The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Sunday, 12.6.15. “Long but not slow”
Howdy folks,
So… are you racing today?
If not, you’re probably in the doughnut hole period of the season; local racing is over, but the big races – Nationals and maybe even Worlds – are looming on the horizon.
Lots of people find themselves in a quandary this time of year. How the heck do you get fast for Nationals when there isn’t any racing happening locally, and most of your training partners have packed it in for the season.
It ain’t easy, folks.
What should you be doing?
In short, think long.
It’s tough this time of year, but if you can make it happen, you want to get some long, hard rides in the next couple of weeks. Think rides that go for 4, 5, even 6 hours.
Yeaaaah. Short days, crap weather, long rides.
I didn’t say this would be easy.
It gets worse.
Long doesn’t mean slow.
You need to push the pace on these rides. In a week or so, the top Euro-crossers will all be heading out to Mallorca where they can bang heads with their teammates on long group rides. Same idea here, even if you don’t have the teammates. Ride like someone is chasing you.
“Tough” doesn’t mean impossible.
I mean, sure… you aren’t going to go out and get a training camp level of training out of a couple/few weekend rides, but if you follow the principles that underlie the intent of these week-long training camps, you can probably do better than you’re doing now, and set yourself up for success in January.
So, what is that intent?
Let’s start with this; It’s incredibly difficult to make profound physiological improvements in your underlying, base-level fitness when you’re racing every weekend.
Can you – and should you – get faster during the course of a season?
Absolutely. But…
You race hard every weekend. If you’re doing it right, you’re spending most of the following week recovering from the weekend past & getting opened up for the weekend next.
You can do some small work mid-week to improve deficiencies or hone strengths, but you really can’t do the kind of work that it takes to bump your FTP enough to get to the front of the group you’ve been racing in, to be competitive at the next category level , or to win one of those races you’ve been sooo close in for sooo long.
The kind of work we’re talking about is the sort that if you did it on a Wednesday, you’d be way off the back come the weekend, and that’s assuming you could take a day off to do it mid-week and still be free to race on the weekend.
Sound likely? I didn’t think so.
So, this break in racing before the final national level races that end the season?
Perfect time to really work your ass off.
Want to be flying at Nationals? Spend the next couple of weeks doing long, hard, fast training rides.
This isn’t long, slow distance eating we’re talking about, this is “Oh crap, how the hell am I going to finish this ride” kinda stuff. These are the rides where you barely manage to drag your ass in the door of your house when you get home. The rides where, when you get home you need to drink a coke to summon the energy needed to order takeout.
4, 5, 6 hours of glorious suffering. That’s what we’re talking about.
Try one today. Next weekend, do it both days. Give me a few weeks of this, and you’ll be really, really strong.
Then we can spend the last couple of weeks before Nats turning that strength into speed.
Have fun,
M
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