Tour of Romandie Training

Hi guys and Gals,

For those of you interested, I thought I would share with you ‘some’ of the training I have been doing since the Track World Championships finished and I switched my focus back to the road in preparation for the Tour of Romandie (which is now done and dusted) and the upcoming Amgen Tour of California.

As always, your feedback and questions are welcomed. Please send me any questions via twitter @leighhoward1

After the Track Worlds finished on Sunday the 8th of April I had 1 week before flying back out to Europe. In that week I done a total of 21hrs of training which included a day of following the Madison and 1 rest day on the Thursday. I then flew to Europe on the Sunday afternoon. My week looked a bit like this:

Monday- Day off
Tuesday- 3hr 15min (flat)
Wednesday- 3hr 45min (hills)
Thursday- 2hrs Easy
Friday- 4hr 45min with 30min worth of S.E (strength efforts)
Saturday- 5hr with 5x5min hill efforts and 2hrs Motorpace.
Sunday-3hrs medium before flying to Europe in the afternoon.

So that is just a quick overlook at what my first week back on the bike consisted of post Track Worlds. After arriving back to Europe the real fun began and I was back into the full swing of things for 1 week before Romandie kicked off. It looked a little like this:

Monday-2hrs easy after landing on Euro soil.
Tuesday-4hrs medium in the hills.
Wednesday- AM ergo session with sprints. PM, 3hrs, 2.5hrs of which was motorpacing.
Thursday- 4hrs 45min in the hills with some sprints thrown in for good measure.
Friday- 5hrs with 4min hill efforts and 2hrs of motorpacing to finish.
Saturday- 5hrs 20min. Just a very solid ride with some climbing and a nice coffee break in the middle!
Sunday-1hr 30min Recovery.

Monday-Departed for Tour of Romandie. Done 1hr on the Time Trial bike after arriving.
Tuesday- Tour of Romandie kicked off!

So now Tour of Romandie is done and dusted, its time to sit down and discuss what my strengths and weaknesses were for the tour and then put it all together for 1 more block of training before Tour of California.

I came out of Tour of Romandie quite tired. I noticed this in the last 2 days when my heart rate would not exceed 165-170bmp which is quite low for me. So after discussing it with coach Scott McGrory, we decided to take it easy for at least 2-3 days and fully recovery before ramping it back up for another block of intense training. I always remember a quote made to me when I was a young fella; “recovery is the key”. Very simple but very true! SO here is what I have been up to in the last week since the Tour of

Romandie:

Monday- Day off due to travel situations.
Tuesday- 2hrs Recovery
Wednesday -3hrs Easy
Thursday -4hrs 30min with: 1x10min@310 watts as warm up. 3x15min ‘special’ Strength efforts@ave of 360watts
Friday -3hrs 30min with: 2x5min@320 watts as warm up. 5×8 second, big gear, uphill sprints. 3×10 second max sprints, high rpm. (I now have a slight head cold, so time to back it off for 2 days)
Saturday -1hr 30min Recovery
Sunday- 4hrs 30min with: 2x15min strength efforts, a little easier than thursday as I still have a head cold. Also 5x sprints.

Anyway folks, now you are all up to date with what I have been doing to keep myself occupied over the past month. Again, I hope you enjoyed it and please stay tuned for some more interesting stuff.

Up next for me is the Amgen Tour of California which will be broadcast on SBS, so get on it and keep your fingers crossed that my hard work will pay off on the coming weeks!