Crosssports's Weblog

The workout for today is pretty simple – get locked and loaded for the weekend.

I’m basing this one on a couple of preconceptions:

– You’re racing on Sunday.

– You’re pretty immersed in your training.

– You care about the race this weekend.

– You aren’t training through it.

When I’m planning for a Cross race and It’s a race I (or the client) care about, I like to schedule an easy day 2 days before the event.

Two days out is easy, day before is Can Openers, then Rock&Roll.

So, today’s workout is Locked & Loaded (also – sometimes – called the S.M.R.)

Here you go:

– 1 to 2 hour Steady Moderate Ride. No hard efforts. Keep it above the level of a recovery ride, but not killin’ it, either.

– Steady, moderate effort (get it?)

– Power meter type person? You’re looking to do this ride at 15-20% below your CP level for a ride of this duration. You should feel like you are always going just a little bit slower than you want to…

When you get home from the ride, you should feel like you could have – and want to have – gone harder.

OK. Pretty easy, right?

What’s with all the excess verbiage?

Here’s the deal: not everybody responds well to the easy(ish) day two days before the race.

Some folks like to go really easy today, and basically do a Recovery Ride.

Others need to go pretty darn hard or their body starts to shut down and they can’t get rolling by the Weekend race.

Yet another group of people find that they race better on Sunday if they take Saturday easy.

Yikes.

How do you know?

Experiment.

Try easy(ish) on Friday this week, and really easy next week. Try switching to an easy day on Saturday.

Keep a written log of your reaction to the changes!

Figure out what lead-in to the weekend’s racing works best for you and begin to schedule your training around it.

You will be faster on Sunday for the effort.

M

~ by crosssports on October 16, 2009.

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