Sometimes, victory feels like this...
The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Monday, 1.2.12. – “Week-ness”
•January 1, 2012 • Leave a CommentHowdy folks,
My apologies for the lack of posting recently. As I mentioned earlier, logistics conspired against me during my holiday travels, and there just wasn’t much I could do about it.
So, hey… here we are, it’s the week before Nationals.
This is the end of the road for many of the few of you left.
…and then there are those of you continuing on until Worlds.
Yikes.
What a long damn season…
So, hey… no workout of the day, today. Instead, I’m going to drop an outline of the week before your big race on ‘ya.
Since everyone races on different days, what i’m going to do is post-up a “Week of the big race” schedule. You plug in your race day, count back, and – Voila! a schedule…
SO,
Monday -
Easy recovery spin
Tuesday -
Spin-Ups, Form Sprints, or 1-2 Hour Moderate Ride
Wednesday -
Slow Roast, or 3 (or 2…) x10 (basically 1/2 a Classic 2×20) or 1-2 Hour Moderate Ride
Thursday
Spin Ups or Form Sprints
Friday -
1-2 Hour Moderate Ride and/or Course Preview
Saturday -
Can Openers and Course Preview
Sunday -
Race. Yer. Ass. Off.
The descriptions/explanations for all of these workouts can be found by entering the name of the workout in the search box over to the left of the page. If you’ve been following for a while, there isn’t anything here you haven’t seen before (except the TTs; I will try to get something up about them in a day or so…)
Have fun,
M
Howdy folks,
•December 29, 2011 • 1 Comment…sorry for the lack of updates this week. I headed out of town to spend Christmas with my family, and ran into an unanticipated lack of internet access.
I will be back in the land of fast internet shortly, and will get some content up to see you through the end of the season,
ciao,
M
The Workout of the Day for the whole darn X-mas weekend…
•December 22, 2011 • Leave a CommentHowdy folks,
Happy holidays, whatever flavor of holiday you might happen to prefer (even if that happens to be none at all, which is usually what I opt for…)
If you’re still racing this season, this is/should be a restful weekend for you.
Ride when you can, try to get a couple/few hours in over the next couple of days, but don’t sweat things too much.
Get some family/friend time in, recharge your engines, and prepare for the home stretch which begins next week…
G’night,
M
The Workout Of The Day for Thursday, 12.23.12. “OMG, ZDI’s!”
•December 22, 2011 • Leave a Comment
Howdy folks,
I hope you’re pretty well rested after yesterday, ’cause today is…
well, today is pretty awful.
Today we’re doing…
Zach’s Death Intervals
Warm up really well.
Find a fairly steep hill that you can do a 30 second hard effort on. Best bet is a climb that’s right on the big ring/small ring break point. You could do it in either one, depending…
Roll into the climb fast, and Sprint up it, 30 seconds hard effort.
Coast back down, turn around and go again immediately.
Repeat for a total of ten reps.
Yup. Ten.
Ouch.
Recover for 5-10 minutes, then go again. You’re trying to do 3-5 sets of ten.
Yes, this is really damn hard.
Don’t even try these if you’re feeling gassed. Don’t do these if you’re racing this weekend (which almost no one in the US is…)
Looking for something a little bit more humane? You can do some Spin-Ups today.
Have fun!
M
The Workout Of The Day for Wednesday, 12.21.11. – “Mod.”
•December 21, 2011 • Leave a CommentHowdy folks,
Well, it’s Wednesday, but no Skills workout today.
If you feel like doing some of that kind of thing, head on down to the search function on the bottom right hand side of the page, enter “Wednesday,” and you’ll find a whole bunch of content to work with.
Honestly, it might not be a bad idea to do a little skills session… y’know, brush up on the little things that you have trouble with?
Think about it…
For the majority of us, though, on the agenda for today is a…
2 Hour Moderate Ride –
Get on your bike.
Go ride for 2 hours.
No hard efforts, but do throw in a couple of moderate ones. By moderate, I mean just that. You can sprint for the town line, but you should be laughing while you do it.
You’re not doing a recovery spin, so you need to put a little bit of gas into the pedals… just don’t go out and kill yourself.
Check out the view, smell the flowers, just do it while you’re putting a little bit of effort into the pedals.
1 notch above a recovery ride.
Have Fun!
M
The Workout Of The Day for Tuesday, 12.20.12. – “Last Waltz.”
•December 20, 2011 • Leave a CommentHowdy folks,
Well, it’s Tuesday again, and you probably know what that means, right?
Wipe a tear from your eye as you do today’s workout, as for most of you, it’s the last time you’re going to be doing these for what little remains of the season.
It’s the Last Waltz…
…for the Classic 2×20 –
- Warm up.
- Go as hard as you can for 20 minutes.
- Recover for 2 minutes.
- Go again for another 20 minutes.
That’s the basic version. Success on this is, however, all in the details.
The idea here is to go as hard as you can for the duration of both intervals without being forced to go easier at the end of the second interval. If you run out of gas before you finish the second interval, you went to hard. If your vision isn’t blurry at the end of the second interval, you went too easy.
If you’re doing this with a powermeter, you want your wattage output to be as close to constant as possible. We’re talking 10 watt variance at the most. Keep it steady.
These take practice to do well, and the better you get, the harder they get. This is a workout that goes great on the trainer, and that’s how I do ‘em, which is a good thing… because I always wind up flat on my back on the floor trying not to puke after the 2nd interval.
I’m really not kidding about the seeing spots thing. If you can learn to push through your limits when you do these, you will get better and you will get better fast.
(…but, yeah, it will hurt.)
(…a lot.)
(…but, you know, the good kind of hurt…)
You can also do the 2×20 Get-Up Style -
Have fun!
M
The Workout Of The Day for Monday, 12.19.11. – “R.”
•December 19, 2011 • Leave a CommentHowdy folks!
Did you get some good, hard riding in this weekend?
Sweet… I’m jealous! 
If you finished up your Cross racing in the last two weeks or so, you should still be off the bike, or, if you *must* ride, please take it easy.
Avoid the temptation to jump into the roadie cutting-contest pre-season insanity. Go out and spin by yourself, easy-like.
Better yet, stay off the bike a little bit longer, and give some thought to putting in some gym time cross-training.
If you’re still playing out the string, and you’ve got some racing coming up today, you’re doing a…
1 Hour Recovery Spin -
- Get on your bike. Roll out into the street, and just spin around for an hour.
- Really small gear, no hard efforts – heck, no medium effort.
- Spin. You’re looking to move your legs around in circles, almost like there is no chain on the bike.
- The idea is to get your body moving, flush the systems out, and speed your recovery.
- Just get out on the road and spin aimlessly. At a certain point, your legs suddenly feel better.
- As soon as that happens, turn around, go home, eat, stretch, and put your legs up.
Relax.
Have fun,
M
The Workout Of The Day for Sunday, 12.18.11. – “The Hills Have (quite small) I’s”
•December 18, 2011 • Leave a CommentHowdy folks,
Hey… if you did yesterday’s workout, you might be feeling a bit gassed today.
If you are, you might not want to do today’s… in fact, you might be better off taking it easy today.
You need to remember, if you’re gunning for Nationals or Worlds, you’re pretty darn close to the end of your build period, and odds are your time is going to be taken up with Holiday insanity at the tail end of the week, so you’ve got some rest coming up.
It might just be OK to go a little out on a limb with the workload this weekend… you’ve still got a little bit of time.
Anyways…
Feeling great? Motivated to do some work today?
Nice.
Taht being the case, today you’re hitting the road (or the trail!) and doing -
The Hills Have (quite small) “I”s
(“I” is for “intensity.”)
Warm up, ideally in the course of a ride out to some pretty darn hilly terrain.
Find a hill – or a series of hills – that will take you 2-5 minutes to climb at pretty darn close to race pace.
Hit the base of the climb hard, out of the saddle, and accelerate into it.
Sit down when you feel you’re starting to lag, and drop a couple of gears. Spin (but still fast, IE about the same as your 2×20 minute level.)
Stay seated until you are breathing a little easier, then…
Out of the saddle, Attack! Hard like you did at the base of the climb.
Same as before, when you start to lag, sit down, spin.
Repeat to top of climb.
At the top of the climb, get out of the saddle, and accelerate as the grade eases. Power over the top and well into the descent, until your speed is great enough that coasting is faster than pedaling.
Coast/spin to bottom of climb.
Pedal at moderate intensity (IE – 2/3 of your 2×20 minute level,) for roughly double the amount of time it took to complete the entire climb.
Repeat 3-5 times.
That’s a set.
Spin easy for 5-10 minutes between sets.
You’re looking to do 3-5 sets.
Better to go shorter and harder than to extend the ride and slow things down.
Have fun!
M
The Workout Of The Day for Saturday, 12.17.11. – “Doppelgangerish”
•December 16, 2011 • Leave a CommentHowdy folks,
Yay! It’s the weekend!
If you’re still following/playing along with this stuff at this point, odds are you’re racing Nationals or Worlds.
That means you need to get some quality work in this weekend. If you can, go race this weekend.
If you can’t?
At least one day this weekend you’re doing some hard riding, and today I recommend…
The Doppelganger -
- Warm up well. If you have time, warm up as you would for a race. It’s good practice, if nothing else.
- After you have warmed up, do five full-gas starts. As always, focus on the second effort in your start, working on getting back on the gas right after you max-out on your initial effort and begin to sit down.
- 20 minutes at your 2×20 pace.
- 2 minute rest.
- 10 minutes of Over/Under intervals
The baseline for this interval is the level of effort/output you just did in the 20 minute effort.
However hard you went in that interval, you are going to try and hold that for the 10 minutes.
Easy, right?
Here’s the rub.
You’re going to sprint for 10 seconds every minute of the interval.
How hard are you going to sprint?
Hard, but not so hard that after you sprint, you can’t sit back down and keep churning away at your 2×20 level.
This takes some practice to figure out.
Don’t get all freaked out if you blow it and can’t hold the effort until the end. You tried, right?
Having said that, don’t wuss out and quit. This is some difficult s***, man. You want to get faster, right?
OK.
Here’s how this works.
Use a stopwatch. Put it on your bars.
Start the stopwatch.
Start the interval with a sprint, out of the saddle pretty hard, but not full gas.
Sprint for 10 seconds.
Back in saddle, drop into your 2×20 zone. Hold this until the minute mark, then –
Sprint again. 10 seconds.
Back in saddle, 2×20 level until 2 minute mark…
Repeat.
Repeat…
Repeat, until you have hit the 10 minute mark.
- 5 minute recovery
- 10 minutes at 2×20 level
- 2 minute recovery
- 10 minute Over/Under Intervals
- SPRINT at the very end of the last interval. 30 seconds, all out.
Really all out, like “I’m sprinting for the Maillot Arc en ciel” all out. You should be at least half-blind at the end of the sprint.
Heck, you should be so gassed when you start the sprint that just upping the tempo a little bit puts you in a box.
You asked for a race simulation, right?
Ouch…
Notes -
Yes, this is f-ing hard. Race-like, right?
You can always just sub in a 2×20 (or better yet a 3×20…) when you can’t race. That’s a hard damn workout if you do it right, but certainly nothing like the nightmare I just handed to you…
Have fun!
M
