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"Training" in Training Races
Focus on the training, not the racing.
At this point in the year many of you will begin racing in the next few
weeks, if you haven’t done so already. Unless in you’re in one
of the warmer hotspots where the early season races actually mean something,
most of you will start the year with a month or so of training races to
get your feet wet (often quite literally). Training races are a great
way to evaluate your early season fitness, sharpen your skills for the
real races coming up, and get some harder training done in a mentally
easier environment.
There’s always a problem, though, and here the problem is that many
riders forget the "training" part of "training race."
The excitement can often be too much, ego takes over, and people race
themselves into the ground before the season even starts. If you participate
in training races this winter and spring, it’s imperative to lay
down some rules for yourself based on your training needs and follow them
to the letter, however difficult it may be to hold back when the attacks
are going up the road.
One situation that often arises is that short days and bad weather can
limit your training time, right up to the point the training races start.
This leaves many riders going from 0 to 60 in an incredibly short time,
and leads directly to an early exit to the season. Too much intensity
too soon, without the base to handle and recover from it, will always
put you on the first bus home. Don’t start the training races unless
you have at least one 4-6 week cycle of anaerobic base training done,
including extended intervals in the Light (81-90% of lactate threshold)
and Middle (93-95% of lactate threshold) zones. You don’t need to
be fit enough to win, only fit enough to participate and not set yourself
back from having done so. (See training articles from last spring in the
Bike.com Smart Training archives for more explanation of heart-rate based
training zones.)
In most cases, racing to win these early season training races won’t
be your goal, and it’s crucial to remind yourself of that. No one
turns pro from training race wins. If you plan on participating, make
the races fit your target. If you’re focusing on a mid-season goal
like the Fitchburg stage race, then you should be limiting your anaerobic
work in March and sitting in. If you need to be ready for Willamette in
April, then you might take a more pro-active approach, be active in the
race, and try to raise the total number of minutes you can spend at and
around your threshold.
Either way, don’t race above your fitness level. If you bury yourself
on a Sunday in March when you’re still trying to improve your form,
you run the risk of losing training days during the week. If Tuesday comes
around and you’re not recovered enough to train because you went
beyond yourself on Sunday, you either lose a training day, or end up over-training
because you needed the recovery but trained regardless. In both cases,
you stunt the development of your form, and the racing is counter-productive.
This doesn’t mean you can’t win early season training races
even when you’re holding back, contradictory though it may sound.
If you know, for instance you’ve only been able to finish 30 minutes
of intervals near threshold in your training but find that you’re
fit enough to sit in comfortably during the training race, you might allow
yourself the last 30 minutes of the race to be more active. Still, you
should do your best to avoid being anaerobic and going with absolutely
every attack. Even if you find that just sitting in is challenging enough
for you to get the intensity work you need for the day, you can always
allow yourself the freedom to take part in the sprint for whatever places
are remaining. In this case, the total amount of time you’ll be in
the red zone is limited, so you can only do so much damage.
Often you’ll find that you’ll actually be sprinting for the
win, which I find an excellent lesson in itself. Sitting in during these
early season events is an prime time to actually watch and study a race
while being a part of it as it unfolds. If you’re sitting in, don’t
do so mindlessly. Ride close enough to the front to watch the race as
it goes on. Mark every attack, and who goes with it. See who’s fit,
and who might be someone to follow when the real races start. See how
moves you might have gone with otherwise play out. By doing this, you
can start to get a sense of the ebb and flow of the race without having
to make tactical decisions while you’re anaerobic and can’t
think straight.
The lessons you learn in this approach to training races will hopefully
stay with you when you find yourself in an important event, and help you
with your patience and choice of tactical moves to make or go with. And
in the end, if it does come down to a field sprint, you’ll find yourself
fresh and ready to make a full-strength go at it. In general, holding
back now will let you continue to build your form but still get the benefit
of racing, allowing you to be in ideal form when the events that matter
come around, and the racing is finally more important than the training.
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