Performance Cycling: Training for Power, Endurance, and Speed

Dave Morris has written a great book for successful cyclist looking to put the final touches and take their fitness as far as it can go. I have found that his advice is SOLID for ELITE level riders. His experience will more than likely be very helpful to the upper category riders (3 and 2's) looking to upgrade and even coaches. I highly recommend it for these people but would probably tell riders that are considering racing, Cat 5's, Cat 4's and even some Cat 3's that Books from Joe Friel and Tom Chapple more appropriate to get them moving in the right direction. Coach Peter Cummings [...]

This book is easy to read, easy to follow, and best of all, easy to apply. Simple but effective workout plans will improve anyone's level of mental and physical performance on the bike.

This book was a gift from my wife for Christmas 2003. I had signed up to go to the Tour de France in July with a Aussie tour group. I had heard from others from previous trips the daily rides of 70 to 120 miles always had an ultra-competitive group of Cat 1 and 2 riders. My goal was to time trial Alpe d'Huez and be able to hammer up some of the steeper climbs with the really good riders and ride 1100 miles in 10 days. When I received this book I had been doing triathlons for about four years...after cycling on and off since college. My old routine was go long on the weekends and during the work week to do a day of intervals with a day off followed by a 2 hour tempo ride followed by another day off. This author advocates doing a big block of intensity followed by several days off which was different for me. I did his program for the "stage race rider" and blocked high intensity days on Thu and Fri followed by a long 6 to 8 hour ride (much longer than he had in his program) on Saturday and then another 3 hours on Sunday at easy pace. Mon-Wed were off days or easy spinning. At first this was very difficult! The very first weekend, I felt wiped out by Sunday (after 4 hard days in a row) but took three days off the bike and on the next thursday I felt really strong. I repeated the program the next week...same feeling by Sunday..kind of wiped out and wondering if I was going to burn out (which is a concern with this program)...three days of easy spinning followed. Well, on Thursday (two and half weeks into program) I was a animal on my interval ride. Holding 29 mph for about 4 minutes before poopin out. I didn't have a power meter running but it was on the flats with no wind. Some guys can do that for an hour - I'm not one of them. But before this program I couldn't come close to doing that. So I started to see results after a few weeks. By the time the Tour de France came around I was as strong as I've ever been on a bike. Being a Cat 5 rider I was now doing training rides with Cat 3's and they were telling me "wow, you're really hammering today...way to keep up with us." I could never keep up with this group in years past. Why the success? Two things. I think the back to back intensity that the author advocates is KEY and ONLY if you allow enough rest after. I would almost always bounce back from my three off days with increased power. The second thing is the modification to my weekend rides. I agree with some of the reviewers that the mileage can seem scant compared to previous training (I was doing about 800 miles per month before this book). What I did is shorten my weekday workouts per the author's program...but kept some really long LSD rides on the weekend. So I would be riding for only 1.5 hours on Thu and another 1.5 hours on Friday followed by a 120 mile hilly 8 hour ride on Sunday (thanks to my wife for the hall pass!) and another three hours on Sunday. That single Saturday LSD ride built up a lot of enduranc

I found this book very directly and succinctly taught me what I need to know to become a better cyclist. The concepts that David Morris uses in this book should increase your understanding of what it takes to be a stronger, faster cyclist -and isn't that the reason why a bike racer or a wanna-be racer buys this kind of book? The training program in this book is fairly straightforward and easy to understand. The program does not involve too many training cycles with a lot of different goals to reach within those cycles. The program Morris outlines is succinct and based on what I see as a logical goal. That means that knowing what you are going to do today and next week in the gym, on a trainer or on your bike is relatively easy to keep in mind. The actual schedule of work involved is hard to very hard but as the author states you adapt his program to meet your own requirements and because of its relative simplicity that is not too difficult to do. I recommend this book for those cyclists who are seeking a practical training program to become a more powerful cyclist.

This is a review based on having the book and following the program in the book since November 2003. Caveat: Everyone is individual, and one person's experience will differ from another. I've tried many different programs from Friel to every other magic bullet article in Bicycling Magzine and I'm pretty observant of my body and its reaction to training, so I think my experience with the program has some merit to it. Also, I fall underneath the category of -married, full time job, father of 2 small children, with little to no genetic predisposition to being a good athlete. So I'm looking for something with the best bang for the little amount of time I can devote to it. And this book and the training philosophies in it have worked very well for me. The book is relatively small, and you have to wonder how much useful information is in there. But it is full of excellent nuggets of information. One thing I've found is that some concepts didn't sink in until seeing them for the 2nd or 3rd time. I don't think you get the full benefit from the book with just one quick reading. In a nutshell, Morris provides a FRAMEWORK for a training program. His particular philosophies such as the Block training methods and focusing on intervals at set power outputs are what really set this book apart from anything else out there. This is not a book that is going to lay out your exact training plan for you. The problem with this presentation is that there needs to be more help for a self coached athlete to develop a program. Friel takes this notion to the other extreme allowing readers to set up a program down to the hour. I tried Friel and found that it was just too much information and got bogged down in all the different rides, etc. Problem with the Morris book is that he is at the opposite extreme and doesn't present enough guidance. Now in all fairness to Morris, what I'm asking for is really hard. This is the 'art of coaching'. Everyone is different. Each individual is going to have different goals, amount of time available, events they want to do, different reactions to stress and rest, etc... He could provide some specific examples, but what everyone will do is just copy the example which could prove more harm than good. But it would have been nice to see an entire year program shown in a calendar format. To use as a model for the self coached athlete to tailor their own program. He does provide some examples based on different cycling disciplines, but it leaves you wanting more. The reality is that 99% of the people who buy books like this are NOT going to get a coach for one reason or another. I think the one reviewer who feels that the book is just an advertisement for coaching services didn't try very hard to understand the book, but without more guidance for the self coached athlete many won't take the time to get the most out of this book and this program. Mr. Morris is a PhD graduate student and I highly doubt he wants to create