Training Partners

Training Partners.

Today’s Blog is my thoughts on training with people. Does training with others help? Does it hinder? How can you use people/training partners to help you?

So those who know me, know I am generally miserable. I like my own company and can train on my own for days and weeks at a time. Although I can do this, there is always a time when I can do with having someone to train with, it just gives you an extra edge. Sharing the suffering you could say, this is useful on long long rides and I find especially the really tough interval type sessions. Yesterday was my 9th day of training in a row, I was planning something hard ish to fully finish myself off. Then out of the blue one of the local riders here in Henley (Ryan), posted on Twitter if one of us at the shop planned an outside ride tomorrow.

Well yes, I was planning on a ride. After a chat with Ryan he was also after a tough session as it was his birthday! (Strange present to himself....) So I decided we could do “over-under’s”, whoever was on the front would use that is the “over”, then changing every 2 minutes. I think usually these sessions are 12-15 minutes. This is a tough session at the best of times, but I thought we should do 20+ minutes. In the end we did 28 minutes in the first set, then soft tapped for ten minutes and popped another 20 minutes in for fun.

“Over-Unders” for those who do not know are meant to lift your threshold. So you so between 1 and 3 minutes just “Over” threshold, then straight into 1 to 3 minutes just under threshold. For instance, if your threshold was 300 watts, your over and under would be 315 and 285 roughly. A standard set would be 12-15 mins. eg: 3min, 1min, 3 min, 1 min, 3 min, 1 min. You clearly can vary this greatly with the “on” being a bit shorter and the off being longer. 2 sets would be standard.

If I had tried to do this session on my own, after the last 8 days I am sure I would have not got through the session on my own. Having Ryan there switching the suffering many times just keeps you interested, keeps you willing to keep going and dig that bit deeper. I find I feel I need to carry on to not let the other person down. After the first set we both said we had hit it too hard in the first few reps..... there again there would have been an option to can the second set. With Ryan there, there was no way I was going to bin it. So we rolled a little bit and off we went again. Very hard session was soon completed and in the bank.

The session below.

https://www.strava.com/activities/494796092

So this above gives you an example of even someone who generally prefers to train alone can gain greatly from training with someone else. I do feel training alone is great for “character” building, some times when you train alone you get bigger satisfaction from finishing the session.

That said I know plenty of people who very very rarely train alone, they seem to really enjoy the camaraderie of people and having someone beside them. This is perfectly fine, if it gets you out, enjoying the bike and staying/keeping fit, thats all good!

So on that note I will leave this blog right there.... ending on a positive (rare for me)...

Thanks again for reading....

(only a week until we are off to Tenerife again)...