The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Thursday, 10.20.16. “Fast Thoughts”

•October 20, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

It’s Thursday, and as promised, speed week continues.

Today we’re taking on some…

Downhill Sprints  – 

 

downhill

 

 

sStart 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.

Ouch.

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.

If you did the workout on Tuesday, you’ll notice that this sprint was, essentially, part of the workout on Tuesday.

Today we’re just isolating that part of the drill, and really focusing on going fast.

So, think fast thoughts.

 

Wait, whaaat?

I dunno man, couldn’t resist the title.

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

 

 

 

 

 

Hi there…

Thanks for following my blog!

This thing started off as a lark, and over the years that I’ve been doing it, has become a little bit of a monster.

It takes a fair bit of time – and a wee bit of money – to keep this thing rolling, and it’s the time of the season where I’ve got to pay the bills to keep this thing going.

I’m not trying to get rich off this thing… or really even make any money from it at all.

It’d just make my life a fair bit easier if I didn’t lose money doing this!

So, hey… if you feel like you’ve gotten anything of value out of this blog, please do me a favor – and yes, it’s a favor, and I will be truly thankful for it – and send a buck or two (or five, or whatever…) my way.

How do you do that?

Simply click on the graphic below, and PayPal will be glad to make it happen.

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Thanks for the consideration!

Posted in Cyclocross, Intervals, speed work, The Workout Of The Day

The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Wednesday, 10.19.16. “Begging Starts”

•October 19, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

It’s Wednesday, time for some..

Skills!

What’s on the agenda today?

Well, if you had a problem with a particular technical skill at your last race, focus on that today.

Try to figure out what you were screwing up, fix it if you can.

If nothing stands out, if you felt pretty solid all around last race?

Work on your starts today.

Yesterday we did some speed work – and we’re going to do some more tomorrow – so I guess there’s something akin to a theme developing. It’s speed week!

So, speed week skills day? A wee bit of acceleration, a wee bit of tech… perfect.

So, first… check out this post on the technical aspects of cyclocross starts.

Then…

Let’s Get 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 minutes , just ’cause.

– 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.

 Need a refresher on the basics? Click here.

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. When you start with your butt on the saddle, your ass stays on the saddle until you are actually clipped in! This definitely takes some discipline and      practice to get the hang of, but I’m more and more convinced it’s the way to go for starts.

– Alternate hands in drops with hands on hoods, if you ever start with your hands in the drops. If you don’t, don’t bother.

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, more sets if you’re doing less variation.

Honestly, there’s a lot to be said for no variation. If you’ve got a style of starting that you’re good at, and confident in, practice only that, and do only that. The idea with trying different variations is to figure out what actually works for you. Once you’ve got it figured out, that’s what you do.

There are definitely different ways to skin this cat, as we can see here…

Front row is pretty evenly split between starting ass on the saddle, and starting ass in the air.

Figure out which one works for you, and then whatever method you’ve chosen is the method you use. Make sense?

Good.

Get  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!

– Again, 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 short 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.

– 5 minutes full gas, rest for 2 minutes, then go again for another 5.

– Start each effort with, well… with a start. Like you were working on a couple of minutes ago…

Warm down, go home, relax.

Enjoy!

M

 

 

 

Hi there…

Thanks for following my blog!

This thing started off as a lark, and over the years that I’ve been doing it, has become a little bit of a monster.

It takes a fair bit of time – and a wee bit of money – to keep this thing rolling, and it’s the time of the season where I’ve got to pay the bills to keep this thing going.

I’m not trying to get rich off this thing… or really even make any money from it at all.

It’d just make my life a fair bit easier if I didn’t lose money doing this!

So, hey… if you feel like you’ve gotten anything of value out of this blog, please do me a favor – and yes, it’s a favor, and I will be truly thankful for it – and send a buck or two (or five, or whatever…) my way.

How do you do that?

Simply click on the graphic below, and PayPal will be glad to make it happen.

btn_donateCC_LG

Thanks for the consideration!

 

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

The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Tuesday, 10.18.16. “Bunny the F Out of it”

•October 18, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

Before we get started, feel free to insert my weekly appeal to rest up today if you need it.

For a large percentage of people, more than one recovery day is needed after a weekend of tough racing, especially when they’ve doubled up and raced Saturday and Sunday. Especially especially when the weather gets wet and muddy, and you’re battling the cold and the muck as well as the race.

Try to honestly assess just how tired you are today. Really, really tired? Maybe take the day off.

Feeling good, though?

Right on.

Today we’re doing…

Attack/respond intervals

These are done on a short, sharp climb, barely big-ringable.

You want a climb that you can hit hard out of the saddle for up to 30 seconds,  then ride hard down the back of or turn around and head back down at speed. The key is having a run-out at the bottom of the hill that will allow you to sprint without fearing for your life.

Warm up well, 30 minutes or so, with a couple of sharp efforts to open your legs.

Roll into the base of the hill at a pretty decent clip, but not so fast that you can’t increase your pace as you hit the hill.

As soon as you hit the hill, sprint. Hard.

Sprint up the hill, out of the saddle to start, sitting down as you get towards the top or as comfort dictates. This is more a style thing than anything else. It’s OK to stay out of saddle if that works better for you.

Minimum 1o seconds, maximum 30 seconds for this effort.

As soon as you hit the top, turn around and head back down, riding hard – as if you were reacting to an attack or trying to catch back on the race-winning move.

Full-gas fast sprint at bottom of hill until spun out. Really go for it, like you’re sprinting for a race win.

Remember when I said the run-out at the bottom of the hill was important? Yeaah…

Recover by spinning easily for 1 minute, go again.

5-10 sets of 5-10. Yeah, that’s a really broad range.

You’ll see why when you try these. Some folks can barely get through 5, some people are barely getting going at 5.

Honestly, if you aren’t gassed when you’ve done 5, you probably need to go harder… but there are exceptions. Some people can just Energizer Bunny the crap out of this type of thing…

energizer_bunny

Maybe you!

We’ll find out.

Recover on spin home, eat, collapse in a heap on couch.

Enjoy!

M

 

 

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

se

 

Posted in Cyclocross, Intervals, The Workout Of The Day

The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Monday, 10.17.16. “Inevitably…”

•October 17, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

It’s Monday, and I bet you know what I’m going to tell you to do today.

Yes, it’s a recovery ride.

Here’s the thing, though; I know that lots of you are going to blow the ride off and just do nothing today.

If I can get you to do one thing this season, let it be this: get in the recovery ride the day after racing.

Seriously. It will help you recover better. It just will. And recovery is important. It just is.

Okay?

Said my piece. Now on with the inevitable…

 

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.

Cheers!

M

 

Hey, you didn’t think I was going to leave you without a some of this weekend’s race action to watch, did you?

Of course not…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

se

 

 

Posted in Cyclocross, recovery, The Workout Of The Day

Go Race!

•October 16, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Go Race!

Have fun 🙂

 

M

Posted in Cyclocross

The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Saturday, 10.15.16. “R.S.W.O. Belated”

•October 15, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

Race Day!

You’ll need to warm up for your race, so how about an easy to remember, effective warmup routine that’s designed for the trainer? Bonus, this also works really well as a day-before openers session if you’re stuck inside due to bad weather (I’m talking to you, Seattle!)

How about…

The R.S.W.O. – 

– Get on trainer. Spin for about 5 minutes.

– 2-3 minutes at your 20 minute output level

– 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.

Repeat The entire sequence (Usually minus the 2nd “20 minute level” effort.)

Bam!

Enjoy!

M

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

The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Friday, 10.14.16. “Evidence is good!”

•October 14, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

Well, Stormpocalypse hasn’t quite hit us yet, so I still have internet. And power. For now.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

It’s Friday, so the question is, are you racing tomorrow?

If you are, time for…

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.

Kick some butt tomorrow. Yeah, that’s compulsory.

Not racing tomorrow, but racing on Sunday?

Go for an easy spin today, or perhaps even take the day off.

Unless that doesn’t work for you.

It doesn’t for everybody. Some people definitely need to ride pretty hard two days before a race to have legs that are open enough to ride well on race day.

Do you know if you’re one of them?

Only one way to find out. Take a day off two days before your race, see how it goes.

Then ride hard two days before your race, see how it goes.

Repeat enough times to establish if there is a pattern to your response.

If you happen to be working with a coach, this is the kind of thing they might/should be looking for in your training/racing logs. Yeah, no “might” there, really.

Doesn’t mean they are, though.

Something to think about, and maybe ask about.

One size definitely does not fit all when it comes to things like Openers, and how individuals respond to them.

So, try different stuff out. Don’t just do one thing all the time and assume it’s the best thing for you. Try different approaches until you have actual evidence that something works for you.

Evidence is good.

Later!

M

 

Looking for a coach? Thinking about looking for a coach? Thinking about  thinking about looking for a coach?

Check out…

se

 

 

 

Posted in Cyclocross, openers, The Workout Of The Day

The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Thursday, 10.13.16. “Moderate Roast”

•October 13, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

Well, it’s raining up here in Seattle.

What’s the big deal, you ask? Well, we’re staring down the barrel of what may turn out to be one of the biggest storms in the recorded history of the area, both in terms of rainfall and wind speed.

Yikes!

I live in a house in the middle of the woods, surrounded by trees. Lots of trees.

It’s pretty bucolic, but the downside is that if we get hit even close to as hard as they’re predicting, the odds of our power and/or internet connection not going out are pretty small.

So, if you don’t see any posts up on here for a couple of days, you’ll know what happened!

Today, though? Today I’ve got power and internet. On with the workout!

It’s Thursday, and as per usual what you do today depends on your weekend plans.

If you’re racing on Saturday, you should take it pretty easy, or maybe even take the day off.

If you’re not?

Well, if you’re not… once again, it depends.

We’re reaching the point in the season where some folks are starting to run the tank dry on the endurance they built up during the road/mtb season.

If you’re finding yourself running out of gas towards the end of races, that might describe you.

It might also just mean that you need some rest. Hard to say without looking at your training records (you’re keeping training records, right?)

If you’ve got the time, think about trying to do a long ride today, or one of the next couple of Thursdays. Four hours would be great. Nothing super hard, just a…

Four(ish) Hour Moderate Ride –

Get on your bike.

Go ride for about four 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.

One, maybe two notches above a recovery ride.

Make sense?

Yeah, yeah… I know. It’s a week day! How the heck do you expect me to do this!?

Think about taking a day off in the next couple of weeks to fit this in to your schedule.

It’ll be worth it.

Can’t cram this in today?

Okey doke, how about…

The Slow Roast – 

No real warm up effort required. You pretty much hop on the bike and go. This can also be done on the trainer. Ouch.

So, hop on the bike.

Ramp up to a level of output that’s approximately 2/3 of your FTP.

Hold this level for the duration of the ride.

Yup. You’re looking to average that power level for the whole damn thing, and as much as possible, you want to keep the output pretty darn consistent.

Just keep rolling along piling on the miles at a steady output level.

If you can, you do the whole damn ride one damn gear bigger than you feel comfortable.

Ouch.

When you start out, it’s probably going to feel like you’re pushing too easy on the hills, and too hard on the flats. Don’t let this get you twisted. You’re doing it right, and it’ll all even out eventually.

How long are you going to ride?

Well, as long as you have.

Got an hour?

Great.

Two?

Great.

By the end, it’s just going to feel like your legs are made of lead. Or tapioca. One or the other, depending.

When you’re finished, go home, eat, relax, recover.

Have fun!

M

 

Posted in Cyclocross, The Workout Of The Day

The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Wednesday, 10.12.16. “Puny mortal…”

•October 12, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

Well, it’s Wednesday. That means it’s…

Skills Day!

We’ve been devoting our Wednesdays to skills work now for a while, and I know that some of you are frustrated with your rate of progress.

You aren’t alone.

Keep at it.

Try not to get discouraged, and try not to get ahead of yourself.

What  do I mean by that?

When you’re practicing and refining your skills, don’t let yourself get too fixated on going fast.

Get the skills down smooth and solid first, then work on the fast once you have them wired.

Trying to do things like dismounts & remounts fast before you do them well is counterproductive. The same is true of cornering technique, starts… you name it.

Nail down the skill, then incrementally bring up the speed.

You need to learn to crawl before you can walk, and if you practice sloppy skills at speeds that are too high you reinforce bad habits that take forever to unlearn. Eventually, bad habits always come back to bite you in the ass…

After you’re done racing this coming weekend – or whenever your next race is –  spend some time watching other people race, especially folks that are faster than you.

Stake out a sector of the course that you found problematic or particularly challenging from a technical perspective and watch how other folks handle it.

I guarantee that you will see plenty of fast folks making fundamental errors in some of their technical skills.

Even the really fast rider.

Sometimes especially the really fast riders.

Which brings up an important point; just because the fast racers do something a certain way, that doesn’t mean you should.

When you’re gifted, you can get away with making all kinds of mistakes.

Most of the time.

Most of the time.

Sooner or later, even the lucky genetic freaks will pay the price for crappy technique, and you’ll see it happening if you watch closely.

A second lost here, a little slip there, a dropped chain, a dab…. whoops, how the heck did they hit – or not hit – the deck there?

Eventually it all catches up with you, no matter who you are.

The difference is, it catches up with you faster when you’ve got standard human level talent.

Puny Mortal…

thanos

If you’re a normal person, and have to work hard simply to not suck, you can’t get away with all the sloppy nonsense that elite riders so often do.

Soooo…

Keep things as simple as you can, and work on getting faster by getting better.

Smoother.

Smarter, even.

When you’re out there on the course watching the fast racers go at it, try to pick out the ones that make their gains on the corners, in the technical sections, and on the barriers. These might not be the one’s winning the races, but they’re the ones you should be looking to learn from. Odds are they’re making more with less than the mutants at the front, who can break all the rules, do lots of little things wrong, and still come up smelling like podium champagne.

 

Onwards…

Here’s how tonight is going to go…

– Warm up on the bike.

As long as it takes to get loose, you should have a light sweat on when you…

– Stretch.

Active stretching, focus on all the muscles you use getting on & off the bike, but don’t when you’re riding. Go as long as it takes to work everything and get loose.

– Mount & Remount skills. 10-15 minutes.

Accelerate coming out of barrier sections. Coast in to them.

 Get to the point where you can come out of a barrier section faster than you went into it.

Come into a dismount section under control, and traveling at a speed that you can comfortably dismount at.

Brake early so that you can come into the barriers coasting, not braking.

Run over the barrier smoothly, in control.

The barriers aren’t 6 feet tall. Run over them with just enough clearance to keep from falling down. You don’t need to jump straight up in the air to go over a CX barrier, ok?

Don’t be afraid to take a few steps to get back up to speed before you get back on your bike.

Remember, it’s not how fast you get on your bike, it’s how fast you get going on your bike.

So many people are so overly concerned with getting back on the bike quickly that they totally forget about being fast.

Yes, you want to be able to dismount & remount quickly, and run over the planks like a gazelle.

But just about everyone seems to think that this means getting back on the bike as quickly as they can after a dismount section.

The second the bike clears the barriers, it’s back on the ground, and you see folks trying to remount.

Don’t do this, ok?

Work on accelerating through the barriers, and running into your remount.

Run up to speed before you get back on your bike.

Make sense?

Remember, smooth = fast.  Don’t over cook these. Hitting the ground is always slow.

– Technical skills on the bike. 10-15 minutes

Tight turns and off-cambers. As always, work on your entrances and exits from all the technical sections. Pedal, pedal, pedal. Try to pedal througheverything. Keep the gas on, power going through the rear wheel, and you maintain traction.

Work on it. Lots more on the bike handling topic in earlier posts, enter “Wednesday” in the search box, and you will likely get bored out of your skull with my verbosity…

– Starts. Go as long as it takes to get 5 perfect, full gas sprints.

Make it feel like a race start. Get off the mark fast, sit down, shift, go again. Remember, it’s the second effort that gets you the early gap most of the time…

– Race simulation. 3 ten minute efforts, 2 minutes recovery between them.

No big complications here. Go really f-ing fast. Try and make these efforts faster and harder than you go in the races. You want to get to the point where your efforts in practice and training are as  hard or harder than anything you see in a race.

Yeah, I know… good luck with that, right?

– Warm down.

Spin out your legs. Take enough time doing this that you feel them unspool and loosen up.

Go home, eat, relax.

G’night,

M

 

– Hey! I’ve had some people ask if I do private skills training sessions, and the answer is yes. In fact, I’m doing one tonight for a couple of people. If you’re interested in scheduling something like this, just drop me a line – mhill@source-e.net

 

 

 

 

 

What’s that you say? You’d kinda’ like to have a cycling coach of your very own? Check out…

se

Posted in Blather, Cyclocross, skills, The Workout Of The Day

The Cyclocross Workout Of the Day for Tuesday, 10.11.16. “Seriously mixed bag”

•October 11, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks,

I got an email this morning from one of my coaching colleagues, who asked…

Has anyone actually tried to do the workouts as you post them? Oh gawd… am I considering following that thing for a month?  Sounds hard.

My response to him was to quote the estimable Jonny Sundt, who once said of the CXWOTD: “It will make you really strong, or it will kill you. Maybe both.”

Let’s be brutally frank here, ok?

When I post up a workout that says something like “take today off!” or “enjoy a nice, relaxing, recovery spin!” ya’all don’t read ’em. I definitely try to make this whole CXWOTD thing something that is actually doable, and I insert plenty of caveats like “maybe think about resting today instead of this!” but, in general, I’m trying to post up workouts for people who want to, well… work out.

That may or may not be the thing that’s best for you, personally, on any particular day in time.

Which brings us to today’s workout.

I’m going to post up some intervals today, and they’re gong to be pretty hard. They’re actually what I, myself, am going to do today. But they aren’t what most of my actual coaching clients are doing.

Most of my coaching clients are taking the day off today.

This was a hard weekend of racing for many of the people I work with, and several of them raced both days this weekend.

For most, a weekend like that takes a couple of days to really recover from. Some solid rest is needed before one is capable of really putting the throttle down for more hard work.

There are exceptions, of course.

Some athletes are just so damn fit that they can recover well enough on Monday to kill it again on Tuesday.

Some even need some training blocks where they push the system super hard like this in order to make real gains in fitness.

Some can do this kind of load for a week, two weeks, three weeks… then they find themselves completely toasted, are never able to recover, and are on the back foot for the remainder of the season.

Personally, I’ve been fighting back problems, and although I raced this past weekend, I wasn’t ever able to actually go hard enough to generate the level of fatigue that I normally associate with racing. Which kinda sucks, but hey! Means I can go hard again today, yay!

 

When I do this “going hard” thing, what will I be doing?

Glad you asked! I’ll be doing the…

The Mixed Bag (with Happy Ending…)

340x_mixedbag72310_01

– Warm up.

– Go as hard as you can for 10 minutes.

– Recover for 2 minutes.

– Go again for 15 minutes.

– Recover for 2 minutes.

– Go again for 15 minutes.

That’s the basics. Success on this is,  however,  all in the details.

The idea here is to go as hard as you can for the duration of all 3 intervals without being forced to go easier at the end of the subsequent interval.  If you run out of gas before you finish the second or third interval, you went too hard. If your vision isn’t blurry at the end of the last 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 a workout that works great on the trainer, and that’s how I do ‘em.

But hey… that’s not all.

This is the Happy Ending version.

What does that mean?

After the third interval,

-spin for 1 minute.

sprint for ten seconds, starting at the one minute mark on your watch.

-spin until you hit the 2 minute mark on your watch

sprint for ten seconds

-spin until you hit the 3 minute mark on your watch

sprint for ten seconds

Etc., etc., continuing until you hit the five minute mark, and give the last little bit of your energy in one final 10 second sprint.

Ouch.

 

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…

se

Posted in Blather, Cyclocross, Intervals, Masochism, recovery, The Workout Of The Day

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