Conn McDunphy is the former Irish elite TT champion and represented Ireland in the elite men's road race at the UCI World Road Championships in Zürich last year. But the Team Skyline rider - a qualified mechanical engineer - coaches a select group of high performance cyclists. That group includes Matthew Walls, the Lucan CRC rider who has just won the Quanta Capital Junior Tour of Ireland. In this piece, McDunphy outlines how he has prepared Walls - specifically for this season - since he began coaching him in October, 2023. He sets out the training load, the number of hours and types of training - along with rest and tapering - that got Walls into such good condition to win the Junior Tour of Ireland.
By Conn McDunphy pedalgraftcoaching.com
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I started working with Matthew in October, 2023, when he was an U16 going into his junior years. He had just joined our club, Lucan CRC. But we had to turn him into a cyclist first, and then into a racer. Initially, we did lots of low heart rate training, always with an eye on his second year as a junior.
My philosophy as a coach is only partly data-based. I place a great emphasis on what you could call 'the human aspect' of training and what actually makes a rider go fast. How many people do we all know that can do crazy numbers training - or racing - but can’t actually win a race? The rider needs to buy in, believe in the training and communicate their sensations. One of Matthew's greatest strengths over this season has been his communication skills.
We implemented a relaxed intensity approach last winter as we prepared for the 2025 season. We were looking at the bigger picture because all the major season goals were later in the year. We had an eye on the National Road Championships (June), Junior Tour of Ireland (July), Junior Tour of Wales (usually late August) and the European Road Championships (October), assuming selection for the latter.
Matthew knows this year - even now his big win at the JT last week - is just the start and that cycling is a long process; that it's a sport where success is achieved over several years. We perhaps left some results on the table early this year due to not targeting the early season races and focusing more on sustainable long-term development.
For periods earlier this year, we didn’t want to overload his body by combining a high training load with external stressors like school, especially as a 17-year-old. He has been consistent for two years now with a lot of room for improvement having turned 18-years-old last month.
We ensured he had the equipment needed to compete with the best in Ireland. We got him sorted with a bike and I gave him my Trinity to use for TTs and fitted him on the bike.
So let's drill down a bit into how we prepared him month-by-month since last October.
October 2024 | Resetting
After the season ended he had 2½ weeks off - with no cycling at all - to reset the body, followed by some hours reintroducing him to the bike.
November | 70hrs training in total
60hrs bike and 10hrs gym. He did no intervals harder than LT1 (aerobic threshold, or the first lactate turn point). Matthew also began aero reinforcement (AR) training here - riding in an aerodynamic position under load.
December| 65hrs training in total
58hrs on the bike, 7hrs in the gym. He did longer LT1 work with AR work, high cadence and pedalling technique work. Halfway through the month we began to incorporate sprint work. We did two threshold sessions this month with 4x10mins over Christmas and 'Ticknock Worlds' as a test day. We did three intensity days in the month and a lactate test mid-month to determine LT1. ('Ticknock Worlds' is a 'training race' of sorts organised by a group of top riders in Leinster who meet in late December and ride a 100km course with 3,500m of climbing, racing against each other - Ed)
January | 73hrs total training
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70hrs on the bike bike and 3hrs in the gym, January marked the start of threshold development. We did two threshold sessions per week, varying the sessions with some under/over work and longer steady state intervals (all based in and around critical power/FTP etc.). These under/over sessions would usually involve 2-3mins ‘over’ 15-20w higher than critical power and then 1-2mins ‘under’ at 91-94% critical power.
The longer steady state intervals would vary from 10-20min blocks with a maximum duration of 40mins of work at threshold. AR work 1-2 times per week incorporating cadence and pedalling efficiency work. This sounds like a lot of intensity but in reality only 21% of his total training this month was over the middle of zone 2. We got him into the Lab in Trinity for lactate+VO2 testing at the end of the month to predominantly redetermine LT1.
February | 54hrs total training
Matthew suffered a bad training crash, with a suspected fractured wrist so he lost some training hours. He did a training camp of 1½ weeks in Calpe. He did his first ‘VO2’ session on February 17th.
March | 54hrs as racing began
I limited his hours due to bad weather and school commitments. We used the racing load and one intensity session per week to begin to fine-tune the top end. We also did one session per week of AR work beginning to do under more load LT1 or just over.
He won the Lucan GP in Dunsany, Co Meath, with some other strong performances on the Irish scene, including competing against the C1s, often in the breakaways. He was solid as expected due to a strong aerobic base. There was lots of work and discussion on racing dynamics and how to use other people's strength to his advantage in races as he moved up to C1. In his first race abroad, in Portugal, he was 6th, with a good breakaway ride using his head.
April | 45hrs cycling
Big aerobic block post-Portugal and before Dornan Rás Mumhan as we knew he was going to the UCI Nations Cup Peace Race in the Czech Republic at the start of May. Due to the high level at Rás Mumhan, we wanted to incorporate this as a ‘training camp style’ load instead of focusing on a peak and aiming for results in that race. However, this back-fired due to the terrible weather resulting in illness the following week.
May | 66hrs, including Peace Race with Irish team
Instead of tapering into the Peace Race we had to do some training due to almost eight days of inconsistency with illness. The week away was a big learning curve for Matthew, competing against the best juniors in the world. May also marked the start of the specificity phase for National TT Championships threshold work in the TT position.
We looked at his power curve relative to the demands of both the Nationals and Junior Tour of Ireland. We found break points in Matthews power curve when it was examined over the expected effort durations needed for the events and these are the durations we targeted, from weeks out. For example, the breaks in the power curve may have identified the need to work on efforts in the road race of between, say 45 second and two-three minutes. And in a TT effort, a break point in the power curve means the power is not quite where it should be at a particular point in a much longer effort.
He did two intensity sessions maximum per week, one in TT position and one on the road bike, AR work at lt1 again with cadence work. We focussed more on training than racing here after the Peace Race. He took his first C1 win, at Mondello Park, within a 10-day training block.
June | 62hrs on the bike, still in the specificity phase
Training ramped up, with multiple split days. We did a recon of the Nationals course together and a trip to the North for a 10 Mile TT. There was then a five-day taper into the National TT Champs and we did a course breakdown of TT and road race courses for the Nationals. He was 2nd in the TT, with the power plan executed to perfection, +20w, and 4th in the road race.
July | Absolute focus on Junior Tour of Ireland
After the Nationals followed a transition week into the Junior Tour. Training hours were low but intensity was high the week before the Junior Tour. He won the race overall, with a stage victory, by making the key breakaways, and then committing all-in when he needed to. He clearly looked like the strongest rider in the race, also winning the climbers' classification.
