The Heart of a Champion

by Tim Cusick

In the face of all the negative things about middle age cycling, the doper next store and EPO at the NY GF, I wanted to share a better story about cycling and aging….with grace! 

Let me tell you a little story about Carl Grove. I met Carl about 4 years ago when he attended a Peaks Coaching Group Training Camp in Pennsylvania. I can still remember checking the sign-up forms as we prepared for camp and doing a little bit of a double take when I read Carl’s age; he was 81 years old. I have to admit there was a little concern about how we could work with Carl at the camp, but after day one, that concern had evaporated; turned out, Carl was pretty fast! I got the chance to do a lot of one-on-one work with Carl that week as he and I spent some extra hours going over all the details. During this time I got to know Carl and talked to him about his ability and suggested he get back into racing and go for a National & possibly a World Championship. I had seen him ride and figured with some quality training, he had the goods! A few weeks after camp, Carl gave me a call and decided that at 82 years old that he wanted to keep pursuing his dreams and we were off and running. 

Carl trained hard and in 2010 pulled off the national double, winning Gold at Masters Nationals in both the road race and time trial by astonishing margins; winning the TT by almost 8 minutes on a 20K course and winning the road race by over 17 minutes. With a whole bunch of new hardware, Carl decided to immediately head over to Austria and go for a World Title. He did well, placing top 5 in both road and TT but learned that at this level, there were some pretty tough riders. 

Carl Grove after Master Nationals

Carl could have settled in after an amazing year, but a month or two later, my phone rang and he and I were talking about 2011. I asked him about Nationals and he immediately let me know, nope, he needed a bigger gold and really wanted to go back to worlds and win. It was in this conversation that I really got some deep insight into Carl. He explained to me that part of his secret of staying young was always having a goal of improving and be working towards it. It would have been easy for him to rest on his laurels. He could have gone back and repeated at Nationals but instead he chose to work harder and go for Gold at the World Championships. Well in 2011, we really dug in. Training for a WC is no joke. You have to be one your game and firing on all cylinders. Carl and I worked through all kinds of power workouts, spent time working on bike and bike fitting, drop height, gearing and chain ring size. He went after his goal with Armstrong like focus. In 2011 Carl Grove won the World Championship TT by over 3 minutes, an astonishing performance at that level. When we talked later that night, he told me that when he was on the podium and the flag started going up and the anthem started to play that it was the proudest moment of his life; he was honored to represent his country and to represent the effort we had put in…and I was honored to be his coach. That is Carl, humble in everything he does. If you know how hard Carl worked to achieve this goal, you would be a little misty right now. Carl never complained, he just did the work. If it rained, he rode in the rain, if it was cold, so be it, and he got cold, stress? He had plenty and still never missed a workout!! We celebrated in October that year and Carl settled in, happy with his WC medal and let me know that he was hanging up if racing shoes and was just going to do some riding from here on in.

Podium at World Championships

Well, this year it took him to January to call me. Carl and I have stayed in touch but when we started this conversation I knew it was different and knew it was the beginning of something and it was. Carl let me know that he needed “something”, that next goal to keep him going and he had an idea. He figured if he started training now, he could go to Masters Track Nationals and win a gold medal! Well, I asked him if he ever raced on the track before; he said no. I asked him if he ever been on a track bike; no, not really. Asked him if he owned a track bike; nope. Actually, he wasn’t really sure that was a track within 100 miles of where he lived; he just thought it would make a good goal. That Monday, at 84 years old, Carl Grove started training for a Master Track National Title.

This was going to be tough. Carl was going to need to focus on the 500m and 2k while learning to ride scratch and points races. Carl physiological profile is more suited to longer time trial and steady state efforts so we have an uphill “anaerobic training” battle ahead of us. He needed to learn how to pedal a fixed gear and how to build a standing start. The training season focused a strength, speed and high intensity interval that would be grueling for a 45 year old, but Carl ticked off workout after workout. We measured his power step by step, and slowly but surely his anaerobic capacity and the watts were climbing. He got a track bike and stared to learn how to use it with under the guidance of good friend and training partner Bruce Gordon. Carl completed one qualifying race and was off to nationals with only having one race on a track under his belt. On Tuesday, Carl Grove took home gold in the 500m’s. His time was actually a new world record but he didn’t know it and rode away from the track without checking in his bike and was informed that it wouldn’t stand. When Carl and I reviewed the day, he wasn’t bitter. He told me he loved it, had lots of fun and enjoyed the day. He was happy to have raced and be recognized by other racers and that was good enough for him. That’s Carl, just enjoying life and staying humble, racing and riding because it fun, because he likes it and because, it keep him young. The week rolled by and Carl picked up a Gold in the points race, a Gold in the scratch race and finally he was down to on big day, Saturday’s2k Pursuit. We talked Friday night and Carl let me know that he still had a goal of doing something very special and he was going to attempt to break both the 500m & 2k world record on Saturday! You see, as you might guess by know, Carl stays focused on the goal, he has a quiet passion for achieving what he sets out to do. A passion that is very humble on the outside but a fire on the inside. He doesn’t care if some folks say he is too old, or might get hurt…he cares about staying true to himself and achieving what he sets out to do. Not because of any recognition, not because of any medal or record but because it make him a better person, it helps him stay young and he hopes it will act as a model for others to keep pushing.

Carl leading them out in the points race

On Saturday Carl won yet another gold. He also set the American and World Record not only in the 80+ category, but also broke them in the 75+ category. This time he made sure he made checked in his bike and completed drug controls. On Sunday, the USAC recognized the unofficial world record and it should become official later this week. Congratulation Carl!!


PS: I am already getting mentally prepared for an October phone call from Carl letting me know he wants to go for a BMX title in 2013!

Special Thanks to Carl's training partner Bruce Gordon!  Bruce was a guiding force for Carl track education and partnered with him at Nationals to guide him through "the learning curve"....Thanks BRUCE!!!!

Pro Carter Jones takes 2nd Overall and Best Young Rider at Cascade Classic!

Bissell Pro Carter Jones finished off a strong week by finishing 2nd overall in GC at the Cascade Cycling Classic and winning the Best Young Rider jersey at the same time.  Based off a strong performance in the flat TT on stage 2 and making the select finishing group on the Mt Bachelor finish on stage 3, Jones showed his all around strengths in TTing and climbing that make him a GC threat in hard stage races.  


PCG Coach: Stephen McGregor

More from Bissell Pro...
The Awbrey Circuit Race marked the final stage of the Cascade Cycling Classic with 5 laps on a 16 mile course. There was an early attempt by twelve riders to escape but it did not hold. On the second lap, a group of eight including BISSELL’s Chris Baldwin  successfully escaped off the front and built up a two minute gap. Baldwin was the leader on the road causing uneasiness in the peloton. Competitive Cyclist controlled the front and ramped up the chase. On the fourth lap, the lead group split, and Baldwin and three others rallied on. The four leaders were eventually brought back at the base of the final time up the Archie Bridge climb. With the group back together, attacks flew in the final miles. As the field approached the finish, Optum’s Jesse Anthony got a small gap which he was able to carry to the line. BISSELL’s Frank Pipp crossed on his heels for third.

Carter Jones had an outstanding race to maintain his second place overall and the best young rider classification. BISSELL rode strong as a team to defend his position and were second in the team classification.

How to Successfully Train for a Stage Race

How to Successfully Train for a Stage Race

By Hunter Allen

There are not many stage races here in the US, and the ones we have are usually only three to four days long.  A longer stage race requires more fitness, more stamina and the ability to recover day after day. Most weekend races create just enough fatigue to feel sore and tired on Monday, but not enough to give you the sense of what a five day stage race might feel like.   We all train smart.  We all train hard.  Do we all train hard enough for a demanding five+ day stage race?   How fresh should you be when you enter the race?  How tired do you expect to be in the last stage?  What can you do about multi-day recovery and how you develop your fitness so that you can handle multi-day events?

The first thing you need to do after deciding that you are going to race in a longer stage race is to begin developing multi-day ‘recoverability’, so that you’ll be able to produce similar wattages day after day all the way to the final stage.  We all fatigue, but those that recover quickly will ride stronger towards the end of a stage race.  The racers that start with their ‘batteries’ 100% charged and then de-charge down to 80% by the end of the race, will do poorly compared to racers that start at 100% charged and then only de-charge down to 90% by the end of the race.  This was exactly the case with an excellent stage racer with whom I was a teammate on the Navigators Pro team in 1995.  Skip Spangenburg was an incredible stage racer, but did not see as much success as his abilities justified while racing in the US, because the races just were not hard or long enough.   Skip was uber-talented, and had a high FTP probably around 5.8 watts per kilogram, but in one day races, he would get beaten by pros with even higher threshold power.   His true talent came in stage races that were longer than five days and most of the stage races that Skip won overall or stages were this length and longer.  Skip won the Tour of Peru two times, along with winning many stages and top 3 on GC in Tour of Venezuela, Tour of Costa Rica, Tour of Argentina, Tour of Chile and more.    Skip would start the race with his ‘battery’ charged at 100% and after hundreds of miles, high altitude mountain passes, crazy transfers, bad hotels and sub-par food, his battery would only be down to 90% as compared to the rest of the peloton at 80%. By day eight Skip  began to shine; riding away from the front groups, climbing faster than the best South American climbers and time trialing faster than everyone in the race.   It was his ability to recover quickly day after day and re-charge his ‘battery’ that allowed him to be closer to his 5.8 watts/kg threshold at the end of the stage race.  As a coach(then athlete), this was proof that the best stage racers might not have the highest overall FTP, but it’s their ability to recover and ride closest to their FTP day after day that makes them champions. 

It is a skill that is learned and takes years to develop, as you need to have thousands upon thousands of miles in your legs, and the more ‘mature’ a cyclists’ body becomes, the faster it will recover.  In the short term, you can improve on this ability by training for this specific stage race fitness.   The first decision you must realize is an acceptance of training while fatigued.   You must continue to train hard when you are fatigued, tired, sore, de-motivated, and overall crushed from the previous days’ of training and this mental change is critical to your success.  One of the generalities in cycling is that you must only train hard on days when you are feeling good and that as soon as you cannot produce the watts you are supposed to be producing, then you should just go home and rest up for another day.   This is an important training concept AND should be adhered to within certain situations. For example, when you are focusing on a specific type of fitness like your Vo2 Max, then you need to have a high level of freshness in the body before you can challenge that system so it will adapt from that super high intensity.   However, if you are training for multi-day stage races, then you must be willing to train hard everyday even if your heart rate isn’t coming up to its ‘normal’ level and your watts are lower than normal.  The goal in this type of training is continue fatiguing and piling on the training stress long after diminishing marginal gains have been reached in order to create enough cumulative stress that when you do rest, your body bounces back with a large improvement in fitness. Your body is an incredible machine and by training it day after day without rest days, it starts to adapt and improve your ability to recover faster and faster.  Again, the caveat here is that it’s likely your Vo2 max system won’t have jumped up a level and you won’t start cracking out 1800watts in your sprint instantly, but your ability to recover day in and day out will have vastly improved. 

What type of training should you do and how far should you push yourself?   The answer to the type of training is fairly clear and I have outlined a sample two week training plan below to help you.   How far you should push yourself is something that only you (and your coach, if you have one) can determine.  At first, I would suggest you should push yourself two days longer than you think you should and then rest. This is a difficult decision to make because many of us have conditioned ourselves to only train when we are feeling fresh and strong.  The feeling you are looking for occurs when you get fatigued past a point and realize you probably need to rest because it is just so damn hard to push yourself, your legs feel like lead, your heart rate is suppressed and your sleep isn’t the most restful.  This is exactly when you should tack on two big hard rides and suffer through them forcing yourself to do them.  One of the best ways to push through this fatigue is by riding with fresher riders or doing group rides when you are forced to grit your teeth on every hill and every time you go to the front to pull.  The legs will be sore and respond slowly to any acceleration or hard effort during this fatigued state and this is what it’s going to be like near the end of your first five+ day stage race.

Two Week Training Block-  to prepare for your first five+ day stage race

This is a basic guideline with some key workouts detailed.

Day 1: Anaerobic capacity-2.5 hours.

Warm-up (WU): 20 minutes warm-up

Main-Set (MS): Then do (6) x 2 minutes striving for 135% of your FTP with 1 minute rest between each,

Then 5 minutes easy,

Then 6 x 1 minute, striving for 150% of your FTP with 1 minute rest,

Then 5 minutes easy

and finish with 6 x 30 seconds ALL out with 1 minute rest…..Try for at least 200% of your threshold watts on each sprint as an average. SHOOT for 350% of threshold watts as your max in the last 6 sprints.

Ride at your Sweet-Spot(88-93% of FTP) for remaining time.

CD: Cool down for 15 minutes of easy spinning.

Day 2: Vo2 Max 2.0hours.

WU:15 minutes warm-up watts <75% of FTP,

MS: Begin with (1) 5 minute interval at 300 watts, then 5 minutes easy.

Do 7 x 3minutes, trying to average 113% of FTP watts in the 3 minutes. REST for 3 minutes between each.

Then cruise at endurance pace 56-75% of FTP for 30 minutes.

Finish with 4 x 3 minutes with 4 minutes rest between each. These are hard 3 minute efforts and try to average between 106%-113% of your FTP, but if you can’t, that’s o.k., and just do them all.

CD: Cool-down for 15 minutes.

Day 3: Endurance/Tempo Ride- 3 to 5 hours.   Ride as long as you can today and get in the time, generally between 70-85% of your FTP.  It would be best if you can stop with an hour from home at a store, get your favorite energy drink and then drill it home for the last hour.

Day 4: Threshold power and hills- 3.5 hours. The first hour is smooth and steady with 5 x 1 minute fast pedals and then (2) hard 3 minute hills. At the start of 2nd hour, do the 2 x 20 intervals at 100-105% of your FTP and give it your best! After the 2x 20, then hit some shorter hills- about 2minutes long and do 10 repeats of them. NOT all out and sprinting up them for your best wattage ever, but at least 130% of FTP. Make sure you rest at least 2-3 minutes between them. Finish with 30-45 minutes of sweet-spot and cool down.

Day 5: Sprints-2.0 hours.  Do a kick butt sprint workout today. You’ll be tired, but do your best and incorporate some hill sprints as well.  At least 15-20 sprints total.

Day 6: Endurance 2hours. Just ride your bike for two hours today at 56-75% of your FTP. Spin the legs and keep them loose. Not quite active recovery, but doing your best to ride gingerly.

Day 7: Big Day-Kitchen Sink workout – 5 hours+

WU: 60 minutes- Endurance/Tempo (70-85% of FTP) pace and just getting the legs warmed up today.

MS: Do (3) x 1 minute fast pedaling. Then do (4) sprints- BIG RING - 53:15 from 22mph. two gear shifts to 14, then to 13. Rest for 3-4 minutes between each.

Then do (4) x 12 minutes JUST above threshold- so about 105% of FTP. Do your best to hold it there!

Rest for 5minutes between each.

Then ride at endurance pace (65-75% of FTP) for 60min, but slow down every 5 minutes and do a BIG gear burst from a near stop. Stay seated and push that gear over until you reach 90rpm and you’re your effort is done and return your pace back to endurance pace.

In the fourth hour, do 6 x 2 minutes on the flats. 2 minutes ON , 2 minute OFF. Try to hold 120%+ on the effort. EASY pedaling between during OFF period, but maintaining cadence.  Ride at Endurance pace with a quick cadence for remaining time in the fourth hour.

Finish with 45-60minutes at Sweet-Spot- 88-93% of FTP, and do a burst every 3 minutes to 200% of FTP and hold for 10 seconds and return to SS.

Endurance for 10 minutes

CD: 5 minutes

Day 8: Rest day. Complete rest.  Off the bike.  Stretching and resting.

Day 9: 3-5 hours Endurance pace.  Ride for 3-5 hours (as much as your schedule allows) and just ride between 70-90% of FTP.

Day 10: Repeat Day 2. You should be tired by now, so your watts will be lower, but the goal is to just do all of the work as hard as you can.  Don’t worry about the wattage numbers, just do your best and complete the workout.

Day 11: Repeat Day 4. Don’t worry about the wattage numbers, just do your best and complete the workout.

Day 12: Repeat Day 9.

Day 13: Group Ride- 3 hours: Push yourself in the group ride.

Day 14: Long Group ride-5 hours –Endurance/Tempo. Make sure you get to the front and do at least 2 x 20 minutes of hard tempo and pushing those sore legs.  You should be crushed today, but next week is a rest week.  Push it!!!  Do your best to make this as hilly as possible. Rest of ride is just getting in the miles and having fun.

Days 15-21: Rest week. Active recovery rides and at least 2 days completely off the bike.

This training plan is not easy and you’ll be tired, sore, irritable and highly fatigued by the end of it.  That is the purpose.   It will be critical to make sure you do everything you can to recover between days, so focus on your post ride nutrition, stretch every day, get plenty of sleep and schedule a couple of massages in there if possible. Once you have done this two week plan one time, then you should consider doing it again about a month later in order to continue your stage race recoverability.

While there are many other aspects to training that you will need to incorporate including: Training specifically for the event itself (TT stage, climbing stages, criterium stage, etc.),  testing out post ride nutrition, learning to really rest between stages (stay off legs, become a lazy sloth) , it also is important to know how much to taper your training before your event.  A proper taper will make sure you have just the right amount of fitness and freshness to give you the legs you want and also plan for fatigue by day 5+.   There are many different taper strategies out there and a lot of scientific research has been done on each of them, each showing different strengths and weaknesses.  It is my firm belief that an athlete should start with a taper so that the rest week is two weeks before the start of the event itself and then the week before consists of shorter and more intense workouts to bring on the final sharpening needed for peak fitness.  One critical ingredient that you’ll want to incorporate in the last seven days before your stage race is a big ‘kitchen-sink’ ride like day 7 above.  This will allow your body to get in one last cardiovascular boost to keep your aerobic system fine-tuned and ready for the stage race and I would suggest this about 5-6 days out from the race start.   For those of you familiar with the Performance Manager Chart in TrainingPeaks WKO+ software, then I would recommend that your Training Stress Balance (TSB) is between +5 and +18 when you start your stage race.  This will guarantee that you have enough freshness, but not so much that you have lost fitness. To learn more about this, you can read the chapter about the Performance Manager in Dr. Coggan and my book, “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”.

Stage racing is one of the finest disciplines in cycling and every racer should set a goal to complete and be competitive in a 5+ day stage race (or hard multi-day recreational event) sometime in their cycling career.  A stage race can teach you more about yourself as you learn how much harder you can push yourself day after day then you ever thought possible.  The human body is both incredibly durable and fragile at the same time and will continue to amaze at how much punishment it can take day after day and still recover to ride hard again the next day.  The more training stress you create, the more your body can handle and a 5+ day stage race can be one of the best tests of endurance that a cyclist can challenge themselves with.

This article has been reprinted from Road Magazine.  Hunter Allen is a regular contributor for Road Magazine and the online TRI Magazine.  Hunter has a new book that is co-authored with Dr. Stephen Cheung.  Purchase your autographed copy at www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com .  “Cutting Edge Cycling” will teach you about the science and application of that science in your cycling.   Email Hunter or Peaks at  info@peakscoachinggroup.com  if you are interested.

PCG Athlete Sam Schultz Wins MTB National Championship

by CyclingNews.com 

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/american-national-championships-2012-1/elite-men-cross-country/results

Sam Schultz (Subaru-Trek) raced to his first-ever elite cross country national championship title on Saturday afternoon in Sun Valley, Idaho. It was a tight two-up battle for most of the six-lap race, until his rival and defending national champion Todd Wells (Specialized) flatted with one to go.

"It feels pretty dang good. It's amazing, and I'm pumped. That was hard!" said Schultz, still catching his breath at the finish. He crossed the line in 1:48:17.

Coming out of the pit and into the final lap's climb, Schultz had 20 seconds on Wells and he extended his lead to 1:04 by the finish. Wells rode to a strong second place while the next three finishers came in on their own: Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Subaru-Trek) in third at 1:48; Ryan Trebon (Cannondale) in fourth at 2:31 and Jeremiah Bishop (Cannondale Factory Racing) in fifth at 3:05.

On the first lap, it was clear that the day's action at the front would be a battle between the two 2012 US Olympic team members: Schultz and Wells. The two were in a league of their own and decisively rode off the front.

For the first five of six laps, the two marked each other and took turns surging. At times, they were so close, they looked like they were only an inch or two from bumping wheels.

"It was a battle. We kept on going back and forth. He would come around me on the bottom of the climb and take some big pulls, and I would always nip him just before the singletrack," said Schultz. "He was descending pretty well, and I was not descending that great, so I made sure to get ahead of him before each downhill. That was my tactic, I had to do that."

On each downhill, Wells would ride Schultz closely, looking for chances to get around. "Sometimes he'd try to get by me on the inside line, but I was holding my line because I knew that was the race," said Schultz.

"I figured Schultz would be up there. He was good last year and was good last weekend when he had his best ever World Cup result in Windham," said Wells. "I figured [Ryan] Trebon and [Jeremiah] Bishop would also be good."

"The way this course is, with the steep climb at altitude, it just kind of sorts itself out. Everyone has one pace he can ride, and Schultz and I were fairly evenly matched today. We just happened to be together and ride off the front."

Wells said he tried to surge a few times on laps three, four and five. "Sam always answered. On the fifth lap, I did a surge and couldn't drop him and pulled up. Then he hit it and got maybe five seconds on me by the top. I was able to close it on him on the descent, but I knew then that I would need everything to go right in order to have a shot at it."

Unfortunately for Wells, everything didn't go right. Just after the downhill rock garden before the one to go bell, he noticed his tire going soft. He lost more time in the next rock garden - the flat one - and had to stop at the pit.

"I did catch wind of his flat," said Schultz. "I was just ahead of him. So from that point on, I was head down. It would have been real interesting if he hadn't flatted. It definitely would have come down to that last lap."

The experienced Wells, who won the title the past two years, knew he shouldn't give up. "Once I got that flat, you never know. Sam could have flatted or had cramps, so I kept pushing as hard as I could, but he rode a great race."

Schultz was nervous to be at the front and said his last lap seemed to take forever. "I was a little cautious because I didn't want to crash. It felt like I was out there alone for an hour." In reality, he was probably out there alone for about 15 minutes.

Behind Wells and Schultz, the race was for third. For a time on lap three, Bishop rode himself into third place in a bid to bridge to the leaders, but a flat cost him some time and required a stop at the pits. Afterward, he spent the rest of the race in fifth place, where he finished up.

"I was about 12 seconds from making contact when I flatted. Guess I was hanging it out," said Bishop. "I was a long way from the pit and rode the rim through some hairy sections including the rock downhill and rock garden. I was surprised I got back to fifth after all that and thank the Cannondale staff for keeping me rolling."

Horgan-Kobelski was having a good day and triumphed over Trebon.

"I felt good and very strong. I had a crash on the first lap - I was with the top two guys, just behind them and kind of pushing and on one of the first switchbacks, I crashed. The course had deteriorated from when I rode it yesterday from all the traffic on it since then. I overcooked a corner and went down. I had to meter my effort from there."

"Sam and Todd were a step ahead today, and I'm happy to get third," said JHK. "I'm so stoked for Sam. I knew it was coming and that it was just a matter of when."

Trebon was appearing in his second mountain bike race of the year. "I felt good. This is a hard course for me," he said. "I'm a big dude and going up those steep climbs, I always suffer on that stuff. I'm happy with how I rode and how the race went."

"I was kind of gunning for that third spot when I realised how fast Sam and Todd were racing, but Jeremy was just a little bit stronger on the climb today."

Adam Craig (Rabobank-Giant) finished in sixth place and barely had time before he had to dash off to do some last minute super D practice. "I felt pretty decent. I've been kind of beat up all week and it was hard to dig super deep. It's good for Sam - it was coming. I was trying to catch Bishop and get on the podium, but that didn't happen, so then I was trying to save something for super D tomorrow morning."