Over the past few weeks I’ve been reviewing my training diaries from prior years and I finally read the Training and Racing with a Power Meter book which I’ve had for a while. In doing so, I came to a few new conclusions. I already knew that I increased my volume too much from 2005, but in reading some of the workouts presented in the book I realize that I didn’t do enough structured high-intensity training.

It seems that once the races started, I ended up just doing one hard workout during the week. And most of the time they were usually just a long endurance ride. So even though races qualify as “hard” workouts, they are usually so erratic that they don’t stress a specific energy system like a quality, structured workout can. Another part of the problem was being slightly overtrained—I felt like one long ride per week is all I could do between races. I also was so focused on “making my hours” that I would choose to do a long ride, instead of a shorter, but more intense, workout. Yet doing a super-long ride would still tire me out for a few days, enough to keep me in that slightly overtrained state I was in.

To combat this problem I’m going to focus on quality over quantity. I’m planning my first peak for late February for the Valley of the Sun stage race in Phoenix. What I’m doing for my first progression is lowering my training hours from what I did last year and increasing the number of higher-intensity workouts, even during the base period. Lowering my target hours will allow me to focus on quality training without the subconscious drive to just “get the hours in”.

I’m going to include many of the workouts in the power book. All the workouts are based on a rider’s functional threshold (FT) and the appendix gives examples of workouts for a rider with a 250-watt FT. So being an Excel addict, I created a parameterized workout spreadsheet where you just type in your FT and all the workouts change accordingly. It’s like a personalized workout menu. Some of the workouts are fairly complicated which should help make trainer time a bit more interesting. I’ll start my progression with LT and Tempo work. Then move to VO2 and Anaerobic intervals as I get closer to February. I’ll still hit the gym and do lower-body strength work over the winter as well as yoga and pilates.

The book also gives some good guidelines on when to quit intervals, which are more aggressive than what I was doing. I’d usually quit my intervals once my power dropped by only 20 watts from my first interval. But the authors warn against using the first interval as a gauge due to the freshness effect. They recommend using the second or third interval instead. I thought this was funny because sometimes I would quit by my third interval since I couldn’t match the wattage of my first. In essence, I’d stop a good workout before I got any benefit out of it!

So with a plan in place, I’m really excited to start my training. I realize that my plan puts the bulk of my training volume smack-dab in the middle of winter. But with the lower hours and more interesting workouts, I think I should be OK. It just means that most of my workouts will be on the trainer in the living room. But this may be a good thing as the trainer is probably better for the structured workouts I have planned.