Before we even get started, did you read yesterday’s post?
Do me a favor and check it out, especially if you’re finished – or close to finished – with your season.
Let me know what you think after you read it.
……
OK, back to today’s workout.
Yadda, yadda, yadda, we’re training for Nationals/Worlds whatever, lots of time to go with no racing, blahblahblah…
Yup, we’ve already talked about all that stuff.
So, hey… enough with it.
How about some intervals to help with your explosiveness today?
How about you…
Start Me Up –
Warm up well.
Find a clear, clean stretch of traffic-free open road that will allow you to ride full-gas for 10-12 seconds.
This is important.
You’re going to be going really darn hard, and you don’t want to/can’t be dealing with cars, potholes, etc.
Shift into a gear appropriate for a race-style start (you can/should experiment a bit with this until you get it figured out. This is good stuff to have figured out for ‘cross season, nice side benefit of this workout!)
From a dead stop (or as close to it as practicable…) get out of the saddle and punch it.
Hard.
Full gas, no messing around.
Shift up as necessary to continue acceleration until you get up to max speed.
Full-gas sprint continues for a duration of 10-12 seconds.
Recover for 30 seconds and then go again.
Repeat 3-5 times.
That’s a set.
Five minutes recovery and then repeat.
You’re looking to do 3-5 sets, or (if you’re using a power meter…) as many sets as you can without seeing a noticeable drop in peak power output.
Well, it’s Wednesday. For the majority of the season, this is the day that we talk a little bit (or, ok… a whole lot, sometimes…) about our technique & our skills.
Today, though?
Today we’re doing something a little bit different.
We’re going to talk about hanging up the bike for a while.
For many of you out there, the season is either already over, or pretty darn close to over.
I’m guessing that’s as much a relief as a shame for a significant percentage of you.
Crazy thing, though; I’m already starting to hear back from some folks who ended their cross season a week or so ago, and are – believe it or not – chomping at the bit to get back on the bike.
Look… bike racers are crazy. It’s a given, ok?
But c’mon, folks. If you just finished your cross season, after a full year of road and/or mountain bike racing/riding as well?
Just Walk Away
Traditionally, the cyclocross season here in Seattle – and pretty much all of the US – used to wrap up right about now. Nationals was at the end of December, and if you wanted to race more after that, you had to go to Europe and get flogged by the big-boys.
Heck, the vast majority of folks were finished with racing by the first week of December.
Oddly enough, most still are.
You know what?
That’s actually a pretty darn good thing.
If you’re planning on doing what most semi-serious bike racers do – race road or MTB in the spring – you need to take some time off.
Guess what?
That time is now.
Back in the day, when I used to follow up a “full” Cross season with an intense road season – and the occasional MTB race – I would finish up my Cross racing in the first week of December, and literally chain my bikes together until January first.
Yup.
I chained the damn things to each other so that I couldn’t ride.
For three weeks.
If I raced Nationals later in the month?
The three weeks got pushed back to whenever I stepped off after the last race of the year, and the chains went on.
I still think this is a really good idea.
Everyone needs some time off the bike. Heck, even the folks who get paid to race take a few weeks off.
If you’re going to be racing next December, the time to take off is now… or, well, in a couple of weeks, when you get done with Nationals. Or Worlds.
That’s an entirely different conversation, and we’ll get to it when the time comes, promise.
Anyways…
Time off.
You need it.
You need to give your body time to recover so that you can start the whole year-long grind all over again.
How do I know this?
‘Cause I’ve watched – over decades – the repeated attempts of many, many folks to avoid taking this necessary rest, and I’ve seen the results.
The riders who don’t take this rest…
Stop getting faster.
Run out of gas mid-way through the next season
Suddenly re-discover a love for skiing in the middle of cross season
Walk away from the whole damn sport after a while.
What a puny plan…
Are there exceptions?
Of course there are, but if you follow people for long enough, there are darn few of them. It may take a couple of years – heck, it may take 5-10 of them – but eventually if you don’t take a darn break, it catches up with you.
So take a damn break, OK?
But what about my base training for the next season? All my roadie friends are out doing base miles, won’t I be way, way behind when I get back on the bike?
Congratulations.
You’re about to discover the best thing about racing cyclocross all season.
You just finished a “base” period that was far more intense, and far more productive than all those empty “base” miles your roadie friends have been putting in teaching their bodies to go slow over longer distances and durations than they ever actually race.
Three weeks off.
Then back on the bike, and back in the swing of things.
You’ll thank me for it later.
*** OK, let’s (briefly!) define what “Weeks off” means. We’re not talking about 3 weeks on the couch eating bon-bons and drinking tankards of ale. Give yourself maybe a week of that, if you have to (and I don’t rule that out. Some folks need to get a whole bunch of self-control out of their system so they can re-set and re-boot. That’s OK, don’t beat yourself up about it.) “Off,” for our purposes, means “Off the bike.” Keep yourself busy. Do something that has your body moving/working a bit, but isn’t over the top strenuous, and isn’t cycling. This is a good time to start the 1st/Adaptation Phase of a weight training program, for example. Or go skiing. Skiing is good…
WordPress is f-ing with the formatting of everything that I do today, and I can’t get this post up in any form where the text isn’t all squashed togethers on the homepage.
Please click through and read this post as a discrete page so that you have a tolerable reading experience!
– onwards –
Well, it’s Tuesday, and we’re workin’ hard to get ready for the big races coming up in the new year.
Unless you’re new here, I’m guessing that you might just have a pretty good idea what that means for today.
Yup.
You guessed it.
Buckle up, today you’re flogging yourself senseless with a series of mixed metaphors!
No… wait, that’s not it.
I meant that you’re doing…
The Classic 2×20 –
– Warm up.
– Go as hard as you can for 20 minutes.
– Recover for 2 minutes.
– Go again for another 20 minutes.
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.
Ditto Heart rate monitor.
Keep it steady.
Don’t have either one?
This workout is great on the trainer, and that’s how I usually do ‘em… in fact, I think this workout is probably best when you do it on the trainer, especially if you don’t have a power meter.
On a trainer, you pick a gear & a cadence, and if you can keep both constant for the duration?
Bang…
…cut-rate ergometer.
I try to roll these in a slightly harder gear than I would normally ride, big enough that I have to consciously work hard to keep the cadence (and hence, power) from dropping.
Keep it steady.
These take practice to do well, and the better you get, the harder they get.
If you’ve been playing along with us the last couple of days, you just spent the weekend either racing, or riding hard enough that actually racing would have been a step down…
I’m guessing that if you’re a regular around these here parts you’ve got a pretty good idea what’s on the agenda today.
Yup.
Suit up, and head on out for a nice…
Recovery Spin –
– Get on your bike. Roll out into the street, 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.
If you didn’t happen to check in yesterday, it might be worth your while to scroll down a bit and take a look.
We’re pretty much operating on the same set of assumptions today, and as a result to the same plan.
We’re prepping for the bigraces down the road, in the absence of much racing to be had.
We’re riding pretty darn hard…
…in fact, we’re probably riding just a tad bit harder (in aggregate) than we would at a race,and today?
Today we’re doing a…
Jacky Day.
This is a good general climbing and endurance workout that will stretch you a little bit longer than anything you’re likely to see out on the cross courses.
Select a route that will enable you to hit at least 3 climbs of 10 minutes or so each, with flat to rolling terrain in between.
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 as close as you can get. With a warm up of 30 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 overreaching justa bit.
I’ve been getting enquiries from people who are trying to figure out what the heck they can do to keep fit in the time between their last races & the big races (Nationals & Worlds) looming a few weeks away down calendar.
You over there in Europe reading this likely don’t have that problem.
Nice.
In the US, we haven’t really come to terms with the “Winter Sport” nature of cyclocross, and we front load the calendar in almost all of our local series. Here in Washington State, while we’ve got almost more racing than is good for us in Oct – November, the 2 big series’ are all done, and the couple of little stand-alone races that are left are all done come the end of the year.
Let’s be honest with ourselves… this ain’t ideal.
Blech.
Here’s the thing, though.
This is an opportunity to improve if you have the discipline to do take advantage of it.
You don’t have to worry about racing for a while, and that means you can train your ass off for a couple of weeks, and still roll a short taper into Nationals.
There’s an old saw of a saying that goes something like “You should always train harder than you have to race, that way nothing in a race will come as a surprise.”
I don’t know that I completely agree with this, but I like the idea of it at least.
So, no racing this weekend?
Guess what? You’re going to ride really G-damned hard instead… ’cause you can.
You’re doing..
The Doppelganger –
– Warm up well. If you have time, warm up as you would for a race. It’s good practice, if nothing else.
– After you have warmed up, do five full-gas starts. Focus on the second effort in your start, working on getting back on the gas right after you max-out on your initial effort and begin to sit down.
– 20 minutes at your 2×20 pace.
– 2 minute rest.
– 10 minutes of Over/Under intervals
The baseline for this interval is the level of effort/output you just did in the 20 minute effort.
However hard you went in that interval, you are going to try and hold that for the 10 minutes.
Easy, right?
Here’s the rub.
You’re going to sprint for 10 seconds every minute of the interval.
How hard are you going to sprint?
Hard, but not so hard that after you sprint, you can’t sit back down and keep churning away at your 2×20 level.
This takes some practice to figure out.
Don’t get all freaked out if you blow it and can’t hold the effort until the end. You tried, right?
Having said that, don’t wuss out and quit. This is some difficult s***, man. You want to get faster, right?
OK.
Here’s how this works.
Use a stopwatch. Put it on your bars.
Start the stopwatch.
Start the interval with a sprint, out of the saddle pretty hard, but not full gas.
Sprint for 10 seconds.
Back in saddle, drop into your 2×20 zone. Hold this until the minute mark, then –
Sprint again. 10 seconds.
Back in saddle, 2×20 level until 2 minute mark…
Repeat.
Repeat…
Repeat, until you have hit the 10 minute mark.
– 5 minute recovery
– 10 minutes at 2×20 level
– 2 minute recovery
– 10 minute Over/Under Intervals
(same as above)
– SPRINT at the very end of the last interval. 30 seconds, all out.
Really all out, like “I’m sprinting for the Maillot Arc en ciel” all out. You should be at least half-blind at the end of the sprint.
Heck, you should be so gassed when you start the sprint that just upping the tempo a little bit puts you in a box.
So, it’s Friday – awesome – and some of us are gearing up for some racing this weekend.
Sound like you?
Racing on Saturday?
Guess what?
You’re doing…
Can Openers…
today!
– 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 5-6 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.
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.
… spin out the legs, go home, and get ready for tomorrow’s race.
Racing on Sunday but not Saturday this weekend? Not racing at all this week?
If you did yesterday’s workout, you’re probably feeling pretty darn gassed today.
Heck, even if you didn’t today’s a pretty good day to take things just a wee bit easy…
Go for a…
One to Two Hour Moderate Ride –
Get on your bike.
Go ride for an hour or two.
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.
Sorry about the empty blog the last couple of days. My road trip down to the USGP races in Bend went a little long, and was a little bit challenging, logistically… so no way to get posts up during most of the trip.
Back now though!
So, onward…
If you’re still racing at this point in the year, you’re probably either living in a country other than the US, or you’re looking ahead to the big races down the road, like Nationals and Worlds.
Good for you.
In most of the country, though, this is where things get tough.
We really haven’t figured out this “Cross in January” thing in the US, yet, and the race opportunities are few and far between this time of year.
Which is a bummer.
We’ll be talking about ways to work around this problem in the next few days, so stay tuned.
Today, though? Today we need to get some work in, and if you’re playing along with us, you’re deep in the season, and you might just be losing a little bit of your endurance at the tail end of the races.
So, gird your loins, this one is gonna’ hurt.
It’s the…
3×20, aka Hell Day.
Day. I said day, didn’t I?
Anyways…
– Warm up. Pretty well.
– Go as hard as you can for 20 minutes.
– Recover for 5 minutes. Or maybe a bit more.
– Go again for another 20 minutes.
– Recover for 5 minutes. Or maybe a bit more.
– Go again for another 20 minutes.
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 or third 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 third 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 workout is great on the trainer – if you can stand to be on a trainer that long – and that’s how I usually do ‘em… but I’m crazy that way. This workout is probably best when you do it on the trainer, unless you have a really peaceful stretch of road you can use, but it takes a certain kinda crazy to do it, no doubt.
Well, I’m down in Bend, and writing c/o the glacial “Hi-Speed” internet that comes courtesy of the gerbils chained to a wheel somewhere in the bowels of my hotel…
ARRRRGGGHHHHH…. SSSOOOOOO SLOOOOOOW!!!
Phew.
Now that that’s off my chest, how about a workout?
Lot’s of folks are racing today.
If that includes you, sweet.
Have fun.
Go Race!
Racing on Sunday, but not today (Saturday)?
Today, have a go at some…
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 5-6 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.
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.
… spin out the legs, go home, and get ready for the race.
But what if you’re looking for something that’s really easy to do on the trainer, or that you can do as a warm up for your race?
Hey…
Got ya’ covered.
You can do…
The R.S.W.O. –
– Get on trainer. Spin for about 5 minutes.
– 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.
– 5-10 minute effort at your 2×20 output level.
Repeat The entire sequence (Usually minus the 2nd 5-10 minute effort.)
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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