Hello, I am 55, been training and racing for 20 years, male.
In the covid time I discovered, through Fasttalk, and thank you from the bottom of my heart (I mean that seriously), polarised training. Dr. Seiler is a true guiding light. Thank you sir.
In the few years before that I had come to understand the Coggan zones (very helpful), and had a good sense of my levels.
To the time of learning of the polarized model I did random self rides/training and super hard local group rides, and races.
To the extent I “trained” it was some sort of half understood sweetspot. I will say in retrospect I knew on some level about polarization, both by self learning and the off comment on the wheel during group ride lulls: “you know the pros (training), when they go easy they go really easy and when they go hard they. go. really. f–ng. hard.” The pro’s on our rides would talk about avoiding going “medium.”
This made sense, but the advice out there was sweetspot.
I hated it. I couldn’t understand what level. FTP? LT? how far below what level? Etc. Etc.
Utter torture. Burnout. Never got better when I “trained.”
The only way I got able to ride with my competition was to ride hard and race hard with my competition, with one exception.
We have a canyon climb in my area. Basically at VO2Max power I can climb it in sub-4 minutes.
My buddy, who knows how to train and wins big races, crits, climbs, a sprinter, set us up to ride out there, do a 2 minute hill sprint up a steep hill on the way, then repeat the canyon at top rate 6 times.
We did this once a week for several weeks leading up to Gila.
When I got there I rolled the Thursday race with no problem, solid TT, we won the crit as a team (he won the sprint), then I got in the break on Sunday, he came by me on the main climb with the group, then won the stage. He thanked me for the help and gave me half the prize money, as me being in the break let him sit on while the others chased.
That was all great, then work and family evolved and my training time was cut by 30%.
That’s when sweetspot wrecked my happiness. Also, no more x3 hard group rides a week, which were actually fun and productive, though, obviously not efficient in terms of real life schedule.
Side note: no shortcuts- timecrunched may mean “weakling,” but anyway:
I found polarized, loved it, keeps me near even with my competition.
Question is, what do I add to raise my level.
Real talk; not like “doing well at my level.”
To put it simply- I am not able to ride as fast as my competition, even though I kick butt on my polarized system. My numbers are good, my feelings are good, I’m happy.
Need to bump it up a notch.
Is this possible with limited time?
If so, how?
To be specific:
I can do 4 days a week of training and one hard/long group ride. One run a week for health/balance, one day off. This means, basically 4 one hour training sessions and a 3 hour weekend ride,