On today's episode of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast, we look at the necessity of intensity training vs mileage training .  Which is better?  Our cycling coach Devlin Eyden helps to sort the logic of what you should be doing and gives a simple solution to your bike training.

Transcript

Brad Brown:         This is the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast and we’ve got cycling coach extraordinaire, Devlin Eyden on the podcast once again. Devlin, welcome back, an interesting question, short and sweet. It was submitted on the website, coachparry.com, you can get your questions in there too by the way, intensity versus mileage as far as training goes, which is better?

Devlin Eyden:      This is actually a really good question because again, I suppose most of us who do struggle with time in the day, it is quite important to make sure that we’re getting the right kind of training in.

The question on intensity versus mileage firstly comes down to what are you working towards? As long as you have a good goal in place, whatever kind of race, whether it be a mountain bike or a cycling race.

Then the next question is, how long is the duration of the event, are you doing ultra-marathon distances, half marathon distances, so that’s what we need to know. We need to know the goal and what you’re doing there accordingly.

When to use intensity vs mileage in your training

Secondly is then the periodization. It is important to remember, no matter what you’re doing in terms of your training, you can’t just do one without doing the other. The mileage and the lower intensity kind of thing is something that we would typically refer to as the base training and that’s important, cause that’s what’s gonna keep you going for a lot longer.

The intensity side of things is where we start building that speed on the bike and building the power in the legs as well. There needs to be a balance between the two and when I go back to my point on periodization, it’s there where we start looking at the balance of how much of each kind of training we’re actually doing in our weekly program.

It’s important to have a ratio of both, obviously the further out from a goal event that we are, we will focus a lot more on the mileage and building the base. The closer we start getting to the particular event in question, we then start working a lot more towards the higher intensity work, the power work, the speed work and so forth.

It is important to have a balance of the two, make sure we know what we’re working towards and yes, they are both equally important in the training program and in your training as a whole.

BB:         All right brilliant, that’s a cool question. Don’t forget, if you want to get your question answered, the website to get to, coachparry.com, you can get all the details there as well.

We look forward to hearing from you, just get to the website and we could be answering it next time out here on the podcast.

Until then, from the two of us, it’s cheers.