Crosssports's Weblog

Howdy folks,

It’s Friday already!

If you’re racing tomorrow, you need to do some openers today. If you’ve been following the blog for a while, that’s not exactly shocking news.

You’ve got to get these darn things in. They make a difference.

Just gotta’ do em.

Well… most of the time.

You know when you should skip the openers?

When you find yourself in a position to either cram in openers at the end of a long damn day full of other stuff, or get to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Openers are important.

Getting the sleep and recovery you need the night before a race is even more important.

I’ve made the wrong call on this myself enough times to know, and I’ve seen athletes I coach do the same.

The classic case is, you travel to a race. S**T goes haywire with your travel plans, and you arrive too late in the day to get your openers in without doing them at night, in the hotel room, on the trainer.

The home-base version is, work or life-stuff goes late, and suddenly it’s well past dinner time, and you’re in the same position; on the trainer, cranking out intervals at night.

This almost inevitably winds up being a bad idea. Just go to sleep.

Get a good warm up in before the race the next day, and forget about the things that you just couldn’t get done.

‘Nuff said?

Onward to the openers! Today we’re doing…

Ignition – 

You’re going to do a series of short, hard sprints midway through a 1 – 1 1/2 hour ride. Before you head out the door, give some thought to where you can do that effectively.

A flat, straight, low-traffic section of road is what you’re looking for.

It would be great if it’s about a :45 minute ride away; that would make things nice and simple.

Hop on your bike and roll out the door.

Ride steady, at a moderate pace for 1/2 hour – 45 minutes, eventually winding up at the aforementioned stretch of road.

You’re now going to do a series of Hard out of the saddle sprints.

How hard?

Well, hard to say. You’ll start to get the hang of it pretty quickly, but figure that you’re shooting for an output level that will allow you to crank out all the sprints in the set at about the same level, but not easily.

You aren’t sprinting to failure here, and you aren’t doing a max power test.

Don’t overdo it, you’re trying to open your legs, not destroy them.

Make sense?

10 sprints, 10 seconds each.

1 minute between each sprint.

After the last sprint, roll back home spinning easily to recover.

Budget at least 15 – 20 minutes for the spin/ride back home.

when you get home, put your feet up and relax.

For some folks, this isn’t quite enough to get their legs open and ready the day before the race – or at least it doesn’t feel like it’s enough – and the importance of “feeling” ready can’t really be overestimated.

If you’re part of this club (I am) add a 10-minute effort at right about your 2×20 output level before you start the sprint sets.

Warm up, 10 minute effort, 5 minutes spinning, sprint efforts, spin down, go home.

Not racing on Saturday this week? Racing on Sunday?

Either take the day off, or go for a…

1.5 – 2 Hour Moderate Ride –

Get on your bike.

Go ride for 2 hours.

No hard efforts, but do throw in a couple of moderate ones. By moderate, I mean just that. You can sprint for the town line, but you should be laughing while you do it.

You’re not doing a recovery spin, so you need to put a little bit of gas into the pedals… just don’t go out and kill yourself.

Check out the view, smell the flowers, just do it while you’re putting a little bit of effort into the pedals.

1 notch above a recovery ride.

Have Fun!

M

What’s that you say? You’d kinda’ like to have a cycling coach help figure this stuff out for you? Check out…

(and, in case you’re wondering…. nope, S.E. doesn’t pay for the plug. I am one of their coaches, though, so if you’d like to work with me as a coach, click on the logo.)

~ by crosssports on November 3, 2017.

Posted in Cyclocross, Intervals, openers, The Workout Of The Day