Crosssports's Weblog

It’s Wednesday night, and that means it’s time for Cyclocross Skills Practice.

That’s right… strap on the rain gear, go outside, and ride around at your local neighborhood cyclocross practice.

If you don’t have one, start your own. Grab some of your buddies, and go out and work on your skills together.

😮

So… what are we working on today?

– As per last Wednesday’s workout, spend a bit of time working on your dismount, remount, and barrier skills. It’s easy to let these slide as the season rolls on, and suddenly you’re flat on your butt in a race ’cause you screwed up the basics. Don’t let this happen to you, ‘kay?

– Off camber skills.

We’re working on this at the Seattle practice this week because it’s important – and because someone requested that we do so. Here are some things to think about:

– work on pedaling through the off-cambers.

How do you orient the bike and your body to allow for a constant pedaling action? Work on different techniques.

– try keeping the bike more vertical and leaning your body into the slope/turn.

– work on aggressive counter steering techniques. Learn to push through turns.

– Use your brakes to steer as well as to modulate speed. Learn to “heel/toe” your brakes, or apply the rear brake while continuing to pedal. This will allow you to modulate your speed without the loss of traction typically associated with “hitting the brakes.” Try it!

Find the limits of your traction. Fall in practice so you don’t in the race. Really push your limits, especially on the off-camber and twisty-turny sections. Figure out what you can and can’t do.

Learn to be comfortable with a drifting rear wheel. It’s going to happen, and when it does, you need to be able to control the drift. Get really comfortable with drifting, and you can learn to use it to your advantage…

As always, finish off the night with a race simulation.

Last week we worked on our accelerations, and you can certainly do that again if you feel the need for speed. (see that post @ https://crosssports.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/workout-of-the-day-for-wednesday-1014/ )

To keep things varied a bit, what I’m recommending this week is 2-4 sets of ten minute intervals on the “simulated race course.”

This is a longer interval than we did last week, but still a fairly short duration effort – so amp up the pace. Really go for it.

Try to go faster than you would in a race. Push it, make mistakes, maybe even blow up.

Go hard. You can recover tomorrow…

M

~ by crosssports on October 21, 2009.

Posted in Uncategorized