Training books

[Furberger]

I'm a fairly keen cyclist, do a bit of cross country, a few duathlons, ride a bit of DH, compete at the velodrome, do some road miles and do a bit of touring. Bit of everything. I'm reasonably fit and reasonably quick but nothing special. I've realised that although I cover a decent number of miles a week, I don't specifically train, I just ride when I want to.
Next season I want to take it up a notch and actually become competitive rather than just an also ran. I need to develop a training plan over the winter, stick to it and measure some improvement.
Bearing in mind the broad range of disciplines I'm involved in, can anyone give me some pointers, a training plan or recommend a good book that will enable me to improve my fitness?
Cheers.

[HundredthIdiot]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyclists-Training-Bible-Jo...

[mrandy]

Are you in a cycling club ? if not start there and find out who the local coaches and ex racers are.
You will gain a lot more than reading a book

[Fatman2]

Pete Reade's black book is supposed to be a good one. A chap on BikeRadar has it available as a .pdf.

I've read it and it looks very interesting but I'm too much of a recreational cyclist to tie myself into a serious training regime (translate: I'm too f'ing lazy LOL).

[Captain Beaky]

A couple of keen friends of mine recommended The Time-Crunched Cyclist by Chris Carmichael, who trained a certain Mr L Armstrong.

The book gives a 12 or 16 week programme to get fit for an event or series of events rather than an ongoing routine. I read it before my first century ride and picked up a few interesting points though I didn't follow it at all strictly.

[Parsnip]

mrandy said:

Are you in a cycling club ? if not start there and find out who the local coaches and ex racers are.
You will gain a lot more than reading a book

^^ this.

You don't say what you want to get good at (Du/track/road) - all three are wildly different from a training point of view - not to say you can't do all three.

Duathlon - get good at TTing, and doing lots of running off the bike - being a good cyclist and a good runner doesn't mean a thing if you can't put them together.

Track - sprint or pursuit? - either way, lots of strength work, standing start sprints and getting on top of a gear and spinning it are the order of the day.

Road is possibly the hardest to train for - you need to be able to respond to other riders, deal with hills, push hard when you don't want to because of someone else - all while thinking about tactics.

If you are looking at going down the road racing route (and I can't recommend it enough) make sure you have lots of group riding under your belt before you try it. 4th cat racing is a mess of idiots who can't ride a bike in a bunch - don't be one of them. It takes no time to get up to 3rd cat if you are half decent and the standard of riding is much higher. Closed circuit crits are a great way to start - the racing is usually hard enough to string the bunch out and reduce the risk of crashes - plus, you learn what your bike can do when you really go for it - after a few laps you know how fast you can hit each corner - like a track day on a bicycle

Training wise - a turbo trainer and a few spinervals DVDs is generally the way I go over the winter - no minging weather, no dark nights and every session is quality as there is a focussed goal, rather than just going out for a ride. Have heard people sing the praises of Friel - never tried it myself right enough. While it is mainly targeted to people who train with power, http://www.flammerouge.je/content/0_home/home.htm is a fantastic resource and has some good, albeit fairly generic, sessions on there.

[itsnotarace]

Parsnip said:

Training wise - a turbo trainer and a few spinervals DVDs is generally the way I go over the winter - no minging weather, no dark nights and every session is quality as there is a focussed goal, rather than just going out for a ride.

Check out http://www.thesufferfest.com/