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It’s Wednesday, so once again it’s Cross Practice night. If you have an organized local practice, get out to it. If you don’t… maybe try to organize one? Start with some friends and some home-made barriers, and before you know it, you’ll have a practice happening.

If you’re feeling extra frisky, try and turn today into a 2 workout day. You need to be really damn motivated to make this work, but if you do it a couple of weeks in a row, your fitness will get a serious jump start.

Schedule your Skills practice for the evening (after work?) and in the AM – before work/school/whatever –

– jump start your day with a tasty 2×20! Details here: https://crosssports.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/workout-of-the-day-for-922/

OK, got that out of the way, did all that real-life stuff, now it’s time for the cross practice!

Here you go –

1 – warm up for 10 minutes.

2 – Stretch out after you’re warm. Pay special attention to all those movements you make hopping on and off the bike that are different from what you usually do.

3 – Barrier skills for 15 minutes.

– Start without barriers, and at literally a walking pace.

– Slowly increase speed until you can mount and dismount the bike smoothly and perfectly at full speed. Do not jump on and off the bike, you are looking to smoothly slide yourself on and off using the same motion at full speed as at your walking pace.

– When you’ve got it wired, bring on the barriers. Work on single barrier and double barrier skills.

4 – Carrying the bike

– Work on picking up the damn bike. Top tube grab, down tube grab, wire them both, and figure out where and when you would use each one… Again, get it wired at a slow speed, and only go as fast as you can go while maintaining perfect form.

5 – turning and handling skills for 15 minutes.

– work on tight, high speed turns as well as super tight low speed turns. Roll some off camber slopes, and learn to turn on them as well. Put two traffic cones about 10 feet apart from each other, and ride a figure eight around them, pedalling the entire time. Make the turns tighter and tighter until you can’t hold the line and you fall down. Learn where the break point is between riding a tight line and falling on your ass, and push that line until you are definitively over it.

6 – practice starting efforts

– full-gas starts from a stand still, with one foot on the ground. Do these until you get 3 perfect starts in a row. Make the efforts long enough that you need to shift up a gear or two, but quit right after you do.

7 – Practice race

– This is best if you can do it with a group of riders that are just a wee bit better than you. Push your limits, and learn what you can do at speed. Go faster than you will race, but shorter. If you are racing for 60 minutes on the weekend, do a single 20 minute effort, or three 10 minute efforts.

8 – Warm down when you’re done. Spin the legs out until you loosen up, then spin for another couple of minutes. Have a drink of water, then go home.

G’night…

M

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~ by crosssports on September 30, 2009.

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