Well new year and looking forward to the longer days and summers of smashing it up. But that’s still some months away!
Over the last few years our club training bunch has dwindled and I think that due to a few things, but mostly the lack of a consistent training day where we will go out and have a good hard effort. We have a good bunch who race and more would like to race this year, but I think it would be better if we had a regular training day where we do a regular loop (or 3) and have efforts etc.
In summer we do a regular Chain Gang but I think it would be good to mix this up. I was just wondering what you did with your group? Do you have a regular day? Regular route with efforts along certain sections?
I ride with a team and once a week in the summer we’ll do a 3-4 hour ride on a flattish route, similar route every week.
We’ll ride endurance for most of it, but there are a few 15-20 minute stretches without any stopping where you are free to do whatever intervals you want. You can ride endurance, do an interval, hop on a wheel of someone going hard as long as they know you are there. We regroup at the next stop sign and then continue on with endurance.
I am fortunate to ride with a great club and a group of people who share similar goals and follow a periodised training schedule through the year - we have a Saturday training ride year round.
It means we naturally get slower and longer rides in the off season with things starting to ramp up now into slightly spicer affairs at the turn of the year going into spring. By summer these are all out smash fests and opportunities for people to try things out that they wouldn’t do in a race. There is no winner, you are encouraged to try and beat each other up or blow yourself up to improve. It’s great.
We also have a Sunday endurance/ reco cafe ride (depending on group) ride and Tuesday night worlds (which again are race specific type efforts)
This combined with structured training puts me in a very lucky place
I prefer variation when it comes to club rides but I am a bit of an outlier, regular fixed routes have been more popular in any clubs I’ve been in. Although I could be wrong but I think most people would like variation too in theory but need that more fixed start/end as life happens!
Our midweek pre-work training ride is a pretty fixed route, on the basis that if you’re starting in the dark, doing a fast paceline, and then needing to get to work after, you want everything to be as familiar and predictable as possible. Want to minimise the chances of anybody taking a wrong turn, getting back later than expected, etc. Those rides tend to be single paceline before and during the race season I.e. Short turns on the front, flick elbow and drop to the back. Group size no more than 6, usually multiple groups so the fastest goes off first and then anybody that gets dropped can just pick up the next group. Off season we’ll dial the pace back a bit and work on group skills more e.g. Rotating paceline.
Weekend training rides are much more variable both in terms of route and structure. Could be hilly route with hills done at your own effort then regroup on the descents. Could ride out together to a road race circuit, then effectively have a X lap race (possibly handicapped if enough people), regroup and ride home together. Could just be a firm training ride with Tempo-SS on the front so everybody gets a good aerobic workout.
It really helps when you share some of the same goals and have others as dedicated as you around you. Life can always gets in the way but there is a core that seem to manage to ride week in, week out - again, it’s where I am lucky (planned reality…) and I can ride when I want.
Route wise we have a few standard routes which get rotated each week - the familiarity is good when it becomes a smash fest… during winter we will try some alternative routes etc as it’s miles on the legs a rather than anything else - nice to explore some different roads and…coffee shops
During the winter the club has the same couple of routes midweek. it keeps things safe and familiar.
I like the idea of going out to a circuit and then doing a few laps, maybe handicapped. Then a ride out to a caf for a coffee and laugh, then ride back.
We have Monday and Friday morning ‘idlers’ rides, which are always chilled as they go at the pace of the slowest person. They’re usually a 100 minute to 2 hour loop, then a coffee stop, and usually then some people go out for a second loop. Usually one day is gravel and one day is road. There’s typically 2-4 people in winter and 5-10 in summer.
Tuesday and Thursday are ‘gravel worlds’ and ‘chaingang’ respectively, though they tend not to run Nov-Feb inclusive. The chaingang is through and off for ~30 minutes then 20-30 of informal racing; the gravel tends to be hard up the climbs and fast through the technical sections but does usually allow a couple of regroups until the last 10-15 minutes. The paceline tends to get 8-10 riders and there are 5-6 regulars at gravel worlds, though nice evenings in early summer can see 15 or so.
Sat and Sun see the usual club runs. Sat has 4-5 different groups go out, but only the A’s (‘Rapides’) is a non-stop ride, and usually a drop ride in the summer (in the last hour/30km).
All of them are good fun and tbh this year I tended to use the Tues and Thursday night rides as substitutes for interval work. It was fun and it’s a good way to get some revs in. That said, it can be hard to be progressive and really focused on improvement if that’s all you do, as I noticed this year.
