spectastic

anyone familiar with chris carmichael's training philosophy for weekend warriors with 8-12 hrs of time on the bike? what do you think about it?

he was in town yesterday and gave a presentation about his book "the time crunched cyclist," which highlights his top-down philosophy in training. I have not read the book, but this was the general break down in his presentation
- skip base training, because you don't have time for it, and you're not having to do multiple day stage races or races longer than 3 hours unless you're cat 1/2
- heavy emphasis on threshold and vo2 intervals to improve FTP, and encourage fat burning at a higher power output (not sure how z6 and z7 factor into it, forgot to ask)
- do small blocks of 2 days of interval, followed by a short period of "built in" recovery (I guess active recovery?) and repeat
- throughout the series of blocks, stress the VO2 and threshold limit by any/all of the following: 1. increase the interval power. 2. decrease break period. 3. increase duration of interval.
- as you reach a point of diminishing return with stressing the VO2 and threshold, taper back and start working on other areas, like endurance.


in principle, this style of training is nice, at least for my situation in Texas, where the bigger crits are in march-may, where high fitness can come quickly with this interval training, and the longer road races come later in the season, at which point I will have hopefully reached my peak, and can then start focusing more on the 3-4 hour road races, where endurance is actually needed.

However, I'm not totally sold on the idea because I want to race as a cat 2 and hopefully cat 1, and 4-5 hour road races are pretty standard for them. Also, I'm still confused about what exactly base training does for you, and why it takes so much riding to do properly. Another local coach proposed that instead of base training, just do tempo rides instead. all it does is build endurance, right? train your mitochondria to keep working after 3-4 hours. can't you do that with tempo rides in the middle of the season, after you've reached peak fitness?

looking for your feedback

PepeM

I am a complete noob so you're probably better off ignoring me. With that said, here is my opinion:

I tried it, didn't like it. Developed some good 2-3 minute power, but not much else than that. My resistance to fatigue was pretty much non-existant. Also, ended the year pretty weak, short stuff power was gone and long stuff power was worse than before. I think it is a good plan to follow if you have a couple of months to train for something and then you're willing to take the crash that comes afterwards (which Carmichael himself aknowledges iirc.)

This is one of my favorite articles when it comes to base:

Zone 2 Training For Endurance Athletes | TrainingPeaks

Also, 8-12 hours is not that low, you can definitely do base on those hours. You can check the following recent article for some pretty good ideas. Basically: long rides on the weekend, sweetspot during the week.

Toolbox: Building Aerobic Fitness - PezCycling News

jsk

I think the time-crunched approach can be OK for quickly getting into shape for crits, as long as you don't keep doing it too long and burn out. I think even for 2-3 hr road races it's probably not the best approach. Especially if you have 8-12 hours/week and more than a few weeks to get into shape for your target events. In that case I would favor a more polarized approach with more base/zone-2 (but still with some structured high-intensity work).

spectastic

thanks for the inputs. and super helpful article. I suppose the top down approach is in no way pleasant, and doing multiple sets of intervals week after week is going to suck, big time. So right now, I'm leaning towards something in between 2, maybe 3 interval sessions, mixed in with tempo/endurance/recovery rides in between

PepeM

So true. With Carmichael's program you're basically always doing intervals, and it does become rather unpleasant.

mike868y

i really don't think 8-12 hours is all that time crunched for an amateur focusing mostly on crits. i think that's about gsteinb's average training load and he's one of the best crit racers in his age group in the northeast. if those are focused training hours that's plenty of time to get fit for hour long crits.

spectastic

what approach does gsteinb take?

rubiksoval

I don't think I'd pay a dime in support of anything Carmichael touches (due to his doping juniors and all).

Also agreed on 8-12 hours still being pretty significant. I've probably averaged 8-9 hours over the winter the last few years and then bumped that up to 10-12 for summer daylight and I only ever really felt limited in road races that stretched past 3.5 hours.

I do a lot (like 3-5 times a week) of tempo/sweetspot on the lower end of that (8-9ish hours) and reduce it to 2-3 workouts a week once I'm closer to 12 hours. I think the key is to just make sure you're working and never just riding around. I don't ever ride below z2 for anything with that type of schedule, and the lower the hours the higher the overall intensity.

Subsitute a vo2 max set in there every week or two and you're almost all the way there, in my experience. Again, where you may be lacking is longer endurance, but that's not a factor in crits.

rubiksoval

Base is anything and everything you've ever done. The notion of going out and riding 20+ hours a week in the winter to build "base" is archaic and irrelevant to almost everyone that's not a pro (and even a lot of the pros I follow).

Hiting those longer tempo/sweetspot rides can be huge. I incorporated that a lot more this year (previously topped out at 1.5 hours, this winter have done 90 mins x 2, 2 hours 15 mins, and recently hit 3 hours of sweetspot) and the results are very dramatic. Again, not a lot of hours (7,9, and 7 the last three weeks, including this one), but CTL is 88 at the moment and my power numbers are at previous peak levels.

Think of it as workload: 4 hours of pissing around might net you 2 mJs of work, but 4 hours with 3 hours of tempo and another decent hour might net you closer to 4 mJs of work (depending on your power, 278w is 1mJ an hour) which is likely what you'll see in a 4-5 hour road race provided you don't spend the entire time off the front.

All the sudden general aerobic training becomes pretty race specific. Win/win.

mike868y

i mean if i knew the answer to this i'd probably be a better at bike racing

revchuck 

FWIW, Carmichael wrote in The Time-Crunched Cyclist that if you have >8 hours to spend training, a more traditional periodized training schedule works better for most people. He also specified that the program works best for events <3 hours.

Voodoo76

That depends...

Yep

I followed the CTS plan pretty closely last year. I really wanted it to work. My numbers were OK at points in the season, but I never felt like I could handle fatigue. I don't think classic base training is the answer, but excising it didn't work for me either. The strongest I felt was in the summer when I was able to do 2 hour early morning rides on both Saturday and Sunday (basically a reversal of CTS).

happybday29475

+1

There are tons of good coaches/books out there, no need to support bad apples.

caloso

I used the TCC book a few years ago when I was training for a 1 hour hillclimb and it worked well for that. In retrospect, it was pretty heavy on FTP-raising, which was perfect for that even though I didn't know it. But for crits, I'd want to add in more shorter, sharper workouts to give you some snap.

grolby

This is probably my plan for the year. Lots of extensive work at subthreshold. Fairly minimal toodling around in Z2. I'm not that familiar with the TCC plan, since I have a similar reluctance to give Carmichael the slightest time of day. If it emphasizes the high-intensity, low-duration stuff, you gotta be careful with that. I HIIT'd myself into oblivion last summer/fall.

jacksonhandy

I do the TCC program for the most part during the week, but the weekends, I hit 3-4 hours on Saturday mornings and 2.5 hours on Sunday mornings. I found that during the week it let me feel like I could crush myself in 1.5 hours a couple of times, then have some fun riding with the fast group rides on the weekends.

However, I am fat, and have raced one season so far and everything else I've ever done was go for a ride until I couldn't turn the pedals anymore. So, yeah.

Homebrew01

Carmichael's a scumbag. Doped Juniors without their knowledge.
"Just vitamins"

grolby

It would've been pretty scummy had he been doping them with their knowledge. Just that much worse.

TMonk

well if it includes any of the workouts he posts here, a lot of it (for him) was being tough as nails and executing workouts that most people (myself included) wouldn't have the willpower to do on a routine basis.

globecanvas

Like everyone else is saying, 8-12 hours is not really "time crunched." You can absolutely do standard base/build training on that many hours. I've basically never trained more than 8-10 hours/week.

... except this year, which is more like 6 hours/week. I'm not following Carmichael's plan per se but I have absolutely been trying to make up for lack of volume with increased intensity. I have done almost no endurance-type rides; every ride has a specific purpose, which is either Z5, Z4, or Z3. We'll see how the racing goes!

TMonk

I'm a 8-10 guy here too, like most of us are really.

I hit 14-15/week for a couple months over base this year, way more than usual. I can't say it's made me much stronger, but certainly more tired and pissed off, trying to manage the other aspects of my life. Hitting the road at 5:30 for 3 hours before work got old after a while.

I had planned on doing 10-12 during the season this year, but I've already averaged 9-10 over the last block. I'm pretty sure it's going to stay that way.

One thing that is different is my TSB is a little higher so I feel fresher for workouts, and as I result I'm able to ride with a little more intensity. I don't plan on keeping the volume up, so we'll see how long that lasts. Additionally, I did hit a FTP test PR last month (by 1 watt), so maybe things are going in the right direction.