Fair warning: there’s a lot going on in this post. The conclusion bullet points at the end have some great highlighted points if you don’t have time for the full throttle version.

In this post we’re going to look at a case study that involved a few different things going on for a cyclocross racer, all while answering the question, How Much Intensity Is Needed In Training?

Case Study Scenario: A cyclocross racer that needed PMAX work to address his issue with the holeshot, but also raced adventure races, so we were trying to balance both. Then, surgery hit in August.

I’m highlighting an error that I made by over-utilized sweet spot training, and had a lack of racing or high intensity.

With adventure racing interwoven with bike racing, as a coach I leaned too heavily on aerobic fitness and a lack of intensity because I didn’t want to ruin the adventure racing. When he returned from surgery, I let his past history of training A LOT be my guide, which was a mistake; we did too much at once and lacked intensity!

Takeaways covered in this post:

When you come back from a break from the bike, you can’t rush it. Get back into things as fast as you can, but still need to ride an appropriate amount; there is no short cut.
Use Sweet Spot for 3-4 weeks to develop aerobic fitness and learn how to execute intervals
During race season, I’d only utilize Sweet Spot if you have trouble with longer duration efforts over 30 minutes
Once you can complete Sweet Spot cycling for up to 45-60 minutes, move on to harder FTP work at 100-105%
When you stop making gains there, utilize VO2Max intervals to push out your FTP ceiling
- Newer cyclists, use this 1x a week and a hard group ride
- Cyclists with more experience with interval training, go 2x a week (Tuesday and Thursday), with either a B-race on the weekend or hard group ride.
  - If there’s no hard group ride, FARTLEK POTPOURRI yourself; go hard when the road tilts upward. I SAID GO HARD!!!!! Not kind of hard (dynamic FRC can help guide you with this)
Use group rides to take yourself out of your comfort zone, but hard pass on the group rides that are filled with a bunch of fluff. If you’re worried you’ll get dropped, you’re at the right ride
Rest means REST. Not lifting, not running, easy cruises below 50% FTP and resting
Racing…if you want to race well, you need to race often. Get out there and pin a number and go hard!!!!

I fully own having missed the mark in a couple of areas for this athlete. As a coach, that is the worst feeling, but I want to share this post so that you don’t encounter the same pitfall.

On the micro level, we’ve all taken losses at times in cycling, which oftentimes occurs when we get stuck in the trees, and don’t step back, to see the forest of our training.

It’s easy to find a workout that “works”, and next thing you know, you’ve been doing it too many times for three blocks straight, then suddenly, you’ve plateaued, but it’s really hard to see when you’re staring at the trees!

Unique life situations happen, and this blog post is here to highlight what can happen when things go awry; how do we get back on track? Calendars get crazy busy, training gets off track, you might train differently one year and not really notice it, but how do you recover?

Case Study Scenario: Surgery Before Cyclocross

It was October 2019, 6 races into the cyclocross season and 10 weeks from having his appendix removed; I was bummed to see that we weren’t making the progress that we both had hoped for in the competitive New York / New England Cyclocross races.

Sure, a major surgery that takes someone off the bike is a BIG hurdle to leap over, but that’s life. As a coach, I need to figure out a way to get him to put his best foot forward.

This athlete comes from an adventure racing background, which consists of insanely long races that involve up to 7 disciplines from riding to paddling to rappelling. It’s gnarly!

Big races require LOTS of training hours, so 20 hour weeks were the norm with multiple different types of workouts in a day. That said, if I’d schedule a one hour recovery ride, I’d open Training Peaks and also see a 45 minute run or a gym session. We needed to work on optimizing the time spent “exercising”.

What’s Wrong With My Performance?

This is a question that you need to be comfortable asking yourself and your coach. If you feel like you’re missing the mark, get clarification!

If you’re failing A LOT of workouts or not seeing progress, your coach is already asking that question in their head, “What’s wrong here? Why aren’t we winning at these workouts?”

We want you to know when you are missing the mark, and this happens at times. We all hit points in time when things just aren’t in crush mode, but it’s what we do to recover and get back on track that is key.

Maybe we need more rest. Maybe we’re hitting the wrong system at the wrong time. Maybe you’re tired from external stresses in life. There are a ton of things, but we need to figure out what it is so that we can get you back on the bike, completing workouts, and progressing as an athlete!

Here’s how our conversation started, 10 weeks after the surgery:

It seems I've taken a step backwards compared to last year. Last year the strongest part of my race was the last 10-15 minutes and I could chase down racers. It seems like the opposite now.

I was bummed to read this, but also having the same feelings.

We discussed the workload, and how the running and lifting on recovery days was not helping, and reiterated the fact that for a sport like cyclocross, where there is so much high intensity, you really to recover to 100% so that you can HIT IT at 100%. You can’t race cyclocross well at 95%. Rest means REST.

There was also a lot less racing before the cyclocross season because of the surgery. After the surgery, I let him ride too much as we had too much focus on getting miles and rides into his legs as opposed to racing intensity.

I ran into Walle and mentioned what was going on, and his immediate reply was, "2 weeks off for SURGERY plus less racing, it's that. You can't train like racing, so no weekly training races definitely reduces some important stimulus."

It was my hunch, but just as you like data, I wanted to SEE the numbers, which we’ll get to at the end of this post.

But first, the initial cyclocross issue at hand: losing spots from the holeshot, then missing the boat…instead of PMAX and FRC, we went PMAX and Sweet Spot.

Losing Spots At The Holeshot

One issue that we were looking to address was that he could maintain his position once the race got started, but he’d miss the front group because of a bottleneck on the first or second corner.

He needed to start out stronger.

Early on Last year you identified my 1 sec-5 minute power as a weakness which I suspected but couldn’t verify.

We’ve addressed that with weight training, sprints etc. and I it’s helped my starts in CX.

It seems my 10 min and 20 min power has suffered a little because of that focus? That seems a little counterintuitive because a lot of my workouts this summer were 1 hour tempo or threshold with bursts which should have helped my 10 and 20 min power…

The 10 and 20m power was just 5W and 10W lower, so pretty negligible, but I expected more of an increase at 1h and we didn't get that. My thought process was that if we got him out of the gate with a better sprint and able to be more flowy on the course he would not be stuck in the bottle neck. With poor starting spots we're in the bottleneck all year so far it seems.

This was a mistake on my part; he was already aerobically fit; there was no need for sweet spot which just brought on too much fatigue versus aerobic benefit. I should have had him working 100% FTP and beyond, and more VO2Max since there wasn’t enough bike racing that wasn’t adventure racing.

So, let’s answer this question about sweet spot cycling right now…

How Much Sweet Spot Cycling Do You Need?

I’ll be brief on this: not that much! Remember, sweet spot is used to get your aerobically fit, and then you should MOVE ON.

I really only have riders utilize sweet spot coming out of base to build aerobic fitness, then use endurance rides afterward since there’s less fatigue. Sweet Spot is spending a macro match for something you can accomplish on the weekend with friends.

Get your sweet spot out to around 3 x 20m or 1 x 60m and then MOVE ON!

But, move on to what?

FTP is really important for any discipline, but overly focusing on it is a big mistake that many cyclists make. One thing that often is forgotten is that you NEED TO GO HARD.

If you want to race or do hard group rides, you need to race and do hard group rides. Wait, what?

Yes; it’s hard to truly push yourself in a workout as hard as a group ride will push you. Also, if you want to be a good bike racer, you need to attend a lot of races.

There are so many variables that go into racing performance that go beyond just watts; it’s all these little things that you need to get accustomed to if you want to have a great performance. Timing of attacks, reading the race, getting your warm up dialed, nutrition, working with teammates, etc etc. The variables are ENDLESS, which is why every race is so dynamic!

I’m not against group rides, but I’m against group rides that are not hard for you. Those are the ones people tend to drift towards. Use group rides to take yourself out of your comfort zone; not to chit chat and ride easy together where you get one hard effort in.

How Important Is VO2max For Cycling?

Aside from the intensity from group rides, you need to hit some hard efforts, and while athletes and coaches have personal preferences on the types of VO2Max work that you complete, there is no denying the fact that you need to complete some VO2Max intervals.

VO2Max intervals will help you go harder when it really counts, when the elastic starts to snap in a bike race. Also, doing these intervals will make FTP intervals feel like a piece of cake. The big benefit is that they push out your FTP ceiling, allowing you to make more FTP gains!

So, clearly, VO2Max work is a must for cyclists. We missed the mark for this rider since there were not many practice races (G-Tour) on the calendar due to the overuse of Sweet Spot and shying away from too much intensity:

One big difference between this year and last is the absence of G-Tour races this year. In those races I hit 350-550 watts quite often, Just wondering if that’s the element that’s missing for fall CX this year. I had workouts this summer where I’d hit those numbers but it was when my HR was in the high 150s to low 160s which is completely different than trying to hit those numbers when you’re at a HR of 175 which is what happens in G-Tour events for me all the time.

Having my appendix out on Aug 1 didn’t help as it shut down Road races planned for the month of August.

While the appendix wasn't ideal, it's something we had to work around. I let him jump back in full throttle and went a little too long with that build by about a week or so.

By the time he said, "Hey man I'm tired" I was like thinking, “Damn, I let him jump back in too quickly”. I let my own excitement for him to being back to training to get in the way of the big picture at hand.

Moving forward we really need to hit some higher intensity aerobic work instead of the longer sweet spot to get more benefit for when he is in the race and pinning it at threshold. So more VO2max and actual 100-105% efforts as discussed earlier.

Cycling Metric Numbers

So, was the intensity truly the problem? Could we prove that with data? The athlete conversations were really key, but I had to dig in.

The good news:

The training for July 2019 and Sept 2019 were better than 2018 in terms of work done (KJ) and the intensity of VO2max, a solid reason why he felt good in late July; things were on track, and even on non-road race weekends we had some HARD sessions.

The bad news:

June is bordered in GREEN. See June intensity (lime green)...way more intensity last year. ;-(

June 2018 consisted of training races, road races, crits, and VO2Max and 15s efforts.

June 2019 had adventure races, Sweet Spot, Neuromuscular 1-2m (this is good!), and Tempo bursts

Overall, June 2018 was just more intense and way closer to cyclocross efforts. The opposite claim could be made that this is too much intensity too soon, but the total workload is what we wanted to focus on in June and have races in the legs. He’s such a developed athlete that he could handle this amount, no problem.

August 2018, bordered in red, also way better. ;-( More high quality work in less hours.

August 2019 is when we focused on the PMAX efforts and increased those watts to get him out of the grid in a better position. We didn’t follow that up with VO2Max work, FRC work, or Racing.

Simply put, look at your weaknesses from 0s through 5m as a key focus for cyclocross.

When we look at the graph again from above, July-Sept 2019 out the gate watts are wayyyy better for 15s - 1m10s; great improvement because of the PMAX work and weight lifting! We were just missing that racing component BEFORE the racing started.

We needed road races, hard group rides, or training races; NOT SWEET SPOT.

At least we know: racing (G-Tour) + PMAX + road racing has him coming out the gate faster, so let's start pinning the threshold and max aerobic (VO2max) more next year as opposed to Sweet Spot; you're aerobically all good and need that overdrive.

How The Cyclocross Season Finished

Freezing cold winter, brutal race conditions.

We simplified the mid week intervals and included PMax, Max Aerobic, Threshold, Rest, and Openers.

One thing we didn’t get into was that he needed a better warm up, something to really get the engine running before a hard PMAX Holeshot start!

Resting More! Only one run and one gym as opposed to 2 and 2.

He started closing time gaps, and by the beginning of November, things were quickly back on track: “Seems like I’ve closed up some of the time gap to the leaders compared to Charm City earlier. Happy to see that progress.”

By end of November he was faster than 70% of the field and just off the top big dogs. In New England he just missed a top 10, down 2 minutes and change from the winner.

Sometimes it just takes some small tweaks, and the feelings that you have as an athlete are extremely important to convey to your coach!

Communication is KEY! \

See Also: How to Train For a Cycling Stage Race

Conclusion

When you come back from a break from the bike, you can’t rush it. Get back into things as fast as you can, but still need to ride an appropriate amount; there is no short cut.
Use Sweet Spot for 3-4 weeks to develop aerobic fitness and learn how to execute intervals
Afterwards, during race season, I’d only utilize these if you have trouble with longer duration efforts over 30 minutes
Once you can complete Sweet Spot cycling for up to 45-60 minutes, move on to harder FTP work at 100-105%
When you stop making gains there, utilize VO2Max intervals to push out your FTP ceiling
- Newer cyclists, use this 1x a week and a hard group ride
- Cyclists with more experience with interval training, go 2x a week (Tuesday and Thursday), with either a B-race on the weekend or hard group ride.
  - If there’s no hard group ride, FARTLEK POTPOURRI yourself; go hard when the road tilts upward. I SAID HARD!!!!!
Use group rides to take yourself out of your comfort zone; hard pass on the group rides that are filled with a bunch of fluff. If you’re worried you’ll get dropped, you’re at the right ride
Rest means REST. Not lifting, not running, easy cruises below 50% FTP and resting
Racing…if you want to race well, you need to race often. Get out there and pin a number and go hard!!!!

Racing Is The Best Training Intensity