The Atheist Training Bible for Old Bicycle Racers, Chapter 2: Why All Training Plans Suck, Except Wanky’s
January 9, 2014 § 24 Comments
Training plans all suffer from the same set of defects. They require you to follow them, they require discipline, and they were designed for someone else.
Let’s look at this first mortal flaw, the requirement that you actually do what the plan tells you to do. This would not be a problem if the plan said, for example, “You’re not drinking enough beer. Drink more beer.” (In fact, this is one of the first things you will be required to do on the Wanky Training Plan ™ . But all training plans except Wanky’s never tell you that. Instead, they all have, buried nastily down in Month 2 or Week 12 or in the arbitration clause, something called “intervals.”
This is like burying a plutonium pellet inside the vagina of a beautiful rich single woman Rhodes scholar who wants to be your mistress and is a fantastic housekeeper, cook, and head of a Silicon Valley major corporation, who always orgasms before you do and whose idea of a great relationship is you riding your bike while she hands you up water bottles. Of course, the “other coach’s training plan” never starts you out with intervals. That would alert you to all the misery and hard work and impossibility that lies ahead, so it starts you out with “blocks” of “base miles.” And who doesn’t like base miles?
Base miles mean hours and hours of fiddling around up and down the coast, chatting with your pals, drinking coffee, trolling the Internet for new bootie covers, trolling the peloton for new booty, damn, son, this is the life! But do you need base miles? Of course not. As a Wanky Training Plan ™ devotee, you’ve been riding for years and have so many miles on your legs that your taint looks like grade P12 sandpaper that’s backed with chips of flint. Still, they give you base miles because it feels good.
Then, the nasty part of the training plan sets in: Intervals. Sometimes they’re called 20-minute efforts, or FTP tests, or big ring workouts, but trust Wanky, they’re all the same shit. You will climb inside a skanky hurt locker and pound your brains out until you despise the very bike you’re now on a 36-month payment plan for. This is “what makes you stronger,” but in reality it’s what makes you realize that you just aren’t cut out for bike racing. It’s somewhere in between that second and third set of 20-minute efforts that you realize your power has dropped, your heart rate has tanked, and this is about as much fun as getting a new tooth implant in your anus.
The Wanky Training Plan ™ , however, will never require you to do an interval, unless you consider drinking three beers in a row an “interval.” The WTP requires, instead, that you “Begin to Spin.”
Tune in tomorrow for Chapter 3: How to Spin (not Spoon)
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Cycling in the South Bay 
You…you had me at beer
I think I’ll have a beer.
The spin’s the thing.
The spin is *definitely* better than those plutonium pellets.
TATBOBeR rules!
Down with plutonium pellets!!
Very … Shakespearean …
you had me at 20 minute power output and orgasms…
See? I know what men like. And women.
🙆 Intervals
Ahem …
A new tooth implant in your anus could be good idea if you plan to drop a two pound log in the porta potti before the next race where you end up being pack fodder. I’ve already contacted my dentoctologist.
Pictures or it didn’t happen.
sheesh. Ive been doing it wrong this whole time. One question though, wouldnt the plutonium pellet make your junk glow and the radiation make you faster? Forget about intervals I am just going to start bangin rich chicks with plutonium pellets in their vaginas. everyone wins. especially me.
Yes, but you die five minutes later, just like an interval.
This is embarrassing, but I am attending a black tie, hoity toity fundrasier for public tv in San Diego (KPBS) this Saturday….for Downton Abbey, and we (my wife (?)) gives them so much dough that one of the show’s actresses is sitting next to me (Lady Edith?).at this gazillion dollar a plate shindig. I was going to share with her my plans for the anal tooth implant and plutonium pellet suppository. Good idea/Bad idea? She is British, you know.
Bad idea. Very, very, very, very bad.
When will your WTP be available on DVD? I have some empty shelf space that needs filled near my CTS and Spinerval DVDs. When your DVDs are available, could you ship them in a plain brown wrapper? That way it will look like pron and my wife won’t get suspicious.
I will make sure it looks like prawn.
forget the training plan, I’ll take that mistress
Your life will be brief but glorious.
In my TP the interval part of 3 beers comes with the sprunt to the can to take a piss before beer #4 warms up.
You are pro. It’s that simple.
OMG I’m crying with laughter – where DO you come up with this sh&t? The lady at the table next to me must think I’m mental….
You can still be mental.
Lots of people ask me where I come up with this, er, “shit.” I use Blogbog v. 2.1.0. You type in a few keywords and it does the rest.
When are you coming for some more Donut?