Crosssports's Weblog

Howdy folks,

Well, it’s Friday.

One week closer to the start of the Cross season!

Yikes.

It’s sneaking up on us quickly. Up here in Seattle, we’re looking at about a month until there’s some CX racing available… if you want it.

6 weeks or so until the local big series starts up.

Definitely time to kick things up a notch.

But, geeze… there’s still road and mtb racing on tap for many of us! It’s still summer, damnit!

Yup.

That’s the reality these days.

Cross has become a late-summer/fall sport, and while the pros are still flogging it around the course in January, the grass roots folks are mostly home on the couch, blown from all the hard racing in September.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

So, what to do today…

Well, racing is good, and if you’ve got it available, you might as well take advantage of it.

If you’re racing tomorrow, you’re going to need to get some kind of openers into your legs today, so might as well do ’em on the cross bike, and get some reps in on that at the same time.

Today, do some…

Can Openers – 

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Here’s the drill:

– Warm up for 1/2 hour or so.

– Follow with several short attacking efforts, IE 30 seconds at 80% of your max, or pretty damn hard.

– Back off and spin for 5 minutes.

– Follow with 10-15 minute effort at AT level, or CP30, or “I could talk to you if I had to, but I don’t want to” level.

– Spin for several minutes.

– Follow with 5-6 full gas sprint efforts on a straight section of paved road, level or slightly uphill.

Do half of these from a near standstill, and for 1/2 of them, get going at a pretty good clip before you start the sprint.

… spin out the legs, go home, and get ready for the race.

What’s that you say?  You aren’t racing tomorrow?

Give these a shot today anyways.

It’s important to get your day-before-race openers routine dialed in well before you use ’em in earnest.

When race season rolls around – and it ain’t that far away – you want to have a pretty damn good idea of just how much work you need to do the day before a race in order to prime your pump for a peak performance on race day itself.

The goal with your openers is to do just enough work to prepare your body for the next day’s efforts, while being absolutely certain that you don’t leave any of your performance out on the road the day before.

How do you figure out how much to do?

Practice, trial & error, and note-taking.

Do your openers, keep track of exactly what you do, and then keep track of the results the next day.

Start doing that today.

Trust me, the effort will be worth it.

…and, oh yeah; if you aren’t racing tomorrow?

Never fear.

We’ve got you covered, and the CXWOTD tomorrow will make you glad you got yer legs open today. Trust me.

Have fun,

M

Hey! Check out the..…site! I’m proud to be a member of their coaching network. Looking for a coach? We can help you with that…

~ by crosssports on August 7, 2015.

Posted in Cyclocross