I want to ride some races next year and am planning to up my training over winter to prepare. im 22 and a bit fit lol. what sort of milage a week on hillyish terrain would be the minimum id need to not embarres myself? i know this sounds like the wrong attitude to have but i want to know what i need to be doing!
cheers
There are whole books written on this subject so it's difficult to give a definitive answer on an internet forum. OTOH training can be broken down into basic principles and then it's for the individual to decide how much training they want to do. So it's best to start with a strategy that will get you to your full potential, and then scale it back to fit your resources and objectives.
Understanding basic physiology will bring structure to your training. The two fundamental systems for exercise are aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic means exercising with oxygen (longer than up to two minutes or so), and Anaerobic without oxygen (less than 2 minutes). High accelerations on a bike will result in your heart and lungs unable to keep up providing oxygen to the muscles and there will be a build up of lactic acid and exhaustion will prevent further effort.
Aerobic training can be broken down into different zones for training purposes. Each zone represents a level of effort measured as a percentage of your maximum heart rate. In terms of how much training in each zone can be indicated by a looking at a diagram of a pyramid. Imagine a series of horizontal lines of equal distance from each other from the base to the top. The lowest will have the largest area and the top the least. This represents the proportion of your training in each zone. The base area (the largest) is miles on the bike at the lowest intensity.
Fat oxiidisation - 55-70%MHR
Fat oxidisation and carbohydrate burning - 70-80% MHR
Lactate Threshold (LT) - 80-90% MHR
VO2max - 90-!00% MHR.
Off the bike training will help with developing core strength for muscle endurance as well. If you wish to compete then as a minimum I would allocate an average of 7-8 hours a week with come January at least one session a week on LT training. This can be done as suggested earlier by efforts @ 80-90% MHR lasting 2 x 20 minutes which can be done indoors on a turbo.
