Energy systems

Following on from my previous post on using excel sheets to plan your season, comes the composition of which system you wish to train at any given part of the season.

Energy systems for simplicity can be broken down into:
0-10s – Sprinting
11s-3 mins – anaerobic
3 mins – 8 mins – VO2max
8 mins+ – Threshold.

Sprinting
“You’re either born a sprinter, or you’re not” – Bollocks.

Well, not entirely bollocks, but not far off. I convinced myself for years I wasn’t a sprinter on the bike. At the end of a 5k run, I could always come by many with one final kick over the last 30s or so. I couldn’t figure why this didn’t translate onto the bike however. It turns out I am actually a fair sprinter, just a long one. I’m not your typical Robbie McEwen who’ll use his massive 5s power to nip round in the last 50-100 metres. I’m more of a Petacchi, with no explosive kick, but the ability to go long over 300-400 metres showing well above average fatigue resistance, holding it to the line.

Powered by the creatinine phosphate system, this energy system recharges in 3-5 minutes. You can get about 5-10 sprints in, with 5 minutes recovery between each attempt. The residual fatigue from these sessions are so low, that they become a great session to do regularly without impairing other sessions. You can do a set of these and then still go out and do your tempo ride after. The sprints however are best done on fresh legs after an easy day, as you want to be aiming to hit peak power over 5-10s of sprinting. Through doing these, your slow twitch fibres will begin to simulate fast twitch fibres, adding to your sprinting prowess. This process takes months, as shown by my power chart below, adding 100w every 4 weeks or so to both my peak and 5s power, which have doubled over the course of 6 months.

 

Anaerobic
The race-winning energy system, often neglected.

This is what the vast majority of local racers lack in my opinion. They don’t do regular anaerobic intervals. I’ve looked at a few local racers power data, and it’s always a weak spot for them, and it’s usually one of the main reasons why they get dropped – they just can’t handle the surge-recover-surge-recover nature of races. Their heart rate goes sky high, the legs fill with burn of hydrogen ions, and they’re unable to recover sufficiently. In a bunch on the flat, it’s not a problem. In races that are strung out into the wind, or that contains lumpy terrain that is rolling, problems begin to occur. It should be said, that by increasing your FTP (the most trainable system of them all), will also raise your anaerobic threshold higher, so these efforts become easier. There should still be a massive focus on anaerobic ability though.

This year I changed my ideas on training. As a runner, how could I do 800m in 3 minutes if I couldn’t achieve 400m in 1:30? The answer was to do speedwork at the shorter durations, and try to extend that intensity over a bigger duation. For instance; do 200m reps in <40 seconds, 400m reps in <1:25, 600m in <2:15 and finally the target of 800m in <3:00.

I went against the grain of traditional linear periodisation, and started my anaerobic training while the snow was still thawing in February, doing 11 lots of 1 minute repeats up Broomfield hill in Richmond park. You can give ~7 minutes recovery to ensure the anaerobic capacity recharges fully, or you can give 1 minute recovery, deplete your anaerobic capacity, and essentially turn it into an aerobic VO2 workout. Both are fantastic sessions, but you’re training different energy systems. I like to do anaerobic sessions with the focus on repeatability, and then a week or 2 later, try to do a max-all out effort and beat my 1 minute power best. My 1 minute power PB back in March, became my 2 minute power PB in June.

VO2Max
Hills!

In racing terms, this is the hardest effort you can do for 3-8 minutes. That may be a hill climb event, a late flyer off the front, staying with the lead group up a 3-8 minute hill, or initially escaping the bunch before settling into a rhythm to work around threshold in a breakaway.

Often what I find in race winning files is that the last 5 minutes of a race is performed near the top end of my VO2max normalised power. Average power is usually lower as I’m trying to conserve energy before launching a hard anaerobic effort + sprint, but in the bigger picture, it’s massively aerobically powered. Training your VO2max brings short-term gains, as it also helps raise your aerobic ceiling. What does this mean? Your FTP is always a % relative to your VO2max. By raising your VO2max, you pull your threshold up slightly, and increase the room for FTP improvement. VO2max isn’t very trainable however.

In terms of training this, you want to be doing 3-8 minute efforts, with minimal recovery. The longer the recovery, the more anaerobic fuelled the intervals will be. Usually this takes place at a 1:1 ratio, for intance; 5 minutes at VO2, 5 minutes recovery, and you’ll gradually reduce the recover to 0.5, so 5 minutes at VO2, 2.5 minutes recovery. When you begin to plateau, the options (same applies to FTP) are to reduce recovery time, go longer, or go harder.

FTP/Threshold
For racing and time-trialling, the main governing factor of how well you perform in TT’s, or which category you race in, is largely dictated by your functional threshold power (FTP), or alternatively, your ‘threshold’. Roughly your best performance for ~60 minutes.

There’s numerous ways to improve your threshold. You can ‘push’ it up, with lots of sub-threshold work, at endurance, tempo, or sweet spot, or you can ‘pull’ it up, with 4×10 at 105% FTP, 2×20 at or above threshold, or VO2 max intervals. There’s not an awful lot of 20 minute sections of road locally in Surrey, so what I tend to do is head to Box Hill and go hard from the roundabout at the bottom for 10 minutes up towards Cycles Dauphine. There’s enough gradient beyond the cafe to continue to put the power down. It’s a brilliant workout!

To ‘push’ your FTP up, requires a tremendous amount of volume if you ride around lots at endurance pace. A lot of books will refer to this as ‘base’. A mesocycle of training whereby the focus is on aerobic conditioning, and getting miles into your legs in order for you to be able to sustain a greater load of intensity once you enter the next mesocycle of training.