In the 30 years or so I've spent racing bikes, the month of January has always stood out as the most dynamic, and perhaps most important of the season. In normal winters I would have two weeks off at the holidays to recover from cyclo-cross season and head somewhere warm for road racing in February or March. Some years I went to Europe after 'cross nationals and raced another six weeks without a break. Other years I attempted to be a year-round New Englander and spent two months Nordic skiing before I began structured road training in March. Wherever you live and however you do it, there's something about the winter solstice passing and days getting longer in January that says ...
Glide Your Way to Fitness, Part II
In part one of this series, I focused on the energy systems used in Nordic skiing, and made some suggestions for how to estimate heart rate-based training zones that relate to the work you're familiar with on the bike. Here we'll move to periodization and implementation of workouts, with the goal of showing how to translate from cycling to skiing. As you'll see, it's quite possible to follow the same phases as cycling.The Off-SeasonIdeally, you have an off-season where you do other things, and take a break from training. You raced your bike all summer, then (I hope) took a week or two off to be fresh to start the skiing season. This should happen sometime between June and August. I'm ...
Peaking for Cyclocross Nationals
No matter how you got there, the final two weeks before cyclocross nationals is a unique period. With the continued growth and momentum of 'cross, a couple thousand of us will be finishing their seasons with an event that for some of is the most important race of the year. For others it's just a chance to compete on the same course as the United States' best 'crossers before they shut things down. Whatever your level and goals, it's time to fine tune and make sure you're peaking for the event.The first thing to recognize is that what you've got for fitness right now is pretty much what you've got; there's not enough time in the final two weeks to raise your fitness level through the ...
Glide Your Way to Fitness, Part I
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 ...
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, ...
Training in Training Races
As February comes to an end, many of you in North America racers will begin racing in the next few weeks, if you haven't already. Unless you spent the winter somewhere warm where the early season races actually mean something, most of you will start the year with a month or so of smaller training races to get your feet wet (often 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 higher intensity, variable power training done in a mentally easier environment than solo intervals staring at your handlebars.The catch here is that many riders forget the "training" part of "training race." The ...