After spending last month working on the Vo2max interval I was beginning to feel stronger, enjoying the training as my legs were beginning to wake up for the season. Which was all well planned to lead into the next stage of the plan, working on the all important Lactate threshold. But that’s not all, it was the start of racing too.
Looking back across March it feels like a long and very eventful one, where I’ve suffered my first real set backs in the build up for the worlds. I was only a couple of days into the month when I had to take a few days off training as work commitments took over. I always feel super uneasy when this happens, I just don’t like enforced lay offs from training. Although it was unavoidable it did leave me with a little doubt over my condition going into the first races.
The month was planned to begin with the Gorrick Saddle Skedaddle spring series at Crowthorne, followed by the West Drayton MBC Black park race. These would lead me into a week long training camp, focused on building power at threshold, before finally making the trip up to Sherwood pines for the first round in the British Mountain Bike Series. Days in between these would consist of spending a day or two recovering from the racing then doing further threshold work.
So how was I doing this threshold work and what’s the point? Well, as most of you probably know, it’s the intensity you spend most of your time at while racing. So by being able to increase the power you produce at threshold it follows that you will perform faster. Your skill level combined with the course will effect how much of this fitness you are able to use while racing, but this is a separate subject.
To build power at threshold I’ve actually been doing a variety of workouts, each week has been slightly different. It’s important to note that to make improvements it really is about time spend AT threshold and not so much about trying to ride as fast as you can for however long you can. So for example if you calculate your LT (Lactate threshold) to be 300 watts, the range you would train at is 285-315. The longer you spend time here the easier it will become, which then raises the power levels you train at.
As for the workout itself I started off doing 4 x 10 minute reps with a few minutes recovery for a week or so before doing 2 x 20 minutes, this continued to build up to an hour, using a combination of the 10 and 20 minute reps. Word of advice though, don’t start too fast! It can be easy to be 10 minutes into a rep and feel like everything is going easy and up the pace, but stay cool. By the time the hour is up you’ll know how hard you’ve worked. But if you are doing it as I’ve described, you won’t have gone out too fast and made the same mistake.
Regardless of the time off at the start of the month, I had great fun racing again, using these events to just get in the swing of things again. I didn’t really feel any pressure during these as the worlds, although fast approaching are still months away.
The training camp didn’t really go as planned as I came down with a chest infection a couple of days into it, having picked up a bug over the weekend of the black park race. So that was another few days off the bike. This concerned me leading into the BMBS. I was only back on the bike again for 2 days before racing and felt some seriously hollow jelly legs. It’s no real surprise I didn’t finish the race all things considered, even though it was pretty hard to take at the time. I don’t like quitting races. The drive home was a very quiet one as I tried to keep myself in check and positive.
By the time I got home though I realised that set backs are inevitable. Fact is they will happen, but its how I respond from them that will decide how well I go in Brazil. So for that I simply reminded myself of one of the years intentions. Do everything I possibly can to be ready for the race.
