By Hunter Allen, Peaks Coaching Group Founder/CEO and Master Coach
originally published in Road Magazine
For all of those crazy cyclocrossers out there, it’s that time of the year again: time to race your ‘cross bike in the cold weather,
rain, and mud with all your heart and guts for little glory and glamour at the
finish line. But it sure is a whole lot of fun!
For some, CX is something fun to do when the bike racing
season is over, while for others, it’s the season they’ve been planning for all
year. What’s the difference? One type of rider has intention, and the other
doesn’t. What does intention bring to the game? Intention is something often
talked about in the martial arts world, though not so much in the endurance
sports world. It is A: a course of action that one intends to follow, B: the
state of one’s mind at the time one carries out an action, and C: a
determination to act in a certain way. Your intention about your CX race has a
lot to do with the outcome of the race, how you determine your happiness with
that outcome, and the experience of the race itself.
So what the heck does intention have to do with training or racing with a power meter? Well, training and racing with a power meter by
definition implies intention. You made a conscious decision to improve, and
investing in a power meter became the outward expression of that intention.
This is not to say that folks without a power meter don’t want to improve, but
maybe their intention isn’t as strong as yours. Without a strong intention, the
intensity of riding is very different.
How do intention and intensity relate, exactly? We know that
the intensity of your workout or the intensity at which you do your intervals
determines the specific type of training response your body gives you (the
“dose and response” effect). If you do intervals at 120% of your FTP, at that
level of intensity you are training your power at VO2Max. Do enough of those
intervals, and your power at VO2Max will increase. There is a metric inside the
TrainingPeaks WKO+ software called Intensity Factor, created by Dr. Andrew
Coggan to define the relative intensity of a ride or a specific time period
within a ride as it relates to your FTP. Intensity is an essential part of
training and adapting to becoming a stronger rider; without intensity in your
workout, you won’t continue to improve.
When we think about intention in relationship with
intensity, it is the intentionality that we bring to a workout that imparts the
necessary intensity to each interval, workout, ride, or race. When we intend to
win a race, we race with a much higher intensity than if we only intend to ride
a race for training and sit in the field. When we intend to go out for a
cyclocross workout in order to improve so that we can have a chance at winning
the next race, that workout will be a very intense workout with lots of hard
threshold intervals, anaerobic capacity efforts, and maybe even a few hard
sprints. The intention that we bring to a workout defines the needed intensity.
The important thing we need to know is at what intensity to ride in order to
create the training response we want.
Let’s examine some workouts done with intention and some
done without so that you can better understand the difference between the two.
One day one of my athletes went out just to ride. She didn’t ride very hard or
super easy, but rode at whatever pace she felt like at the moment. When she
returned, she commented in her notes that she didn’t feel much like riding and
that her legs were just spinning around. Take a look at her power file from
this ride:
On another day not long after, she had a workout goal of 2 x
20 minutes at FTP in an hour’s ride (power file below). This time she was
focused and she even got on the indoor trainer to do the workout so she could
focus completely on it. In her workout notes she wrote that she felt clearly
better when she was focused on the workout and working on engaging her core.
Bringing intention to the workout brings about body awareness, which will make
a difference to your cycling, just like it did for this athlete.
What about bringing intention to a race? How do intention
and intensity interrelate in racing situations? The very act of participating
in a race means you are bringing intention into your reality. Because you chose
to join the race, you made a conscious decision to become part of the race, and
this will impart your intensity. The difference between intentions for racing
and intentions for training have more to do with the strength and desire of
your intention, which govern your intensity. If your desire to win the race is
very strong, it’s more likely you will stay more focused than the riders around
you and will continually watch the terrain, the tactics that other teams
employ, and your own race strategy.
Sometimes your desire is too strong and you want to win so
badly that you chase down every attack until you finally get worn out, which is
of course when the winning attack goes away. Sometimes balancing your desire to
win with the natural rhythm of the race becomes more important than the actual
intensity you bring to the race. At other times your race desire isn’t very
high and you find yourself going through the motions, which means that your
intensity will most likely be low. Another case might be that your intention in
the race is dictated to you by your teammates or team director. In this case,
your intensity is governed by an external intention upon your own free will and
choice (you are, of course, a willing partner to this, or you wouldn’t be on
the team).
A race done with a focused intention appears very different
in a power file analysis. The chart below is from an athlete who went into his
race with a highly specific game plan and intention: he wanted to get in a
breakaway and, once in the breakaway, grind people’s legs down so that all he
had to do was put in a little attack to drop them, then solo to the finish
line. This is wishful thinking for some of us, but this athlete knew the
course, knew he had the legs to back up his plan, and needed only to execute
it. One thing you should note about the chart below is how the much smoother
the power becomes when he’s in the breakaway versus in the pack and then how it
becomes even smoother still when he’s solo off the front and doing his best to
get to the line first. Clearly intention in a race is an ever-changing thing;
the best racers use their intention before the race to set their game plan and
tactics in the race, but when the race is unfolding a careful response and
appropriate reaction to the dynamics of the race is also required.
A power meter can tell us many things about our training and
racing. Post analysis is a useful tool to help teach yourself the importance of
training and racing with a goal or purpose in mind. Goals and purposes are
typically very concrete and defined, such as, “I am going to win the race in a
field sprint,” or “I will attack on the climb at the finish and solo to the
line for the win.” Intention, on the other hand, isn’t always a concrete goal.
Intention is more of a determination of how you will approach a race or how you
will act in a certain race; with highly dynamic bicycle races, it is often the
better way to think about a race or training ride. Intend to do your best and
play out your strategy, all the while being willing to change on the fly to adapt
to the ever-changing tactics employed by your competitors.
When you train with your power meter, intend to train in
specific training zones and to work on specific weaknesses, then use that
intention to improve; this will help you better regulate your training
intensity. On the flip side, I am also a big believer in going out and just
riding your bike (which is an intention of its own). Not having a strong
intention on some days does not mean you aren’t competitive or don’t want to
win, nor does it mean you will not have fun. In fact, quite the opposite; some
of those days of weak intention can end up being your best days on the bike.
One last piece of advice: remind yourself occasionally that
this is bike racing; not every day is going to be perfect, and you won’t be on
form for every race. As USA Cycling’s coaching coordinator Sam Callan once said
to me, “Sometimes my level of intensity did not meet my level of intention.” No
matter how hard you want to do something, your body doesn’t always respond the
way you want it to. Intention and intensity are entangled concepts that, when
consciously put to proper use, can enhance your fitness and your success in
races and rides. Start with the right
intention, and the success will follow.
