The Next Level

By Hunter Allen

What’s the next level?  What does that mean and how do you get there?  Everyone is always talking about the next level and that they are going to ‘the next level’.   What exactly is the next level that they are referring to?   Do you want to have more endurance?  Do you want a higher FTP?  Do you want more ‘matches’ in your matchbox?  Or do you just want more of everything!

Well, of course it’s that last one.  “Sir, can you just give me more of everything, please”….  But,  really can you have more of everything at the same time, or should you just focus on improving one area and then another and then another and finally you have ‘more’ of everything.   The question is of course really about improvement and making sure you go faster on a bicycle.  The challenge is the “How” do I go faster on a bicycle?

Once you have established that you want to improve, you need to consider what is more important for you to improve in?  If you want to take yourself to the next level then that means really improving in every part of your fitness.  When we examine the overall picture of fitness, it’s really your threshold power that holds you back from that next level.   If George Hincapie could all of the sudden go to the next level and now crack out 450 watts at FTP, versus his norm of 420, then I would say that he’s at the next level.  Does this mean his sprint has also improved or that his ability to go hard on short steep hills has improved?  Probably not, but maybe now that his FTP has increased so much, he won’t ever be in a position in which he needs to do a sprint as he is winning solo off the front.   This was the case with a masters athlete that I coached last year.  He had focused on improving his sprint and vo2 max power, which did improve and now he was more competitive in his masters category, but still wasn’t winning races in a dominating fashion and occasionally still being pipped at the line by his archrival. The solution was to ‘go to the next level’.  I had him focus on improving his FTP solely and not worrying about his sprint or Vo2 or any other specific area of fitness.  He increased the amount of training he did by 15-20%, (which was a struggle for a masters rider with family,
work, etc.) and he did more sub-threshold and threshold intervals than he had ever wanted to do.   This focused effort of nearly 3 months working in one area made a difference as his FTP went up more than 30 watts that season over previous seasons.  With this 30 watt increase in FTP, he no longer needed to contend in sprint finishes or worry about short hills, as he just simply rode away from everyone that he competed against.  So, how do you get there?  What training should you do in order to make that quantum leap?  To push yourself farther than you have gone and make it to ‘the next level’.  

The first thing that has to be done is focus on improving your threshold power as that is what determines the ‘level’ that you are riding in.   The average speed of a category 4 race is determined by the collective average threshold power of riders in the peloton and that is a lower power to weight ratio than the Category 3 riders, etc.  So basically if you want to ride in the Category 3 peloton and you are now a Category 4 racer, then you need to increase your threshold power to at least the median of all the racers in the Category 3 pack. When your threshold has improved to the new level, you can then tune the engine so to speak with shorter, harder intervals that give you more race specific qualities.  Here are four key things that you need to do in order to go to the next level.

1- Increase your overall training stress by 15-20%.  This is something that many masters and category racers overlook.   So many of us are time constrained that it’s impossible to get in a ride longer than 2 hours each day and even on the weekend.  If you want to go to the next level though, you are going to have to figure out how to squeeze it in….. and doing (2) separate rides in one day is not going to do it.   You have to get in (2) big rides each month and preferably (3) big rides.  Rides that are at least 5-6 hours long that force you to dig deep near the end, so that when you reach home, you are tired and your muscles are quivering(not cramping though) from the fatigue.   This is the #1 thing you can do and you cannot skip this step if you want to go to the next level, no matter if you are a pro or a recreational cyclist, you have to increase the miles, hours, and overall volume of training stress in order to challenge your cardiovascular and muscular system enough to create positive adaptations for the future.  Those longer rides enhance your endurance and there is no substitute for them.   I have listened to countless stories of riders talking about how they just can’t improve any more no matter how many intervals they do or how many group rides they ride in, yet they never do rides that are 5 hours or longer.

2- Focus on doing longer intervals at or very near your functional threshold power (FTP).   You are going to need to do at least 40-60 minutes of work from 91-105% of your FTP three days a week and then bump it up from there.  After 3 weeks of riding at this level, you need to increase the amount of time spent at or near FTP to 60-90 minutes, where one session a week will be a long ride and have nearly 90 minutes of riding at your FTP.  Start out with (3) x 10minutes at 105% of FTP and build up so that you are doing (3) x 30minutes at 100% of FTP, with lots of little steps in between. If you get too tired to ride right at your FTP, then lower the wattages down to your ‘sweet-spot’ wattage, 88-93% of FTP and continue from there.  You’ll still get plenty of training stress and as long as you can maintain at least 88% or so, then you should be
training intensely enough to get improvements in your threshold.

3- REST between sessions.   Give yourself a rest day between each training day.  If you are really serious and want to improve your FTP, then you will need a rest day between each workout.   This is another important step because if you are doing intervals and don’t hit any numbers each day, then you won’t be receiving the same benefits either!   The beauty of your power meter is that you have a goal wattage to hold in each interval, so you know you are training correctly.  The power meter also tells you when you can’t do the work and that is equally important to know.   If you head out to do a threshold workout and you can’t hit
your goal wattages,  and then give yourself some  rest (endurance pace) and try again in 20 minutes.   If you still can’t hit them, it’s time to go home and rest up for another try the next day.

4- Quality and Quantity counts.   You want to hit those intervals and at the same time you need to also get in a much larger quantity of intervals/work in the legs. Most of the time you are going to emphasize quality over quantity, because if you can’t physically produce the wattages at your threshold power, then you are not straining your systems enough to improve.  For example, you could do (4) x 10 minutes at threshold power with 10 minute rests between each and still get in a total of 40 minutes at threshold , which is better than doing (2) x 20 and the first effort is at FTP, but the second one you can only eek out 85% of ftp.  So, for certain focus on the quality first and if you start to fatigue, shorten the interval length (no shorter than 10 minutes though) in order to still hit the goal wattages.   As you get stronger and stronger, you’ll be able to do more and more intervals and lengthen the total amount of work done at threshold, and eventually you’ll be doing (3) x 30minutes or even (1) x 60 minutes and (1) x 30 minutes.  In that last interval set of each workout, remind yourself that it’s ‘this’ one that really counts. It’s always the last hill repeat, the last interval, the last week of your  build cycle that really makes the difference.  So dig deep in that last effort in order to really get the most out of the effort.    The intervals themselves and how you execute them are also important. If you start too hard in the effort, then you won’t be able to maintain your threshold pace or higher for the entire effort.  If you start too easy, you are cheating yourself of precious training strain.  So, proper pacing is critical to success when doing all intervals, especially threshold ones.  I recommend that you start out quickly to get up to speed, but no need to sprint, then immediately settle in on your threshold pace or 10-15 higher .   Hold this pace until the last minute or so of the effort and then bring up your pace by 10-20% and push hard to the very end.  This gives you a ‘double peak’ shape in your downloaded power file with a peak of wattage in the beginning and then another peak at the end.  This is the ideal pacing strategy for a time trial, threshold
interval and many other intervals as well.

The next level isn’t as easy as just doing some random intervals, riding 50 more miles each week or by
focusing on one specific energy system alone. It’s the combination of all of these things done in a rational, progressive manner that allows you to overload your lactate threshold system and then when you rest, it improves to give you a higher threshold power.  It does take time and do at least three months of highly focused training on your threshold before expecting any significant gains.   There will be days when you are tired and there’ll be days when you are doubting whether the training is working or even worth it.  You have to have faith and push through these days as if we only trained on the days that we felt great, then not much training would get done at all.   The next level is there, and you can get there if you work for it with an intelligent and focused plan.

 Hunter Allen is a USA Cycling Level 1 coach and former Professional Cyclist. He is the co-author of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter, co-developer of CyclingPeaks Software, and is the CEO and Founder of the Peaks Coaching Group.  He and his coach create custom training plans for all levels of athletes.   He also  has online training programs available at www.TrainingPeaks.com/hunter and you can contact Hunter directly www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com

1 Watt of Motivation

By Tim Cusick

Life sometimes gives us moments to reflect on who we are and why we do some things!  A couple of weeks ago I decide to revamp my training and really start adding some longer, harder efforts in a move to raise my FTP.  Reason?  None that was apparent.  I had no big event, no A race, no Grand Fondo,…just a desire to see what it would take to push things to the next level.

Before I started this, I spent some time talking to Hunter about what it will take and one of the longer workouts he challenged me to do was one he called “Kitchen Sink”.  The “Kitchen Sink” workout is plain mean.  A 5 hour plus ride with specific systems workout in each hour.  Basically the first hour has 8 – 10  power building sprints, second hour has FTP raising 2 x 20 minute SST, third 4-5 VO 2 Max building intervals, fourth focuses on 4 – 6 very painful Anaerobic Capacity power intervals and finally in the fifth hour an nice tempo ride home to “brush-up” on your muscular endurance.  The challenge was on and to add to the pain, I chose a nice 107 mile loop to make to make sure I had the time to do all the work.

On ride day I set out and everything came together great!  My power was good I was feeling great and was hitting all my zone targets for each workout segment for the first three hours.  During hour four and the anaerobic intervals, the fatigue really started setting in but I was able to push through and hit the numbers but hour five (+) got a little tougher.  As I pointed my bike home with about 20-25 miles to go and a prescribed tempo session of 45 minutes, I knew it would be tough.  As I was about to start my tempo work I took a deep notice of my average power; 194 watts.  At a 150 lbs this is a pretty solid number for an endurance ride but with all the intervals, I was pretty happy to see it that high. 

That’s when I started having the crazy thoughts; if I can nail my Tempo work I can bring this ride in over 200 watts for around 6 hours and that would be a pretty big accomplishment for me!  With new found motivation I set off on my Tempo work to hit the goal and then it got ugly!  I punched it to Tempo pace and there seemed to be no response!  I had visions of Scotty yelling to Kirk; “I am giving it all she’s got, Captain” coming from my legs!  I was drilling it but the power meter (in this case, usuckometer) was only reading about 225 watts and I didn’t think this would be enough to hit the magical 200 watt goal and it wasn’t.  When I completed my interval I was about 5 miles from home and stuck at 198 watts.  I decide to throw in 5 more minutes of tempo in the effort to achieve but that left me at 199 watts with about 2 miles to go and, ladies and gentlemen, I was cooked.  The desire to lie down on the side of the road was over-whelming, each pedal stroke was a total battle of will power.  In the last 2 miles home I have a small climb of about 400 ft elevation gain.  I got to the bottom still holding 199 watts but not moving it forward.  About half way up I was as a suffering point I am not sure I have ever been at but, I got out of the saddle and gave an all out “sprint” (it was only a sprint in the fact it was a full effort) and about 100 meters before the turnoff into my neighborhood, the beautiful number 200 appeared on my power meter!  I gave another little push to make sure it would stick, turned onto my road and hit the start / stop button on my Garmin.  I had done it!  As I slow pedaled around my house, working hard not to vomit gel cubes and sports drink, I really began to ask myself why?  Why kill yourself for 1 watt?

That is the question isn’t it?  As a coach, potential clients ask me how I motivate my athletes.  As a coach, you cannot motivate people; you can only create the perfect environment for them to motivate themselves. The role of a coach as a motivator is one of understanding what self-motivates the athlete and finding challenging ways to help that self-motivation finds its way to the surface and get expressed in results.  I know there will be people who will read this and say “but a coach should be a motivator, should help me want to do the tough workouts and drive for success, help me get my butt of the coach and do the work” but my answer is no, a coach cannot stop you from choosing to not do the work, a coach cannot make you get off the couch and on the bike unless you first chose to do so.  A coach needs to learn about you and what motivates you towards success and help nurture and mature that in an effort to allow you to become more motivated.  Why?  As a coach I cannot stop an athlete from deciding that today’s workout was to hard so they skipped it or working in the break to win the race was just a little too fast so I “dropped back”.   Self motivation is the key to success; you have got to want to work hard towards your goals whether that is a National Championship or the completion of your first century.  You have to find your 1 watt of motivation inside of you.  What is your 1 watt?  If you are new to riding, target slightly longer and longer ride, challenge yourself to reach for 1 more mile on your long rides.  If you are a Cat 4 rider looking to move to Cat 3, challenge yourself to stay in the break 1 more minute, work hard for one more place.  Looking to complete your first century, push yourself to find one more training day a week.

One More Lap

by Sam Kreig

As the CX season unfolds I realize how short the CX season really is. Months of hard work and it is almost time to start thinking about racing on the road again. With only 4 weeks left in my cyclocross season I must remind myself to race every moment of every race before the season ends. It is so easy to back down… damn every race I want to quit at some point. I always think of what I heard Kent Bostick said to my friend John Hart… "little buddy..Your pain is not special." I live by these words during the hardest part of the race. Sometimes as I am gasping for air or my legs hurt so bad I want to cut them off… I just remember that “my pain is not special.” As I spit on my top tube unable to see straight…. I remind myself again… “your pain is not special”
I hurt… damn do I hurt. Every day I train… I hurt. This past year at master’s nationals I was standing on the curb yelling at my wife with 1k to go in her time trial. She was 3 seconds back on my time sheet. I noticed she was crying when she rode by…these were not tears of sadness… dude these were tears of insane pain… pain I don’t know if I have ever felt. I go hard… damn sometimes I go so hard I can’t feel my hands or feet…but have I ever gone so hard I cried! Never…not yet.. And I guess that is why she as a stars and stripes jersey and I don’t……….. So this year that is my new goal… To race so hard that I either pass out or cry..

Pain and failure is 99% of this sport. So why every time I am suffering do I feel pain and usually fail? You would think I could ignore the pain and grab success by the nads….. It is at the moment when it hurts the MOST….I start to think “my pain is special”…. But I know it isn’t.. We all feel it… we all want to quit. Every minute of every interval I think about it for at least a few seconds… It is like beating you head against a concrete wall. Each time you slam your forehead into the wall it hurts and the wall doesn’t move. The funny thing is I have been repeating this for 6 years now. So the truth is…it is not a failure. I didn’t LOOSE.. I raced my brains out and went as hard as I could.. the guy in front of me is just stronger…should I just quit and not chase him? No way…. The struggle is what I love the most. I think to love this sport, and survive racing you have to enjoy getting beat down as much as you enjoy giving the beat down. I just want to be out there suffering… it always feels so much better when I am making others suffer…but I learn more and grow more from being on the receiving end of a good beating. Motivation comes from failure for me.

I think about the NIKE commercial….my better is better than your better…. If you haven’t seen it go to youtube… and check it out. But really… is my BETTER …better than your BETTER…. Damn if that was the case I would win a ton of races. I don’t win very often so I think there are a ton of guys out there whose BETTER is BETTER than my better. So if Kent is correct that my pain isn’t special… and others are better… why do I race? 99% of the time I know I can’t win. There are always several riders who are a bit stronger. In some cases a TON stronger. So why do I spend thousands of dollars racing and 100’s of hour suffering each year? That's a really good question. I think there are a ton of answers. I have my identity so wrapped around cycling what would I do if I stopped? I would probably have a terrible drug problem or gamble my life savings away. So suffering for hours on end might just be a bargin .

So we now have an idea of the consequences if I stop suffering and quit riding. The new question becomes: how can I suffer in bliss? This is a trick I am getting better at each year. I love to watch Chris Horner suffer… the guy is always smiling… Try it… for me it works…. For the first time I have started to invite the pain in… I don’t run form it like I used to… I don’t start to question why I hurt or think “I must be having a bad day.” What I have learned is when you go HARD… it hurts. It always will. I always here riders talking about “bad legs” most of the time it makes me chuckle. Bad legs usually just mean the race was hard. If you ride with power I want you to try to ride around 600 watts for 40-45 seconds… that is the start of a cross race. DO it every day… If you ever have a day where that feels easy and your legs don’t burn…Go buy some lottery tickets.
If you are in shape…and have trained a decent amount… and your legs hurt and burn…it is a pretty good sign you are going hard…not that you have bad legs, but that you have fit enough legs to suffer. Somewhere along the way on the delusion train we have decided that going hard should feel good. That is crazy talk. The only time racing and training feels good…is when you are not going hard enough to make any gains or to win.

If you feel good = You are not going very hard (at least not hard enough to get benefits from training or to be successful in a race)

If you feel bad = you are probably pegged and on the rivet
-this is actually a good thing

Bad legs = peoples in your race are Better than your better

Good legs = you need to upgrade

99.9% of the time I think the above is correct. We all have bad days every once in a while. But if ½ of your races are bad… then you are not being realistic. Your training either doesn’t match your goals…. Or your goals don’t match your pedigree.

Now that we have solved a pretty serious math problem lets get back to the fact that most of us are not very good. What do I mean? Most of us suck. Yes we suck. Hard to stomach but the sooner we all figure it out the more credit we can give to the riders who don’t…….. Now this isn’t very nice, but what I mean is that the guy who beat me last weekend sucks a little less than I suck. The guy who finished behind me isn’t Better than my Better. Every week the goal is to suck a bit less and try to bring the best effort I can manage to the race. Each week I have new excuses as to why I am going to suck. I try to hide them under the bed in a shoe box, but I always let a few slip. Usually I talk about how hard I trained or didn’t train. That is my favorite. But the bottom line is when we walk up to the starting line we are very vulnerable. It is how you learn to deal with the insecurity of sucking that makes you a great warrior. Dude…. win or lose if you bring a great fight you should be able to pat yourself on the back and be amped about how you raced. Most of the time we just beat ourselves to a pulp during the race and then continue to do so for the following week. The key is to ask yourself several times during the race “can I go harder?” If the answer is yes… then get on the gas. If the answer is “no” then stay the course. So next time your are out racing at Defcon 4..try to smile… you should be amped that you are killing it. If you are crying then you know you are pegged. Pegged is pegged. The guy in 10th is just as pegged as the guy who won. Neither effort has more value. Like Kent said “your pain isn’t special.” So don’t run from it… invite it in…and next time you are racing and the race is finished.. I challenge you to race one more lap… why not… it is what we do and who we are. Cross season will be over in a blink of an eye. Enjoy every painful minute of each lap…. Soon there will be no more laps to ride and no more cross races till next year. You will spend the next 9 months getting ready to do it again.

Holiday Training Tips

By Tim Cusick


Old man winter has arrived!  The combination of limited daylight, cold temperatures, and the increased family obligations of the holidays can present plenty of training problems as you are working on build a stronger power foundation for the 2010 season. However, for many of us, the holiday season of late December to early January can come with decreased work obligations and hopefully, a little more time off.  Often athletes ask me how can I “super-charge” my training in 10 – 14 days.

Build your own Holiday Training Camp – Time challenged athletes are often hesitant to “rev” up the volume of the training in fear of over-training but here is a tip; it is pretty hard to overtrain in a week.  If you have some extra time off, great way to motive yourself and challenge your training is to design your own “holiday training camp”.  Plan a week that has 50% more volume then you are currently doing.  Each day ride some extra volume while focusing on different riding skills.  Monday can be sprint day, Tuesday climbing day, Wednesday long recovery….  My holiday training programs can help set the schedule ( www.trainingpeaks.com ).  Make sure you schedule extra recovery time after your camp to ensure your body recovers and you reap the benefits.

Raise your Fat Burning – Ok, we all know the holidays can challenge our weight management so here is another tip, increase your volume while super-charging you bodies fat burning ability.  Here is the trick; from Dec 25^th – Jan 2^nd plan to ride 45 – 60 minutes trainer each morning as an extra ride.  Wake up, grab a drink (black coffee or tea but no cream or sugar) and jump on the training before you eat anything, no calories at all.  Once on the trainer, spin at endurance zone (power or heart rate) doing a 1 minute fast pedal each 5 minutes (no additional power or resistance, just fast pedal).  Once complete, eat your typical breakfast and complete your normal daily training.  This will teach your body to burn fat as an energy source while helping to keep down those holiday pounds.

Breath – We work on our pacing and pedaling drills all season long but how often do we work on our breathing?  All the training we do to develop our systems to more efficiently process oxygen, we should also learn to take in more oxygen in each breath.  To breathe efficiently, you need to learn to use your diaphragm (it’s located below your lungs).  This drill starts before you get on the bike.  Take a few minutes before each workout and practice breathing through your nose and down into your diaphragm, your stomach should “expand” with each deep breath. Practice taking deeper breaths each day.  Carry this drill into your warm-up of either your trainer or outdoor workout.

With a little creativity and some focus you can use the holiday to help boost your winter training and better prepare yourself for a successful 2010 season.

Spring Camps – Fitness and Form

As cyclists, a lot of us work through the winter in focus for a spring camp.  Since over 70% of the country is living through short days, cold temperatures and wet or snowy weather, spring camps give us a chance to get away and build some miles in warmer regions.  The question is; are you looking for a cycling vacation camp or a training camp?  Vacation camps are typically great ways to build the miles and view the scenery while training camps are often focused on building fitness and form through organized training education and miles.  As a rider, you need to assess your goals to choose which it right for you.  Training camps are a great way to prepare you for big events, racing seasons and personal bests whereas vacation camps are best for building fitness while refreshing and relaxing.

Peaks Coaching Group spring camps are training camps in great locations.  Our camp focus is to build fitness while learning all the “ins-and-outs” of power training from the pro’s.  Our camps feature:

           

Camp Highlights:

·       Daily power training seminars focused on teaching you how to get the most from power training and power training methods

·       Skill building rides focused on each of the skills you will need to be a better racer and rider; from sprinting to climbing, we cover it all

·       Fully supported rides, SAG support, food, drinks, mechanical support

·       One-on-one power files review with Hunter Allen (co-author of “Racing and Training with a Power Meter”) and Scott Moninger (winningest US Pro ever) and the rest of the Peaks Coaching Group

·       Advanced yogi, daily massage and more

·       Great camaraderie and team building

Thinking about scheduling a camp this spring?  Looking to challenge yourself to reach above your limits?  Visit www.peakscoachinggroup.com/camps to learn about our Peak Power Spring Camps.