Blog Posts From Active Expert: Gale Bernhardt Tagged With crash_training

Bike tours – huge hours and how to use those to your advantage

guest — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:11:06 GMT

Those that have read previous blogs and my books, know I’m a fan of large training weeks to boost fitness. These are often called “crash training blocks” because you increase volume significantly more than your curren tnormal.

Before heading into daily specifics and how to structure your own crash training week, or use a bike tour to your advantage, first I’ll give you a summary of my last week of bike riding. A group of us did the Bicycle Tour of Colorado. Because I live in a city near the 2012 start, a couple of us rode from my doorstep to begin the tour, which is why my mileage is different than that shown on the website.

Definitions:

Ride time – The time spent moving on the bicycle (pedaling and coasting). This includes rolling easily and waiting for others, warm up, cool down and toodling along at an easy pace just because.

Elapsed time – Total time accumulated in the activities associated with cycling on a tour. (Stopping at aid stations, clothing removal time, sunscreen application, changing flat tires, inspecting broken seats, popping into a bike shop, etc…) This time begins when cycling starts for the day and stops when the bike gets racked.

Average speed – Distance divided by ride time.

For six days of riding, the totals are:

458.52 miles

26,528 feet of climbing

28:51:32 ride time (near 29 hours)

15.9 mph average speed (you'll see big swings in daily averages)

36:53:00 elapsed time (near 37 hours)

I’ve done plenty of week-long bike tours, around a dozen or so. This tour wasn’t the biggest mileage tour I’ve done, but the ride and elapsed times were both more than I’ve done in the past. The reason for that is a single word – wind.

Tomorrow’s blog will include goals for the ride and some specific file details.

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Questions and discussion can be found on my Facebook page.

Cycling and mountain bike training plans can be found here.

The week following the crash training week – in short, it worked

guest — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:12:57 GMT

Regular blog followers know about the three-day block of high volume, the crash training block (explanation text here and summary stats here). For those of you that want the short story, it worked. I achieved my first bump in fitness this season.

For those that want gory details, those follow.

I think there are some important points to make about the training block itself and what happened the week following the block.Something I didn’t discuss last week was exactly how I felt by day 3. In a single word, flat. What happens at the end of a big training block (and when people are overreaching in their training) is a feeling that you are working harder than your heart rate monitor shows. A week ago Sunday, my legs felt as though I was working in Zone 4, but my heart rate monitor was showing low Zone 3.

Important point – when you are tired, you cannot force your heart rate to respond to the level of your rating of perceived exertion.

I wasn’t running a power meter on that day, but I know from past experience that power is low, heart rate is low and rating of perceived exertion is high.

For the three-day block, here is summary heart rate data:

Zone 3: 32 minutes

Zone 4-5a: 21 minutes

Zone 5b-c: 0 minutes

Monday following the block, was light stretching and light weights. Legs didn’t feel too bad. Though I’ve viewed this as a nice surprise in the past, I knew what was coming.

Tuesday’s morning swim was a clear indication that I was tired. I couldn’t make the intervals on the main set, so I simply sat out several 50s and tried to stay out of the way of my lane mates. (Which was tough because I couldn’t get out of my own way.) The Tuesday run was barely classified in the jog category.

The weather was fully cooperative this week, with off and on rain. The Wednesday ride was on the road, a loop that included hills, but no intensity. My legs still felt tired.

Though the Thursday swim was slightly better than Tuesday (I could make more of the intervals), I was still low on energy. The trail run in the afternoon was really a hike-jog. (Great day in the drizzle, very peaceful.)

Friday, was an easy 30-minute walk in the rain. (Last week Friday was 4hrs of riding, day 1 of the block.)

Saturday’s swim was better, I’m starting to get some energy back. I was in the pool 1:15 at what I consider a moderate-effort workout. Rain all morning kept me off the mountain bike until late afternoon. I couldn’t stand the thought of a trainer ride, so waited until the wind and sun dried off the Horsetooth Mountain Park service road. This was the only off-road option I thought would work without tearing up the trails and making a mess of the bike and me. Total ride time was 50 minutes. It is a road that climbs just over 1000 feet in 2.2 miles. I kept the intensity down and would classify it as a strength workout. (Last Saturday I was on the bike 3:15, “out” 4:20.)

There are several ways to structure a crash training block and the recovery week. Because I needed a boost in preparation (base) fitness, I didn’t have the ability to drive intensity at the same time as the high-volume block. (Which will NOT be the case in a couple of months, where I’ll do another big volume block that will include more intensity.) In the week following this crash training block, there was almost no intensity above Zones 1-2 until yesterday, Sunday. Obviously, training volume was slashed as well.

My measure for both the effectiveness of the training block and my recovery was yesterday’s group ride. The goal was to hang on the wheels of lead riders for as long as possible. I was able to make that happened for about three hours, which was good. The last hour of the ride, I suffered a strength bonk (my legs refused to power up the last climb); but by that time Ron Kennedy and Bill Danielson were the only two left. They took mercy on me and waited.

In the summary below, notice I was able to drive significantly more time at higher training zones in a single day than I could manage in accumulation last week. That is intentional – cut volume, increase intensity.

For the 78.5 mile (2933 ft ascending, 18.7 mph avg. speed, including warm-up and cool down time) road ride:

Zone 3: 33 minutes

Zone 4-5a: 33 minutes

Zone 5b-c: 2 minutes

I’ll continue to work on fitness by putting a mountain bike ride on Saturday, followed by a road ride on Sunday. The strategy and mix of these workouts will change as the season progresses.

The goal?

Sub-10 hours at the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race.

What is crash training?

guest — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:47:34 GMT

As promised in my earlier blog, this is the follow-up column on crash training. Crash training is a term that I believe has cycling roots, though I can’t trace the origin. Traditionally, a crash training week is one that is high volume, relative to the athlete’s current training schedule. Training is some 50- to 100-percent above the athlete’s normal weekly volume. Often, cycling teams will have a spring training camp to focus on riding, team building exercises (formal and informal), distribute new kits and begin to plan strategy for the season.

Cycling teams intend for this big-volume training week to spring-board the fitness of every team member, and very often that is indeed the result. Unfortunately, while some athletes respond very well, others leave the week of training ill or injured.

My first experience – summer bike tour

The first time I personally experienced an abnormally high volume week of training was the first year I did Bicycle Tour of Colorado. I was racing triathlons at the time and was not sure how my body would respond to such a high volume of cycling. The route that year was 468 miles over seven days and included climbing nearly every day. I can tell you I was very nervous about not being able to complete the ride.

My original plan was to include a couple days of swimming and running after I got off the bike. The short story of that is I didn’t have the least bit of interest in running or swimming after I got off the bike on any day. I don’t believe the lack of swimming and running hurt my triathlon training one bit.

What I found is that my overall endurance in all sports was significantly improved after the week of cycling. It took a little over two weeks for me to recover; but when I did, my fitness was significantly improved. As you would imagine, my cycling was much stronger. My swimming was unaffected and my running was also noticeably improved. (“Improved” means lower heart rates for the same speeds and the feeling like I had the endurance to go forever.)

The second experience – spring self-designed road riding block

After my experience with the fitness results produced by the bike tour, I decided to do a spring trip to Arizona. Several of us from Colorado decided to travel to warmer weather to get a jump on spring fitness. The first year we did a spring trip, it was in February. As it turned out, the trip was great but we returned to cold, snowy Colorado weather for the month of March. Though we felt the trip was somewhat beneficial, we decided that February is too early to do the week-long trip if we want the fitness to make a difference for summer riding.

What I have learned

In the last ten years or so, I’ve done multiple spring trips and summer bicycle tours. The trips have been a week long and other trips have been shorter. I’ve done organized tours and I’ve organized my own groups. I’ve also advised many athletes on how to structure crash training blocks to their fitness advantage. Here are a few things that might help you when you design your crash week on the bike:

If you are riding six or seven days, pick no more than three days to be “hard”. “Hard” can be fast, hilly, long or long mixed with fast or hilly. Make the remaining days lower intensity.
If you try to make all days fast or high intensity effort on all the hills, the result will be mediocre training. Manage your daily ride goals to achieve the results you want.
A crash training block doesn’t have to be an entire week and can be three or four days of riding. This can be a road trip somewhere or it can be done from your home base.
For a week of riding, you can make the training volume 50- to 100-percent greater than your current training volume. This is one guideline for design.
How much intensity you can tolerate needs to be determined for each individual athlete.
For athletes aiming for longer key events such as 100-mile mountain bike races or 200-mile road races, you can do shorter block of training, three days for example. Make the total training time in the three-day block equal 80- to 150-percent of your total predicted event time. This can be done early spring or within six weeks of your race.
You MUST be rested before doing the crash training block.
Ignore anyone that has not been doing the training block with you. In other words, if you have been riding for three days on your own and you show up to a group ride where other people have fresh legs – ignore them. They do not have the accumulated fatigue you have in your legs. Ride to your own plan.
Excellent nutrition, hydration and sleep habits are critical to be able to absorb the benefits of the training block.
Get daily massage to speed recovery. If you don’t have access to a masseuse, you can do your own leg massage. (I have never had access to daily massage for my crash weeks and caring for my legs at the end of each day is critical.)
If you do the training block from your home base, you must manage your work, family and social obligations or the training can end up leaving you overtrained, ill or injured.
There are big advantages to taking a trip away from home to do the training. (Minimizing distractions, minimizing other chores, maximizing rest and recovery.)
You may need to rest more than someone else doing the same crash training week.
In order to reap the benefits, you must recover after the crash training block.

Crash weeks for other sports?

You can do crash training blocks for swimming, running or nearly any other sport. A crash block for running carries more injury risk than cycling, in my opinion. Be very careful with a running-only crash block.

You can combine running and cycling to yield running results from a crash training block.

A crash block in swimming is not as risky as running, but depending on your sport history, be aware of any shoulder pains.

Have you done a crash training week?

If you’ve done a crash training week, feel free to comment below about your experience.

Crash Training Day 3 – My legs are wrecked

guest — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:06:53 GMT

I’ll post the training ride stats for you first, while you’re reading this, I’ll be working on telling you more about how to use crash training to your advantage. The goal is to post it later today.

Day 3 – check (today was road bike, Day 1 and Day 2 were mountain)

4hrs ride time (“out” time 4:36)

4415 ft of climbing

63.88 miles

69.1 ft/mi

Three-day total:

Ride time = 11:15

Chamois time (this includes refueling, chatting, what I call “out” time) = 14:11

Feet of climbing = 10,664

Miles = 55.85 mountain, 63.88 road to total 119.73 miles

Combined hill ranking = ~89 ft/mi

Crash training block

guest — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 21:56:15 GMT

I’ve lamented in some recent posts (within the last month) that my fitness stinks compared to past years at this same time. I’ve been working on that issue, including today's first long day in the saddle on the mountain bike. I was able to recruit Bill Beyers and Ted Mioduski to ride 4:00. Our ride time was right at 4, with “out” time at 5:15.

Today's ride is part of a crash training block of three days. Though I've written about crash training weeks in past posts, I've not written about blocks of three or four days - I'll write more about strategy in the upcoming week.

The goal is to get 3-4 hours on the mountain bike tomorrow and then about 4 hours on the road on Sunday. Three rides, three days in a row can do a lot to bump fitness up.

Day #1 – check.

3104 ft. of climbing

29 miles

107 ft/mi hill climbing ranking