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.
