What plans would you advise for 6-10 min tt efforts? (Competitive hillclimbs). I dont have time for more than mid volume. How about 10-30k tt’s? Both formats of racing are on my calendar for next year.
Last year i just did riding mixed with intervals of full out efforts (i.e i rode around outdoors at varying intensity, and did max efforts up my target climbs, or target tt flat route). I had lots of ftp gains but burned out by fall, and had mild knee injuries likely due to all the v02 effort wear and tear.
General Build has a good mix of VO2 and Threshold which hits the spot for those efforts. Not sure any of the Specialty plans is quite right for those efforts IMO. 40k TT plan is probably the closest, but it’s mostly SS and Threshold work up to about 105%, doesn’t really go higher than that. For the 10k and hill TTs I think you need to be doing more VO2 training. I would consider using the TT plan as a base but then swap out one Threshold workout each week for a VO2 workout. You could use the VO2 workout progression from the first half of the Crit plan. Specificity is also important - pacing and ability to hold power in an aero position is critical, so as you get closer to race season I would look to do some of those above threshold intervals outside on your TT bike and on hills.
I did exactly this last year, don’t know if you are based in the UK?
In the UK we have a time trial season that Goes from About April-September and a hill climb season that goes from September-October. I was working with a Coach last year and did quite well.
Would your events be seporated like this? Or would it be a mixture of short hill climbs and longer TT’s throughout the year?
Well I will share what my coach had me doing in the 7 weeks I was training for Hill climb. This is after a 3 month Base Build Jan-March, racing/TTing from April-August. Then started hill climb training begining of September.
Tuesday/Thursday 6x30 Seconds Sprints in the morning 7x3 min Max efforts (vo2) in the evening.
Hill climb at the weekend.
We had me try some Tempo on other days to keep up some endurance base but I couldn’t cope with that. I also happened to be commuting an hour a day zone1/2.
During these 7 weeks my
3 min power went from 450w to 490w
5 min power went from 430w to 460w
Afraid I didn’t do any 10 min efforts
I guess the biggest thing was Max Effort on the training days / Max rest the rest of the time.
I’m sure there’s another podcast where they cover hill climb TTs, maybe someone else might know which one it is, I just happened to be listening to the one above yesterday.
None of the trainer road plans specifically cater for short Maximal efforts in the 5-10 min range. Some of them might be good for it but it’s not an option you can select for race type in the workout builder.
I’m sorry but that’s not true at all, my best 6 min power (5m 45s) from this year is 425w and my FTP was about 350w. 10 mins might be more like 110% FTP? I didn’t do any 10 min hill climbs im afraid.
Raising FTP would be a fantastic place to start SSB → General build. But i would highly recomend putting some specialty in there.