BOULDER, COLORADO

THETIME- CRUNCHED

CYCLIST

3rd Edition

CHRIS CARMICHAEL and JIM RUTBERG

Race-Winning Fitness in 6 Hours a Week

The Time-Crunched Cyclist, 3rd edition, is part of THE TIME-CRUNCHED ATHLETE™ series.

Copyright © 2017 by Chris Carmichael and Jim Rutberg.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Carmichael, Chris, 1960- author. | Rutberg, Jim, author.Title: The time-crunched cyclist: race-winning fitness in 6 hours a week / Chris Carmichael and Jim Rutberg.Description: 3rd edition. | Boulder, Colorado: VeloPress, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016055402 (print) | LCCN 2016059236 (ebook) | ISBN 9781937715502 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781937716837 (ebook)Subjects: LCSH: Cycling—Training. | Cyclists—Time management. | Endurance sports—Training.Classification: LCC GV1048 .C38 2009 (print) | LCC GV1048 (ebook) | DDC 796.6—dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016055402

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Art direction by Vicki HopewellCover design by Andy Omel; cover photography by Philip BeckmanInterior design by Erin Farrell / Factor E CreativeIllustrations by Charlie Layton

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CONTENTS

Foreword: Mark Gainey viiIntroduction ix

Part I The Time-Crunched Advantage 1 1 The New Paradigm for Endurance Training 3 2 The Science of the Time-Crunched Training Program 23 3 Terms and Conditions 49 4 Measuring Intensity in the Information Age 73

Part II Training Programs 117

5 Time-Crunched Cyclist Workouts 119 6 Criterium, Road Race, and Cyclocross Training Programs 149 7 Century and Gran Fondo Training Plans 161

8 Gravel Racing and Ultraendurance MTB Training Plan 173 9 The Commuter’s Plan for Race-Ready Fitness 185

Part III Weight Loss, Nutrition, Hydration, and Heat-Stress Management 203 10 Weight Loss for the Time-Crunched Athlete 205 11 Fueling High-Intensity Workouts 253 12 The Time-Crunched Kitchen 279 13 Hydration and Heat-Stress Management 321

Part IV Making the Most of Your Fitness 343 14 Supplementing Your Training: Endurance Blocks 345 15 Making the Most of Your Fitness 357

16 Strength Training on Limited Time 379

Acknowledgments 409References and Recommended Reading 411Index 419About the Authors 429

173

8

GRAVEL RACING AND ULTRAENDURANCE MTB

TRAINING PLAN

I REALLY WASN’T SURE ABOUT gRAVEL RACINg until I was out in the mid-

dle of nowhere in the Flint Hills of Kansas, 175 miles into the Dirty Kanza 200.

It was early in the evening, with the late-day June sun low in the western sky.

Golden hour, the photographers call it, and now I see why. What struck me

was the quiet. It took 175 miles, but I had reached a point where the only man-

made structure I could see on the vast grassland was the gravel road I was on,

and I couldn’t see another human ahead or behind me. It was wonderful to be

alone on a bicycle in a beautiful landscape of flowing grass.

Having ridden with and talked to a lot of athletes who have completed

gravel races and/or ultraendurance mountain bike events, the quiet is one of

the common threads that draws people to these events. It may take 8 hours or

more to get there, but you reach a point where you are finally alone, and in

today’s ever-busier world being totally alone is rare.

The other common draw to ultraendurance events is the very real likelihood

of failure. In shorter events you may fail to stay in the lead group or you may get

dropped from the peloton, but it is rare that you will reach the point of giving up.

People get pulled from criteriums because they get dropped, but they rarely sit up

THE TIME-CRUNCHED CYCLIST174

and quit of their own volition. In contrast, almost everyone contemplates quit-

ting during a rough patch in an ultraendurance event.

For the highly motivated career professional, the notion of failure is ter-

ritory you may not have experienced in a long time. You have succeeded in

nearly every avenue of life. You have conquered the challenge of building a

successful career. You are an expert in your field. You haven’t failed, in a sub-

stantial way, in years. Yet here you are, many hours into an endurance event,

wrestling with the decision of whether to continue or accept personal defeat.

Quitting is easy; continuing is hard. For many athletes, the underlying reason

to enter ultraendurance events is to reconnect with the visceral challenge of

facing and overcoming a true decision between success and failure.

There are many reasons why athletes are increasingly drawn to gravel and

ultraendurance mountain bike events, and isolation and the chance of failure

are only two. For some athletes, these events are the next logical step after

participating and competing in shorter events that no longer offer a substan-

tial challenge. Others are being drawn away from training and competing on

pavement because gravel roads and mountain bike trails present a lower risk

of being hit by a car. Whatever is drawing you to ultraendurance events, the

inescapable fact is that you can’t dramatically increase the time you have avail-

able for training. This leads to the inevitable question of whether the principles

and concepts of time-crunched training can be successfully applied to events

lasting 8 to 24 hours.

The short answer is yes. We have successfully used low-volume, high-

intensity training principles to prepare athletes for success in ultraendurance

events, from the Leadville 100 to Dirty Kanza 200, and the Breck Epic to La

Ruta des los Conquistadores.

The training program in this chapter fills the need for an efficient train-

ing plan that can be folded into a hectic workweek, splits the all-day weekend

ride into two more manageable chunks, and yet still prepares you for the wide

range of challenges presented by ultraendurance races.

gRAVEL RACINg AND ULTRAENDURANCE MTB TRAININg PLAN 175

Be aware that this is not an off-the-couch program that takes you from

a life of no exercise to the finish line at Leadville. Before commencing this

plan, you should have cycled through either the TCTP Competitor program

or Century program and ridden through a 4-week recovery-and-maintenance

block (see Table 5.1). The people who achieve the best results with this plan

are those who are already experienced cyclists and can leverage some of the

long-term aerobic fitness they’ve accumulated over the years. This program

was designed for those looking to tackle a new challenge—one that keeps

them riding and enjoying the sport throughout the year. The program can be

used equally well to prepare for a long gravel event, an ultraendurance road

event, or an ultraendurance mountain bike race. It is designed more to create

the fitness necessary for a 100-plus mile event than it is tailored specifically for

the technical skills of road, gravel, or mountain biking.

THE ULTRAENDURANCE PROGRAM

There’s a massive difference in the physical demands of being able to stay com-

petitive in hour-long criterium races on the weekend versus racing up and

down 10,000 vertical feet over the course of 9 to 10 hours. Unlike the week-

end racers, competitive ultraendurance racers are usually logging at least 10

hours a week on the bike. Many riders are more in the 16-to-20-hours-a-week

category. So keep in mind that like the Century plans, this plan isn’t likely

to produce race-winning fitness for ultraendurance events; there’s simply not

enough time on the bike prescribed here for a rider to dominate an 8-plus-

hour race. Of course, if you prove me wrong, be sure to let me know.

To match your expectations to the reality of the program in this chap-

ter, I’m confident that a reasonably experienced mountain biker who follows

the plan closely has a good shot at finishing the Leadville 100 in around 10

hours. Is a sub–9-hour finish possible? It’s been done, but it’s a stretch for the

program, and the CTS athletes who have accomplished that feat came into

the program very fit. Those results assume that you have good weather, no

THE TIME-CRUNCHED CYCLIST176

equipment failure, no crashes, and a smart nutrition-and-hydration strategy on

race day.

The biggest departure from the other plans in this book is that the

Ultraendurance plan (see Table 8.1) requires significantly more weekly train-

ing hours. That, of course, leads to the question, How can it still be called

a Time-Crunched Training Program? In essence, the program relies on the

same science and utilizes most of the same weekday training structure. That’s

the part that targets metabolic improvements: an increase in your ability to

produce energy from carbohydrate and fat, and an increase in your ability to

deliver oxygen to working muscles and process lactate before it starts build-

ing up. But then there are the unique challenges associated with long days in

the saddle, and there’s no other way to prepare for those than with long days

in the saddle. The Ultraendurance plan requires no fewer than 7 hours a week

throughout its 12-week schedule and maxes out at 13.5 to 14.5 hours of train-

ing during week 10. However, the weekday workouts can be completed in as

little as 90 minutes.

Back-to-Back Training

The bulk of this plan’s training time is devoted to back-to-back multihour

rides on the weekends. These aren’t overly intense or structured rides; they’re

what I call “ass-in-the-saddle” rides where you prepare your body for the rig-

ors of 10 hours of riding. By splitting up, say, the 8 total hours of weekend

rides in week 8, you’re logging a huge chunk of saddle time within 24 hours.

When you get on the bike on Sunday, you’ll be fatigued, your back and joints

will be a bit stiff, and your sit bones (the ischial tuberosities) may be a bit ten-

der. Riding through the soreness and fatigue is an important part of preparing

yourself for the final third of long endurance races.

Midweek rides are short—less than 90 minutes—but still intense, and

placed on back-to-back days. I planned them on consecutive days to increase

the cumulative workload and better replicate the training stimulus from a

gRAVEL RACINg AND ULTRAENDURANCE MTB TRAININg PLAN 177

long ride. On these longer rides, I’d have a rider completing several 20-minute

SteadyState (SS) intervals, longer ThresholdLadders (TL), or more OverUnder

(OU) sets (see Chapter 5 for details on these workouts). When there isn’t time

to put all that work into one interval session, you can achieve a very similar

overload with back-to-back interval days.

Because back-to-back training days serve as the foundation of the

Ultraendurance plan, Monday and Friday rest days are even more critical.

You need them to recover from the training block and give your body time to

adapt so you go into the weekend or week feeling fresh and fitter. Don’t skip

these rest days. Don’t use them to make up a workout. If you can’t ride on a

given day, especially during the middle of the week, skip it and move on. Just

try to keep the skipped workouts to a minimum.

If you have time to get in the optional 45- to 60-minute EnduranceMiles

(EM) ride in the middle of the week, great. But remember, the intensity for

an EM ride ranges from 45 to 75 percent of your threshold power and 50 to

91 percent of your threshold heart rate. Do your body a favor and keep your

power and heart rate at the lower end of the EM range for these rides. All I want

you to do here is get more time in the saddle and add more miles to your legs.

Climbing Rides

Half of the Saturday rides in the plan call for climbing. This doesn’t mean you

have to do climbing repeats up the same trail or dirt road for 4 hours. Aim to

spend 40 to 60 percent of your overall ride time (not distance!) going uphill.

That means at least 90 minutes of climbing in a 4-hour ride or up to 3 hours of

climbing in a 5-hour ride.

I understand that it’s easy for me to find routes that will accomplish those

goals in my hometown of Colorado Springs, while in some areas of the coun-

try it’s not realistic at all. If rolling hills are what you have, then use them well.

And if you live in a truly flat region, you’ll have to make do riding into the

wind or somewhat over-geared.

The Time-Crunched Cyclist will put you at the front of the pack in just six hours a week.

That’s right: Six hours a week on this revolutionary plan will rebuild your competitive fitness and help you regain race-winning form.

Criteriums, road races, Gran Fondos, gravel grinders, century rides, or the fall cyclocross series—the Time-Crunched Training Program will boost your recovery, rev up race-winning speed, improve power, and help you go the distance.

This new edition includes:

➤ Integration with Strava tools to track and sharpen your training

➤ New Gran Fondo, Gravel, and Ultraendurance Mountain Bike plans

➤ The Time-Crunched diet to shed pounds and improve power-to-weight

➤ Energy-packed recipes from award-winning chefs Michael Chiarello and Matthew Accarrino

➤ New guidelines for hydration and stress management

➤ Race-winning tactics to make the most of your cycling strengths

Capture your best performance in the time you have right now. Let The Time-Crunched Cyclist show you how to develop competitive speed, power, and endurance for top results.

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