If anyone is interested, I have a 54c Redline Conquest Team frame for sale.
Brand new, unused, was a warranty replacement. Comes with a Ritchey fork, can also sell as a complete bike if someone is interested.
Make me an offer/drop me a line in the comments…
M
Howdy folks,
Welcome to Wednesday… as always, that means that today the focus is on the technical side, and we’re working on our…
Cyclocross Skills –
If you’re new to this whole Workout Of The Day thing, please be sure to go back and check out Monday’s Post.
We’re kind of working on a theme here this week…
.
OK?
.
Read it?
.
Great.
Keep all that in mind, and don’t be afraid to take it kinda’ easy today if you need to.
If you have been playing along with us, you’re probably pretty familiar with the general workout formula from Wednesday by now.
We’ve been spending most of our time on Wednesdays dissecting our skills…
We’ve spent a bunch of time figuring out what isn’t working for us, and trying to fix those little broken, orphaned parts of our skill set.
Not today.
As part of our “rest week” mantra, today we’re going to focus solely on the positive.
We’re going to work on one thing, one thing only, and it’s going to be the one thing you really think you’re good at.
(…and no, I don’t want to hear “But Matt, I suck at everything…” Positive thoughts only, today, OK?!)
No dissection, no criticism, no getting down on yourself for being really bad at your remounts… none of that.
Today, you’re going to pick one thing that you’re really good at, skills-wise, and you’re going to fine tune it.
– Do you have a great start?
Cool. Tonight, you’re going to make your start even better.
– Are you fantastic over the barriers?
Nice. Drill the crap out of your barrier skills tonight, and make ’em even better.
Today is all about fine-tuning.
Take that one thing that you are best at, and hone it into a keen-edged weapon, ready to be unleashed in your next race.
As you’re working on that skill (whatever it is) visualize how that skill – perfectly executed – is going to win you your next race.
Nice imagery, eh?
Have fun!
M
Howdy folks,
Well, after yesterday’s post, it’s probably not a surprise to anyone that the workout for today is going to be the…
Classic 2×20.
That’s pretty obvious, right?
Today, though, lets pay extra special attention to how we feel on these, and how we’re tracking our performance in general.
For you folks with power meters, take some time today to look at your 2×20 numbers over the course of the season to date.
How do they look?
Are you seeing any patterns?
Heart rate monitor? Same thing.
Are you doing these based on Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)? How are you keeping track?
Nail it down!
If you’re tracking your output by gear ratio v. cadence, that’s cool too. Just make sure you’re charting and keeping track of the results!
‘Nuff said?
OK… onward!
– Warm up.
– Go as hard as you can for 20 minutes.
– Recover for 2 minutes.
– Go again for another 20 minutes.
That’s the basic version. Success on this is, however, all in the…
The idea here is to go as hard as you can for the duration of both intervals without being forced to go easier at the end of the second interval. If you run out of gas before you finish the second interval, you went to hard. If your vision isn’t blurry at the end of the second interval, you went too easy.
If you’re doing this with a powermeter, you want your wattage output to be as close to constant as possible. We’re talking 10 watt variance at the most. Keep it steady.
These take practice to do well, and the better you get, the harder they get. This is another workout that works great on the trainer, and that’s how I do ‘em, which is a good thing… because I always wind up flat on my back on the floor trying not to puke after the 2nd interval.
I’m really not kidding about the seeing spots thing. If you can learn to push through your limits when you do these, you will get better and you will get better fast.
(…but, yeah, it will hurt.)
(…a lot.)
(…but, you know, the good kind of hurt…)
G’night,
M
Howdy folks,
I hope ya’all had a lovely weekend, and enjoyed the racing this weekend.
Now that it’s Monday, you should find yourself feeling a little bit gassed.
You’re due for a recovery day, and that’s exactly what we’ve got on the schedule for you…
R3 –
Recover –
– Get on your bike. Roll out into the street, and just spin around for an hour.
– Really small gear, no hard efforts – heck, no medium effort.
– Spin. You’re looking to move your legs around in circles, almost like there is no chain on the bike.
– The idea is to get your body moving, flush the systems out, and speed your recovery.
– When you do your recovery ride -if you have the time- just get out and spin aimlessly. At a certain point, your legs suddenly feel better.
Relax.
– As soon as that happens, turn around, go home, eat, stretch, and put your legs up.
Remember –
– this is a good day to get some core work in if you aren’t totally spent. Lots of info up on the topic in previous posts.
OK.
That’s the workout for the folks who need a little bit of recovery after a hard weekend.
That should be most of you.
But hey…. what if you’re feeling really gassed today?
I’ve gotten notes and questions from some of you asking about a rest week.
When should you take some time off from all this damn racing and training?
Good damn question.
Here’s how it’s gonna’ go…
First of all, I can’t flat-out tell you when you’re going to need to take a rest.
If I was coaching you directly, one of my main jobs would be to have both eyes glued to your fitness metrics, looking for the tell-tale signs that would indicate impending over-training.
How do you do this for yourself?
It’s not that easy.
Importantly, though… if you’re actually starting to think of this whole thing as “Damnracing and training”? If you’re not pretty darn psyched to get on the bike come race time?
You probably need a break.
More on the “break” soon, but let’s get one thing out of the way first; I’m not a “Three weeks on/one week off” kinda’ guy.
Why?
First of all, it’s nonsense.
The vast majority of athletes who find themselves needing a rest week every three weeks “need” it because they have talked themselves into this “need,” or have gotten so used to having the break that their body starts tuning into the cycle, and comes to expect the rest period.
You’re not on a PED cycle, so you don’t need to synch your training to your drug taking
Second of all, you’re not a pro, right?
You’ve got other things going on in your life, and racing & training need to adapt themselves to your life schedule, not life to your training schedule.
Rest when you can, and when you need to, not when the “Schedule” tells you to!!
Huh?
Look, for the regular-person bike racer – IE: have a job, family, a LIFE, IE: YOU – lifedoesn’t shouldn’t revolve around racing.
You need to learn to cram your training and your racing into the spaces life allows.
This is not conducive to following a (strictly) periodized training schedule.
You know the type I’m talking about, right? They’re the ones that sound something like “we’re going to start out with a build period of x weeks, and then you’ll take a rest week, then 3 weeks of blahblahblah, followed by some intensity, and then… then, you’ll really be flying!
Blech.
My philosophy of resting is the mirror image of my philosophy of racing, to whit:
Your Goal Race is whichever one you wind up in a position to win (or do well in…)
And…
You rest when you’re tired, but before you’re really tired
These are the basic, fundamental tenets of a sane training schedule for the real-life bike racer.
Pretty simple, right?
Not so much.
How do you know when you’re tired?
Metrics.
I’ve harped on the topic pretty much continually as we’ve gone along, and here’s where it really becomes important.
– You need to have consistent, established metrics in order to track your fitness! –
One of the reasons I really like riders to do the Two by Twenty (aside from it’s obvious training benefit…) is that it provides a really fantastic metric to gauge fitness by.
Every Tuesday, after you perform your weekly penance, you should be making some important observations…
1 – are my 2×20 numbers going up?
2 – are they staying the same?
3 – are they slowly going down?
4 – are they dropping like a brick?
5 – numbers? I’m so beat I can’t even finish the damn workout!
Guess what? If you’re in…
Cat 4 or 5? – you’re too late. You probably needed to take a break a while back…
Cat 1? – Keep going. You’re doing fine.
Cat 2? – Hmmm… tough call. You might need to take a break… then again, you might need to go harder…
Cat 3? – Break Time! (probably…)
Most Riders will need to take one (1) rest week during Cross season!
YMMV, of course, and if you’re working your ass off at the day job and at home, it’s pretty likely that you’ll need more rest than the single, semi-employed wastrels that tend to populate the Cat 1 and Cat 2 fields.
If you find yourself needing frequent rest weeks, you need to back the f**k off during the week!
Look, man – a rest week isn’t a cure-all for running yourself into the ground. If you find yourself so damn tired on Monday that you can’t even make it to work…
…you went too hard the week before.
You probably do need a week off now, but if you come back and kill yourself again, you’re just going to repeat the same cycle of stupidity.
Don’t train so hard that you can’t recover in the course of your normal week!
So. OK. Enough preaching.
You – authentically – need a down week. What should you do?
Here’s my breakdown for what a rest week should look like…
Day 1 – Recovery spin
Day 2- Totally off bike. Stretch, massage.
Day 3 – Ride if you feel like it. Stretch. Chiro or acupuncture.
Day 4 – Ride how you feel, but ride. Nothing hard, but get on the bike.
Day 5 – Same as Day 4
(Most of the time, during the season, a rest “week” actually means 5 days, with racing on the weekend.)
Day 6 – Day off if no race on Day 7, or Can Openers
Day 7 – Ride how you feel, or race
Questions?
Get ‘em to me…
M
Howdy folks,
It’s Sunday, and you should be out racing today.
Pretty simple, right? The workout today, I mean. It’s…
GO Race!
I’ve written a bunch on the topic of warming up for races, and it’s especially important that you not overdo it on double weekends (as this is for many of you…) Check out some of the advice on warming up at –
https://crosssports.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/the-workout-of-the-day-for-sunday-9-12-too-damn-warm/
As it’s looking pretty miserable out there, you might pay extra attention to the somewhat abbreviated version of The RSWO in that post; it’s my default warm-up on those wrath of god type days (like it looks like we might be having here in Seattle…)
Have fun out there,
M
Howdy folks,
Welcome to the weekend!
Many of you are racing today, and if you are, well… have fun. Ride hard, ride safe (ish…) and have a great time. Kick some ass.
If you’re racing tomorrow – Sunday? Well, today you need to get ready.
Yes, that’s right, today you’re doing…
Can Openers –
– 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 start efforts on a straight section of paved road, level or slightly uphill.
You want to begin these from a dead stop, with one foot unclipped.
Do not stop until you get at least 3 perfect starts in a row, and I mean perfect; this is the cross equivalent of practicing free throws. make ‘em count.
… spin out the legs, go home, and get ready for the race.
If you’re in Seattle (like I am…) you might just be looking at the wrath-of-god type stuff on the weather forecast and be thinking to yourself “I’m not going outside this weekend unless I absolutely have to…”
Got ‘ya covered…
You can do…
The R.S.W.O. –
– Get on trainer. Spin for about 5 minutes.
– Shift into big ring/largest cog combination.
– Ride 30 seconds in this gear, then shift up one cog.
– Ride 30 seconds in this gear, then shift up one cog.
– Repeat until you hit the hardest gear you’ve got, or can handle.
– Ride 30 seconds in that gear, and then shift all the way back down to the Big/big combo.
– Ride 30 seconds in that gear, then immediately shift to hardest gear you can handle.
– Full gas sprint, out of the saddle, for 30 seconds.
Back to big/big combo.
– Spin for two minutes.
– 5-10 minute effort at your 2×20 output level.
Repeat The entire sequence (Usually minus the 2nd 5-10 minute effort.)
Have fun!
M
Howdy folks,
I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s skills work. We’ve been doing some relatively heady stuff the last few weeks, so here’s one that’s pretty darn simple. Today we’re doing the…
Slow Roast –
– first of all, If you actually did the 3×20 on Tuesday, you may want/need to opt out of this. Take it easy today instead, or do Spin-Ups. Ditto if you’re racing on Saturday. This is really geared toward a Saturday race day.
– this one is a little bit longer than most of the workouts we do – you’re looking to budget 2-2 1/2 hours.
– No real warm up effort required for this one, either. You can pretty much hop on the bike and go…
– So, hop on the bike.
– Ramp up to a level that’s roughly 20 beats below your zone 5 heart rate level or a wattage that’s 25% below your “Classic 2×20″ average, or just at the limit of comfortable conversation. You can talk comfortably, but any harder and you couldn’t.
– Hold at this level for the duration of the ride – ideally for 2-2 1/2 hours.
– Go home, eat, relax, recover.
Notes:
– Yeah, this exercise is just as simple as it sounds. Nice not to have to use the stopwatch, eh?
– Yeah, this is a “Dead Zone” exercise. Don’t worry about it – there’s method to the madness, I promise…
– If you’re hammered from yesterday, take it easy today instead, and do an hour long recovery ride, or the aforementioned alternative workout.
Have fun,
M
Howdy folks,
Believe it or not, it’s Wednesday already, and that means – you guessed it – it’s…
Skills Day!
Here’s the run-down for tonight’s workout…
– Warm up on the bike for about ten minutes. Just roll around, and get the legs moving.
– Get off the bike and run for 5 minutes, broken down into 30 second efforts with 30 second rests. Run as fast as is comfortable – work up to full sprints over several weeks.
– Stretch. Too complicated to give a full outline here, but if there is interest I will post a stretching/warmup regimen…
– Back on bike. Dismount and barrier skills.
Go back and take a look at the last couple of Wednesday’s posts. There’s a s**tload of stuff up on mounts and remounts.
Run through some of those drills.
SLOWLY!
Seriously.
Go slower than you think you need to. Get your remounts and dismounts absolutely perfect.
Then get fast.
If you can’t execute the basics absolutely flawlessly at low speed, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be able to execute them even passably well at race pace!
Make sense?
So, now go do it.
Don’t worry about the fact that every one else is going faster than you… it’s a practice! Make it perfect…
– Turning skills. Work on slow speed turning while pedaling, and high speed turns where you can’t pedal.
One drill I suggest doing is riding in a circle around a cone, trying to make the circle as small as you can while pedaling continuously. Ride smaller and smaller circles until things get so tight that you literally fall over sideways. Work on vertical bike alignment and countersteering. Push your limits – that’s how you figure out what they are 
Switch directions when you start to get dizzy…
– Do some YouTube cruising and find some footage of the Euro guys riding crazy-ass stuff. Watch how different folks ride the same stuff in different ways, and try out the various methods you see.
Figure out what works for you.
I’m a vertical bike, keep pedaling, countersteer kinda guy. The style works for me, but it’s not for everybody.
What works for you?
Don’t know? Figure it out… that’s what practice is for!
…Now, do the same drill on the side of a hill…
…Then, same drill, on the side of a hill, doing figure-eights around 2 cones, or even better, around 2 barriers, placed a couple of meters apart.
– Integration of the two previous drills…
The areas I see people having the most trouble with on race day are the parts of the course that challenge multiple skill sets simultaneously. Ya’all are pretty darn good at dismounting and remounting in a straight line, on stable terrain. Throw in an off-camber barrier in the middle of a turn, or a sand pit that forces you to remount in a turn and things get sketchy.
Practice this stuff!
It’s hard to replicate the feel of riding in sand if you don’t have any sand, but you can get close by working on your dismounts and remounts on an incline…
Ride at an angle up the side of a hill in a gear that is way too big to roll all the way up.
As you begin to bog down, unclip and dismount before you lose all forward momentum.
Remount at the top, roll back down and go again.
Repeat.
You’re looking to get a really deep feel for the bail-out point, that moment where your forward momentum gives out and you stall.
You need to be off the bike just before this happens.
Wait a moment too long and you’re at a dead stop or worse – you’re falling over sideways.
Get off too early, and you’re missing out on riding those barely rideable sections, or losing time.
You see a lot of this in races with sand sections… people running past the folks falling over sideways, and people flying by the folks too quick to get off and hoof it.
There’s a fine line here, and you need to practice to find out where it is.
Oddly placed dismounts and remounts…
…are another one of those things you just need to practice.
Go back to the same hillside we were just working on.
Right at the spot where you were just dismounting, place a barrierparallel to the line you were/are riding.
You’re going to ride up the hillside towards the barrier, and just before you come alongside it, dismount.
Off the bike, you pivot towards the barrier
If the barrier is on your right, you swing both your body and your bike to the right, orienting yourself so you are approaching the barrier face-on.
…and step over it.
One step over the barrier, pivot again, back towards your original line.
…now the barrier is on your left, and you swing both your body and your bike to the left…
Now you remount, back on bike, out of the saddle. Punch it.
– Practice in both directions, barrier on your left & barrier on your right.
– Really work on moving your bike around the “turn” as you go over the barrier. You’re facing uphill, you’re about to turn to the left and remount. Turn the bike in that direction before you turn your body.
You step over the barrier, you swing the bike towards your left, and you remount after the bike comes back on line. (yeah, I know… trust me this will make more sense when you try it on the bike…)
– Starts. Practice starts until you get 5 perfect starts in a row.
Work on getting into the pedal, getting up to speed, and work even harder to develop a powerful second effort off the gun.
Much of the time the rider that can accelerate a few moments after the start is the one that gets the gap.
You want to be that rider…
– Rest for 5 minutes. Drink something, eat something, get ready to go…
– Practice race. I would suggest doing lap on/lap off efforts, or sets of 10 minute efforts. Full gas, pretty damn fast. Integrate everything we worked on earlier, and don’t forget… Have fun!
– Warm down, stretch, get warm and go home.
G’night,
M
Howdy folks,
It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means, right? It’s…
Two by Twenty Tuesday!
– Warm up.
– Go as hard as you can for 20 minutes.
– Recover for 2 minutes.
– Go again for another 20 minutes.
That’s the basic version. Success on this is, however, all in the details.
The idea here is to go as hard as you can for the duration of both intervals without being forced to go easier at the end of the second interval. If you run out of gas before you finish the second interval, you went to hard. If your vision isn’t blurry at the end of the second interval, you went too easy.
If you’re doing this with a powermeter, you want your wattage output to be as close to constant as possible. We’re talking 10 watt variance at the most. Keep it steady.
These take practice to do well, and the better you get, the harder they get. This is another workout that works great on the trainer, and that’s how I do ‘em, which is a good thing… because I always wind up flat on my back on the floor trying not to puke after the 2nd interval.
I’m really not kidding about the seeing spots thing. If you can learn to push through your limits when you do these, you will get better and you will get better fast.
Nothing new here, right? You’ve seen these before, you’re probably pretty sick of the damn things.
Psych…
Today, if you’re really ambitious, you aren’t doing a 2×20.
You’re doing a Three by twenty.
Just like the Two by Twenty, but add one more interval.
Yeah, you’re probably going to need a rest day tomorrow if you pull this off. That’s OK.
You’ll have earned it.
have fun,
M
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