It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s Skills Day here at the blog!
With the real race action starting up this weekend for most folks, today we’re going to laser focus on…
Starts.
Practice.
Practice your starts until you’ve got them wired.
A good start might not win you a cyclocross race, but a bad one can sure as hell lose you the race.
There’s pretty good bang for the buck when it comes to working on your starts.
So, we practice.
How do we practice?
Here are some tips –
– Start with your pedals at 3&9 o’clock, not 12 and six.
It might take some practice 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 do it for a reason, eh?
See what I mean?
-Try starting with your butt on the saddle, and your butt off the saddle. See what works best for you.
– Ditto, try starting with hands in the drops vs. hands on the hoods.
Figure out which variation works for you, and then stick with it. Refine your starts, but once you make a decision – “I start butt on saddle, hands on drops” – that’s it. Don’t switch it up. Just work to improve your starts from this position.
After you have tried a couple of variations at a slow pace, get yourself set to go hard.
Begin with a few medium effort starts, just to work on the mechanics, round off your rough edges, and make sure you remember where the heck your pedals are.
When you start to get the feel for things, hit it hard a couple of times, then back off.
– Do 2 sets of six full-gas starts.
– short effort, just go long enough that you are up to full speed, then back down, turn around, go again.
Just like the beginning of a race. One foot on the ground, dead standstill, get-up-and-go.
– Recover for a few minutes, then Finish the night with 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.
– 6-8 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
Hey! Want to do some skills and drills with a cool group of folks?
I’m guessing that many (most?) of you raced this weekend, so… how did it go?
Think about it for a bit, and then write down some notes.
Be honest…
Make a list of…
What worked, what didn’t.
Where you felt strong, and where you felt week.
Did you run out of gas partway through the race? Where/when did that happen?
What went well for you physically?
What went poorly for you, physically?
What went well for you, technically?
What went poorly for you technically?
How did your bike work?
Take the answers to these questions, and turn them into a couple of lists:
– What I’m feeling good about right now.
– What I need to work on right now
The things you’re feeling good about right now? You’ll come back to those later.
Things you feel like you need to work on?
Roger that. Let’s get cracking on that work.
Plan on addressing those things.
Training is good, but training to a plan is better.
You start this planning by analyzing what is and isn’t working for you, and then working to get your weaknesses to the point where they aren’t a total liability, and your strengths to the point where they’re game changers.
So write this stuff down.
Then think about it a bit.
Then work up a game plan to address the immediate weaknesses, and fortify your strengths.
Feel free to ask questions about this in the comments section below.
Make sense?
Onward!
Since you probably either raced or rode hard yesterday, today is – yup! – 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 – and just spin around for an hour.
– Really small gear, no hard efforts – heck, no medium effort.
– Spin. You’re looking to move your legs around in circles, almost like there is no chain on the bike.
– The idea is to get your body moving, flush the systems out, and speed your recovery.
– Just get out on the road and spin aimlessly. At a certain point, your legs suddenly feel better.
– As soon as that happens, turn around, go home, eat, stretch, and put your legs up.
I hope you’re enjoying your long weekend! Me? Not so much. Damn summer colds, blech. Trust me folks, avoid the one that’s going around right now, it’s a serious bummer.
If you didn’t spend the last 24 hours curled up in a ball on the sofa shivering like a baby colt, you might be racing today.
Nice.
Have fun out there. Just remember, it’s (probably…) just the first race of a long damn season. No pressure. Race like you mean it, but not like it’s the end of the world if things don’t go spectacularly well.
Today you should just be looking to blow the pipes out, work the kinks out of the system, go for a dry run… you pick the metaphor.
The idea is that you’re racing – and racing for real, with every intention of doing as well as you can – but the real goal posts are further on down the road in the meat of the season.
So, use today as a learning experience.
Pay attention to your pre-race routine. How did it work out? What do you need to change in the future?
What was the race field like? Are there any new faces at the races that you’re going to need to pay attention to?
How did the bike(s) work? Any pressing mechanical issues that you should take care of? Don’t sleep on this stuff…
How did the body work? Make note of where you felt good and where you felt bad, what sections of the race you were strong in and what ones you were weak in. We’re going to work to address these as the season goes on, and that work starts now with identifying strengths and weaknesses.
More on this soon…
Above all, enjoy the hell out of the race.
That’s what this is all about!
Not racing today?
How about going for a…
Hard Group Ride –
Get out there and kick some A** on the local roadie ride, or on the trails with your buddies.
Push the pace if and when you can, try and go hard – harder than usual – and see how you recover from some stiff efforts on a course or in a group you know pretty well.
Duration? 3 hours or so. OK to go long(er. Ish.) today, but better to go kinda long and really damn hard.
Try to ride a bit over your head.
Either ride with a group of riders that are just slightly better than you – and ride defensively – or push the tempo at the front with a group that you’re comfortable in.
…or maybe a nice, relaxing (hah!)
Jacky Day.
This is a good general climbing and endurance workout that will stretch you a fair bit longer than anything you’re ever going to see out on the cross courses.
Heck, this is about as hard and sustained as you’ll ever see in a road race.
In fact, what we’re trying to do is, essentially, simulate a day off the front of a road race.
Ouch.
Select a route that will enable you to hit at least 3 climbs of 5-10 minutes or so each, with flat to rolling terrain in between. If your local climbs aren’t that long, try and do more shorter ones. If hills are longer… well, cool. Just don’t turn this into an all-out climbing day, ok?
Warm up well, at least 20-30 minutes before you hit the first climb.
Climbs should be hard but steady.
Start medium hard (not full gas!) and try and hold it the whole climb.
Drive it over the top, and roll down the descent. Visualize a prime at the bottom of each descent, and a chase pack nipping at your heels. Don’t sit up at the top of the climbs,stay on the gas all the way down and through.
In between climbs, keep it steady.
You want to stay on top of a pretty big gear, at a level that is below threshold, but not that far below.
If you’re a power meter type, with an ftp of 265, you would want to try and average about 200 watts between the climbs and 300 on the climbs.
Not a PM type? Try and go about 90% on the climbs, and just over 50% between the climbs.
Remember, 3 climbs of 10 minutes, or the equivalent. With a warm up of 15-20 minutes, and a cool down of about the same, this would be just about perfect for a 2.5 hour ride.
Got more time? Rest after the 3rd climbing effort, repeat the cycle.
It’s better to keep the intensity up than to go longer. Remember, we aren’t resting between climbs, we’re dieseling along in a big gear.
Visualize yourself driving an all-day breakaway, and you get the idea…
Have fun, and think to yourself, as you’re rolling along…
“What would Jacky do?”
M
PS… this is a hard workout. Depending on your schedule, and what you did yesterday, it might be a bit much. Might also toast you for tomorrow, so be warned, ok?
Yowza! Lots of different schedules colliding this long labor Day weekend. Some people are racing on Monday, some people are racing on Sunday, some people are racing 2 or even 3 days… way too complicated for our brief here on this wee little blog!
We can offer this, though!
Racing on Monday?
Today you’re doing…
Can Openers –
Warm up for 1/2 hour or so.
Follow with several short attacking efforts, IE 30 seconds at 80% of your max, or pretty damn hard.
Back off and spin for 5 minutes.
Follow with 10-15 minute effort at AT level, or CP30, or “I could talk to you if I had to, but I don’t want to” level.
Spin for several minutes.
Follow with 5-10 full gas start efforts on a straight section of paved road, level or slightly uphill.
You want to begin these from a dead stop, with one foot unclipped.
Just like a race start. Clip in, go hard until you’re up to speed.
That’s one start.
Do not stop until you get at least 3 – 5 perfect starts in a row, and I mean perfect. No bobbling with the pedal. On, in, and off.
We all know how important starts are in the race, so make ‘em count.
This is the cross equivalent of practicing free throws, practice matters and it makes a difference.
I don’t quit until I nail 5 in a row, but set your own threshold.
Make sense?
Cool.
Got em’ dialed? Ripped ‘em?
Excellent. You’re done.
Spin out the legs, then go home and rest.
You’re ready for tomorrow’s race.
Not racing at all this weekend?
Right on.
You might think about going for an epic Kitchen Sink ride today, especially if you can follow up with another one tomorrow.
…which would leave you wishing you had Tuesday off as well, so you could spend it recovering in bed.
Which is, of course, a day off on Monday for most people.
Yay! Enjoying the holiday?
Thank organized labor.
You know this guy is!
Anyways, Labor Day Weekend also means it’s a race weekend for a lot of folks.
If You’re one of ’em, you’ve got a choice to make.
Are you taking the race on Monday seriously, or are you just rolling through it as a fun intro to the season’s racing?
If you’re putting some mojo into the race on Monday, you should take it pretty easy in your training today.
Go for a nice, easy Recovery Spin, or maybe even take the day off the bike.
Tomorrow (Sunday) will feature some intensity and speed to open up your legs for the race, but if you want to be flying on Monday?
Need to chill a bit today.
That’s just one choice, though.
You might also choose to ride through the race on Monday, and sacrifice a bit of performance in this one event for the potential of gains in fitness later on down the road.
How does that work?
Well, basically, you treat race day just like any other training day.
You aren’t trying to be particularly fast or on form for that day, and you aren’t focusing your training schedule on that day.
For a Monday race, training through would mean that you go about your weekend as you normally would, and then just show up at the race after a couple of days of (probably) pretty hard riding and see what happens.
That might not be a bad way to go this early in the grand scheme of things, but I can’t really tell you if it is or not.
What I can tell you is that if you’re riding through, really ride through.
Don’t half-ass it, or use riding through as the excuse you tell your buddies for having a crappy day.
Go hard this weekend and then just race with whatever is left in your legs on Monday
Or take it easy today, hit the openers tomorrow, and try to give it your best on Monday.
Either one of those is a good plan.
An indecisive muddling-through, middle ground, neither one nor the other approach, though?
Not a good plan.
So pick one.
And rock it.
Make sense?
Good.
So now that you’ve thought about it a bit, are you riding through this weekend, or not racing at all this weekend?
Nice.
Today, go for a…
Hard Group Ride –
Get out there and kick some A** on the local roadie ride, or on the trails with your buddies.
Push the pace if and when you can, try and go hard – harder than usual – and see how you recover from some stiff efforts on a course or in a group you know pretty well.
Duration? 3 hours or so. OK to go long(er. Ish.) today, but better to go kinda long and really damn hard.
Try to ride a bit over your head.
Either ride with a group of riders that are just slightly better than you – and ride defensively – or push the tempo at the front with a group that you’re comfortable in.
Have fun!
M
PS – If it just so happens that you’re racing on Saturday this weekend, have fun! Racing on Sunday?
If you’re racing this weekend, have fun, kick A**.
Not racing?
Have fun.
Period.
That should really be the goal.
There simply aren’t that many (if any!) weekends in the foreseeable future that aren’t going to be dominated by racing, thoughts of racing, and preparations for racing.
So enjoy this one.
Go for a long mountain bike or road ride, spend some quality time with your soon to be neglected significant other(s)…
…that kind of stuff.
Enjoy.
Today, though?
Today you’re doing Ramp Sprints.
– Warm up well
– Find a long, straight section of flat, traffic free road.
– You’re going to do a series of sprint efforts that look like this:
1 – Start from a dead standstill, one foot on the ground. Think race-type start, IE – you’re going hard, but you know you’re going to hit it again in a couple of seconds.
…speaking of which…
2 – Once you’re up to speed, sit down. Pause for two breaths. Go again. Full gas short sprint for 5 seconds.
3 – After you max out the 2nd sprint, slow down quickly. Make a 180 degree turn.
Jump out of the turn. Full gas sprint back towards where you started. Go ’till you’re spun out or 5 seconds.
That’s one rep.
Do three, then 5 minute break.
Repeat until you are obviously slowing down, max wattage has dropped appreciably, or you just can’t stand it anymore.
…practice last night. Much fun was had by all. We worked on our downhill cornering skills last night, and the improvements in confidence and skill that people made were pretty inspiring. Hope to see even more of you out there next week, which will be the last night of the series.
Today, though?
Today,
Get High!
(knees. get your knees high. What did you think I was talking about?)
We’re going to be doing some more running today, and we’re going to be running on stairs, so… well… start by find yourself some stairs.
These are going to be short intervals, so you don’t need stadium stairs or anything like that. Something in the neighborhood of one single flight of standard office building stairs is perfect.
In a pinch, you can use a grassy knoll or hillside, but stairs are really the ticket for what we’re dong today.
– get on your bike and warm up for 15 minutes or so.
– Mosey on over to your stairs and get set. Stretch, have a sip of water, turn up the volume on your Ipod.
– Jog up the stairs. Walk down.
– Repeat x3
– Sprint! up stairs, fast, using whatever stride is most comfortable. Walk down.
– Repeat x3
Rest for 1 minute, walking slowly up and down stairs.
– Sprint up stairs, this time using quick, tiny strides, 1 stair step at a time. Jog down.
– Repeat x3
Rest again, same as before.
– Sprint up stairs, this time using long strides, several stair steps at a time. Walk down.
– Repeat x 3
Rest again.
– Sprint up stairs, combining the previous two exercises; long step, followed by 2 short steps. Do 1x.
Walk down.
– Run up stairs, high knees, exaggeratedly so…
Repeat x3
Rest again, 2-5 minutes.
Sprint up stairs, free form, just go as fast as you can. Go until spent.
– Repeat entire damn thing if you’re a freaking animal.
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.
– If you haven’t been doing much running this season, be careful. Don’t overdo this, and don’t risk screwing everything up for the rest of the season by blowing up a knee or something. Better yet, try this.
Don’t you just love Wednesdays? Once Cyclocross season begins, it’s by far my favorite day of the week.
Why?
Because its…
Skills Day!
I’ll be out at the…
Cyclocross practice tonight, leading one of the training groups. If you’re in the Seattle area, you should come out and join us.
It’s the best night of the week!
Training on your lonesome today?
Here you go…
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 (depends how rusty/crappy 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 down cold, smooth as silk.
When you’re perfect (hah!) throw some barriers into the mix.
– 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.
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 keep it there.
Smooooooth.
(If you don’t have barriers, anything will do. Use a log, put a stick on the ground – whatever.)
4 – Figure eight drill.
Set up 2 cones or 2 rocks or two – somethings, whatever – on the side of a slightly sloping hill. One up hill, one down, about 5-8 meters apart.
Ride in a figure eight pattern around the cones…
– first pedaling the entire time.
No coasting.
Pedal the corners & the downhill.
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. You can break and pedal at the same time, sometimes.
Experiment with this, it’s a game-changer.
– Mind blown? Cool. Now you go 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.
– Start each effort with, well… with a start. Like you’re in a race.
Spin down for a few minutes, then head home and finish up your day.
Before we get started, just a reminder that if you’re in the Seattle area, the Wednesday Cyclocross Workouts at North Seatac Park are in full swing…
It looks like we’ll have some authentic, traditional CX weather tomorrow, so should be even more fun than usual! Hope to see you out there!
It’s Tuesday.
You know what that means, right?
It’s…
Two By Twenty Tuesday!
Pretty simply, the 2×20 looks like this:
– Warm up.
– Go as hard as you can for 20 minutes.
– Recover for 5 minutes.
– Go again for another 20 minutes.
That’s the workout in a nutshell, but the devil is in the details.
First of all, warm up.
No, seriously. Don’t just hop on the bike and blast one out.
Warming up makes a difference, especially if you’re doing this as a test session… and, ideally, every time you do these, it’s doubling as a test session (we talked about this last week.)
You don’t need to do anything super hard or super involved, just make sure the legs are up and running before you kick off the workout proper.
Spin for a bit, blast a couple of 30 second to 2 minute efforts off pretty hard, spin a bit more, then go for it.
When you do go for it, really go for it.
But in a controlled sort of way.
The idea here is to go as hard as you can for the duration of both intervals without being forced to go easier at the end of the second interval. If you run out of gas before you finish the second interval, you went to hard. If your vision isn’t blurry at the end of the second interval, you went too easy.
If you’re doing this with a powermeter, you want your wattage output to be as close to constant as possible. How constant?
Can you keep it in a 10 watt range?
Probably not.
15 watts?
More likely
20 watts?
Try.
Keep it steady.
These take practice to do well, and the better you get, the harder they get (you’re welcome.) This is a workout that’s a natural for the turbo trainer, and that’s how I do ‘em.
This is a good thing, because I always wind up flat on my back on the floor trying not to puke after the 2nd interval.
I’m really not kidding about the blurry vision thing. You should aspire to seeing-spots level of output on these.
If you can learn to push through your limits, really push, you will get better and you will get better fast.
It’ll be painful, though.
I promise.
Have fun!
M
Oh c’mon! I can see the stats, I know you aren’t all checking out…
I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me this wasn’t exactly a restful weekend. We had a Big Damn Windstorm in Seattle the last couple of days, and after falling tree limbs caused the termination of the WWOCX event and the partial cancellation of the front end of my car, I decided discretion was the better part of valor and rode inside this weekend.
There’s something about long trainer rides that just pulverizes my legs. It’s much, much worse than the equivalent amount of time spent on the road or the trails.
So, my legs are really damn sore today.
And I’m almost all the way through Narcos, which I can kinda-sorta recommend.
If you’re watching it while doing intervals on the trainer, that is.
Frankly, I have absolutely no idea how good it is if you’re watching it under… normal… viewing conditions. There’s something about trainer TV that’s just different from normal TV. I can’t really accurately capture this difference, but suffice to say that violent criminal dramas with relatively simple plot lines and ADHD-inspired pacing seem ideal for watching on the rollers.
More on trainer TV later in the season. Maybe a poll… what’s your favorite thing to watch when you’re on the trainer?
Perhaps you can ponder your answer to the question while watching some television on the trainer as you recuperate from the weekend’s hard efforts by doing a…
Recovery Spin –
– Get on your bike. Roll out into the street – or into your living room if you’re on the turbo – and just spin around for an hour.
– Really small gear, no hard efforts – heck, no medium effort.
– Spin. You’re looking to move your legs around in circles, almost like there is no chain on the bike.
– The idea is to get your body moving, flush the systems out, and speed your recovery.
– Just get out on the road and spin aimlessly. At a certain point, your legs suddenly feel better.
– As soon as that happens, turn around, go home, eat, stretch, and put your legs up.
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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How cool is that?
Just go to - http://crosssports.spreadshirt.com/
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