16 Week Face of America Training Plan & Guide

fully recover, but need to adequately recover between training sessions. And I am not only talking about training stress, but other life stresses as well. Life stresses come in many forms that affect us physically, psychologically, and emotionally; however, a simple example that many don’t think about is if you job or day requires you to be on your feet 8+ hours a day. Stress and bodily strain – regardless of the form, is cumulative and should always be considered by you or your coach when planning and executing training plans. To highlight this aspect, if you have a coach, you must inform him or her of all of your daily stresses, travel, and when you end up performing your prescribed Recovery Ride or LI Ride at a HI effort. This often occurs when we come across some “friends or foes” along the ride that elevate the competitiveness and obviously the unintended intensity of the ride! Therefore, that’s one of your HI sessions per week that you and/or your coach had not planned, and may result in consecutive HI days that may end up hindering progress and your plans. * LT is the most common intensity to work at improving. With a PE of 7.5 – 8, this workload is often sought to sustain during races lasting ~15-90 minutes. However, depending upon the course terrain and distance, one will often “criss-cross” below into Sub-Lactate Threshold or Sub-LT and above into VO2max, which is basically your maximum oxygen uptake rate, or maximal aerobic capacity. LT is approximately 65% - 85%of VO2max for most individuals. With sedentary individuals, their VO2max may be in the 50% range or below, and the elite endurance athlete could be as high as 90% - 95%. Breathing is labored at threshold, so conversation is limited, and muscular strain/fatigue is very prevalent. After completing the winter or off-season aerobic base building phase, LT intervals may be as short as 2-3 minutes. However, after incorporating these intervals once or twice a week, in 6-8 weeks you’ll be able to sustain progressively longer bouts at this level (i.e. 5-20 minutes). Recovery Recovery may be prescribed as active or inactive, or in other words, as a “Recovery Ride” (for perhaps 3060min) or as a Day Off entirely. If your training schedule indicates taking a Day Off, then you’re not to train at all, rest, and stay off of your feet as much as possible. 5 Restore A “Restore Week” usually follows a Recover Week, and elevates the volume and intensity enough to prepare for the elevated stressors of the Build Weeks. Build A “Build Week” usually follows a Restore Week or Recovery Week, and generally has an overall increase in training volume (hours) by 20% - 40%. This is a guide for your planning purposes; however, this may be more or less depending upon fitness level and training week. Fueling & Hydration Adequate fueling and hydration should both be experimented with before, during, and after training, in order to determine what food, products, and water amounts prove most effective for your performance and recovery. For rides lasting 2-3+ hours or more, a general guide would be to eat something approximately 2 hours prior to start time. For those who aren’t going to get up at 4 am for a 6 am start, then a bar (i.e., Clif Bar, PowerBar) and a 16 oz. bottle of water an hour prior, or a couple of gels and a 16 oz. bottle of water 30-45 minutes prior, may be effective options for you. Again, try them all to see what works best for you. What works for a training partner or “Pro Joe,” won’t necessarily work for you, so find out and make it routine. Focusing still on those longer training rides, a general guide would be 200-400 calories per hour and 16-32 oz. of water (or a combination of water and a beverage containing some carbohydrates (maltodextrin or some form of sugar) and electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium…) per hour. The range of calories usually correlates directly to your intensity level and metabolism. We’re all different, as are our training sessions in terms of intensity level and volume (or how hard and how long). TP2 – Todd Parker Training Programs LLC, © All Rights Reserved

16 Week Face of America Training Plan & Guide | Page 5