Welcome to the Ask a Cycling Coach podcast presented by Trainer Road.

Today we have a new guest on our podcast with us.

It's Ruth Holcomb from the Santa Cruz Hit Squad. What's up, Ruth? How are you? Hi. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm good. Just enjoying the end of my offseason, you know. Packing it full of school. That's your off season. Yeah, true, true. Not much of an off season, honestly. Ruth is a student at University of California, Santa Barbara.

She also, at the... Yeah, true, true, not much of an offseason, honestly. Ruth is a student at University of California, Santa Barbara.

She also, at the same time, like I said, as a member of the Santa Cruz Hit Squad, won the U23 Lifetime Grand Prix series this year, which is awesome because Ruth, you did not start in gravel.

You started an XCO and short track. Now you're doing this long stuff.

It's awesome. So I'm stoked to have Ruth on here because we've had some questions specifically for Ruth.

We're going to talk about specifically today, we're going to get into periodization and managing periods of

intensity in your training. Right now is a time where a lot of athletes are laying out their training for the coming year. So hopefully we can give you some really

good insights on how to lay out your training so that you can be fast when it matters and then

not be too broken down and burnt out when you push beyond that. So hopefully we can make that happen.

We're also going to talk a bit about strategy of like how to adjust training for long durations versus short durations. It's going to be a good one. But first, the rapid fire questions, Ruth, the most important ones. We're going to run through a handful of them now. Traditional V-O-2 max intervals, like the three to five minutes sort of things, or 30-30s. What do you prefer? Ooh, I mean, I definitely prefer like traditional V-O-2, but, like,

I think for like what I need to work on those 30-30s are, like, more prevalent in my trading.

So I would rather do a traditional one, though. This is interesting. This is supposed to be

rapid fire. We're totally not going to go rapid fire. One would expect that because you have a background in like cross-country Olympic, that you just like naturally are like punchy and and prefer these on-off style efforts. Is that not the case? I think that the thing about the on-off is, well, I guess, I guess it depends kind depends kind of how like the goal of the 30-30s

like most of my 30-30s are like you also have a set minimum for that those rest periods and so

I think that's really hard for me is like I can do any like 30 seconds great I love a 30-second interval

but it's kind of like that 30-second rest where you have to hold the minimum and then go back up.

And like that's the part that like I really struggle with.

So I think I don't really love that.

I'd way rather just be given like, all right, two, three minutes like go all out.

And then you get like no minimum like for the rest.

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