Author: Adam MyersonIf you're a cyclist who lives where it snows, you know that there's no sense in complaining about it. No one likes shoveling a driveway, but the only way to survive in a winter climate as an athlete is, of course, to pray for snow, and play in it. The key is to make the best of the winter while it's here, and the best way to do that is on the "misery sticks". A bad winter for riding usually means a good winter for skiing. Many of our clients and friends have either gotten serious about Nordic skiing, or come to cycling from a skiing background. In the early years, this was uncharted territory for us in terms of training properly if cycling was still your ...
Running for Cyclocross
Like barriers or mud, running is one of the core qualities of cyclocross that isn't the most important aspect or even mandatory, but crucial to prepare for. 'Cross is still mostly about who can pedal and drive their bike the fastest, and while a race might be lost on the run, they're only occasionally won there. Some of us may have a little more natural talent for it or even a running or triathlon background, but running when you've spent a season racing road or mountain bikes just plain hurts. As you prepare for the 'cross season, it's important to first be able to incorporate adaptive running into your training, and then be able to do some structured work to improve your running ...
You Can Take it With You
It's a common refrain for North American professional cyclists that traveling is the hardest part of the sport. This isn't unique to pros, though. It's crucial for racers at every level to consider how traveling can take away from your performance, and how much they need to prepare and account for it, just as they would with training. Bike racing is hard, of course, but it's something you prepare and train for. Traveling is something you do secondarily and is often out of your control; it's obviously not going to make you stronger to sit in a car for 6 hours, and undoes all the training, resting, and dieting you've done to prepare. Whether it's time in the car or maybe ...
Training While You Work
Most of our clients at Cycle-Smart are not professionals. Or more specifically, they're not professional cyclists. The majority of people we work with are trying to be the best bike racers they can be within the context of their "real lives" - work, school, family - they have other commitments that they aren't looking to sacrifice in order to become a full-time bike racer. One of our biggest challenges as coaches is to help them find the balance between their professions and personal lives and their athletic goals.Within that context exists a classic challenge for working professionals who are also amateur bike racers: the business trip. Training in the context of daily work is ...
Training Weaknesses, Racing Strengths
By the month of May, most North American riders are done with base training for their summer season, or very close to it, and have anywhere from 1-3 months of racing under their belt. If you've had a successful spring, you should have a strong foundation of aerobic fitness, with the ability to ride at race pace for up to 60 minutes, enough endurance to finish your longest races, and the capacity to recover quickly from interval work and consecutive training or racing days.This is also the point where you should have enough information to sense what you're doing well and what you're doing poorly. Have you been climbing well? Sprinting well? The opposite? Are you finding that you're OK ...
Hang on to that Form
While it might be approaching cyclo-cross season for some of us, just as many still have a month or two 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 this year, and 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 ...
Sick and Tired
It's going to happen to all of us at some point in year. Things are going well, you're on top of your form and riding strongly, and then it starts: scratchy throat, stuffy nose, itchy eyes-- that's it, you're sick! Many riders make the mistake of overtraining (or underresting), depressing their immune system, and making themselves vulnerable in the first place, but also don't give themselves enough time to fully recover from fear of losing fitness. It's a recipe for an early end to your season. In this article, I'll detail how to prevent getting run down and susceptible to illness, and how to rescue your form if it does happen.If you're getting sick and tired of being sick and tired, ...
Resting Your Way to Fitness
When ambitious riders want to improve, naturally the thing they focus on is their training. Usually they take the "more is better" approach, piling on more hours, miles, and intensity. To a point, those are the basic ingredients for getting stronger; you train hard, you get better. "Ride lots" is zen-like in it's simplicity, but it works. And yet, training is only half the story.The important part of your improvement is not just the training, but almost more importantly, the resting. In previous articles I've written about the cyclical nature of training and the process of stressing a system, letting it heal, adapt to the stress, and improve, and then stressing it again at a higher ...
Multi-Day Race Recovery
No matter what your body type or racing preference, most of us at some point will find ourselves focusing on a stage race or multi-day criterium series. Each region of the US has that one big event that local riders anchor their season around. In New England it's traditionally been races like Killington, Fitchburg, and Green Mountain. In Wisconsin it's now Tour of America's Dairyland, and Superweek before that. Those are just a couple of examples, and I'm sure you have one in mind for this season. Assuming you've done all you can training-wise leading up to the event you're targeting, it's important not to waste any of that precious form while the event is actually happening and in the ...
Intense Rest
Whether you did a fall base period or a full cyclo-cross season, if you live in a cold climate January and February are the most difficult months to train. If it's not already something they focus on, I encourage my clients to take advantage of the cyclo-cross season as a way to maintain fitness through the New Year before they're forced off their bikes or indoors because of weather. Another way to utilize this time period between the end of the road or mountain bike season and beginning of winter is to try to do a fall build-up period. This allows them to work on a broad base of aerobic fitness at a time when racing won't interrupt training, as it does much of the rest of the ...