Cycling Weekly — December 07, 2017

Racer’s 1989 schedule scrutinised through lens of modern wisdom

Fitness

yneside-based racer Brian

Johnson, now 51, hit his best

form in the late Eighties.

His most successful year came in

1989, aged 23, when he qualified to

represent Great Britain in the Peace

Race, a 12-stage race through the

Eastern Bloc.

For this special-edition retro

Training Makeover, we’ve asked pro

coach Jamie Pringle to home in on a

single week in Johnson’s schedule,

March 2-9, 1989, and bring some

modern training know-how to

bear on this old-school regime.

MAIN

GOALS

Photos: Daniel Gould / Words: David Bradford

One glance at this schedule

and you know it belongs to

an Eighties hardman. Brian

Johnson is from that era when

toughness was the defining

characteristic for an aspiring

pro. How would I change his

schedule? Not very much. He’s

handling 25 hours a week,

bouncing back quickly after

each ride; that speaks for itself

— though it does make you

wonder what happened to his

less robust team-mates.

Brian is commendably self-

aware, noting how he feels,

including his resting heart rate,

though the ‘DIET’ scrawled on

every page makes me wonder

whether he’s overly restricting

calories. He seems to favour

the same two or three gears,

suggesting lots of time spent

at either side of race cadence.

I’d suggest smaller gears and

higher cadences for climbing —

less grinding out a big gear.

Whereas Brian follows a very

hard, long day with a shorter,

easier day, the modern way is

to have shorter higher-intensity

sessions early in the training

block (while fresh), followed

by longer, lower-intensity

sessions later in the block. This

separation of stresses allows

for better quality sessions and

greater adaptations overall,

with a rest day included. Using

a power meter would allow

Brian to add a well-controlled

sweet-spot session (perhaps 3x

15min), as well as an interval-

type session, e.g. classic

20-60sec high-intensity efforts.

‘Marginal gains’ over his

old schedule include a proper

warm-up pre-race, and

refuelling within 30 minutes

of finishing longer rides.

Dr Jamie Pringle

High-performance

specialist who was

head of science for

British Athletics for

the Rio Olympics. Has

coached numerous

world-class and re-

cord-setting cyclists.

psdistillery.co.uk

THE

COACH

HIS COMMENT

1. Strong performance
   in Girvan 3-Day Race


2. Get selected for the
   Milk Race


3. Earn a pro contract

CW: Was 1989 a big year

for you?

Yes it was. I won stage two

of the Levy Moores two-

day race, and that got me

selected for the Peace Race.

CW: Did you have a coach?

No. There was a local guy

called Ray Wetherall, a prolific

winner and legend in North-East cycling,

who mentored and supported me.

CW: Did everyone ride big mileages

back then?

Oh yes. I was doing 350 to 400 miles a

week but I knew of guys locally who put

in 600-700 miles a week. I thought of

my riding as being on the soft side.

CW: Any other big differences

compared to now?

The amount of racing. I did 65 days

of racing that year [1989]. An average

amateur race was at least 75 miles long,

then you’d do a midweek race too. That

was the norm. These days it’s more about

quality, building up to your target race.

Rider bio:

J Age: 23 (in 1989)

J Height: 5ft 7in

J Weight: 63kg

J Best results: 87th

1989 Peace Race;

10th 1990 National

Amateur RR Champs

CW: What do you wish

you’d done differently?

The biggest mistake I made

was not relocating from

the North-East. I was quite

isolated. I should have

moved down to Sheffield,

somewhere with big-name

riders, where I could have

got noticed. At the time, I was too scared.

CW: Tell us about the 1989 Peace Race.

In two weeks, we did 1,619 miles of

racing. You just got thrown in at the

deep end. It was a fantastic experience.

I finished 87th, but more importantly, I

met a girl on the race, Ewa, our Polish

interpreter, and two years later I

married her; she’s my biggest supporter

to this day.

CW: What happened next?

The weekend after the Peace Race,

I went up to Scotland to ride a two-day

race. As soon as I hit 40 miles, my legs

fell off. After that, my form just died

away... it took me about eight weeks

to recover.

48 | December 7, 2017 | Cycling Weekly