OK, yeah, my bad… some of you aren’t on Facebook. Here’s some more info, from the Crampy’s folks.
(Seriously, I did not write in the third person about myself, OK?)
We are excited that Matthew Hill will be helping us with a cyclocross clinic this Saturday to help get everyone warmed up before the race on Monday.Check out Matthew’s blog https://crosssports.net/ and/or follow him on twitter @crosssports
Plan on meeting at the store at 1p and bring your cross bike (or mountain bike) ready to ride off road!
*Please note: there is a $10 fee for the workout to cover expenses and coaches time. Thanks!
**Fee included as part of Mr Crampy’s Crew membership
It’s Thursday! One day closer to the weekend in front of you than it is to the one behind you!
That’s gotta’ be worth something, right?
So, hey… how about a workout?
As always, if you’re feeling a bit gassed today after all the work the last couple of days, feel free to go easy today.
Feeling pretty darn peppy?
Sweet.
This’ll fix ‘ya right up. It’s…
Run. Pause. Get High (Knees, that is…)
Find a set of stairs to do today’s workout on. You’re going to be doing a set of short intervals, so you don’t need stadium stairs or anything like that. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a flight or two of bog-standard office building stairs is perfect.
– 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.
– 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 stairstep at a time. Jog down.
– Repeat x3
Rest again, same as before.
– Sprint up stairs, this time using long strides, several stairsteps 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 –
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 this is your first time running this season, go easy & go short. Don’t overdo this, and don’t risk screwing everything up for the rest of the season by blowing up a knee or something, OK?
If you did, and your numbers are still going up – or staying flat – and your legs aren’t feeling like lead the day after, today you’re doing…
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.
At this point, you should be starting to get the hang of this, and you should be getting better at the basic 2×20.
Better and stronger.
Or, maybe you’re suddenly getting worse at them.
That would be a signal…
…you know, the “Take a rest, stupid!” signal.
This early in the season, if your 2×20 numbers aren’t going up – and you’ve been doing them for a couple/few weeks, and have gotten the hang of ‘em – you need to be better rested when you do them, or you need to go harder.
One or the other.
Or, well, you’re where you’re at, and you really aren’t going to be able to get any better.
That’s possible.
Not likely, but possible.
Really unlikely this early in the process.
Unless you just finished a hard road season. Then there could be a lot of different things going on here.
If you just finished the road or MTB season, and your #s are dropping on your baseline workouts?
Be honest with yourself.
Back things down a notch.
Remember, if you don’t have trouble breathing… heck, with seeing straight at the end of these intervals you aren’t going hard enough.
Yikes! This one went up really darn late… sorry about that.
We’ve been packing the workouts in pretty tightly over the last few weeks, and if you’ve been following along, right about now you’re probably due for a little bit of unstructured fun… on the bike.
So, that’s the workout for today.
Have some fun.
Ride However You Feel…
Get up whenever you feel like it.
Get on your bike.
Go ride.
Do whatever the heck seems like it would be fun.
Go race, go on a group ride, go mountain biking, heck… take out the Cross bike and work on some skills.
This weekend – if it’s at all possible – I recommend getting in the last (or almost last!) road or MTB race of your season. The Cross racing is right around the corner, and it’s really darn hard to match the intensity of racing when you’re training on your own!
So, if you can manage it, your workout today is –
Go Race!
No racing in your neck of the woods?
Today’s Workout – if you’re not racing – is…
The Doppelganger –
Remember just a paragraph ago, when I was saying that it’s really hard to get race-level intensity without racing?
Yeah.
This workout is hard.
Really, really, DAMN hard.
Make sure you’re up for it, don’t do it if you’re feeling a bit gassed, and feel free to cut it in half. Or less.
You’ve been warned…
– 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?
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
– 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.
You asked for a race simulation, right?
Ouch…
Yes, this is really damn hard. You asked for it.
You can always just sub in a 2×20 (or better yet a 3×20…) when you can’t race. That’s a hard darn workout if you do it right, but certainly nothing like the nightmare I just handed to you…
The short, sharp, right-off-the-bat effort is one of the key, defining aspects of Cross racing, so it probably shouldn’t be that big a surprise that we’re going to work on that energy system, eh?
In short – and to repeat – we’re going to be doing more of those; hope you liked ’em! 🙂
Today, though?
Something completely different…
Run. Pause. Get High (Knees, that is…)
– 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.
– 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 stairstep at a time. Jog down.
– Repeat x3
Rest again, same as before.
– Sprint up stairs, this time using long strides, several stairsteps 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 –
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.
– Don’t go that hard if it’s your first (or nearly first) time running this season. In fact, don’t do this workout at all. Do this instead –
– If you’re super fit, or crazy, do a 20 minute effort on the bike (1/2 a Classic 2×20) immediately before running. Be aware, this is a completely bonkers workout combo if you do it right, and if you do do it right, you should need to take it easy tomorrow. Or you’re really damn fit. One or the other…
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..."
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