It seems counterintuitive: indoor cycling for an outdoor race that will include lots of bumpy gravel and technical corners - surely you will lose the edge and suffer from being completely out of your element?

There is no better place for a structured workout than an indoor trainer. Have you ever wondered why professional cyclists do most of their interval training on climbs? It’s not because they’re all pure climbers, it is because climbs provide added resistance for a steady and uninterrupted effort with little distraction. During the toughest interval sessions, you don’t want to be worrying about cars, traffic signals, pedestrian crossings, downhills, or corners.

Gravel and cyclocross races often involve repeated punchy efforts of high-intensity intervals. Pyramid intervals are a great way to expose your body to the range of training stimuli and intensities that are commonly experienced during gravel and cyclocross races. This periodised training plan has been designed to target your 3-major energy systems – Your ATP-PC system, your anaerobic glycolysis system, and your aerobic system. Because HIIT intervals are short, they enable you to accumulate a lot of time at an intensity above what you’d otherwise be able to sustain in continuous blocks. That, in turn, helps improve your VO2 max and threshold power.

SCIENCE-BASED PERIODISED WORKOUTS
This periodised training plan, and the workouts contained within, have been developed using tried and tested methodologies based on the fundamental principles of exercise physiology and use over-under intervals and ramps to increase athlete engagement and break the monotony of sitting on a single power number for any particular duration.

Each workout includes information on the metabolic system they impact and aims to familiarise you with the interplay of the ATP and phosphocreatine (ATP-PC), anaerobic glycolytic and aerobic pathways (tricarboxylic acid cycle, electron transport chain and beta-oxidation).

TSS-BASED WORKOUTS
Training Stress Score (TSS) is a composite number that considers the duration and intensity of a workout to arrive at a single estimate of the overall training load and physiological stress created by that training session.

The workouts contained within this plan are based on intensity, rather than volume, as the most accurate method of predicting acute training load (fatigue), chronic training load (fitness), and training stress balance, these three key training makers commonly referred to as ATL, CTL and TSB.

Weekly TSS will build in a progressive but achievable way to get the most amount of benefit and adaption from the 4 duration of this training plan.

WHY ARE THESE TRAINING PLANS SO CHEAP?
Relatively speaking, cycling has a high cost of entry in terms of equipment required, insurance, licence / race entry fees, training software, training applications and indoor training equipment. Elitism is prevalent in cycling. Cultural conditioning and economic circumstances should not be a barrier to personal improvement and mental wellbeing. As such, the costs of these training plans have been set with inclusion and accessibility with equal priority to helping you become a fitter and stronger athlete. Everybody matters.

TRAINING PLAN COMPATIBILITY
Every workout is created using TrainingPeaks Workout Builder which facilitates export to Zwift, TrainerRoad, a Garmin or Wahoo head unit or a companion app of your choice.

QUESTIONS?
I am happy to answer any questions via email and can provide advice on nutrition, methodologies, terminology and lessons learned from my own personal experiences. Email me: seanvintin@hotmail.com