Training for Road Races in Competitive Cycling

Video Transcript

"SAL COLLURA: Okay, now that we've gone through the days of the week, I'd like to get specific for certain events. Let's start with road racing. So if you're training specifically for road racing, I would take that week and add the following things. I think "hill repeats" are an important aspect of training for road racing. One, most road races are going to have some kind of hill, so you are training yourself to climb hills, that's great. But the other thing it does, it takes you to a deeper level. What's going to happen is a road race, is there's going to be an attack, it's going to be strung out. There's going to be a section of time where you're way out of your comfort zone. What "hill repeats" do is simulate that. So, for example, let's say you take a--let's use a 1-mile long hill. Okay, so hit the hill as hard as you possibly can in the biggest gear you can. Either you're turning around and coming back downhill, or if you can make a loop out of it, but you need a few minutes, less than 10, of recovery. So you get a couple of 3 minutes of just recovery. You're not going hard. You're panting, you're breathing, you're getting over what you just did, then you're going to do it again. And I recommend, with hill repeats you're going to hit that thing, five, six, seven times. If it's early, early spring, you're not going to be able to do it as much. If you're to the point where you're getting in shape, maybe you can hit that thing 10 times, and you know what? That's your workout for the day. It's hard, it's going to hurt, but you're done. At the end of that 10 times, you can just noodle home, take an easy ride to recover. But it's those really hard efforts and it can be short. You know, a mile hill isn't going to take you very long if you're going full speed, but it's that extreme effort that's really training your body. You're getting your heart rate up, you're opening up those lungs, and you're building big muscles in your legs, pushing up that hill. And the other thing I would add for training for road racing is do a little bit of that base miles training where you're at 75%, 80%, 90% of your max for an extended period of time, and maybe you're doing that on your Wednesday. Let's say you're doing 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Well, keep it at a point where you're not really comfortable. You're just out of your comfort range, but you're doing it for extended periods of time. And, again, not going 100%, you'll be able to extend that longer, and that's good training for you to keep in that training zone for a good 3 hours, and maybe that could be your Wednesday."