Originally Posted by
PeteHski
So if you only do 10 hours total training per week, you don't think some intensity (i.e. polarisation) will help? Not talking about HIIT. I take that to mean little or no endurance training and very low overall volume. Obviously you are going to need volume to perform well over a double century.
My events tend to be very lumpy, so I need the ability to burn matches over numerous punchy climbs, so maybe interval training is more important for me. I don't have any experience of riding long events at steady state power.
Bundy did not say he only had 10 hours and I did not say intervals will not help.
What I said or meant to imply is that someone wanting to do a hard double century who is apparently coming from a low training volume would be better off increasing that training load or the number of calories (kJoules per ride) over 6-9 months before doing VO2 max intervals or more specifically intervals over FTP. I also said there really are no long term studies on the topic of ultra distance training and fatigue. I looked. I asked several well known experts.
Stroke volume increases most effectively at a relatively low heart rate. All great endurance athletes spend a lot of time at lower intensities. Time between VT1 and VT2 seems to impact mitochondrial function and muscle fiber type the best. The only questions are when, how much, the level of intensity and how often should one bump up intensity working towards a specific event. Some athletes respond to volume than intensity. This gets into the domain of having a good coach or in my case, knowing my body very well. Bundy would not be served poorly by getting his CTL up into the 90-110 range to do a double. Getting there from ostensibly zero at the age of 60 takes time, my guess was 6-9 months.
I remember a correspondence with Andrew Coggan asking a question and he asked me a few, basically to see how I knew what I was doing was helping my functional performance. At the end, he said keep doing it until it stops working then do something else. Some years after that I was searching for training on low volume because I needed surgery and could not ride much, low and behold Coggan wrote somewhere on a forum he would just do 2 x 20 min 3x per week. My FTP improved for sure on at regimen, actually a pretty good amount especially since I did more than 2x. BUT, my endurance at 4+ hours did not see any improvement.
I like Couzens because he has decades of data and he analyses it. I am doing a volume and intensity ramp myself right now. The earlier season volume allows me to train at a higher intensity over two blocks spanning 7 weeks. I am currently setting PB on shorter climbs by several seconds but the real meat and potatoes for me is the ability to keep laying a moderate power down hour after hour without your heart rate decoupling. I am dreaming to get 5% on the top end when my peaking concludes. Would I not want that 5%? No way, give it to me. I liked to read accounts and also posts from marathon world record holder Ed Whitlock. His training was very slow paced as is many other marathoners. Only when they get close to an event do they crank up intensity. Personally, that works for me. Just at about half the horsepower as those guys.
https://alancouzens.com/blog/optimal_periodization.html
Edit: Seilers polarized is 20% of sessions and no 20% of time. In terms of time, it usually is 5-10% of total time. I always try to do some intensity every week even in the off season but nothing structured, just maybe some hill repeats once every 7-10 days. Totally anecdotal but but I have found that as I get older, not losing it is very important and so, I do do some intensity year round as maintenance. A pure Build type cycle (usually 3 blocks) is a once a year type thing for me and then I go back. CFBoy would have more insight into this as he is about 10 years my senior