Is your response time short, or long?

Well, I hope I never need such a response as a medical helicopter! There\’s also the speed of the body\’s response to training.

Some people respond quickly to the training load. Others need more time. This is mentioned in The Cyclist\’s Training Bible. It says that the speed of your body\’s response is likely mainly genetic, and that you can\’t change it.

This is why training must be tailored to the individual. A program that works great for another cyclist might see me sidelined for weeks with an overuse injury. As the Training Bible puts it, \”What is an easy day for one rider may be a race effort for another.\”

What I\’d like to know for sure is whether I\’m a fast responder, or a slow responder. On the face of it, it appears to be the latter. Those on-bike \”force\” efforts that I began doing eight or ten months before last November\’s Tour de Cure only seemed to start taking effect since Tour de Cure!

On the other hand, maybe I simply didn\’t work hard enough, often enough at those force intervals. If I had a coach to egg me on, my response time might be faster.