In this video we cover off: what is the effective interval and sweet spot for training, what is the best way to maintain your base fitness through the season, are there any fitness benefits from doing high intensity bunch rides, what training do you do for your first 100km mtb if you are a rodie, what is the correct sock length for 2013, how do you win bike races, how many hours should you spend building base, what are the benefits of motorpacing…

In this video we talk about:

Your cycling questions answered
00:14 – What is the effective interval and sweet spot for training
01:12 – What is the best way to maintain your base fitness through the season
01:43 – Are there any fitness benefits from doing high intensity bunch rides
02:16 – What training do you do for your first 100km MTB if you are a Rodie
03:18 – What is the correct sock length for 2013
03:36 – How do you win bike races
03:51 – How many hours should you spend building base
04:42 – What are the benefits of motorpacing

Video Transcript:

Hi, welcome to Cycling-Inform’s weekly updates. My name is David Heatley.

We’re going to be covering off some of the questions that we’ve had come through on our Facebook Fan Page

But first, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook, so you can get the most recent updates as they get posted live.

Now, Troy has asked the question, what’s the effective interval training and sweet spot training?
Well, they are kind of two different questions, and it also really depends on where you’re coming from and what you’re training for. To give you an idea about endurance riding, generally the sweet spot around an endurance ride is around three and a half hours. Now when it comes to interval training, I’ve got my own philosophies around it, and the first one is that I prefer shorter intervals rather than longer intervals. For example, I would prefer five minute intervals over twenty minute intervals, and the reason for that is that if you do a lot of short five minute efforts as opposed to one long twenty minute effort, the threshold power that you’re having to develop to do that effort [five minute] is a lot higher than if you were to do it for twenty minutes. For that very reason, I prefer shorter intervals rather than longer intervals.

Richard O’Donnell has asked the question, after doing a three month pre-season program, what’s the best way to maintain it through the season?
Now, Richard, if you’ve built up your base during your preseason, then obviously you just need to maintain it. To do that, what I would recommend you do is two or three intervals during the week and get out and do some longer rides on the weekend, and that will help maintain it while working on your speed.

Shane has asked the question, high-intensity bunch rides, fun to do, do these have a place in a well-planned training calendar?
Look, I’m always a big fan of doing the occasional fast bunch ride. One of the reasons for that is it just helps hone my bunch riding skills and works on my ability to be able to ride in a bunch very efficienty and work on my technique in doing that. Now the other thing is that it does work on good technique around developing speed as well, so the answer to that is yes, but in moderation.

Now Shane is asking a question, how do I do a 100 kilometer mountain bike event when I’ve actually never done any mountain biking?
Well what you’ll find is that a lot of the stuff that we do on the road will translate over into mountain biking from a cardiovascular and fitness and strength point of view, so there’s not really much difference apart from obviously some variations in the levels of torque that you’ll be applying to the bike to get up some of those steeper climbs that you may not necessarily experience with road riding. One of the areas that you will obviously have big problems with is getting around a course when it becomes quite technical, because those skill obviously aren’t honed down on the road, they are honed while on the [MTB] course, so my recommendation for you in your preparation is to actually get on a mountain bike and spend a bit of time doing some mountain biking, and if you can find somebody that has very good experience with mountain biking, attach yourself to them and have them teach you a few basic skills around mountain biking prior to the event.

Josh Goodall, one of my great buddies, has asked the question, what length of sock is cool this year?
Well, look. It depends on who you talk to and depends on where you live, but here in Victoria, the sock length needs to come up just below the start of your calf, so very long.

Sal’s asked the very broad question, how do you win races?
Well geez, that’s a big question, and it really depends on the race. I think we might leave that one. Sal, look, if you want to find out a little bit more, do contact me, and we can discuss that one.

Damien has asked the amount hours per week you should spend in building base.
Well base training is very important. It really depends on where you are and whatever doing, so if you are a person that’s working, then we generally find that 10 to 11 hours is as much time as you can actually commit to base training or training generally for a week, so I would recommend that you get in as much training as you can during the base period when the weather is good and 10 to 12 hours. Now obviously if you can fit in 15, then that’s going to be a little bit better than 10 to 12, but if you aren’t able to do 10 to 12, then obviously it’s going to be 8 or 9. So it really, really depends on how much time you’ve got available. My recommendation is to get as much time as possible on the bike and to do it at low intensity [E1 or no more that 75% of your Max Heart Rate] so that you can back it up every single day.

Now Fleck asked the question the benefits and how to motor pace.
Well look, there are lots of techniques to motor pacing and really it depends on where you want to get with your cycling and what sort of results you want. For example, if you’re training for track events or short duration events, then obviously you want to be behind the motor bike doing short intervals. If you’re training for road racing, and you want to work on your strength endurance or the intermediate fiber, then tempo riding behind the motor bike for two to three hours is a good idea. Now is it beneficial? Yes, sure. Chasing a motor bike is fantastic training, and the great thing about it is that the motor bikes never tire, so it means that you can get a really good hard intensity effort without having to rely on other people to wind you up and drag you through the ride.

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