Time Crunched Wrap Up
--A quick review:
This Blog started earlier this year when the good folks at Saris offered me a PowerTap hub if I would in turn write a blog about my experiences “Training with Power”. I'm not some uber-cyclist who time trials at 50k per hour. I'm quite the opposite. I'm a 42 year old father of twin two-year-olds with a mortgage, a dog, and not a lot of extra time to train. My athletic background is in long course triathlon where I'm a “middle of the pack” kind of guy. So far this year, while training for the State Time Trial, I improved my threshold power by more than 10%.
After reading Chris Carmichael's book The Time Crunched Cyclist, the concepts resonated with me, so I decided to give the training plan a try and see how it worked for me.
Before starting the plan I did 2 tests. The first test is the CTS 8 minute test. Essentially it's two 8 minute all out efforts. You use the higher of the 2 average wattages as a basis for your workout intensities. The second “test” I did is the climb up Emigration Canyon. It's a 7.66mi climb from 4917ft to 6242ft with an average grade of 3.5%, which takes me about 35 minutes. This a great test for me getting an estimate of my Threshold Power.
--The Results:
8min test- Before 295w After 315w Change +20w or +6.8%
EM Cyn Test- Before 243w After 254w Change +11w or +4.5%
In both of these tests I started out a little hard and faded in the end, which effects the results slightly. In the 8 minute test I aimed for a 10% improvement, or 325w, from the previous test, which is about what the book had said to expect. In the climb up EM Cyn. I aimed for a 7% increase, or 260w, because of my 8 minute test results.
--What worked:
Over the last 10 years I've spent hours and hours riding long slow distance, which gave me the ability to ride all day long, but left me off the back of the pack after a couple of surges in the local crit. This training plan addresses that short coming directly. In fact, I think I quite literally spent more time in Zone 6 in the last 8 weeks then I have in the last 8 years. I have no doubt that if I showed up for a local crit race now I would be able to hang with the pack during the surges, and be there to contend for the finish.
--What didn't:
My life isn't on a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday schedule. I'm an airline pilot, and my work and time off tends to come in three to four day chunks. This means that my training ends up being on back to back days, and that doesn't work very well with this program. Now, there are times when my schedule lightens up some, like between the end of the peak summer travel season and the holiday rush, and I can do all the workouts as prescribed. But, if I have the time off to do that, then I have enough time to use a more conventional training plan.
--Will it work for me in the future?
If I have the time to train on a conventional plan this winter and spring, I will. Of course, I'll be sure to add in plenty of Zone 6 work and Over/Unders in my build phase so I can stay with the pack come race day. If I find myself in a “time-crunched” situation, I think a modified version of this plan could work for me. If I had four consecutive days to train, I'd move the weekend long ride to the third day as a recovery ride and complete the other workouts as written. This might not be optimal, but I think it could work with the time I have available.
--Will it work for you?
The plan in this book is simple, in a good way, well thought out, and very hard; pretty much what you'd expect from Chris Carmichael. If you find yourself with limited time to train and a desire to be competitive in cycling, I'd definitely give it a try.
--Final Thoughts:
As I mentioned in a previous blog, a study that was done on cyclists using this training method showed a 12.9% improvement over eight weeks, but I only managed 6.8%, or about half the amount of improvement of the cyclists in the study. I think that there may be a couple of things that effected how much I improved. First, I started out the year with a threshold power of ~217 watts on my road bike, and I had brought that to ~243 watts by mid August, close to a 12% increase. Now bring that up to 254 watts by the end of the Time Crunched program and my year to date improvement is 17%. That's HUGE for less than a year's worth of work! To put it another way, when I started this program I was the strongest I had ever been on the bike and any new power or fitness was exactly that, new. Just think, if I were to match those kinds of gains in 2010 I would be at 297w by season's end, up 80 watts from 217w pre-PowerTap, which would be nice, but is totally unrealistic. Second, when you're following a program like this motivation plays a big roll in how hard you can flog yourself. Even though I was pushing as hard as I could on these workouts, I know if I had had a race coming up I may have been able to eek out just a few more watts, or go just a little longer on some of the workouts, and sometimes that last little bit of effort can make all the difference. In fact, with no goal race coming up, by the time I was finishing week six I felt noticeably burned out and over-trained. I did the workouts, but both physically and mentally I wasn't 100%.
--One Last Thing:
In the book Chris Carmichael talks about how this program is something he uses in his personal life. Well, the last time I saw him was in Leadville. He was heading down from Columbine Mine shouting encouragement to those of us still on our way up. Here's my question: when does the Leadville Training Plan supplement to The Time Crunched Cyclist come out? Because I'm going back and I just might need it!
20 Weeks till the first race of the season, 9 months till Leadville.
Time to get on the bike :)
Train Hard and Smart
Pat
