What is this training plan that keeps derailing, and what does "derail" actually mean? That plan is to ride my "maintenance" schedule most weeks, one 34 mile ride with 1800 feet of climbing ridden mostly in Zone 2*, one 23 mile ride with 1300 feet of climbing ridden in a mixture of Zones 2 through 5, and two easy rides ridden in Zone 1. There are two ways I can use this plan to be ready for a metric century. If I do a metric century every month, then two weeks of each month I ride the maintenance plan, one week I ride two to three easy rides to taper (rest) for the metric century which I ride at the end of that week, and then the following week I do five to six easy rides. If I am not currently riding metric centuries, then I ride the maintenance schedule every week. From that base, four weeks before a metric century, I increase the length of the longest ride from 34 to 45 miles. The following week I drop back to the maintenance schedule. Two weeks before the metric century I increase the longest ride from 45 to 55 miles. One week before the metric century I ride the maintenance schedule. The week of and after the metric century is the same as the metric century a month schedule, easy to rest before and recover after the event.
What does it mean to say that the above schedule "derailed"? For more than I year I have consistently completed at least 300 minutes of aerobic exercise every single week, so derail does not mean no riding, it means less riding, but still enough riding to add up to 300 minutes. A common minimal schedule I do to reach that 300 minutes is five one hour, relatively flat rides each week. So, from a health perspective, I'm doing fine. It is only in the context of a regular schedule of metric centuries that my schedule derails. Subsequent to derailment, I may no longer be a month away from being able to complete a metric century (though see below), it might take me two months or more to reach that goal.
What were these "life events" that most recently derailed my training plan? They were a relatively modest pair of events which, upon reflection, were only able to derail the plan because 1) they were on top of other life events which, by themselves, were not enough to derail the plan but brought me close to that eventuality and 2) because my maintenance plan appears to be close to the maximum training load I can sustain. The two things that pushed me over the edge and caused me to drop back to an easier schedule were: 1) Road repair that made it difficult to ride my 23 and 34 mile rides. 2) My grandkids and their family took a vacation. They needed some extra help from me to get ready and that extra effort left me exhausted. They left mid-day on Saturday, and after they left, I had planned to do an easy ride. I was unable to complete (or even start) that ride nor could I do anything else for the rest of the day. I collapsed on the couch for the rest of the day. On Sunday, I completed that short ride but was unable to do anything else thereafter. On Monday, I was scheduled to do my long ride, and had even toyed with the idea of working towards a solo metric century four weeks from now by extending that ride to 45 miles. However, that Monday I was exhausted and opted to spend my limited energy doing some chores and forgoing the ride. On Tuesday, I was still feeling tired but also feeling that this was my last chance to avoid another derailment and even feared slipping below 300 minutes for the week. If it had not been for the road repairs, I suspect I would have forgone the longer ride but would have completed my normally scheduled 34 mile ride. In retrospect, I don't know if that would have been a wise decision, but faced with finding my way around the road work, it was more than I could manage emotionally so I did a much flatter, easier 38 mile ride instead. Thus was my schedule derailed.
If my maintenance schedule is at the limit of what I can sustain, how is it that I can ever do a metric century? Part of the answer is given by the word "sustain." I have noted multiple times on this blog that it is possible to train to a peak of fitness which is above what I can sustain long term. Thus, I can work my way up to a metric century but then might have to take a break to pay off the resulting fatigue debt resulting from preparing for and riding the metric century. If that were true, then my dream of riding a metric century a month all season long is doomed. Perhaps a more realistic explanation is that what I can sustain on the bike is strongly influenced by what is going on off the bike. When I am unstressed and well rested, I might well be able to maintain a metric century a month schedule, but when life takes its toll, I can barely maintain the easiest version of 300 minutes a week, and in fact I think that is what the story in this post suggests. Key to appreciating this alternative explanation is the dramatic impact of life events on the ability of my body to absorb training, that may be more important than the fine details of exactly how I train. Sadly, this scenario may also doom my metric century a month dream, the odds of going an entire season with no intervening life events are low indeed.
One final point that I don't quite know how to fit in with the rest of this story is that I know from experience the more I do, the more I can do. Right now, I find my 34 mile ride fairly tiring, my legs are inevitably sore by the end. I have found, however, that when I start doing longer rides, that 34 mile ride starts feeling easy. This was particularly evident last Fall, when my preparations for the Golden Hills Metric Century and a subsequent solo metric century worked particularly well, leading to a level of fitness and comfort on the bike I haven't seen for a long time. I sure would like to repeat that! When I look back on that period, they key was not consistency, up through August I had a lot going on in my life and my cycling schedule had been derailed to say the least so that in September, I jumped into the ramp-up to prepare for Golden Hills with very little preparation. Why did that work? When I think about it, the period in question, September through November of 2019, was a period of particularly low stress in my life, and maybe that's what this is all about. I often follow the Tour de France, and have been puzzled by the speculation about how the various favorites are "feeling" and how that bodes for their Tour that year. These guys are professionals! Shouldn't they have a training plan that allows them to tune their fitness and fatigue in a predictable way? To some extent they do, the other discussion about the favorites is which races they have ridden leading up to the Tour to maximize their fitness and minimize their fatigue, but there is an unknown factor as well. Might they be similarly susceptible to what is going on off the bike as I? Maybe this is just the way it is, I have to just keep trying, cutting back on my training when my body tells me I must, being the best that I can be when I am lucky enough to have a stress and illness free period of which I can take advantage.
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* Zones 1 and 2 are a pace I can ride indefinitely, with Zone 2 being harder (faster) than Zone 1. Zone 3 is a pace I can maintain for an hour or so. By the top of Zone 4, I can only manage to ride for 30 minutes. Zone 5 is some degree of sprinting, a pace I can maintain for 15 minutes at the bottom of the zone to 20 seconds at the top (aka Zone 6).
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