Thanks to all who came out the the last of the Wednesday Night World’s CX Workouts out at North SeaTac…
We’ll be taking a week off, then starting up again out at the Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome in Redmond. Hope to see you out there!
“But what about today’s workout?” I hear you asking.
Today we’re doing…
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.
Welcome to another Wednesday, and as per usual, we’re going to talk a bit about skills today.
Before we get to that, though, tonight is the last night of the Wednesday Night World’s Cyclocross Training Series out at North SeaTac Park.
Come on out and join us if you’re in the area!
After tonight, there will be a short break in the training sessions up here while all the bike industry folks get their Interbike (and CX Vegas) on, but things will start up again on the 28th, as we get rolling out at the Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome.
Last week we talked a bit about our Starts. If you didn’t happen to read that, maybe give it a once over today. We’re going to be doing a few start efforts in this workout, so brushing up on the basics ain’t a bad idea.
That’ll come in a bit, though. Let’s start at the beginning of today’s workout…
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.
5 – 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.
6 – 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…
Warm down, go home, relax.
Enjoy,
M
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It’s Tuesday, and guess what? We’re doing the same thing we did last Tuesday!
Why?
Well, frankly, because it takes a couple/few reps to really get the hang of doing these damn things. And because this workout is good for ya, in a “What doesn’t kill you” kinda’ way.
What workout is this that we’re talking about?
It’s the…
The MB15 –
Warm up well. (Seriously. Warm up for this one, it’ll help.)
The basic idea here is to do a series of very short efforts with very little rest between them, for a pretty long period of time.
Sound confusing?
Here’s how it breaks down…
Warm up.
Get set…
Go!
15 seconds on
15 seconds off
15 seconds on
15 seconds off
…and so on and so on for the duration of the interval.
How long are you going to do this for?
– Ten minutes
How many sets?
– Three -four sets, 5 minutes between sets. Ideally, you aspire to pile enough ten-minute segments on top of one another to equal the duration of your races.
How hard do you go during the “on” segments?
– Pretty darn hard.
You’re familiar with the level of effort you put out in your 2×20’s by now, right?
You need to go harder than that.
More than a little bit harder.
Ideally, you’ll hit these on periods at right about 150% of your FTP, if that’s a number that means anything to you. If it doesn’t, it’s harder than what you’re dong your 2×20 effort at. A lot harder. For most folks it’s going to be about 50% harder.
Like I said, “ouch.”
How easy do you go during the “off” segments?
– A lot easier, but you aren’t soft pedaling.
Right about 50% of your FTP, or in the neighborhood of half as hard as your 2×20 level.
This is going to seem way too easy when you’re starting out, but by the end – if you’re doing these right – it’s probably going to be really damn hard to keep the “off” that high.
Ouch.
It gets worse.
Ultimately, you want to be able to do however many of these it takes to equal the duration of your typical CX race.
Seriously, Ouch.
Do what you can.
That’s the basics of this workout, but let’s talk about how folks tend to screw this up, shall we?
First of all, you really can’t do this workout correctly with a power meter that’s set to anything other than instantaneous power display. Even a 3-second display rate can screw things up; that’s 20% of the interval duration!
So, go check your PM settings and adjust accordingly.
Next big screw up? These aren’t sprints.
You’re looking to nail these output levels for the duration of the intervals, not way overshoot them and then coast back down to them.
If you’re doing a 300 watt “on” segment, that means 300 watts for 15 seconds, not 400 watts for 5 seconds and then 250 watts for 10 seconds.
That’s fine and all, but it’a different exercise.
A corollary to this is, on the “off” segment, you aren’t coasting. Ever. You’re doing 50% of your ftp. It’s not uncommon at all for people to experience the “off” portion as just as hard – or harder! – as the “on” section as the overall duration of the interval set reaches the duration of your race day.
In graphic form, your workout should look more like a square wave –
Than like this…
(yup, snipped from a real-life attempt at this workout)
Make sense? Have at it!
Oh, almost forgot!
Last week, after doing this same workout reader Bart De Wever asked…
Hello, Just did the MB15 today (which is indeed pretty hard to do it exactly like you describe it). Great training, love it ! I was just wondering where the name comes from ? Did a google search and all I could come up with was a classic Marshall amp😆 !
Hah!
Definitely not the amp, Bart!
The naming convention for this is actually pretty simple. This type of interval workout is called a MicroBurst interval, and we’re doing them for 15 seconds, so MB-15. You may also see some MB-30’s later on in the season, so stay tuned!
Thanks for asking, and for reading!
Enjoy,
M
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I hope ya’all had a better day out at the races than I did yesterday! First race of the season was a disaster for me, as long -term back problems reared their ugly head in a race-ending manner.
Lessons were learned, though. I’ll talk about some of them in the near future, but TLDR? Take care of yer damn self in the couple of days immediately preceding a race. I set myself up for disaster by sleeping on a bed that I knew was bad for my back the night before the race, even though I could feel the damage I was doing, as I was doing it.
Getting old sucks. Not getting any smarter as you age is inexcusable.
Enough whinging, on with today’s workout.
After a race weekend, you just gotta’ know that today we’re going for 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.
How about some coverage of the Euro-CX kick off race for ‘ya to watch if you happen to be spinning on the trainer today?
Enjoy!
M
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I have had a couple of requests to talk about how the he** to warm up for a race, so here you go…
First of all, don’t overdo it.
I see way, way too many people spending a ridiculous amount of time on their trainers before the race, and frankly, I think a huge number of racers leave their best effort of the day back in the tent on the Gerbil Wheel before the race.
Don’t let this be you.
If you feel like you need to spend more than an hour warming up for your race, frankly you’re doing something wrong.
There’s been a fair bit written about warming up for cycling events, and if you spend any time at all reading through some of the stuff that’s out there, you will no doubt find that the only commonality is that most everyone disagrees.
Until you start reading some of the science, and some of the warm-up protocols suggested by those who have also read the science.
During endurance events of intermediate duration (4-5 min), performance is enhanced by warm-up irrespective of warm-up intensity
Note this interesting bit in the results –
There were no differences in anaerobic power output during the trials, but aerobic power output during the first 1000 m was larger during both EWU (203 W) and HWU (208 W) versus NWU (163 W) trials.
I pretty much never warm up for road races, unless I Know the first few K are going to be pedal to the metal. When people ask how I can get away with this (and they do!) I always respond with “that’s what the first lap/loop/5k is for…”
You can’t get away with this in Cyclocross.
You need to hit that first K, hell that first hundred meters at 100%, with all guns blazing.
Warming up definitely improves your aerobic power output over the first K of a race.
End of story. You need to warm up for Cyclocross.
How much do you need to warm up?
Well, here’s where we get into interesting territory.
The study I linked to above basically showed no difference between the results of warm ups conducted at different levels of intensity and duration. The key was simply to warm up, get the legs turning over.
However you do it, warming up helps.
Nice.
Remember this the next time all hell breaks loose and you can barely get in any kind of a workout before your race. Even a little bit of a warm up helps.
OK, it’s just a study. Heck, it’s just one study.
Frankly, for Cyclocross, I think you need to warm up pretty hard, if for no other reason than that you don’t want the shock of that F-ing start effort to hit your body (and mind!) like a ton of bricks.
What you don’t need to do is warm up for a long time.
After a certain point, all a long warmup does is get you tired. And that ain’t good…
tired?
OK, so what should your warm up look like?
Something like this…
Get on your bike.
Ride at a super easy level for 5 minutes. No pressure on pedals, recovery day light.
5 minutes more at just one notch higher.
2-3 minutes at right around your 20 minute output level.
then
2-3 minutes at one notch/gear easier
30 second race pace effort.
recover for 2 minutes easy…
30 second race pace effort.
recover for 2 minutes…
2 full-gas start efforts, 2 minutes between them.
Spin for 5 minutes.
Go race.
Ok.
That’s kinda’ the “In a perfect world” warm up.
In reality, you need to figure in course preview, getting all your stuff schlepped to where it needs to be, registration, yada, yada…
Ideally, your race day would look like this:
Wake up.
Eat breakfast.
Ride for an hour.
Snack, take a nap.
Eat lunch (3 hours before race.)
Course preview
(while mechanic preps bikes, team staff handles everything else.)
Snack, electrolyte drink, change into race clothing.
Warm up.
Race.
Yeah, right.
Oh well, we try.
Get as close to that as you can, and remember – the science shows that any warm up is better than none!
I’ve managed to do really well in races where the only warm up I got was a 1 or 2 lap preview of the course.
If you are forced to choose, always pre-ride rather than warm up.
You get a less than perfect course preview, and a less than perfect warm up, but part of each is better than none of one!
Ok, after all that, are you ready for the reality-based warm up?
Quite frankly, this is what I wind up doing most of the time, and almost always if I wind up stuck on the Gerbil Machine. It’s the –
R.S.W.O. – The Rock Stupid Warm-up and Opener –
First, get everything you need to do before the race done. Sign up, course preview, etc., etc. More questions you probably didn’t even have on the topic of race day routine answered here –
– 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.)
Phew.
Enough of that, eh?
Have fun,
M
* If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about when I say “20 minute level”, checkthis out…
** The Warm Up routines I describe here are actually pretty hard, and believe it or not, are likely to be too damn hard and too long for non-elite racers. You will need to experiment and figure out what works for you. Don’t be afraid to cut the warm up short, or go easier. You don’t get a prize for winning the damn warm up…
Well, we’re here. First race weekend of the season has arrived!**
Seems like most folks who are racing are racing on Sunday this go-round, so that means that today we’re doing…
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.
– spin out the legs, go home, and get ready for the race.
Have fun,
M
** OK, so not everyone is racing this weekend. If you aren’t, take a look back at the weekend workouts we’ve been doing over the last month or so and pick one! Lots to choose from! Mix and match! Yay!
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Before we get started with today’s workout, just a quick word.
Seattle local Nathan Kiger (the other long hair on the scene) recently got nailed badly by a right-hooking automobile, and wound up in hospital. It looks like he’s going to be fine, but it’s likely to be a long road to recovery, and a fair bit of time before he will be able to work again. This is every cyclist’s nightmare scenario, and he’s living it, and he could use some of our help.
If you’re racing this Sunday, today is an easy day for you. Take the day completely off, go for an easy spin, or if you absolutely can’t make yourself chill out, 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?
Have fun!
M
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If you think you might just need some more personalized coaching or training!
Yikes! It’s just about time for the racing to commence!
Up here in Seattle, the first “real” race of the season is this Sunday. Wow. Things sure are…
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
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It’s Wednesday, skills day around these here parts!
Without further ado, let’s jump right in…
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…
Warm down, go home, relax.
Enjoy!
What’s that you say? You’d kinda’ like to have a cycling coach help figure this stuff out for you? Check out…
Before we get started, let’s get this out of the way; If you raced yesterday, you probably aren’t going to want to do today’s workout. We’re going to hit it pretty hard, and odds are you don’t want to be doing that. You should be going for a Recovery Spin instead.
If you didn’t race yesterday, welcome aboard! Today we’re going to have ourselves a blast (hah!)
Doing…
The MB15 –
Warm up well. (Seriously. Warm up for this one, it’ll help.)
The basic idea here is to do a series of very short efforts with very little rest between them, for a pretty long period of time.
Sound confusing?
Here’s how it breaks down…
Warm up.
Get set…
Go!
15 seconds on
15 seconds off
15 seconds on
15 seconds off
…and so on and so on for the duration of the interval.
How long are you going to do this for?
– Ten minutes
How many sets?
– Three -four sets, 5 minutes between sets. Ideally, you aspire to pile enough ten-minute segments on top of one another to equal the duration of your races.
How hard do you go during the “on” segments?
– Pretty darn hard.
You’re familiar with the level of effort you put out in your 2×20’s by now, right?
You need to go harder than that.
More than a little bit harder.
Ideally, you’ll hit these on periods at right about 150% of your FTP, if that’s a number that means anything to you. If it doesn’t, it’s harder than what you’re dong your 2×20 effort at. A lot harder. For most folks it’s going to be about 50% harder.
Like I said, “ouch.”
How easy do you go during the “off” segments?
– A lot easier, but you aren’t soft pedaling.
Right about 50% of your FTP, or in the neighborhood of half as hard as your 2×20 level.
This is going to seem way too easy when you’re starting out, but by the end – if you’re doing these right – it’s probably going to be really damn hard to keep the “off” that high.
Ouch.
It gets worse.
Ultimately, you want to be able to do however many of these it takes to equal the duration of your typical CX race.
Seriously, Ouch.
Do what you can.
That’s the basics of this workout, but let’s talk about how folks tend to screw this up, shall we?
First of all, you really can’t do this workout correctly with a power meter that’s set to anything other than instantaneous power display. Even a 3-second display rate can screw things up; that’s 20% of the interval duration!
So, go check your PM settings and adjust accordingly.
Next big screw up? These aren’t sprints.
You’re looking to nail these output levels for the duration of the intervals, not way overshoot them and then coast back down to them.
If you’re doing a 300 watt “on” segment, that means 300 watts for 15 seconds, not 400 watts for 5 seconds and then 250 watts for 10 seconds.
That’s fine and all, but it’a different exercise.
A corollary to this is, on the “off” segment, you aren’t coasting. Ever. You’re doing 50% of your ftp. It’s not uncommon at all for people to experience the “off” portion as just as hard – or harder! – as the “on” section as the overall duration of the interval set reaches the duration of your race day.
In graphic form, your workout should look more like a square wave –
Than like this…
(yup, snipped from a real-life attempt at this workout)
Make sense?
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…
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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