A lot of people have been asking about the workouts Lance used to prepare for the Tour de France, and especially the time trials. The tricky thing about time trial training is that you need to train at race pace even when you're not in shape to sustain efforts that difficult. In other words, we know that Lance has to be able to ride 45-50 kilometers an hour, sometimes faster, in either an individual or team time trial. But back in February and March he didn't have the power to ride that fast for the duration of a full time trial. So the workouts that I used with Lance earlier this spring - which are the same as what we used to use back when he was winning the Tour - were time trial intervals.

To perform time trial intervals, Lance would get on his time trial bike. It seems like you could perform these on either a road or time trial bike because you're concerned about power output, but it's important to remember that these workouts are also essential for developing the skill and feel necessary to handle the TT bike with confidence at race speeds. So Lance would go out, do a nice warmup and then 4 8-minute intervals that were pretty much all-out. This meant he was holding a power output and speed that was greater than what he would hold for a 60-minute time trial. In essence he was doing "over-speed" intervals, because riding at that intensity forces the body to adapt and develop the power necessary for sustaining long efforts in individual and team time trials.

Since there are a lot of amateur cyclists competing in summer time trial series, here's what I would recommend for you. You can do a very similar workout to Lance's, but I'd back the workload down a bit to 3-4 6-minute intervals. If you know your time trial pace, push yourself to ride 10-15 watts above that intensity, or 5-10 heart beats above your time trial heart rate if you're not using a power meter. In terms of speed, these intervals should be 2-5mph above your time trial pace. Take 6 minutes of easy spinning recovery between intervals.

Chris Carmichael
www.trainright.com
www.twitter.com/trainright
read more

By Chris Carmichael

 

There is a crucial threshold that every bike racer must reach and exceed in order to be successful. But I’m not talking about a lactate threshold or anything like that; this threshold is harder to define because it’s really a combination of physiological, psychological, and environmental factors. At the same time, every racer who’s broken through what I refer to as the “Competitive Threshold” knows what it is, even if they can’t really describe it.

 

When your fitness is below a given point (relative to your competition) you’re racing to survive and holding on to a slight hope that if you survive long enough you might be able to launch one all-or-nothing bid for victory. But when improve beyond your Competitive Threshold, survival is no longer an issue and a whole new world of opportunities opens up. Instead of fighting for wheels so you don’t get dropped, you’re fighting for wheels based on strategy. Instead of viewing the peloton as a place to find shelter, you start viewing it as a tool you can use to increase your chances of winning. You start acting like a hunter instead of a scavenger.  

 

At the 2009 Amgen Tour of California, there were a handful of athletes on the comeback trail and many more riders who were just starting their season. With the difficult weather conditions and challenging stages, it quickly became evident that many riders had yet to reach their Competitive Threshold this season. But before you slam me and say I’m criticizing riders, let me say that it’s completely normal for a significant portion of the peloton to be using a race for training (it’s only February, after all!), and getting steamrolled by some of the world’s top teams is actually an invaluable experience for the development of stronger domestic programs and younger riders. It’s a hard way to learn, but the key to developing world-class riders is building a series of experiences that will progressively make them wiser and tougher.  

 

The reason I bring up the concept of the Competitive Threshold is that Lance Armstrong’s ability to ride the front of the peloton – not just for moderate pace-setting duties but also for the hard chasing that was frequently necessary in the final hour of stages – was additional proof to me that he’s reached and far exceeded his Competitive Threshold. The Tour of California was challenging for Lance, but he wasn’t riding to survive. He finished seventh overall, within two minutes of Levi Leipheimer while riding as his domestique, and when he needed to be he was on the correct side of every split in the pack during the road stages.

 

In the past few days, though, I’ve received calls and emails asking about Lance’s Stage 5 time trial performance. Should it have been better? Is 14^th place a sign that he’s lost a step in his abilities against the clock? Has his age reduced his capacity for great time trial performances? None of the above. The man hadn’t raced a top-tier professional time trial since July 2005, and he’d been pulling super-domestique duty for the previous four days – through some of the nastiest conditions this side of Belgium. And, as I mentioned before, it’s still February and Levi and others trained specifically to try and win the Tour of California and/or the Stage 5 time trial. Lance’s time trial performance was right where it needed to be at this point in his comeback and this point in the season.

 

Though I didn’t get a chance to travel with the Tour of California, I was there for the time trial stage because I was coaching at the CTS Training Camp in Buellton, the next town over from Solvang. We’ve had a camp at the same time as the Tour of California for the past two years, and we’ve gone to watch the time trial each time. Whatever you’ve heard about the crowds and excitement, multiply it ten-fold and you might begin to understand the scene in Solvang. It was incredible, there were fans packed 10 deep on some sections of the course. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it at a bike race in the US, and I’ve been to the Manayunk Wall in Philly, the home straight of Athens Twilight, Beech Mountain during the Tour du Pont, Brasstown Bald during the Tour de Georgia, and I rode the Coors Classic way back when. Long live the Tour of California.  

   read more

With one stage to go in the Tour of California, we know exactly what to expect. A blue wave.

Johan Bruyneel is a man of habit, as would any of us be if we were so in the habit of winning. But it occurred to me, as I was riding around the Solvang ITT course last night, pondering where the race was won, that it happened where it always happens: at the first chance to go uphill and put the hurt on folks. Not that they assembled the full climbing train, a la 2005 at the Tour, but Levi himself said that on stage 2's fateful attack, he commanded "Light it up Popo!" to Yaroslav Popovych, before launching the attack that won him the jersey, for good it seems. Classic Bruyneel: don't hit them on the sexiest climb, but rather the first one. Advance, and hold.

Holding has been pretty easy though, for one simple reason: Leipheimer is the strongest rider in the race. His win in the time trial tells you all you need to know. This was the usual course, rolling with a few small challenging climbs and a few more sections of flat... or at least false flat. With a northerly breeze, the first half of the course was where the chrono was won: a mix of slight to sharp rises with no help from mother nature, til you hooked a left turn, summited the course at the start of Ballard Canyon, and began sailing back to Solvang. The second half of the course was very, very fast, largely downhill, and only favoring someone with really sharp technical skills.

Advance and hold. Nail the time trial. And today, in the hardest stage of the race, it's time to simply keep the pace high. Look for Horner, Armstrong, Brajkovic and Popovych on the front of the race, keeping the pace close enough to everyone's limit as to make an attack unthinkable. The strongest man rides for the strongest team, which in cycling is usually checkmate. read more

By Dean Golich, 

You know it’s hot when an athlete drinks seven bottles of fluid and still loses two kilograms of bodyweight during a five-hour ride. The oppressive heat and gusting winds made the Tour Down Under a hard way to re-enter the peloton for Lance Armstrong, but he handled the weather and his first top-tier pro race in nearly four years quite well.

After spending close to two weeks training in Hawaii, including some motorpacing with Chris Carmichael on the Queen K Highway and some long climbs outside of Kona, Lance flew to Australia about a week before the TDU started. Chris flew home to Colorado from Hawaii the same day I left Colorado Springs to join Lance in Australia. During the first race of his comeback, we wanted to gather data on Lance’s power and also see how he adapted to being back in the routine of stage racing.

In the week prior to the TDU, Lance continued training long hours in the saddle. The biggest challenge for these rides was the heat, and at one point his SRM file shows a peak of 115 degrees! The reception for Lance was tremendous, even well before the race. He and his Astana teammates had police escorts on training rides and since Lance and the team were so easy to recognize there were people constantly waving out of car windows, houses, buses, etc.

Once the race started, Johan Bruyneel, Sean Yates, myself, and several other athletes and directors who had known or worked with Lance before 2005 all said the same thing: “It’s like he never stopped riding.” That’s not to say that he’s as strong now as he was when he won the 2005 Tour de France. He still has plenty of progress to make before he gets there, but the way he raced his bike in the Tour Down Under wasn’t any different than the way he raced before he retired. He wasn’t hesitant or rusty, he wasn’t timid about sticking his nose in the wind, and he rode smart.

The 2009 Tour Down Under was harder than we originally expected it to be. The days that were likely to be pretty easy turned out to be very windy, and crosswinds shredded the field. Lance rode wisely and had the power to stay near the front, and avoid the crashes and splits, and his power outputs and kilojoules (a measure of the mechanical energy a rider produces as he rides, which by a matter of convenient math turns out to be about equal to the calories burned to produce the work) were as high and sometimes higher than during the stages with more challenging courses. In other words, there were no “easy” days at the TDU where Lance, or anyone, could just sit in the field.

With the TDU being more challenging than expected, it was great to see that Lance not only rode well but actually felt better and stronger as the race progressed. The original idea was for Lance to ride conservatively and just use the race to get re-acquainted with racing and the very fluid dynamics of the peloton, but the conditions made it necessary for him to race the TDU rather than just ride in it. He came away from the race feeling very good about his conditioning, his power numbers are right where they should be, and his form looks very good going into the Tour of California.

Perhaps even more impressive than his performance on the bike was his performance off of it. Since he won his first Tour de France, Lance has been more than just a bike racer. He’s always had more responsibilities (press conferences, visits to cancer centers and hospitals, meetings for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, etc.) than the typical pro cyclist, but watching him go through his day is incredible. I was staying with Lance and his soigneur for the trip, and he is in constant motion. Within 30 minutes of getting back from racing a stage of the TDU, he was showered, dressed, fed, and off to another function. Keeping up with him is a challenge for everyone around Lance, and we weren’t racing!

read more

To fine-tune his preparation for the Tour Down Under, Lance traveled to Hawaii for some long miles and motorpacing. I'll be out there for the motorpacing, and it will be good to get some high-speed, race-pace hours in his legs before he starts the first stage race of his comeback. Here's the training plan I worked up before he left. It has changed slightly, as training programs always do, but the most important thing for Lance is the progression of block training. You can read more about block training in previous posts, but for now, check out what Lance is doing.

December 29-31---3-day training block
3-4 hours daily @ endurance pace staying below 315watts, climbs at 340-380watts
 
January 1: Recovery ride
 
Jan 2-4----3 day training block
Day 1: 4 hours @ endurance pace staying below 315watts, include 1hr @ Tempo power, 350-380watts, low pedal cadence during Tempo (60-70rpm).
 
Day 2: 4 hours @ endurance pace staying below 315watts, include 2-3 10-minute MuscleTension Intervals @ 45-50rpm, uphill @ 350-400watts with 8-10mins recovery between intervals.
 
Day 3: 4 hours @ endurance pace staying below 315watts, include 1hr @ Tempo power, 350-380watts, low pedal cadence during Tempo (60-70rpm).
 
January 5-6: Recovery rides
 
Jan 6-8----3 day training block
Day 1: 5.5 hrs with 3 climbs of 15-30minutes at 380-420watts, last 60mins behind motor for leg speed.
 
Day 2: 4.5 hours with 2-3climbs late in the ride of 15-30minutes at 380-420watts, last 60mins behind motor for leg speed.
 
Day 3: 4 hours @ endurance pace with 2 climbs of 15-30minutes at 380-420watts, last 60mins behind motor for leg speed.
 
January 9-10—recovery rides, maybe on the TT bike
Day 1: Recovery ride
Day 2: Recovery ride
 
January 11: Possibly an Ironman test on the TT bike??
 
January 12: Depart for Australia?

read more

By Chris Carmichael 

Following the excitement of Lance announcing his comeback and the subsequent flurry of press conferences and all manner of races in October, the main comeback event for November was the aerodynamic testing we did in southern California.

 

Prior to getting into the wind tunnel in San Diego, Lance raced the Tour de Greune individual and team time trials in Texas. During the individual time trial he rode a position he and Steve Hed had been working on, and though it looked fast Lance discovered he had trouble maintaining his power output. Of course, that was partly due to a calibration problem with his SRM – it was reading about 100 watts low – which prompted Lance to ride at what we estimate to be close to 500 watts for the first five minutes of the race. He clearly paid for that effort later in the event, but even accounting for the inaccurate numbers, after 15 years as a professional cyclist Lance was absolutely certain the new position prevented him from generating maximum power.

read more