Bad Day at the Office

[Slippy]

Having had great results at the start of the time trial season, including pbs and top 10 finishes, my results have dipped to say the least. Guys that I was beating for over a minute are now doing the same to me, which is great for them, but not for me.

I have reduced the high end intensity training focusing more on riding at around 75-80% with some intervals at 90%.

Am I just experiencing a mid season dip or bad days? Do I need to to do more intervals?

[Julian Downing]

Hi Slippy

I think its important that you focus on YOU rather than the relative improvements of others (hard though it is to see their times improve!). Have your times gone backwards or have they stayed the same? Just trying to understand whether you have plateaued or have actually gone backwards from a time perspective...also do you have any HRM , watts date etc to quantify what's going on?

Be interesting to know to see whether for example a power or endurance problem can be identified - that will dicate what you should do next....

Let me know and I'll see whether I can come up with a few ideas.

Cheers

JULIAN - (aka obsesed about TT times!)

PS don't despair - I hit a plateau earlier in the season - shook myself out of it quite quickly by doing a couple of 2 up TT's with someone a minute or so quicker than me - hung on and was painful, but took me up to the next level...

[Slippy]

Having looked at my times I think its more about the head than the legs, my heart rates for the "slow" times show a fairly constant 90-95% for the duration with a slight increase in the second half of the races, which is similar to my best performances. With regard to the times they seem to be plateauing and not showing improvement.

I have re-introduced some intervals into my training, given myself a talking too and produced a cracking ride last night coming 2nd and wiping 2.5 mins off my pb for the course. Head games!!

Julian Downing said:

Hi Slippy

I think its important that you focus on YOU rather than the relative improvements of others (hard though it is to see their times improve!). Have your times gone backwards or have they stayed the same? Just trying to understand whether you have plateaued or have actually gone backwards from a time perspective...also do you have any HRM , watts date etc to quantify what's going on?

Be interesting to know to see whether for example a power or endurance problem can be identified - that will dicate what you should do next....

Let me know and I'll see whether I can come up with a few ideas.

Cheers

JULIAN - (aka obsesed about TT times!)

PS don't despair - I hit a plateau earlier in the season - shook myself out of it quite quickly by doing a couple of 2 up TT's with someone a minute or so quicker than me - hung on and was painful, but took me up to the next level...

[Julian Downing]

Hey Slippy,

That's great news - 2.5mins improvement's fairly massive!

Whenever you do find yourself plateauing though, I always consider:

1. Seeing what changes to my training programme I can make - much has been written about "if you repeat consistently the same training....you'll get the same result!"

2. Not taking the easy option and dropping the high end intensity stuff. After all, its at high intensity that we race...

Hope your times keep coming down - keep us posted. I was peaking for last Tues - 10mile TT on the fastest course around the Epsom area - sadly completely washed out by storms...so here's to two weeks time!

Cheers

JULIAN