I used to be a runner. I used to
be a marathoner. I used to love training. I used to love racing. It all seemed
so simple. It all seemed so black & white. It all seemed so natural. But
was it really? Or was I remembering what it was like towards the end of my
running career and forgetting what it was like when I first started?
To me, the formula was pretty
simple. Build a solid base of miles in the “off season”. That meant running
about 45 miles per week. Marathon training required that I up the mileage to a
base of 70 miles 12 weeks before my target marathon. 8 weeks would do in a
pinch. 2 days each week of track intervals. 2 days each week of tempo runs. 1
day each week for a 20 miler. And 2 days where I let my body tell me what I should
to do. Simple.
Due to a running injury, I had to
have knee surgery to repair a simple tear. The expectation was that I would be
grounded for a week, maybe two. I never would have guessed that my short run
the morning of my scheduled surgery would be my last run. The surgery was a
complete success. In fact, I was walking 9 holes of golf and carrying my golf
clubs on a hilly course only 6 days after my surgery.
The problem was that my surgeon
found a different problem once he got a look inside my knee. I have no lubrication
in my knees. The result is bone on bone scraping with every step I take. The
wear and tear from running is anywhere from 20 to 30 times worse than it is
from walking. My surgeon estimated that I would like need replacement surgery
in 3 to 5 years if I kept running. That was more than 13 years ago.
Return to Rookie-hood
I tried many exercise routines to
replace running. It was 10 or 11 years before I finally tried road cycling. The
initial investment just to try cycling was a bit steep. I didn’t want to make
that initial investment only to discover I really didn’t care for road cycling.
But once I tried it, I fell in love with it immediately. I didn’t really know
what I was doing.
My only goal early on was to ride
as often as I could and build a solid base of miles. I knew from marathon
running that anything I would want to try later on would require a solid base
of miles. It seemed logical to me that the same thing would be true of road
cycling. I didn’t know anything about the sport, not even from a spectator
perspective. But I knew it would take some time to build that solid base of
miles.
Organized Event
When I first started riding I thought
I wanted to participate in bike races. I thought bike racing would be
comparable to road racing. I was very disappointed to learn that I could not be
more wrong. I think of the two kind of like this. RUNNER: I finished my first
marathon in 5 hours. REACTION FROM OTHER RUNNERS: Fantastic!! Congratulations!!
You are now a marathoner!!! And on and on it goes. Compare that to Cycling
races. CYCLIST: I finished my first Century bike race and I didn’t get dropped
from the peloton until the 80 mile mark. REACTION FROM OTHER CYCLISTS: So, are
you going to throw your bike in the dump and burn the cycling kit? Okay, maybe
a little bit of an exaggeration, but not too much.
A little over a year ago I
participated in my first century ride. With no previous long distance cycling
experience, I wanted to be sure that my training was going to be enough for me
to achieve my primary goal, to finish. At the time, I only knew one person who
had completed a century ride. Even he had only one century ride under his belt
so his ability to help me was limited.
I was very fortunate to find a few
long distance cyclists on dailymile (www.dailymile.com)
who were able to provide some great information. I should take this opportunity
to specifically thank dailymile friend Richard C. for patiently answering all
my questions, sending me detailed information on hydration and calorie
requirements, Heart Rate profiles and pacing recommendations along with a large
number of other great bits of information.
I knew what I had to do as a
marathon running to be successful. I had no idea what I needed to be successful
as a Century cyclist. In fact, I wasn’t really sure what success was. Talk
about operating at a deficit! But I knew I needed to have a training plan.
Instead of being able to turn the information I was getting and turning it into
a solid training plan, I was becoming overwhelmed. I really just wanted a
training plan. How many days should I ride each week? How far should I ride
each day? What kind of intensity should I be putting into each ride? If I can
ride x miles in y time, how fast will my century ride be?
Clearly it wasn’t going to be that
easy.
TRAINING PLANS
I did numerous searches for
century ride training programs for century rides. I found plans that talked
about how many days each week I should ride. I found training plans that told
me what my heart rate should be on each ride. I found training plans that told
me how many watts I should be pushing on each ride.
Not that it was part of the
training per se, but complicating all this was getting amazing, detailed
information about how many calories I should be taking in each hour, how much
water and electrolyte replacement drink I should be taking in each hour, and
the most critical of all, my bum hurt seemingly all the time!
Training plans seemed to go from
the ridiculously simple, very low mileage plans designed to get someone across
the century finish line. Eventually. Not that I knew what that would be for me,
but there was no emphasis whatsoever on time. Other plans were so ridiculously
complex and detailed, that I was completely lost on how I could possibly
participate in such a plan on my own.
Even though I had no previous
experience riding century rides, I knew none of what I found would be right for
me. What was wrong with these plans? Some of them were written by highly
respected cycling coaches. Some were designed by cycling teams and proven over
time. Some were far too conservative, or at least I thought they were. I wasn’t
really sold on tracking my training according to an HR monitor, so that wasn’t
going to work for me. I wasn’t going to buy a Power Tap, so using WATTS wasn’t
an option.
That got me thinking back to my
marathon training. Why did I feel so confident in that? Well the bottom line
was experience, sure. But it was more than that. The real difference was that I
believed in what I was doing. It wasn’t even a question. It was a simple fact.
Talk about faith!! So I do I use this concept of “faith-based” training. That’s
what I needed.
FAITH-based TRAINING
So what is “faith-based” training?
I think it’s pretty simple really. The components are:
·
Believable
·
Manageable
·
Flexible
·
Enjoyable
Believable: I honestly
believe there are any number of training plans that will help me be successful.
No matter which plan you choose, it has to be a plan that you believe in. If
this plan is coming from your coach, then you have to first believe in the
coach. If you don’t, it’s going to be difficult to buy into any plan that s/he
is proposing. Believing in the coach can go a long way, but you still have to
believe in the plan. That means that specific plan for YOU. Sure, that plan got
elite athletes to achieve their goals, but I’m not an elite athlete. So it has
to be believable … for you.
Manageable: The training
plan has to fit your schedule and your life. We all give up certain things when
we are training. Expect to make sacrifices. Most of us have families and jobs
that require a certain amount of our time. Maybe drinks with the gang after
work, or you need to get your spouse to help get the kids on the bus in the morning.
But it can’t be such a drastic departure from our normal lives that we simply
can’t stick to it.
Flexible: The plan should
be specific enough to be clear on what needs to be done on any given day. But
it should be general enough to provide overall goals for the week. For example,
I used to plan my track workouts Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes I had to
travel out of town. I could almost always get a run in while I was away. But to
get a long run or a track workout done was much more difficult. So I might have
to do my track intervals on Monday one week and skip the second one. I might
even do a little more since I would only be doing that workout once that
particular week. But I was confident that the plan still gave me plenty of
quality to achieve my goals.
Enjoyable: You might have
thought this last item to be a bit odd. But I think this is essential to
faith-based training. Whether your goal is to run a 5k, complete a century ride
or complete an ironman, training is hard! That’s part of why these goals are
important to us. Because it’s hard! If you don’t enjoy the training that’s
required to get you there, it will be very difficult if not impossible to stick
with it over a period of many weeks. First of all, I competed in events that I
enjoyed the most. I did run the occasional 5k, but I much preferred longer
distances. As a result, almost all of my races were 10 miles or more. That’s
what I enjoyed.
Does that mean I always enjoyed my
track workouts? Absolutely not. Did I always enjoy my 20 mile runs? Usually,
but not always. I found that I preferred running 400’s on the track over
fartlek on the roads. I found I liked to compete against myself and the track
would allow me to do that. I found I enjoyed running with other people, so I
worked it out so I could run track intervals on days when others would also be
running intervals. On weekends, I would sometimes drive 15 or 20 miles to meet
friends who were also running 20 miles that day. Even though it was hard, I can
honestly say I looked forward to almost every workout.
MY CENTURY PLAN
So what did I do for my training
before my first century ride? I used faith-based training to develop a plan I
could believe in. It might not have been the most efficient plan or be the best
plan and it might not have allowed me to get the most out of my abilities. But
it did allow me to achieve my goals for my first century and have fun training
for it.
Specifically, I “talked” to as
many people as I could find. I read as many articles as I could get my hands
on. I tried to ride as much as I could. And in the end, I believed I would be
able to complete my first century ride, complete it within a self-imposed time
frame and enjoy the experience.
Looking back a year and a half at that
first century ride, it remains a very special event for me. It is not my
fastest. But it is my favorite. I learned a lot from that first ride. I learned
that I was not doing enough high intensity rides. I learned that I needed to
incorporate more hills into my training, at least if I planned on riding hilly
century rides. And I learned that I loved it, all because I relied on
faith-based training. You gotta believe.
