If you’re racing this Sunday, today should be as relaxed as possible for you. Take the day completely off or go for an easy spin.
Hah! I know some of you – a lot of you – can’t force yourselves to chill out as much as you should.
Human nature, amiright?
So, if you just can’t make yourself go easy today, do something like…
The L.B. 1 –
You’re going to be doing a series of short, hard sprints midway through a 1 – 2 hour ride, so give some thought to where you can do these effectively.
A flat, straight, low-traffic section of road or trail is what you’re looking for.
Even better if it’s about a :45 minute ride away; that will make things nice and simple.
Hop on your bike and roll out the door.
Ride steady, at an easy, relaxed pace for 45 minutes – 1 hour, eventually winding up at the aforementioned stretch of road.
You’re now going to do a series of Hard out of the saddle sprints from a standing start.
8 sprints, 7 seconds each.
1 minute between each sprint.
After the last sprint, roll back home spinning easily to recover.
Budget a minimum of 20 minutes for the spin/ride back home.
Put your feet up, relax, you’re done for the day.
Not racing this weekend?
Cool.
We haven’t done any running this week, so how about some…
Stairing –
– First, figure out where you can do the workout.
We’re going to be running stairs today, so you need some stairs, or a small hill, or a grassy knoll – something you can run up. Stairs are best, but whatever you can come up with will work.
You don’t need NFL stadium stairs or anything crazy like that for this workout. Look for something that’s long enough to give you 10 seconds of running at a full sprint; That’ll be plenty long enough. We’re doing speed work, here. Short, sharp efforts.
On with the workout.
– get on your bike and warm up for 15 minutes or so.
(we’re going to warm up for any running efforts we do, all season, with some time on the bike. )
– Mosey on over to your stairs/knoll/whatever, and get set. Stretch, have a sip of water, turn up the volume on your Ipod.
– Jog up the stairs. Walk down.
Get a sense for the spacing and “feel” of the stairs. You’re going to be flying up these things in a full-on lactic acid bath shortly, so you want to get comfortable with the terrain.
– Repeat x5
– Sprint! up stairs, fast, using whatever stride is most comfortable. Walk down.
– Repeat x5
Rest for 1 minute, walking slowly up and down stairs.
– Sprint up stairs, this time using quick, tiny strides, 1 stairstep at a time. Walk down.
– Repeat x5
Rest again, same as before.
– Sprint up stairs, this time using long strides, several stair steps at a time. Walk down.
– Repeat x 5
Rest again.
– Sprint up stairs, combining the previous two exercises – 1st time up, long strides; next time up, short strides, etc. Walk down.
Rest again, 2-5 minutes.
– Run up stairs sideways. Yup, you read that right. Sideways. Try it, it’ll make sense. More of an agility drill than anything else, but it’ll be good for you.
– Repeat 2-5 times.
Rest again, 2-5 minutes
– Repeat entire damn thing until you just can’t do it anymore, or you are going so slowly it’s ridiculous.
Get back on bike, spin out your legs, go home.
Notes –
If you can, go really damn hard. If you do this right, it’s a brutal workout.
Don’t go that hard if you haven’t got the legs for that yet. Keep it under control. You want to build up to the point where you are going up the stairs in a dead sprint, and are completely gassed at the end of each set. That’s going to take a few sessions to build up to, though. Don’t kill yourself the first time out.
If anything starts to hurt, or feel strained, pulled, or otherwise bad – as in “something just ain’t right, bad” – stop. Just stop. Do Not Injure Yourself Running G-damn stairs in the pre-season, OK?
Up here in Seattle, the first “real” race of the season is this Sunday.
Yikes.
It’s going to be a fast one, and that being the case getting some speed work in this week ain’t a half bad idea.
That being the case, today we’re…
Going Downhill Fast –
So, ok… not like that. Like this…
Start by warming up well, a bit longer than usual – 30 minutes or so.
Find a gradual downhill that lets out on a flat section of road or trail. The ideal setup for this workout is a downhill that’s about a block long that turns into a flat section of road another block or so in length.
Extra bonus points if you can loop back to the start without having to turn around – that would be perfect.
You’re going to do 3-5 sets of 5 sprints, full gas. Here’s how the sprints go:
Roll down the gradual descent in a comfortable gear. You want to hit the bottom of the hill going fast, but not yet in a sprint.
As soon as you hit the flat section at the bottom of the hill, get out of the saddle and give it full gas.
Sit back down as you get up to full speed, and try to go even faster.
Go until you are spun out.
Spun out means that your legs can’t go any faster, your form goes completely to hell, or you start bobbing up and down on the saddle a lot.
Ideally, a little bit of all of those things.
Remember, we’re working on leg speed today, so really focus on turning your legs over. The goal isn’t to make the bike go fast, the goal is to make your legs go fast.
There’s a difference, eh? Try to keep it in mind, ok?
That’s one rep. You’re doing sets of 5.
Each sprint should take just a few seconds. Recover for 30 seconds to a minute between them, and 5 minutes between sets.
Stop when you hit 5 sets or just aren’t getting the same leg speed you were on the first couple of reps.
When you’re done, spin out your legs and go home.
Tips –
– You should start the sprint in a pretty big gear, and spin it out. How big? It depends on how fast you’re going and how strong you are. You’re working on speed here, so don’t try to lug a giant gear, but the gear needs to be big enough that you accelerate when you hit it at the end of the downhill.
– Important, let me reiterate: stand up out of the saddle when you start to sprint, and gradually sit down as you begin to spin up into your sprint.
– Don’t forget to breathe. Seriously. Too many people hold their breath when they sprint. Don’t be one of them.
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…
We’ve got one more week of these, and then – as of now – it’s looking like that’s the end of the road for CX practice this season. We appear to have lost the use of the JBM Velodrome at Marymoor. Want to see the decades-long tradition of Wednesday night CX practice continue? Help us find a new venue! No joke, if we don’t come up with something, it all ends this season.
Enough said. On with the workout!
With the race season kicking off, let’s talk about…
Starting Fast!
In the big races, the time you lose fighting your way through traffic can be the difference between winning and not even seeing the person who wins.
In small local races, you might be able to fight your way back into a race if you have a bad start, but it’s going to be just that: a fight.
In cyclocross starts are important. You’ve simply got to have them wired.
So, how do you go about doing that?
Practice.
Every time I do my openers the day before a race, I finish the workout with a set of start efforts. Race-like, from a dead stop, one foot on the ground, and I don’t end the ride until I get five in a row absolutely perfect, no bobbles.
There were times back in the day when that wound up being a long, frustrating way to end a workout.
Totally worth it though.
Make these starts part of your routine, and not only do you get better at the skill, you gain confidence in it.
Being confident in a skill is every bit as important as having the skill. You can’t afford to worry about being able to clip in at the start of the race, there are simply too many other things you need to be thinking about.
How do we gain that confidence on race day? By getting this stuff nailed down now.
Let’s begin with the basics…
First of all, start with your pedals at 3(ish) & 9(ish) o’clock, not 12 and six.
This might take some extra work to get down if you’re used to starting with your pedals at closer to 6 & 12, but it really is better and faster.
Every gate start event does it this way, and they ain’t doing it that way because they’re dumb, ok?
See what I mean?
Butt on the saddle or off it?
It doesn’t really matter. (I’ve changed my mind on this recently. I think. We’ll talk more about this in a couple of weeks, stay tuned…)
Both ways work, and you need to give them both a shot to figure out which is best for you.
I’m a butt-on-saddle guy myself, but it took a bunch of practice for me to get comfortable doing it this way. To be honest, I’m not at all sure it was worth it, or even the best choice for me, personally.
With my stubby little legs, I’m literally only making contact with about a square centimeter of the very tip of the grounded foot at the start of a race.
Teetering on a precarious tippy-toe probably isn’t the best idea in the chaos of a starting grid, but it’s worked pretty darn well for me over the years, so I’m committed.
Which is kind of a lesson in itself.
If something is working for you, don’t change it just for the sake of change.
If you’re not so committed, though? Haven’t gotten things so wired in that you’re only going to f**k things up by changing?
Now’s the time.
Figure out what works for you, and put some time into it to be sure, because once you decide, and put the practice reps in, you ain’t likely walking that choice back.
Starting with hands in the drops vs. hands on the hoods? Ditto all the above.
You’ve just got to try it both ways and see what works.
There aren’t many top crossers who start in the drops anymore, but not so long ago this was a pretty common choice for the fastest guys off the line.
Try it, it might wind up working for you.
The start of a Cross race, despite everything you may have heard, isn’t all about the first 10 meters of the race.
Let me repeat that: The start of a Cross race, despite everything you may have heard, isn’t all about the first 10 meters of the race.
Here’s how the start of a Cross goes…
The gun sounds.
Everyone clips in and immediately starts to sprint up to speed, out of the saddle.
Someone (or lots of someones…) blows their start. They get passed, quickly.
People are shifting up gears, starting to sit down in the saddle.
Someone who started way in the back blows by almost everybody on the outside.
There’s a very short pause in the acceleration, almost as if everyone takes a breath…
…Bang! There’s a second acceleration, a sprint just before or as the group leaves the starting straight.
If you want to be good at your starts, you need to master this second acceleration. You must to be able to go even harder than your first, out of the gate effort mere seconds later.
How do you develop this ability?
You can probably guess.
Practice.
So, with all this talk of practice, on with today’s workout…
Getting Started –
1 – warm up for 10 minutes.
2 – Stretch out after you’re warm.
Pay special attention to all the muscles used in those movements you make hopping on and off the bike that are different from what you usually do.
3 – Dismount/remount skills for 5-10-15 minutes (depends how rusty you are. Do more of these, less of everything else if you need to.)
– Start at literally a walking pace, and slowly increase speed until you can mount and dismount the bike smoothly and perfectly at full speed. Do not jump on and off the bike, you are looking to smoothly slide yourself on and off.
Do just the most basic dismount/remount as per above until you have it wired, smooth at all speeds. When you are feeling confident, add some barriers to the session…
– Again, start at a super, super slow speed.
– Approach the barrier, dismount smooth as silk.
– Step over the barrier, paying attention to how you lift the bike, and how you place your feet.
– Remount. Again, think smoooooth….
– Start with a single barrier, move to a double, and keep going slow until you have things wired. Then, speed things up until you aren’t smooth, back it down 1 notch, and make it smooth.
(If you don’t have barriers, anything will do. Use a log, put a stick on the ground – whatever.)
4 – Starts.
Just like the beginning of a race. One foot on the ground, dead standstill, get-up-and-go.
Begin with a few medium effort starts, working on all the things we talked about above.
Remember…
– Start with your pedals at 3&9 o’clock, not 12 and six.
– Alternate butt-on-saddle and off
– Alternate hands in drops with hands on hoods.
When you start to get the feel for things, hit it hard a couple of times, then back off.
2 sets of all the variations above at a medium to slow pace.
Feeling solid, skills-wise?
Nice.
Get yourself ready to go hard.
– Bang! Six full-gas starts.
– short effort, just go long enough that you are up to full speed, then back down, turn around, go again.
Spin easy for a couple of minutes, then…
– Bang! ~pause~ Bang!
– Six full-gas starts, but each start effort will look like this…
– Full effort start from a dead-stop, foot on ground.
– As soon as you get up to full speed, sit back in saddle, take one deep breath, go again, HARD!
– Ouch.
5 – Recover for a few minutes, then Finish the night with two interval efforts on relatively easy terrain.
– “Easy” as in a loop on grass with some tight-ish turns on it, or some pretty buffed double-track.
– Go hard, and work on accelerations out of the turns.
– Every time you slow down entering a turn, get on the gas on the way out of it, ass out of the saddle, working hard.
– 6 minutes full gas, rest for 2 minutes, then go again for 5.
– Start each effort with, well… with a start. Like you were working on a couple of minutes ago…
Well, yeesh… busy morning! Sorry this is going up late, but the stuff that pays the bills comes first!
Speaking of which… I’ll be starting up the paypal funding thing on here again soon. If you find this blog useful, please think about pitching in a few shekels to help keep the lights on. I’m not trying to make money here, but I can’t do this if I lose money.
So, link will appear in a couple/few days, stay tuned.
Today, though? How about a workout, or workouts?
If you raced yesterday, or trained hard through the long weekend, today you’re going for a nice, relaxing…
Recovery Spin –
– Get on your bike. Roll out into the street – or into your living room if you’re on the turbo watching the vid – and just spin around for an hour. Or more. Or less. Whatever it takes.
– 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.
– Just get out on the road and spin easily and aimlessly. At a certain point, your legs will start to loosen up.
– When that happens, turn around and go home.
– If you’re doing these on the trainer, same deal. Just spin. No hard efforts, just make the legs go around in circles in a small gear.
– Follow up with as much relaxation as you can. Eat, stretch, and put your legs up. Get a massage if possible.
Take it easy yesterday? Ready to hit it hard today?
Excellent.
Try these on for size…
VO(to the)max 12/50
Warm up
Warm Up: 20 min @ 40 % of FTP throw a couple of efforts at or > ftp in during warm up to make sure you’re ready
Up here in Seattle, the first race of the year is upon us, as folks endeavor to destroy their Labor Day weekend by racing on a cross bike way too early, when it’s way too hot, on a course that’s way too bumpy and dusty to be all that much fun.
Yay.
Seriously though, I’ve given up fighting the (good) fight. Cyclocross now starts on Labor Day. Check.
So, that being the case? Monday is race day. That means today (Sunday, for those of you reading this when it goes up, on Saturday) we do…
Can Openers –
Here’s the drill:
– Warm up for 1/2 hour or so, spinning easy with a couple of short bursts thrown in.
– Follow with several short attacking efforts, IE 30 seconds at 80% of your max, or pretty damn hard. 2 – 3 of ’em.
– Back off and spin for 5 minutes.
– Follow with 10-15 minute effort at right about your 2×20 output level, 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 hard 10 second efforts, ideally on CX type variable terrain, level or slightly uphill.
– Finish with 5-6 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! Pay particular attention to these if tomorrow is the first race of the year for you, and/or if you haven’t gotten much start practice in so far this season.
Go as long as you can, as hard as you can. The shorter you go, the harder you go.
Goal here is to be pretty much spent when you’re done.
If you can string two days of this sort of work together on a weekend, that’s great stuff… but end of second day, you should feel like you kinda maybe don’t want to wake up and do it again tomorrow.
“Epic” is an overused word, but if you can make these “epic” days? Nailed it.
To be absolutely clear, if you do these rides correctly, they ruin your weekend. When you’re done, you can’t do much more than lie on the couch and eat. Maybe you can make it to the shower.
Maybe.
Never felt that way after a training ride?
Now’s your chance…
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…
Wait, what? It’s Friday already? How the hell did that happen?
Not only is it Friday, but it’s Labor Day Weekend?
Crap.
That means CX season isn’t just on the way, up here in the Seattle area, it means it has arrived. The annual Labor Day Race is on Monday, and the first of the big local series races kicks things off bigly next weekend.
So, damn.
Better be all trained up and ready to go, right?
Well… maybe not.
Don’t forget folks, it’s a long damn season. Not ready to fly quite yet?
Breathe.
Don’t panic.
Long. Damn. Season.
If you aren’t going to be fast at the beginning of the season, take comfort from knowing that the majority of the people who will be won’t still be flying a in a few weeks – or couple of months( 🙂 ) when you are!
So, with that in mind… what are we going to do today?
Well, as always on Friday, it depends on your weekend plans.
If you aren’t racing at all this weekend, odds are it’s pretty damn close to the last weekend that won’t be the case. So you should go long this weekend. Get some miles in over the last weekend, money in the bank for the (long!) season ahead.
That means you should take it easy today. Maybe even take the day off the bike. Do some stretching, some cross-training, but keep things light. Maybe a…
Recovery Spin –
– Get on your bike. Roll out into the street – or into your living room if you’re on the turbo watching the vid – and just spin around for an hour. Or more. Or less. Whatever it takes.
– 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.
– Just get out on the road and spin easily and aimlessly. At a certain point, your legs will start to loosen up.
– When that happens, turn around and go home.
– If you’re doing these on the trainer, same deal. Just spin. No hard efforts, just make the legs go around in circles in a small gear.
– Follow up with as much relaxation as you can. Eat, stretch, and put your legs up. Get a massage if possible.
Racing on Monday?
Well, more decisions to be made. Kinda.
If you care about the race on Monday, tomorrow is going to be an easy day for you. If you don’t care about the race on Monday, you’re going to train through it, and ride hard all weekend. What does that mean for today?
A wee bit of work either way. Perhaps some…
Sventervals –
Sometimes a picture (or a video) is worth a thousand words.
Just like in the video.
Really darn short – 10 seconds max – full gas hill sprints, ideally on pretty technical terrain.
5 reps per set, and notice how hard Sven is breathing after these?
That’s the idea.
Hit it hard. Really hard. These are super short, and super intense.
Ideally, you’re doing these on a short climb that you can barely get up, one that is at the bleeding edge of your technical ability and strength.
You can surmount the obstacle, but it forces you to give it everything you’ve got to make it happen.
But you can make it happen, despite the pain. For a couple of reps, at least.
Can’t get up the hill anymore?
Take a short rest, go again.
When you can’t get up the hill at all even when you take a short break to recover?
I hate to say it, but it looks like we have lost the use of the Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome for the in-season Wednesday night practice series.
This series has been in continuous operation for more than 25 years, but it’s dead in the water unless we are able to come up with a new venue, and do so fairly quickly.
If you happen to know of a place that might be suitable – and folks, it’s got to have lights – let me know. Crowd sourcing is our only hope here, so please spread the word.
Onwards with the workout.
Short Hill Repeats…
You want to do these on a climb that has you right on the edge of being over-geared.
There are a couple of ways to do this…
– big-ring-able, but just at the edge of being a small ring climb.
– small ring, but with steep or variable terrain or both.
Each effort should take 5 second or so, which tells you how long the climb needs to be.
Warm up for approx. 1/2 hour, then roll on up to the base of the climb you have selected.
Begin your intervals with an out of the saddle, full race-pace ATTACK into the climb.
You’re looking to blast up the climb, full gas the whole way.
It’s perfectly OK to sit down 1/2 -3/4 of way through the effort – especially if you need to do so to maintain traction – but don’t let the intensity drop.
Try to maintain your intensity for the duration of interval.
You’re going to recover for 30 seconds between each rep, and then 2-5 minutes between sets.
5 reps. per set.
Minimum of 5 sets.
If you can do more than that, great… but try to maintain the level of output you had on your first set.
If you have a power meter, you’re done when the wattage you can maintain throughout the set drops off the edge of the table; that’ll be pretty obvious when it happens.
In more depressing news, I hate to say it, but it looks like we have lost the use of the Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome for the in-season Wednesday night practice series.
This series has been in continuous operation for more than 25 years, but it’s dead in the water unless we are able to come up with a new venue, and do so fairly quickly.
If you happen to know of a place that might be suitable – and folks, it’s got to have lights – let me know. Crowd sourcing is our only hope here, so please spread the word.
Onwards with the workout.
I have to admit, I really dig the start of the practice sessions every year. It always…
I’ll be out coaching/leading the skills clinic, hope to see you there!
If you can’t make it out tonight skills work is still on the agenda for you.
Skills work that goes a little bit like this…
1 – warm up for 10 minutes.
2 – Stretch out after you’re warm.
Pay special attention to all the muscles used in those movements you make hopping on and off the bike that are different from what you usually do (We’ve talked about stretching on here in the past, check out the search function if you want/need some more info.)
3 – Dismount/remount skills for 5-10-15 minutes
– Start at literally a walking pace, and slowly increase speed until you can mount and dismount the bike smoothly and perfectly at full speed. Do not jump on and off the bike, you are looking to smoothly slide yourself on and off.
Do just the most basic dismount/remount as per above until you have it down cold, smooth as silk.
When you’re perfect (hah!) throw some barriers into the mix.
4 – Figure eight drill.
Set up 2 cones or 2 rocks or two… somethings. Doesn’t much matter what it is.
Ride in a figure eight pattern around the cones…
– first pedaling the entire time.
No coasting.
Pedal all the way around the figure 8, including the turns.
Practice using the brakes while still pedaling. This is one of those secret techniques that – once you figure it out – makes a huge difference. When you stop pedaling you lose traction, so don’t stop pedaling!
Experiment with this, it’s a game-changer.
Mind blown?
Cool.
– Same drill, not pedaling through the turns.
– Same drill, alternate styles.
5 – Now move the figure 8 to the side of a slight hill.
One cone up hill, one down, about 5-8 meters apart and staggered, IE: not directly below each other on the slope.
– Same drill(s) as before. Go.
Good?
Next, pilot around those corners – uphill and downhill – with the inside foot out.
Having trouble making the turn at the top of the figure 8? Put your foot down and push off with it to make the turn.
Don’t be afraid to use the foot that’s unclipped to push off or “paddle” around a turn, or to keep yourself driving forward on an off-camber section.
This can be another game changer, so work on it, eh?
– Alternate both of these styles around the figure-eight.
Experiment.
Try different speeds, different lines, different angles.
See when/how/why each style works, and figure out how they can work for you.
6 – Recover for a few minutes, then Finish the night with two interval efforts on relatively easy terrain, but make sure to include the figure – 8 in it.
– “Easy” as in a loop on grass with some tight-ish turns on it, or some pretty buffed double-track.
– Go hard, and work on accelerations, and your exits from turns & technical features.
Every time you slow down entering a turn, get on the gas on the way out of it, ass out of the saddle, working hard.
– 6-8 minutes full gas, rest for 2 minutes, then go again.
Spin down for a few minutes, then head home and finish up your day.
Have fun!
M
What’s that you say? You’d kinda’ like to have a cycling coach of your very own? Check out…
You betcha. I do the personal coaching/trainer thing. Clients have included multiple National and even World Champions, and 2/3 of My Cyclocross athletes made the podium at Nationals in 2009, with one taking home the Stars and Stripes. Interested? Drop me a line at: crosssports@gmail.com
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