Time to Focus on Cyclocross – Ready or Not, Here I…

While I’m pleased that my cold has passed and health has returned to my body, I can’t believe that cyclocross season starts in only 3 weeks.  Unlike last year when we had a new baby born on this day in 2010, I’ll have a little more fitness for CX in 2011.  I had to take about 3 weeks off the bike in 2010, and I entered the CX season with a CTL in the low 40′s / high 30′s.  This year, my CTL will likely be double last year, but that doesn’t mean I can ride twice as fast.  I have a few challenges in CX that my fitness can’t fix.  First, my offroad bike handling is not the best.  I have never ridden a mountain bike in my life.  I owned one for a brief period of time via an eBay purchase, but I sold it a year later after never riding it.  Second, I still have winter road / base miles goals to achieve in the road offseason, so I can’t peak for CX like the other racers.  In fact, I’ll probably do 70 – 80 mile hard rides on Saturday and then attempt to race cross on Sundays.  That’s a recipe for disaster, but at least I’ll get in my base miles, right….

My wife informed me last night that our kids can’t realistically spend all day at the cross race which is required if I race Masters as the first race, and she races Women’s A’s as the 3rd to last race.  So, I am being forced to likely race Men’s A’s.  While my fitness is above last year, my poor bike handling and Saturday long rides will be enough to ruin any chance to even finish anywhere near the top half of the field.  So, look for me to be pulling up the rear in the Men’s A’s unless we can sort out some baby sitting in the next three weeks.  I’ll miss week 1 due to work, so October 9th will be the start of the fun.

Despite these challenges, I still agree with this TrainingPeaks post on why cyclocross is such a great sport and something everyone should do at least a few times a winter.

Races Should Not Be Your Best Efforts

I know many cyclists will disagree with the basic premise of this post, but I’ll explain my thought process below.  The concept is to challenge the commonly held belief that we peak for races and put forth our best efforts in races.  I’ve owned a powertap for 3 years, but I’ve never raced more than a few races with it.  Some will argue that races produce your best numbers, but I will challenge that concept by suggesting that training should almost always produce your best numbers if you are racing correctly.

The concept that races should produce your best numbers and races should produce your best efforts is based on the idea that races are hard and “motivation” is highest in a race.  However, I’ll challenge that concept with the following two points.

1. If you have never trained at a certain effort/duration (i.e. 450 watts for 5 min), then don’t expect to be able to produce that effort in a race for the first time.

2. If you are producing your highest efforts constantly in races, then you are probably doing one of the following:

Not training hard enough.  

If you can produce 320 watts for a 60 min crit, yet you have never achieved that number in training, then you are probably not training and testing with a structured approach.  Peak efforts should be pleasant surprises built on foundations of peaking numbers near race day, not anomalies produced only during races.  Go back and review your peak efforts.  If more than 1/3 of them are happening in races, then I’m going to suggest that you are not training hard enough to prep for race efforts.

Riding too hard in races and burning matches.

If you generating peak numbers in races, then you are either racing above your ability (i.e. may need to downgrade if you see peak numbers prior to getting dropped in a race), or you are burning matches in races.

In races, it is common to see riders struggle with the pace.  Maybe family, work, or injuries have made the season very difficult compared to past years.  So, a rider may be riding what was once their proper category, but now it is beyond their training level.  They can either ride out the season or downgrade until they can hold the pace.  The WKO+ / Coggan / Allen Power Profile Chart is a great way to quickly get a feel for a rider’s strengths and weaknesses for a given category.  While I find that the chart can vary depending on your weight (i.e. heavier riders are slightly over penalized more than real world conditions), it is a very close indication in my experience.  If you are touching the top of the category below you on the chart, you’re likely fine and need to improve.  However, if you are nowhere close to your category on the chart, you may want to downgrade until you can ride efforts closer to your peers at that level.

The key is that most races should ridden at efforts below where you have trained.  For example, if you have trained and tested correctly, then you have ridden an all out 20 min effort.  There are very few cases where you will be replicating that effort in an actual race.  I can only think of one, a solo breakaway 8 – 10 miles from the finish.  Anything else would leave you depleted and unable to continue racing.  Unless you are throwing down an end of race effort, you should never produce a peak 20 min effort.  If you do, then that tells me you have never tested an all out 20 min in training.  An all out 20 min training effort is designed to leave everything on the road because it is training, however, if you do that in a race, you’ll have nothing to finish.  So by definition, only a race ending effort should even remotely have the possibility of a 20 min peak.   If you are in a two or three man breakaway, I’d suggest that you also need to hold a little something back to sprint at the end, so I’d question if that would produce a peak effort either.

The net/net is that training is the time to test, train, and extend your peak efforts.  You have the ability to test and train your 1 min, 5 min, 20 min, and 60 min in a variety of conditions and often with different levels of freshness so you are prepared to race on race day.  You should always try to make your hardest training days harder than your hardest racing days.  While this may not be possible for the entire race effort, it is definitely possible and suggested for shorter efforts.  If you find that all your peaks are coming in races, then try to determine if your training isn’t hard enough, you’re racing too hard in races, or your racing above your ability/fitness level.

Weight Loss for Cyclists

As a cyclist, weight gain and loss are key factors that affect every rider.  In flat races, there is less of an issue with carrying around some extra weight.  When the road points up, it can be a huge issue.  As a bigger rider, I’ve always ridden in the high 180′s and low 190′s.  This season, I raced in the low 170′s and will target high 160′s in the 2012 season.  The key to weight loss is simple calories in and energy expended.  I used the Livestrong Calorie Tracker app with a ton of success in 2011.  The key is monitoring the unconscious eating and calorie intake.  In many cases, it is a sport drink or an energy bar packed with 200 useless calories.  If you can eliminate a few of those a day and watch a couple other items, then you quickly cut out 500+ calories and have started the journey.  Here are the major mistakes that CyclingTips blog highlighted which I also observe others doing:

There are some common mistakes I see when athletes try to lose weight:

• Eating large amounts of foods that are high in “healthy fats” such as avocado, oils, nuts and seeds. Whilst this is quite healthy from a cholesterol perspective, a gram of fat has the same calorie value no matter whether it’s from pig fat or olive oil. Half an avocado contains the same calories as a Mars Bar!

• Snacking on sports bars, drinks and lollies when they’re not actually training. These foods pack a lot of energy into a small, easy to consume package. Not ideal for weight loss.

• Overeating protein shakes or other recovery foods when it’s not necessary (eg. after an easy recovery ride or an easy roll to the coffee shop with your mates)

• Not adjusting their calories for periods of lower training loads, or when you’re injured or taking a break from the bike

• Excessive calories coming from sports foods and supplements you don’t need

Masters Racing and Rest

I blog often about my challenge to get into peak form with so much business travel affecting my training.  Whenever I get to 80 CTL, I have some type of work travel which takes me off the bike for a week and typically reduces my CTL by 10 points.  I am now back to near 80 CTL, but I’m heading out again on travel, so that’ll drop.  I was planning to race River Gorge Crit and Labor Day Crit in the P/1/2 Twilight race, so it may be ugly for me, but I will hopefully do a respectable effort.  With cyclocross just around the corner, I’m opting for these crits over longer road races due to my increased weight (gained 8lbs back) and focus on shorter races like cyclocross.

As the year comes to an end, I’m realizing that although some non-travel weeks allow me to get in an extra ride or two, it isn’t always helpful to my training.  Whenever I try to add a ride or two in a week, I find that I don’t have enough recovery to go hard.  So, all my training that week becomes a mixture of level 3 and level 4.  When I have full rest days off the bike between my training days, I can ride much harder for longer.  While this isn’t rocket science, I find the interesting part to be the total TSS at the end of the week.  I can sometimes get more TSS in a week with fewer days because rest days allow me to crush training efforts.  So, I’m considering making a new rule for myself that doesn’t allow me to train consecutive days unless it is a weekend.  I have to be flexible with work and business travel, but that is the new plan (actually trained this way last year).  I’m guessing that my age is likely causing it to take longer to recover which is a common thread I read everywhere.  So, while age may not affect my top end or FTP much at this point, it is impacting my recovery.  So, I’ll go with quality over quantity in 2012 and see if I get better results.  2012 plan will remain TNC (FTP intervals), Thurs (Anaerobic Intervals), Sat (Long Miles – Kennesaw Beyond Allatoona Ride), and Sunday (Sweet Spot).  The total hours will remain around 8h to 8.5 hours in normal weeks, and it will drop down to 4 – 5 hours in travel weeks and often less.  This is not how someone should train who wants to improve at P/1/2 races in 2012, but that is the plan, and I’m sticking with it…..

Race Winning Strategies

Today there was a great post on Training4cyclists that highlighted one of the interesting topics confronting most racers in the Cat 2 – 5 levels.  It discussed race winning strategies and whether a cyclist should just accept their weaknesses and focus on their strengths to race only those races that play to their strengths.  The area where this becomes tricky is determining one’s strengths and weaknesses.

I have been racing and training with the belief that I only had strengths in sprinting for the last couple years.  This was based on my Performance Manager Chart in WKO+ from TrainingPeaks.com.  While this is true to some extent, what was really happening was my other areas were “untrained” rather than weaknesses.  So, it is important for a rider to really focus on all areas with structured intervals to determine which areas are weaknesses and which areas are untrained.  After about 6 – 8 weeks of focused intervals, it will become very clear where true weaknesses exist.  I am not a climber due to my weight, but this year I got my weight into the low 170′s for several weeks which helped to fix some climbing issues.  I am confident that a focused diet could get into the high 160′s and create a decent climber profile.  With work, this is realistic for me.  However, when I focused on 20 minute intervals, my FTP sky rocketed since I had never trained with any sustained efforts in the past.  I still struggle to hold a high FTP whenever work takes over (often), so this is not a natural strength, but it is something that can be trained with time and focus.

The point of this post is to pick races which play to your strengths and focus on those races where you have more cards to play, but don’t blindly assume that all your current weaknesses are indeed weaknesses.  They could be areas where you are untrained and just need some time to develop.

Working for a Living

Yes, work has created a challenge the last few months. New job left me with 3 hrs of training per week for nearly two months. Peak 20 min has dropped from 365 watts to 315 watts. Weight has gone from 172lbs to 176lbs. However, all is not lost. Learning how to drop weight and increase FTP will be a useful skills for offseason and next spring. So, glass is still half full. Only one or two races left, then on to cyclocross season.

Training with Structure

Every time I’ve made gains on a ride this year, I’ve thought about how I’d like to blog about it so that I don’t forget how I made progress.  Every winter, I seem to forget what worked for me the prior year, so I blog more for myself as a journal / history to refer back more than any external reason.

However, this post is about something that I discovered only this year.  Since I started racing three years ago, I have read about how it is important to train with “structure” or a “plan”.  I read all the cycling plans and material to try and understand the concept, but I couldn’t really execute on any plans.  I even purchased a few plans from top online cycling training sites, but I couldn’t even complete week one without time issues or often just difficulty of the plan.   I now realize this is very similar to a young teenage boy who reads Muscle and Fitness magazine hoping to learn how to get a six pack and big chest to do better with the girls at his school.  Despite his best intentions, he can’t complete the same workouts that the guys in the magazine are doing.  Some of it has to do with strengths / maturity, some with steroids, and some with time (takes years to get to their level).

However, there is something that this young teenage boy is doing that is better and more advanced than 95% of the riders who race in the Southeast.  This teenage boy is training with “structure”.  Even at an early age, most of us get introduced to the gym at school or a local gym in town with some “junior” membership in hopes to improve our strength.  For whatever reason, at that age we are able to quickly comprehend the concepts of “training plans”.  Ask any 14 year old boy what is his “workout plan” when he goes to the gym, and I bet most can rattle off something like the following….”Well, I do a 3 day plan.  On Day 1 – Chest / Back, Day 2 – Bi’s and Tri’s, Day 3 – Legs / Abs, etc….”    I wasn’t a gym rat, but I have used variations of the above plan since I was in middle school.  I can’t tell you when I learned this approach, but it was very early.  I remember feeling self conscious when I misunderstood the “push/pull” concept and paired the wrong parts together only to have someone explain that I was creating too much fatigue in a single workout.  Fair enough, simple stuff, even my mom has a 3 day “circuit” that she does on the machines where she rotates.

So, why is it that most racers go out on random group rides which provide no structure?  I did it for two years.  It’s fun, right.  Can you imagine if gym workouts were random like cycling group rides.  You’d start with a plan to do 10 reps x 3 sets of chest at 225lbs, but then, someone takes off the 225′s on their rack, and they are going to do 5 reps max.  Oh crap, you and others don’t want to be left behind, so you quickly add weight and match their efforts.  Then, after 1 set of 5 reps of max chest, they throw down the weights onto the rack and quickly start pumping out Leg Curls.  You are on rep 3 of your max trying to match their effort when you notice this.  You drop your weight and run over to the Leg Curl machine next to them and immediately at 10lbs more than them.  You’re both pumping out the leg curls, freaking ehhh, nice.  Wait, who’s that, some new guy just started doing preacher curls across the room and everyone is already headed over there.  You dont’ want to be last.  Drop your leg curls and head over.  Who cares that you only did 1 set of 7 leg curls because it’s preacher curls time, right.  So, imagine if this continued for another 90 minutes.  I bet you would be tired and feel like you got a hard workout, maybe the hardest day ever in the gym, right.

Now, what kind of progress will you make.  Your size and growth will be terrible because you never complete sets or properly fatigue each muscle group.  Your working hard, but the lack of structure will leave you with terrible results.  Anyone can tell you that doing half sets and mixing max in at random times will lead to poor results.  Even worse, if you had to compete in a lifting competition or any competition, you’d find that you are not very strong at all.  If everyone had to do a 225lbs max number of reps competition like the NFL combine, you’d be hurting after 5 reps…. News Flash – This is the exact same with training using group rides!

Group rides are hard, but they do not provide multiple sustained 20 min hard efforts.  They may have one or two hard 5 min or 1 min, but they don’t have 6 x 5 min or 5 x 1 min efforts like a structured cycling plan.  In essence, you are never stressing any zone hard enough to make the proper adaptations similar to the gym rat running from one machine to the next with half efforts.  One is obvious to everyone, the other is the most common mistake I see in training.

So, if you want to make progress, create your own 3 day or 4 day plan.  Instead of Chest/Back, Bi’s/Tri’s, Legs/Abs, make a cycling version.  I have a 4 day plan that has become a 3 day plan lately.  It is basically 2×20/SST, VO2 Intervals, Long Day of Tempo, Race or another 2×20 / SST.   Basically, I am trying to devote one to two days a week to raising FTP via 2×20 intervals usually done at FTP.  I devote another day to 3 min or 5 min hard efforts which used to include hill repeats, but it has been dropped with a new job this month.  Finally, I get in one long day with the team on a group ride where I don’t care about pace and keep it around high zone 3 for duration / fitness / TSS.  On day 4, if I have one, I race or add another FTP focused day.  If I do race, then I normally have an easy day  or 3 depending on a Sat or Sunday race.

I’m sure nobody will read this or make changes to their training, but this approach has raised my FTP from 320 to 360 in a few months.  I guarantee anyone who adopts that 4 day plan and uses their power meter to set those zones using an honest 20 min all out test to get their 95% number = FTP will make HUGE gains.  Question:  Are you willing to change??  Based on what I see out there, the answer is usually “no”.  No problem, just don’t talk about this rider or that rider having “natural talent” because the only difference between most of these rides at the Cat 2 – 5 level is structured training.  Good luck and good riding!

Progress Forward / Regressing Backwards

So far, 2011 has been a great “training” season of progress with new peaks everywhere.  I have focused on FTP work and raised my 20 min peak from 320 watts peak in 2010 to 360 watts this year.  More importantly, I’ve dropped weight from 203lbs peak on January 3, 2011 to 176lbs yesterday.  I was planning to keep progressing and get my peak 20 min up to 380 – 390 watts and weight down to 170lbs.  I can easily continue dieting and get the weight down, but I noticed that my power has started to move backwards.  I’m likely getting near my potential FTP and will make less gains moving forward if I make any at all.  The weight loss may also be drawing from power as drastic weight loss the last two weights likely included a few pounds of critical muscle.  My gut says that both of those items have contributed to a brief plateau, but I think the smart money is on the fact that I started racing a lot the last few weeks including a 78 mile climb fest that has left me tired and without the training structure that provided these gains.  With a race coming this weekend, a trip the weekend after,  Roswell Criterium the following week, then State Crit / Sandy Springs, it doesn’t look like I’ll get much structure back.  So, hopefully, I’ll stop racing in June and start training again with a focus on FTP, VO2, and sprint power.  I always feel like peaking in cycling is similar to landing a jumbo jet in a thunderstorm, and this year I’m flying an A380 and trying to land on a small air strip in a rain forest.  Fasten your seatbelts, I think I’m headed for a bumpy landing…

New PR 20 min Power – 1 Month ‘Til Race Season

After a tough 2hr solo ride and a 2.5 hour Airport Ride on Sunday, my legs were pretty tired. However, due to a change in meeting schedules, I was home at 5pm in time to jump on my bike for 90 minutes on a Monday afternoon….pure gravy. My legs felt heavy and not ready for anything tough, but I figured piling on one more threshold workout prior to a day or two of rest would work well. I set off at a tempo pace and decided to go for a 20 min power test since it is something I never do because they are usually so hard for me. After a few weeks of sweet spot training (SST) at 88% of FTP, I was able to do an effort above my prior 20 min best without too much strain. In fact, I’m confident that I could have gone about 10 watts higher, and my power was lower in the test due to 4 – 5 street crossings and a bunch of slowing for little kids on bikes and moms with strollers. For now, I’m happy with a new PR at 325 watts in 20 min knowing I can easily get it up to 345 watts by June’s Augusta race goal. My weight has come down from the peak of 202lbs down to 190lbs. After some healthy eating and tough riding, I weighed in at 188.0 this morning with 53.6% water. Based on my normal water of 53.0, I likely have a few tenths of a pound of water from all the Gatorade/Heed/Gu2 drink powders. So, I’m happy with 188lbs in late February and will target 178lbs by June. I’ve lost 14 lbs in 7 weeks, so I should easily hit the June target if I don’t fall off the rails. I think 1 lbs per week is a more realistic goal moving forward, so my target of 178lbs in June is conservative. An ideal race weight would be 175lbs in June. I haven’t been that weight since high school, so I doubt I can get there, but I can dream. It would give me a 60 min power of 4.1 w/kg, and a sprint of almost 20 w/kg. However, we are talking about a lot of hard dieting and some very hard threshold intervals done every week to get there. Is it possible, probably not, but I’m going to give it a shot. If I fail, I’ll at least have the fitness I have today which is more than any fitness or power I took to a race last season. I’m easily 2 – 3% faster this year since I haven’t been sick, no new bike, no new bike fit, and a focus on SST trainer intervals this winter. No offense to fans of LSD rides, but those advocates are missing a crucial piece to the puzzle. Professional riders do multiple days at 4 – 6 hours, but most P/1/2/3 riders are racing weekends that consist of two days at most with one day no longer than 1 hour in most cases. Long road races are three hours. So, who will ride faster, the guy who did a bunch of LSD for 3 – 4 hours about once a week, or the guy who rode hard for 2.5 hours twice a week and 1 hour SST twice a week. News Flash: Riding at endurance pace for less than 3 hours will do nothing for your fitness, nothing, just junk miles that will do nothing to help you. So, if you are determined to do “base miles” or “LDS” (Long Slow Distance), make sure you go longer than 4 hours to have any hope of adaptations with 5 – 6 hours as a better goal for any real gains. Have fun. I’ll do 2 hours at SST instead and then hang out with my family….

A New Season Is Here

After a long, cold winter with some rain, snow, and ice, spring is now just around the corner.  This means one thing, race season is near.  NGCA is holding our annual winter training camp this weekend, so we’ll be hammering around LaGrange, GA trying to get in some fitness and get to know one another better.  Team camp is a fun time to get away from normal life and just hang out with some great riding.  We have Cat 1 – 4′s all riding together on the team, so there is a nice mix of abilities and experience.  It is fun to ride with people who you may not get a chance to ride with much during the rest of the year.  Looking forward to it.