Irish national time-trial champion Ben Healy enjoyed a very strong debut season in the World Tour last year, racking up 55 race days and going very close to victory a number of times. The 22-year old, now in his second year of a two-year contract with EF Education-EasyPost, has eyes on a Grand Tour in 2023 as well as a maiden professional victory.
In this piece he talks us through the unexpected challenge of getting his weight right. He said he anticipated it would be much easier to shift weight when he started at World Tour level and how he is working on getting that right this winter. He also outlines some of the watts he pushes during his training rides and his pattern of winter training in six to seven week blocks.
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FatMax is a training intensity. It is the intensity at which you burn the highest amount of fat over the course of a specific duration.
LT1 means Lactate Threshold One. It is defined as the lowest intensity at which there is a sustained increase in blood lactate concentration above resting values. It is widely accepted it is a very ´trainable´ zone.
How was your off-season?
I went to Portugal with a few friends and we just had a relaxing holiday by the beach. We did a bit of surfing and after that I went to London to spend some time with my girlfriend, which was really good. It (off-season) wasn't too long, three weeks in the end, and then another week just spinning the legs easily, just before I got back into it.
When did you go back training?
Training started the second week of November and I was right back into it. I did a bit less volume but some low cadence efforts and some gym as well, just progressing through the movements and starting with that.
And when did you step up the intensity?
There was no specific point where I really stepped it up. In the second week of November there was a gradual progression all the way up to Christmas. Over that 6-7 week block up until mid-December it was just building back up the fitness. There was a lot less volume and a lot less work compared to December but the basis of what I was doing was still the same.
And how did you manage things over Christmas?
Leading up to Christmas I didn't really have any time off. I came to the end of that 6-7 week block and I needed a few days to rest and adapt but that wasn't necessarily over Christmas. That was just before. I flew back home on the 15th of December and that was when it was minus two degrees and snowing pretty crazy.
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It coincided with me having some rest and adaptation from the block before. So I had 4-5 days easy and we started the next block of training. The structure of my training is that I have that first 6-7 weeks and then I had that rest and adaptation and now we move on to the next phase of winter. This next phase will involve a bit more VO2 max efforts and continuing on with the low cadence stuff.
Do you spend any time on the turbo?
It's never really too bad here (in Girona). This year I´ve gotten away with not doing anything on the turbo so far, which is pretty nice. I try to avoid it as much as possible because when I need to do it, it's all kind of new and fresh and I can get through a slog pretty okay, without it really hurting me mentally.
How do you balance miles versus intensity?
Balancing the miles and efforts is tricky. But because I´ve been training for quite a while now, it almost comes naturally to me. It's an open line of communication between my coach and I and it's just constantly talking about how I'm feeling.
I get the sense if I'm doing too many base miles then I'm not hitting the quality of the efforts. So as long as I can do all the efforts that I'm prescribed, and doing them how they should feel without being affected, then the base miles are okay. If we can push that, we push that and if not, then we back off the base miles and make sure the efforts are okay. That's really the focus, make sure the efforts are alright.
Have you any specific training goals for this winter?
I'm focusing on my weight quite a bit. This is a big goal for me. For the last year I over-indulged and came into the season a lot heavier than what I wanted and then I had quite a busy season to start with one-day races. I was really trying to focus on carbo loading and then fueling in the race, and recovery after, and it just became really hard to shift that weight.
It really took me a good 3-4 months to get to that race weight I wanted. And that was quite an unexpected thing I had to learn last year with stepping up to a pro team. With that extra volume of racing, really you'd think it would be easier to lose the weight but I actually found it more difficult. So I'm focusing on that this year with the help of the nutritionist. It's always something that's on the back of my mind.
Can you give us some idea of what kind of wattage we're talking about in your efforts?
I'll do a lot of 'fat max' work, which is high Zone 2. For me that will be about 280-290 watts and really checking the heart rate isn´t tipping over the edge, and longer blocks sitting at that effort. I also do a few low cadence efforts, trying to activate the fast twitch fibres aerobically, and longer blocks of 320-330 watts and 50-60 cadence, short recovery between efforts (5-6 minutes).
That's the sort of stuff I´ll be doing, and then obviously some pretty long endurance rides as well, and every now and again in the gym. I don't really do FTP tests any more. We've moved on to doing more lactate testing, but we don't even do them regularly. We do them because it's a more accurate measurement of where my FTP and fat max is.
Just because your FTP is 370, you can't just automatically assume your high Zone 2 is 80 per cent of that, or 75 per cent. But with the lactate tests, you can see your LT1 zone and really be specific about where you should be riding. So at the start of each block I'll do a lactate test.
