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Hang On to That Form!
Making it through to the end of the season
While it might be cyclo-cross time for some of us, just as many still
have a month or more of road or mountain bike racing left to their season.
This late in the year it's very difficult to find the energy or motivation
to train hard unless you've take an extended break in the summer. If you
started your season sometime last winter there may not be any form left
for you to acquire. All the improvements you can make have been made.
So, how then to approach the remaining events and avoid completely cracking
or burning out?
The key is recognizing that for the most part you don't have to train
anymore. With only a month left in the racing season it's too late to
try to build fitness; heavy training runs too high a chance of having
to pull the plug because of fatigue. You've been making deposits in your
form bank all year; now's the time to make some withdrawals. You have
to accept the level of form you have and turn your attention not to getting
faster or stronger, but simply maintaining and feeling good on race day.
The first step is to focus all your attention on recovering fully from
the weekend. If you've raced hard on Saturday and Sunday, before you even
consider training again you need to be completely healed from the efforts
you made. Late in the year your ability to recover quickly is diminished.
A race that might have only taken one easy day to bounce back from might
now take two or more. Since, at this time of year, you shouldn't be in
a rush to squeeze in workouts during the week, you now have the luxury
of perhaps taking a day completely off and as a minimum having Monday
and Tuesday as easy, active recovery rides of 1-2 hours. You might find
that it takes you the entire week before you finally feel like you could
push the pedals hard again. Don't panic if that's the case. Again, you're
not trying to force anything out of your body now, but are instead trying
to work with what it's got.
Assuming you're recovered after the extra day of rest on Tuesday, Wednesday
might be your only real training day of the week. Wednesday is ideal because
it's far enough after the weekend to recover from the races, and far enough
before from the weekend to recover from the training. When you're in this
maintenance mode, Wednesday's workout should consist primarily of aerobic
work, but can include a little of everything. The tricky part is doing
enough to maintain your form, but not so much that it's too difficult
to recover. Keeping the work aerobic is one way to assure that you won't
do any damage you can't heal from without a good meal and a quality night's
sleep. A fast group ride or training race that doesn't push you over your
limit is ideal. You're looking to do as much work at threshold as you
can handle, but again, you have to be aware of your limits and know when
to say no mas. The last thing you want to do is dig deep.
From there, the focus should be on fully recovering from the training.
Thursday and Friday will look just like Monday and Tuesday: 1-2 easy hours
of active recovery. Even if you feel you could have trained again on Thursday,
that's not the point. Again, you're not trying to build more form. Resting
on Thursday is a crucial part of being recovered for the weekend. You
don't want to light all your matches during the week at the time of year
when the book starts to get a little thin.
If you're racing an important event on Saturday, you might only rest Thursday
and do some opening up work on Friday to get yourself jumpstarted for
the weekend. With the extra rest during the week, the opening up workout
on Friday or Saturday becomes more important than at other times of the
year. You don't want your body to shut down, and after two days of rest
that's exactly how you might start to feel. The opening up workout can
sometimes be the most painful one of the week for that reason. It's important
to recognize when you feel blocked because you've taken some extra rest
as opposed to when you feel weak because you haven't recovered enough.
It can be a difficult distinction to make, but if you know you've had
4 of the past 5 days easy, you can be confident that you've recovered.
The ride should again consist of a little work in each zone, just enough
to activate all your energy systems. 15-30 minutes of steady tempo, 5-15
minutes at LT, and 3-5 sprints is enough to get things rolling. If you're
on track, you should feel better and better with each effort. At the same
time, be sure to end the workout at the first sign of fatigue.
This should leave you fresh, strong, and open for race day, where you
can put 100% into your competetive effort with no holds barred. You won't
be physically or mentally tired from a hard week of training, and your
metabolism should be rolling from the workout or race the day before.
The race itself will be sufficiently hard enough to help you keep your
fitness in addition to the one workout during the week. With this approach,
you should be able to ride off the form you have for 4-6 weeks before
you really start to lose form overall and need to train again. On top
of that, you won't feel guilty for skipping workouts you didn’t need
to do anyway. By the time your form really starts to slip away, the season
should be over and you can take a full, deep rest of 1-6 weeks with no
activity before you get back on the bike or start your off-season routine.
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