Well, I’m guessing that most of you are racing today.
If you are, you know what to do today, eh?
Go Race!!!
If you’re not, though, today might be a good opportunity to get some solid endurance work in.
By “Endurance” I don’t mean any kind of lollygagging the miles away with the off-season roadies, though.
You’re in the middle of your damn season.
You can get after it today.
You can have yourself a…
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.
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 Doudou do?”
M
PS… this is a hard workout. It should go without saying, but don’t even think about doing this if you’re skipping a race to take it easy. Take the day off instead, OK?
For some inexplicable reason, a bunch of my friends are all kinds of excited to head out and catch the remake of Carrie on it’s opening night, tonight…
Yay, teen revenge fantasies!
But you know what?
If There Will Be Blood this weekend…
It should be the blood of your competitors! Muah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!!!
Kidding.
Seriously, kidding, folks.
I mean, you know what is best in life, right?
…but maybe blood is pushing things a bit too far.
The crushing, though?
We can get down with that.
We can also get down with…
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?
6 -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.
So, hey, wow… I know I’ve said it before – and you’re probably getting tired of hearing it – but man… I saw some tired folks out at the cross practice last night…
…and that’s just counting the few people who showed up!
It looked like a fair passel ‘o folks just thought the better of it and stayed at home, great weather be damned.
You want to do these on a climb that is big – ringable for you, but just at the edge of being a small ring climb.
Each effort should take 5 -10 seconds, which tells you how long the climb needs to be, eh?
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, all – out ATTACK into the climb.
You’re looking to blast up the climb for 5-10 seconds, on top of the effort the whole way.
It’s perfectly OK to sit down 1/2 -3/4 of way through the effort, but don’t take your foot off the gas.
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 make sure you’re maintaining the intensity.
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, trust me.
Spin out & warm down after.
Seriously.
Warm down.
You saw the Team SKY guys riding the trainer after the ridiculous mountain stages at Le Tour?
If those guys make a point of climbing on a stationary bike after riding up Alpe deHuez twice, you can do it after some little ‘ol hill repeats, right?
No excuses.
Take the hint.
Warming down is worthwhile.
After you’ve warmed down, head on home and enjoy the rest of your day.
Well, it’s Wednesday, and that’s the day that we usually talk about – and work on – our skills.
I think we’re going to do something just a little bit different this time around, though.
I received the following message after this weekend’s racing…
Hello Matt,
I enjoy your blog. This is my second full year racing cross and I just upgraded to CAT 3, which for me was pretty cool. This week I had my first bad race. I have had things come up before, mechanicals, crashes, legs not firing etc. but today things kinda all came together I was falling, making dumb mistakes, compounding said mistakes, hr was absurdly high etc. I pulled the plug after ripping out my shorts on a fall into a stake (ouch) so… What do you do focus on after a bad Sunday at the office?
Ming
Thanks Ming!
Some pretty darn good questions raised there, eh?
You know what?
We’re going to dedicate today to thinking about them a bit.
First of all, try to remember – try, I know it’s hard – that everyone has a bad day. Even these guys…
Enough mayhem and mishaps occur in that darn race to make anyone feel better about their luck.
And how about this gem from last season?
Look folks, even the absolute best in the world have a bad day.
When my back went out on me in the middle of a race on Sunday, I could take at least a little bit of solace in knowing that Bart Wellens was last seen rolling off the course in the middle of his race, on the same day, favoring his creaky back.
That’s the basic version. This is the get-up version, though, so…
Start the first interval out of the saddle, and stand for the first 30 seconds.
After those 30 seconds are up, sit down. Keep the effort going, and consistent. Don’t surge, don’t go harder when you get out of the saddle.
Stay seated for the next 1:30, then stand for 30 seconds.
Repeat to the end of the interval, and follow this format for the successive interval.
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 too hard. If your vision isn’t blurry at the end of the second interval, you went too easy.
If you’re doing this with a powermeter, you want your wattage output to be as close to constant as possible. We’re talking 10 watt variance at the most. Keep it steady.
These take practice to do well, and the better you get, the harder they get. This is another workout that works great on the trainer, and that’s how I do ‘em, which is a good thing… because I always wind up flat on my back on the floor trying not to puke after the 2nd interval.
I’m really not kidding about the seeing spots thing. If you can learn to push through your limits when you do these, you will get better and well… you will get better.
Tips:
– I do these on the trainer, with a stopwatch on the bars and an Ipod blaring in my ears. Start the stopwatch at the beginning of the interval, and the format is really easy to follow; you stand up for :30 at the 2:oo, 4:00, 6:00, etc. mark(s). Get it? It’s easy!
– A power meter will help you to keep the level of intensity constant. You want the power output to be as steady as possible with these. If you don’t have a PM, do these on the trainer, choose a gear ratio and a cadence, and stick to that for the duration of the exercise – instant home made ergometer.
– No reason you can’t do these normal-style. Honestly, for many/most of you, that might be a better bet.
Why do we do this variation of the workout?
Some folks have been struggling to get through the longer efforts this season. It can really help, mentally, to have that out of the saddle effort thrown in to the longer/larger workout. It makes it feel just a bit like you’re doing a series of 2 minute intervals rather than 20 minute ones.
You’re not, though.
Try to avoid the temptation to up the output level when you get out of the saddle, OK? That’s an entirely different workout.
We also do these specifically because it’s difficult to keep your output level consistent when you get out of the saddle.
In cyclocross, we’re constantly in and out of the saddle, all race long… but we don’t always get out of the saddle because we need to accelerate, quite often we’re shifting position to maintain traction, or to muscle the bike around terrain, etc.
It’s actually pretty common for people to get out of the saddle, reflexively stomp on the gas, and lose traction because they put out too much power. This won’t usually cause you to crash, but it will blow you right out of your line, and can often be the difference between cleaning a section and being forced to dismount.
You need to have a good handle on how much power you’re putting through the rear wheel to handle the bike well in cyclocross.
I’ve had some people asking about archived workouts, and how to make their way through the what is – at this point – a rather imposing (how did that happen?) collection of ramblings.
Over on the right side of this page…
Just below the Facebook box is a little search box.
You can find any of the posts that have gone up on here over the years by entering some targeted search terms.
I haven’t been great about tagging posts to make it easy to look ‘em up.
Sorry.
Frankly, I didn’t think this would go on as long as it has.
Never fear, though! there’s an easy shortcut to make it easier to find general types or categories of workouts:
Search by day of the week.
Generally speaking, the type of workouts posted on, say, Tuesday all fall into the same narrow-ish category, IE 2×20′s, or some variation on the theme.
Looking for skills work? Search through the Wednesday posts.
If you read through a week or two’s worth of posts, the pattern should become pretty clear.
Make sense?
Good.
So, hey… how about today?
Well, today, most of you are – yup – racing, so Go Race!
Lot’s of info on race-day particulars if you search through Saturday or Sunday posts. See how that works?
It’s easy!
Not racing today?
Well, have at it. The search function I just described?
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
Yeah, that's right... if you have completely lost control of all sense of fiscal responsibility, you can now purchase silly articles of clothing with my blog address on them.
How cool is that?
Just go to - http://crosssports.spreadshirt.com/
and think "conspicuous consumption... mmm... feels so good..."
Crosssports's Weblog 