UKC

Hey,

Can anyone recommend a decent cycling training manual? There are loads out there and not sure whats best. I'm a recreational road rider going about ~100-200km a week looking to get faster and structure training more.

Cheers, Alex

In reply to a13x:

Buy a heart rate monitor, join a local cycling club

In reply to kevin stephens:

Yeh but beyond heart rate increasing as I'm trying harder I would have no idea what to look for! Planning o getting involved with uni cycling club I think.

Alex

In reply to a13x:
Uni cycling club would be great; you will get no end of training tips and should be able to find well matched training partners. HRM's are great for training in different zones, loads of books on this

In reply to a13x:

The Cyclist's Training Bible by Joe Friel is comprehensive and a pretty good place to start, he also has a blog which is worth trawling through the archives.

The Time Crunched Cyclist (Chris Carmichael) has more specific emphasis on structured high-intensity work (i.e. lots of intervals) to get the most bang for your buck in terms of training time. This probably would benefit you the most by the sound of where you're at now. It's also based more heavily on modern ideas of training with power meter information but still applicable even if you don't have one of those (in which case its quite useful and interesting to "calibrate" yourself periodically on a gym bike or a turbo.)

(I'm guessing the new edition might leave out the name-dropping bits about how he used to coach a certain Texan pro rider though...)

In reply to a13x:
i've been looking for info on HR based training and the stuff in the BC insight zone was useful and a good starting place

http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/insightzone