Joe Friel, Hunter Allen, or both books

[phourgenres]

I was wanting to get a book to supplement a powertap I am going to get. I mostly want it for training rountines. Any preference between the two? Is it an overkill to get both (a lot of overlapping information)?

http://www.amazon.com/Cyclists-Training ... 834&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Training-Racing-P ... 879&sr=1-1

[JK]

Both.

Friel has a very good allround and in-depth view on training. Allen is the reference point for training with a powermeter.

[mattyb]

Definitely not overlapping and very different in what information they are trying to pass on.
Friel's book is a really long explanation of periodized training. That is, start with general fitness and strength and then gradually and increasingly focus efforts on the exact aspects your race needs. It's very much a long distance Triathlon approach of aiming at one or two key races and builing everything else around that.
The reality for most cyclists (including pros) is that you need good general fitness and then a good period of working on things for upcoming races (sprints and VO2 for crits or tempo with surges for road races for example) rather than x weeks of zone 2, x weeks of tempo/threshold, x weeks of v02 then race.

Hunter Allen / Coggan have put together information about the power meter and how to use it for training. Test yourself or race, look at the data, pick the bits that are important and use that info to improve. There is a small section on creating a training plan but it's more about the learning about the power data so you can use it to then create a specific plan to boost certain aspects of your riding.
The 2nd edition has a couple of sample plans and a good workout library you can use. This is a great resource and worth the price of the book alone.

Personally I found Friel's book a bit tedious and a bit too serious. There's one line saying something like 'you need to give up the rest of your life if you want to be a top athlete'. That sort of thing can lead to anti-fun training and burn out.
If you understand periodization, then you could leave Friels book on the shelf.
TRWPM really gets down to the facts of a race... In this race, for the most part you were sitting at around X watts but you had X amount of surges over X watts and the finale required you to do X watts for X minutes follwed by a sprint over X watts for X amount of time.
So then you take you training to mimic that kind of work. One day might be a certain amount of surges while recovering at a tempo pace - just like the race. The next dat might be a 3 hour ride following by some anaerobic work and then some sprints - just like the race. Then you look at the data and see if your power is improving and how you can further improve.
That's really the essential teachings of Allen/Coggan.

[phourgenres]

Thanks for taking the time to write such an extensive response.

[Tapeworm]

+1 for mattyb's assessment of the two books.

I would also add that should be so inclined to spend enough time on the net most of these things can be researched online.