My "Secret" Training Program

Well, I guess it won't be much of a secret, if I'm publishing it here on my blog - but there are only one or two of us that read my blog anyway, and we both know about my "secret" training program.

But I thought I'd put it out there for posterity's sake - who knows - it could be a valuable training tool for some poor sucker that used to be in pretty good shape, somehow lost their conditioning, and wants to get it back again. Gee - that could describe me this year! And hence, I've devised a new, "secret" training program to whip myself back into shape as soon as possible.

What's the rush, you might ask?

Well, for one thing, the first race of the season, the San Bruno Hillclimb, is on January 1st - just 3 weeks from now! It's only a 3.7 mile climb, gaining about 1400 feet of elevation - very similar to Old La Honda (which gains 1330 feet in 3.3 miles). In fact, your time up San Bruno should be not more than about 1 minute slower than your time up Old La Honda, mostly because of the slightly longer distance.

Another reason - the first road race of the season that I intend to ride is the Cantua Creek RR on February 16 - just 2 months from now.

And finally, the Tour of California will be happening February 17 through February 24, and a few of us will be taking a "sanity day" off on Wednesday, February 20, to ride up Sierra Rd in the morning, and watch the TOC roll up over the summit of Sierra towards the end of that day's stage race - and I want to be able to climb Sierra Rd in a good time (33 minutes would be real nice!) - and right now, I'd be lucky to do that climb in 43 minutes!

Well, to climb Sierra Rd in just 33 minutes, I'd have to be able to climb Old La Honda in record time (for me) - just 22:51 (my current PB from earlier this year was 23:18), or Kings Mtn Rd in just 28:55 - and I haven't even broken 30 minutes on Kings Mtn Rd yet!

So, I've got my work cut out for me! Oh, how do I know about those times for Old La Honda and Kings Mtn Rd? Simple - just check out my Low Key Hill Climb Converters web page - it has these cool calculators that allow you to enter in a known time for some climb (say, 33:00 for Sierra Rd on the 1995 Climbs converter) - and it will predict your climbing times on all the other climbs done that year in the Low Key Hill Climb series. Those converters were fun to do, based on the fine work (conversion charts) that Dan Connelly did on the 1995 and 1996 renditions of those hillclimb series.

So what does this all have to do with my "secret" training program? And just what IS the "secret" training program, anyway? And why is it such a "secret"?

Okay - all good questions. And, I have some answers. If you've read any of my earlier blogs, you know that I've had this problem recently - I inadvertently lost a lot of climbing conditioning as I got into road racing this year (in the second half of the year, starting in July). I was on a great training program in the first half of the year, doing lots of climbing - almost every day, in fact!

But once I discovered how much climbing ability I had lost a couple of months ago, I got quite depressed - and instead of starting to just climb again, I got more and more out of climbing shape - and also just lost conditioning, in general, as my riding volume decreased quite a bit! I started missing many days in a row - sometimes as much as a week without riding at all! What a mess...

But now I've hit upon a really good idea to get myself motivated again, in a way that will demand a lot of work, but will be fun at the same time, which I believe is one of the "secrets" to any training program - you have to design something that works for YOU - and not somebody else! That's been my mistake - I've been trying too hard to bounce back according to someone else's ideas about how to bounce back - and not due to anything that anyone else has told me - it's been completely created in my own head, where I'm looking for answers and asking questions from all kinds of people that I admire and respect - and listening to their answers and advice, but forgetting to listen to the one person that knows best - me!

So here's my "secret": You know best how to motivate yourself - so use whatever "tricks" it takes to motivate yourself, then apply those tricks and let nature take its course - how simple can that be?

And, here's my "trick": I'm going to ride from my work location every day (it's in San Mateo), climbing over some small hills to get to Canada Rd - then I'll do a very moderate 5.0-mile time trial along Canada Rd, heading for the base of Kings Mtn Rd. After doing the 5.0-mile time trial, I'll go nice and easy for a few miles to get to the start of the Kings Mtn climb, then climb it hard, starting at Tripp Rd, and going up exactly 1.4 miles (this will be about 10 minutes or so, which is 1/3 of the climb of Kings Mtn Rd). Then, I'll turn around and head back to work, doing another moderate-paced 5.0-mile time trial on Canada Rd. This will be day 1 (Monday, December 10). On day 2, I'll do the exact same ride, but add 0.1 miles to the hard climb - and "hard" means at a time-trial climbing pace, or zone 5.0+ (about 162 bpm for me). This extra 0.1 miles will be an extra 45 seconds of hard climbing or so. And, each day, I'll continue to add 0.1 miles to the climb - and by the end of 28 days, or on January 7, 2008 - I'll be able to do a hard time trial pace up Kings Mtn Rd, all the way to the top (which is 4.2 miles - or 1.4 miles plus the 2.8 miles that I will have added by then, in 0.1 mile increments).

Hopefully, this "secret" training program will result in me being able to climb Kings Mtn Rd in about 30 minutes, which would be a new PB for me. Then, all I have to do at that point is try and and take off another minute or so from my climbing time, but I will have a good 6 weeks to get that done, before the big day on Sierra Rd (on Wednesday, February 20).

Another benefit is that I will working on those 5.0-mile time trials on Canada Rd, which is where the Beat-the-Clock time trial series are held - and as I get in better conditioning, I'll mix in some days where I do those time trial segments at a harder and harder pace, until I am doing the 5.0-mile time trial segments at close to a true time-trial pace - so by the time the first Beat-the-Clock time trial comes along (which I believe will be in about the middle of February, like this year), I should be in good enough shape to do well for that 10.0-mile time trial, where I will try to match or beat my best time this year, which was 26:14, or 23 mph.

And, as an added plus, this "secret" training program should get me in good enough shape to be able to do the San Bruno Hill Climb on January 1st in a time of about 24:xx (under 25 minutes) - and I get this number by using a Kings Mtn climbing time of 30 minutes in that LKHC Converter page, and noting that the Old La Honda time would be about 23:42 - and as I said, your time up San Bruno should not be much more than one minute slower than your Old La Honda time.

Make sense? Well, it doesn't really matter if it makes sense to YOU - the key is, it makes sense to ME!

...And that is the big "secret"... :)