12 hours per week training program

This training program is designed for ambitious beginners who want to increase their level of performance.

This program has two days with intervals, which is Tuesday and Thursday. Mondays and Saturdays are supposed to be light training days with an intensity about 60% of your maximal heart rate.

These light training days are made to accelerate recovery from races and hard training days. After three weeks’ intensive training I recommend that you take a recovery week with less training, less intervals, but at the same high intensity as usual.

One of the main benefits of this cycling program is that you get a really good structure on your training. This is very important as a new rider.

Many beginners have no idea about how to get a structure into their training. They go for long rides when they ought to rest and go for easy rides when more experienced riders would do intervals. Often their training is strongly correlated to the weather report.

So if you are a beginner, I am pretty sure that you will gain very good results with this program. Not because of the intervals per se as you might expect.

Intervals have a huge impact on your performance, but without a structured training plan the intervals will be worth nothing. So this program will give you a good starting point simply because of its good anatomy. You can read more about basic cycling training principles here.

Â	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
app.12hr	1hr recovery	3hr — 3x(3+3)min V02 max	2hr — 4x200m sprint	3hr — 2x10min AT	Rest	1hr easy ride.	Race, 2hr.
app.12hr	1hr recovery	3hr — 3x5x(40+20)sec. V02 max	2hr — 4x200m sprint	3hr — 4x(3+3)min V02 max	Rest	1hr easy ride.	Race, 2hr.
app.12hr	1hr recovery	3hr — 2x10min AT	2hr — 4x200m sprint	3hr — 3x5x(40+20)sec. V02 max	Rest	1hr easy ride.	Race, 2hr.
app.8hr	Rest	2hr — 2x(3+3)min VO2 max	1hr — 4x150m	2hr — 2x4x(40×20)sec VO2 max	Rest	1hr easy ride.	Race, 2hr.