Video: APJunior Development Cycling Team - a start line for youth bike racing

From All Things Bike:

https://www.facebook.com/allthingsbike/videos/321069338708841

We kicked off our fourth season with a great talk with Bill Shattuck, Bart Lipinski, Lizzy Gunsalus and Mark Gunsalus of the AP Junior Development Cycling Team, a Massachusetts program that over the years has introduced boys and girls to cyclocross, mountain and road racing and helped them reach and exceed their potential as cyclists and people. 

Bill, Bart and Mark are cornerstone figures of the New England cycling community and Lizzy is the Future of New England Cycling and evidence of the program's success. Bill describes the history, routines and long term goals; 

Bart describes the riders, the parents and the rewards; Lizzy describes the training, the racing and how cycling has helped her mature; and Mark describes the mentoring, the support and the team camaraderie. A great insight into a long established and newly re-vitalized program (renamed in memory of New England Cycling friend and benefactor, Alec Petro) that helps youth get outdoors, compete, make friends and have fun. William Shattuck Bart Lipinski Mark E Gunsalus AP Junior Development Cycling Team PBM Coaching Peaks Coaching Group New England Bicycle Racing Association New England High School Cycling AssociationFit Werx A-D Bikes Frame and Wheel #usacycling #lizzygunsalus

Not a pro? Why would you need a coach? - By PCG Coach David Ertl

Professional cyclists and triathletes typically hire coaches.  This makes sense as their career and income depend on their results.  Paying someone to help them be successful is good business.  But what about recreational and amateur athletes who hire coaches – what is the rationale there?  For an aspiring amateur wanting to get to the professional level, coaching just makes sense.  However, many  athletes who purchase  custom coaching through Peaks Coaching Group are avid cyclists/enthusiasts with no intention of racing let alone ever attempting to become a pro.  Many don’t even consider themselves athletes.  They may just want to keep up with their fellow cyclists on group rides, participate in a local or regional triathlon, compete in or just complete a gran fondo.  In many cases, they have no aspirations of entering, much less winning, a race.   So why would an amateur athlete invest good money in a custom coaching program when there is absolutely no financial reward?

To answer this we have to look at the reasons why these amateur athletes participate in their chosen sport. While not pros , most athletes who hire a coach are very committed to their chosen sport, often giving it a priority in their lives only behind family and jobs in importance.  They are very invested in their sport as evidenced by the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars they invest in training and equipment.  If athletes are willing to commit this much time and money to their sport, doesn’t it make sense for them to invest in their own “motor”, which will have greater impact on their results than equipment ever can?  There are a number of benefits that an amateur athlete can gain through coaching. Let’s take a look at them:

Time: Most amateur athletes have time constraints such as full-time jobs, families and other obligations. They certainly can’t devote large blocks of time during the week and even on weekends training like the pros do. So they need to get the most of out their limited training time.  Additionally, because of their other obligations, their recovery time is also limited and may be impeded by work and family obligations.  Also, because of their busy lives, they may not have time to develop their own training plans.

Expertise, Knowledge and Technology:  Amateur athletes typically do not have the knowledge and tools to create a scientifically sound training regimen. One alternative to coaching is to buy a pre-built training plan, but the athlete would need to know enough to adjust it specific to their own situation. Analyzing data from workouts is an area where a coach typically has far more education and experience than a self-coached athlete.  As new methods and devices become available (heart rate monitors, power meters, GPS computers, motion sensors, software tools), the amount of data collected on a simple ride can be overwhelming. A coach can help sort through and identify the critical pieces of data to examine.  

Interest level: While some very motivated athletes are fully capable of designing a workable training plan for themselves, others are not.  Even those that are, often choose to hire a coach simply because they don’t want to invest the time (see Time above) and energy in coming up with a plan. They would rather let someone else do the planning for them so they can focus on training and following the plan. When the coach takes on the responsibility of crafting the plan, the athlete can get back to doing what they like doing (riding their bike and training) rather than doing something that they have to do (creating a custom training plan).

Accountability: This is a big one.  Often amateur athletes need some accountability for remaining on task and following the plan , especially for busy folks or those lacking discipline.  A coach provides that accountability. For the athlete, knowing the coach will be taking a look to see if they followed the Training Plan as prescribed provides much needed motivation at times.

Perspective:  Another big one.  Self-coached athletes tend to let their emotions get in the way. A coach can be more objective and help the athlete keep perspective when things aren’t going well.  A bad ride or an illness may seem like the end of the world to a committed athlete while the coach can assure the athlete that it is only a minor setback.  A coach can also provide objective feedback on training progress and provide positive feedback when the athlete is doing well and is showing improvement. A coach evaluates and determines your actual strengths and weaknesses and gets to know you on a very personal level.

Intensity and Recovery: As often as not, a coach needs to help an athlete understand the importance of intensity, which is a bit of a “double edged sword” in itself.  Amateurs aren’t going to have the physical capacity to handle professional level workloads so, workouts should be tailored to the individual client’s needs. Recovery is too often downplayed significantly by self-coached athletes.  Self-coached athletes tend not to push themselves hard enough when they should be training hard.  But then again, they don’t take enough easy days (really easy) either. They tend to do most of their training going moderately fast but never pushing the limits (which will lead to improvement ) and then not allowing adequate rest and recovery (where that improvement really  occurs!).

Setting Achievable Goals & Measuring Progress: While a  fair number  of athletes coached through PCG do race, a surprising number don’t – they just want to improve. This can create real challenges for the athlete in measuring improvement.  The first step here is to assess the athletes current condition and with their input determine achievable goals.  A coach can help them establish goals and in turn convert those goals into data points without the need for race results.  Using speed, heart rate, power, cadence and now motion analysis, a wide range of goals can be determined and metrics can be used to measure progress toward those goals.

Coaching Bonuses:  A coach looks at the complete fitness picture and can schedule in mobility routines, appropriate warm-ups and cool-downs, foam rolling, pedaling drills, strength training and even nutrition - aspects of training that are very often forgotten by athletes who are too busy ‘training’, when these can be important components of training as well.  Something often overlooked is the positive influence a  good coach can offer by providing encouragement and motivation, read “cheer leader” for an athlete.

Equipment and Ride Recommendations: Need a new head unit , power meter or even a bike?  Ask your coach for advice.  Looking to venture into giving gravel, mountain biking or CX (Cyclocross) a try and don’t know where to begin? Want to give racing a try? Do you want to try an endurance ride? Maybe just a medio, piccolo or gran fondo?  Even a big group ride? A coach can help here too.

Yes, coaching costs money, yet your time spent on the bike can be made much more efficient.  Those new carbon wheels you just bought could have paid for a year or more of coaching and you could be so much faster on your “old” wheels with coaching.  Over the long-haul, you may even save money and time off of the bike by preventing overuse injuries. 

If hiring a coach simply isn’t in your budget, ask about other resources your coach can offer, like consulting which could include goal setting, writing a custom training plan, or even just finding the correct pre-built plan while you save up some money.

David Ertl is an Elite coach with Peaks Coaching Group. His Coaching Focus is on Road, MTB,CX,TT. 

Find out more about David www.peakscoachinggroup.com/DavidErtl

The Power of Cyclo-Cross

Cyclo-Cross is a unique discipline within cycling that shares many of the same demands of other disciplines, like criteriums, road races, mountain biking, time trialing and even track racing.   This is one of the characteristics of  CX, that makes it popular along with very demanding.    To be successful at CX, you must have a high functional threshold power, 

be able to time trial at the limit and over it quite frequently, have the anaerobic capacity to accelerate for short periods of time,  be able to do incredible intense short bursts of power and have the handling skills of a cheetah in pursuit.   Because of the varied demands of the sport, training for it is not just as easy as using all of the same workouts you have been using for the road racing season.  If you have spent the season doing some racing and training smart, you are going to have many of the skills needed for successful CX racing, but there are some critical aspects you’ll want to fine tune before the season starts.    Let’s take a look at some of the demands of CX, a couple of key workouts you should incorporate into your pre-season training.

PCG Webinar: Think Train Prep Like A Pro

Let’s take a look at some of the demands of cyclo-cross first.  Anytime you embark on a new athletic endeavor, one of the first things you must consider are the specific demands of that event.  No sense in continuing to train for hill-climbing if you are trying to prepare for cyclo-cross!   Cyclo-Cross is characterized by:  Short, very intense bursts of power, followed by a relatively short period of very little leg muscular contractions (downhills, coasting), some running, and finally a flat out period of high power for less than a minute or two.    All the while, the event itself lasts from 45-60minutes, which makes it relatively short in comparison to most cycling events.    Once you understand what is involved in the sport, then you can start to tailor your training for it.   My co-author of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”, Dr. Andrew R. Coggan, has preached to the masses at every seminar we have taught that one of the most important things to consider when training for an event is event specificity.  Learn and understand the demands of the event itself, that’s the first step towards planning a training regime.

Let’s take a look at a cyclo-cross power file and see what we can find in the file that will further help us develop some specific training for success in Cyclo-Cross. 

18 minutes spent “Not Pedaling” in an one hour race, means that 30% of the race was spent coasting. While this doesn’t mean recovering, it does mean that technical skills are critical to success in a CX race.

In examining just this one power distribution chart above in TrainingPeaks WKO4 software, it’s easy to see that cyclo-cross has some interesting characteristics.   This above distribution chart is very similar to how a criterium road event might look.  The first thing you notice from this power distribution chart is the sheer amount of “not pedaling”. Here, in an hour long race, 18 minutes were spent coasting, which tells us something about the course.  Most likely the course was technical and included some run-ups, and other sections that just didn’t allow for pedaling.   The second thing we see in this distribution chart is the relative even distribution of power from 200- 600 watts, with a concentration from 400-500 watts, which is significant, since this rider’s FTP is 350 watts, but the majority of the time in the race he spent at a much higher wattage than his FTP.

  Here in the graph below, we see just how incredibly ‘stochastic’ or highly variable the power in this file is.  This race is nothing but a set of ‘micro-bursts’ all strung together!   Tiny effort after tiny effort, with equally short rest periods for an entire hour, makes this race incredibly unique.   One thing to note as well is that we do not see much extended time without power, so there must not have been any significant running sections in this race.

An incredibly stochastic race, with lots of bursts, and nearly lacking in sustained power for more than even 30 seconds.   Plan for lots of hard efforts in your upcoming races.

As we examine the file even further, let’s see what we can learn by ‘smoothing’ the data over a 30 second time period.  Smoothing by 30 seconds is a good time course to use when smoothing a the power file.  This time course of 30 seconds relates well to the time it takes for the heart rate to respond to the increase in workload, along with the half-life of lactate in the blood, which impacts your ability to recover quickly.   What we see below with the data smoothed, is that we can pick out the individual laps in the race and we can also see that the upper limit of watts which are limited to a range from 350-450watts for much of the time this athlete was pedaling.

These two components will help us to design some workouts in the future to meet these demands.

By smoothing the power file a little bit, we can see the individual laps in the race more clearly.  The light blue line is at 600watts, the yellow line at 500 watts and the thicker, dark, blue line is a simple linear regression that shows the trend of the power throughout the race as this rider fatigues.

Another important aspect of the above graph is we can nearly pinpoint when the athlete was no longer able to produce the same power that he produced for much of the race.  This gives us insight into the athlete’s fitness and ‘repeatability’, or the ability to do multiple hard efforts and recover quickly.  In this case, this athlete begins to fade around 45 minutes into the race, so he needs to increase the number of intervals that he is doing in training to make sure he can maintain the needed wattage for the entire race.

Now that we have determined some of the key components for cyclo-cross success, let’s design some workouts that will help better prepare our athlete for the next event.  The first workout that is very obvious in which the athlete needs to be able to do with their eyes closed is the ‘Micro-burst’ workout.   The micro-burst workout is done by a series of 15 second ‘ON’ periods with watts at 150% of the athletes functional threshold power(FTP) and with the ‘OFF’ period only 15 seconds long at 50% of FTP.   So, 150%-15 seconds ON, 50%- 15 seconds OFF.  Repeat this ‘on-off’ cycle for 10 minutes, take a break for 5minutes or so, and then go again.  If your race is going to be an hour long, then you need to be able to do at least (6) of these interval sets without any major drop in wattage from the first set to the sixth set.  This will be great preparation for the stochastic nature of cyclo-cross.

The second workout you should consider is a variation of this workout, that I call the “30

Cubed” workout.  It’s also a microburst workout, but now the ‘ON’ period is 30seconds long at 150% of FTP, followed by 30 seconds of 50%, followed by a 30 second period of running.   This makes you get off the bike every minute thereby practicing your mounts and dismounts, along with giving you a huge burst of power as well. 

The third workout that will help the cyclo-cross rider is an hour of 2 minute efforts.

Normally when you do a 2 minute effort, you are trying to hit at least 120% of your FTP for each one, but when you do an hour of them, it’s impossible to do the that high of a percentage of your FTP and finish the workout.  So, by reducing the intensity of the effort to 100-110% of your FTP, it will help you in completing the workout, and thereby accomplishing your goal of increasing your ‘repeatability’.  Since the ability to consistently repeat a strong effort over and over is paramount in cyclo-cross, you need to address this ‘repeatability’ issue with the only thing that will help….. and that’s hard work!   When you do this workout, make sure you are warmed up well, and use your power meter to regulate your effort, as you will tend to overshoot your goal wattage if not careful.  On the rest periods,  start out by making them double the length of the interval, so 4 minutes, and then as you get better and better, see if you can do this workout with only 2 minutes rest, or a 1:1 work/rest ratio.

As you can tell from this article, cyclo-cross racing has some very specific demands to the sport.  Not only do you have to love the cold, rain, mud and to suffer, but you have to be able to put out the effort needed for the event.  With the popularity of the event continuing to rise and the demands of the sport being better defined, the use of a power meter becomes more and more important in training for a cyclo-cross event.  Make sure you race with your power meter as well, so that you can be certain that you are training specifically for your event.  By understanding the demands of the event, training specifically for them and then racing your hardest, you will be assured of a greater chance of success in this fun new popular sport in cycling.

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 TrainingPeaks WKO Software, and is the CEO and Founder of the Peaks Coaching Group. He has coached over 500 athletes ranging from professionals to fitness enthusiasts, and has helped many athletes achieve dreams and goals that they didn’t think were possible.  He specializes in coaching cyclists with wattage meters and is on the forefront coaching with cycling’s newest tool.   He has online training programs including Cyclo-Cross plans available at www.TrainingPeaks.com/cyclocross    and you can contact Hunter directly www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com

The Power of Cyclo-Cross

By PCG Master Elite Coach Hunter Allen

Cyclo-Cross is a unique discipline within cycling that shares many of the same demands of other disciplines, like criteriums, road races, mountain biking, time trialing and even track racing.   This is one of the characteristics of CX, that makes it popular, as well as very demanding. To be successful at CX,  you must have a high functional threshold power,  be able to time trial at the limit and over it quite frequently, have the anaerobic capacity to accelerate for short periods of time,  be able to do incredible intense short bursts of power and have the handling skills of a cheetah in pursuit.   Because of the varied demands of the sport, training for it is not just as easy as using all of the same workouts you have been using for the road racing season.  If you have spent the season doing some racing and training smart, you are going to have many of the skills needed for successful CX racing, but there are some critical aspects you’ll want to fine tune before the season starts.    Let’s take a look at some of the demands of CX , a couple of key  workouts you should incorporate into your pre-season training.

Let’s take a look at some of the demands of cyclo-cross first.  Anytime you embark on a new athletic endeavor, one of the first things you must consider are the specific demands of that event.  No sense in continuing to train for hill-climbing if you are trying to prepare for cyclo-cross!   Cyclo-Cross is characterized by:  Short, very intense bursts of power, followed by a relatively short period of very little leg muscular contractions(downhills, coasting), some running, and finally a flat out period of high power for less than a minute or two.    All the while, the event itself lasts from 45-60minutes, which makes it relatively short in comparison to most cycling events.    Once you understand what is involved in the sport, then you can start to tailor your training for it.   My co-author of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”, Dr. Andrew R. Coggan, has preached to the masses at every seminar we have taught that one of the most important things to consider when training for an event is event specificity.  Learn and understand the demands of the event itself, that’s the first step towards planning a training regime.

Let’s take a look at a cyclo-cross power file and see what we can find in the file that will further help us develop some specific training for success in cyclo-cross. 

18 minutes spent “Not Pedaling” in an one hour race, means that 30% of the race was spent coasting. While this doesn’t mean recovering, it does mean that technical skills are critical to success in a CX race. 

In examining just this one power distribution chart above in TrainingPeaks WKO4 software, it’s easy to see that cyclo-cross has some interesting characteristics.   This above distribution chart is very similar to how a criterium road event might look.  The first thing you notice from this power distribution chart is the sheer amount of “not pedaling”. Here, in an hour long race, 18 minutes were spent coasting, which tells us something about the course.  Most likely the course was technical and included some run-ups, and other sections that just didn’t allow for pedaling.   The second thing we see in this distribution chart is the relative even distribution of power from 200- 600 watts, with a concentration from 400-500 watts, which is significant, since this rider’s FTP is 350 watts, but the majority of the time in the race he spent at a much higher wattage than his FTP.

  Here in the graph below, we see just how incredibly ‘stochastic’ or highly variable the power in this file is.  This race is nothing but a set of ‘micro-bursts’ all strung together!   Tiny effort after tiny effort, with equally short rest periods for an entire hour, makes this race incredibly unique.   One thing to note as well is that we do not see much extended time without power, so there must not have been any significant running sections in this race.

 An incredibly stochastic race, with lots of bursts, and nearly lacking in sustained power for more than even 30 seconds.   Plan for lots of hard efforts in your upcoming races. 

As we examine the file even further, let’s see what we can learn by ‘smoothing’ the data over a 30 second time period.  Smoothing by 30 seconds is a good time course to use when smoothing a the power file.  This time course of 30 seconds relates well to the time it takes for the heart rate to respond to the increase in workload, along with the half-life of lactate in the blood, which impacts your ability to recover quickly.   What we see below with the data smoothed, is that we can pick out the individual laps in the race and we can also see that the upper limit of watts which are limited to a range from 350-450watts for much of the time this athlete was pedaling.

These two components will help us to design some workouts in the future to meet these demands.

By smoothing the power file a little bit, we can see the individual laps in the race more clearly.  The light blue line is at 600watts, the yellow line at 500 watts and the thicker, dark, blue line is a simple linear regression that shows the trend of the power throughout the race as this rider fatigues. 

Another important aspect of the above graph is we can nearly pinpoint when the athlete was no longer able to produce the same power that he produced for much of the race.  This gives us insight into the athlete’s fitness and ‘repeatability’, or the ability to do multiple hard efforts and recover quickly.  In this case, this athlete begins to fade around 45 minutes into the race, so he needs to increase the number of intervals that he is doing in training to make sure he can maintain the needed wattage for the entire race.

Now that we have determined some of the key components for cyclo-cross success, let’s design some workouts that will help better prepare our athlete for the next event.  The first workout that is very obvious in which the athlete needs to be able to do with their eyes closed is the ‘Micro-burst’ workout.   The micro-burst workout is done by a series of 15 second ‘ON’ periods with watts at 150% of the athletes functional threshold power(FTP) and with the ‘OFF’ period only 15 seconds long at 50% of FTP.   So, 150%-15 seconds ON, 50%- 15 seconds OFF.  Repeat this ‘on-off’ cycle for 10 minutes, take a break for 5minutes or so, and then go again.  If your race is going to be an hour long, then you need to be able to do at least (6) of these interval sets without any major drop in wattage from the first set to the sixth set.  This will be great preparation for the stochastic nature of cyclo-cross.

The second workout you should consider is a variation of this workout, that I call the “30

Cubed” workout.  It’s also a microburst workout, but now the ‘ON’ period is 30seconds long at 150% of FTP, followed by 30 seconds of 50%, followed by a 30 second period of running.   This makes you get off the bike every minute thereby practicing your mounts and dismounts, along with giving you a huge burst of power as well. 

The third workout that will help the cyclo-cross rider is an hour of 2 minute efforts.

Normally when you do a 2 minute effort, you are trying to hit at least 120% of your FTP for each one, but when you do an hour of them, it’s impossible to do the that high of a percentage of your FTP and finish the workout.  So, by reducing the intensity of the effort to 100-110% of your FTP, it will help you in completing the workout, and thereby accomplishing your goal of increasing your ‘repeatability’.  Since the ability to consistently repeat a strong effort over and over is paramount in cyclo-cross, you need to address this ‘repeatability’ issue with the only thing that will help….. and that’s hard work!   When you do this workout, make sure you are warmed up well, and use your power meter to regulate your effort, as you will tend to overshoot your goal wattage if not careful.  On the rest periods,  start out by making them double the length of the interval, so 4 minutes, and then as you get better and better, see if you can do this workout with only 2 minutes rest, or a 1:1 work/rest ratio.

As you can tell from this article, cyclo-cross racing has some very specific demands to the sport.  Not only do you have to love the cold, rain, mud and to suffer, but you have to be able to put out the effort needed for the event.  With the popularity of the event continuing to rise and the demands of the sport being better defined, the use of a power meter becomes more and more important in training for a cyclo-cross event.  Make sure you race with your power meter as well, so that you can be certain that you are training specifically for your event.  By understanding the demands of the event, training specifically for them and then racing your hardest, you will be assured of a greater chance of success in this fun new popular sport in cycling.

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 TrainingPeaks WKO Software, and is the CEO and Founder of the Peaks Coaching Group. He has coached over 500 athletes ranging from professionals to fitness enthusiasts, and has helped many athletes achieve dreams and goals that they didn’t think were possible.  He specializes in coaching cyclists with wattage meters and is on the forefront coaching with cycling’s newest tool.   

He has online training programs including Cyclo-Cross plans available at www.TrainingPeaks.com/cyclocross and you can contact Hunter directly www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com

10 Tips for Junior Racers

By PCG Elite Coach Mark Orton

Racing as a junior can be very rewarding, but it can also be very stressful. Here are some quick tips that will help aspiring junior racers keep enjoying the sport, and keep from burning out. 

•   Take school stress into account. Don't plan any big race events within a week on either side of finals, midterms, prom, homecoming, or anything else that may stress you out. Don't have a tough training week on any of those weeks either. If you can work it into your schedule, make those weeks your rest and recovery weeks. 

•   Try all kinds of disciplines. Give cyclocross, track, trials, bmx, mountain bike, road, or gravel a try. Different disciplines allow different strengths to shine. I’ve seen racers struggle to be an XC racer, then transition to Enduro and Downhill and excel! You’ll never know if you missed your calling if you haven't tried them all.

•   Have fun and don't take things too seriously. If you get too serious, and specialize in one thing too early, you will burn out. We ride bikes because it's fun, don't forget that! Even if you’re on a serious training plan with a dedicated coach, be sure to work social and fun rides into your plan. 

•   Play other sports and do other activities at least up until mid-way through high school, if not through college. A well rounded athlete is more attractive to college programs, and has developed a better sense of themselves, resulting in higher overall confidence levels.

•   Do well in school, take school seriously. Your biggest supporters are your parents, keep them happy and willing to support your sporting endeavors by keeping your grades up. Most of us won’t make a living on the bike, so keep your options open by keeping your grades up. Plus, cycling is expensive, so when you move out you’ll need a good job to pay for this sport!

•   Work with a coach that has experience with juniors and knows the differences between training juniors and training adults. Junior racers are not just small adults. When interviewing prospective coaches, ask questions about their training plans, ensure that they know the differences between coaching masters athletes and junior athletes. 

•   Junior females, learn about the female athlete triad. If you are a female racer, you need to know about this. A great place to start is femaleathletetriad.org. If you are working with a coach, this is something you need to make sure they are aware of as well.

•   Enjoy your success, and always strive to get better. Don't assume your success as a junior racer will automatically lead to success as you grow and progress. Differences in development create situations where there are imbalanced race fields. Junior racers each mature at different rates, so someone who may be underdeveloped this season, could have a growth spurt and be the most developed in the field next season.

•   Work skills and the fundamentals more than you think you need to. Skills can keep you and other racers safe. Skills can keep you out of trouble. Skills will help you win. No matter the discipline you race, having well rounded skills can pay dividends and get you out of a tricky situation. It can mean the difference between touching wheels and riding away, and touching wheels and causing a pile up in the peleton.

•   HAVE FUN!!! I can't say that enough, HAVE FUN!!!

Racing bikes is fun and rewarding. It will keep you in great shape, it teaches you lessons that you can apply to your everyday life, and it helps you develop into a responsible adult. However, if taken too seriously, too early, it can be a recipe for burn out. Using these tips will help you get the most out of your time on the bike, and add enjoyment to your training and racing.  

Training And Racing In The Rain

by Marianne Holt, PCG elite coach

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”

- Bob Dylan

Whether you love rainy days or hate them, it’s very likely that you will find yourself riding in the rain at some point; probably racing in it, as well. And rain changes things. As you watch the weather report, here are a few things to keep in mind when faced with the drips.

Road Hazards

There are several places that can become slick as glass even if just mildly wet or damp:

• Painted lines
• Railroad tracks (hopefully there aren’t any on the course, but you never know)
• Manhole covers
• Intersections where cars stop. These are usually worse when the roads are just damp versus very wet. When cars stop at intersections, oil drips down and accumulates on the asphalt. Combine that oil with just a little bit of water, and it’s crazy slick.
• Dirt and gravel that might have washed out on the road. Be on the lookout for this, especially in the turns.

Braking

If the roads are very wet, water will accumulate between your bike’s brake pads and rims, essentially giving you zero slowing and stopping ability. So be sure to feather the brakes frequently to squeeze out the water and keep it out.

This is so obvious I almost hesitate to include it, but I will: Allow extra room between you and the rider in front of you. Even if you do a great job of keeping the water away from your brake pads, it will still take extra time to stop or slow down on wet or damp roads, so give yourself plenty of room.

Racing

Ride at the front of the pack. My athletes get to hear me preach about not riding at the front of the pack, but while that is still my advice in general, at or near the front will for sure be the safest place to be if it’s wet. Personally, if it’s raining, I like to go hard from the gun to try to whittle down the field. You’ll have to use your judgment on this one because you don’t want to burn all your matches from the beginning, but the fewer riders in the field, the better your chances are of staying safe and having a good finish.

Hands in drops is even more important when it’s wet. It’s easy for wet hands to slide right off the top of the brake hoods. Keep your hands in the drops; you’ll have more control and won’t risk losing your grip.

Gear and Clothing

This one is important! If it looks pretty certain the roads will be wet, run a little less pressure in your tires. I usually go 5-7 psi less than I would normally have. Yes, you might increase your risk of a pinch flat, but you’ll get better traction on the wet roads.

I highly recommend wearing eye wear with yellow lenses, or some other light color. If you go without, you’ll get tons of road spray in your eyes (from the wheel in front of you or your own front wheel) and won’t be able to see well. The lenses will of course get wet and dirty, but I find that a quick swipe with my finger will clear them off enough for me to see the road ahead.

If you’ve been using the same helmet for a while on these hot, humid days, chances are you’ve accumulated a lot of sweat on the pads and straps. If the pads get very wet and water drips in your eyes, you’ll feel a serious stinging (think salt water in your eyes). So now is a good time to clean your helmet and get that sweat and grim out of the pads and straps.

It’ll probably be a little cooler in the rain, so don’t forget to pack an extra base layer and maybe arm warmers. A vest is good too, but you’ll need your race number to be visible at all times, so if you plan to race in your vest, be sure to pin your number on it. And I KNOW you all know how to pin on your number!

Getting it Done

Remember: rain shouldn't stop you. It simply creates another opportunity to become a better athlete!

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Marianne lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, where she enjoys all types of riding, including criterium races, road races, GFNCS, mountainous centuries, time trials, and the occasional cruise on her mountain bike or cyclocross bike. She is a Category 1 racer with the PainPathways Women’s Team and a USA Cycling Level 2 Certified Coach. She has extensive road racing experience, including NRC and International Stage Races, UCI races, and elite and masters nationals championship races. She is a former masters nationals time trial champion and has numerous silver and bronze medals from masters nationals criteriums and road races. Marianne can be contacted through info@peakscoachinggroup.com or www.peakscoachinggroup.com.

Two Killer Cyclocross Workouts

Cyclocross hurts, and so do the workouts that matter! Head out to your local CX course (or create one at a school or park) and give these two workouts a try.

Workout One: The 30-30-30

Warm-up

Ride 15 minutes in your endurance zone with a solid five-minute tempo effort to open up your legs.

Main set

Complete the following:

• 1 x 5-minute blow-out with watts at 115% of FTP
• 2 x 10-minute sets of 30-30-30: 30 seconds riding as hard as you can, 30 seconds coasting and not pedaling, 30 seconds dismounted and running fast. Repeat.
• 5 minutes easy
• 4 x 2 minutes AC work at 130% of FTP. Push hard and fast. Rest 2 minutes after each.
• 10 minutes easy
• Finish with 10 x 1 minute fast pedaling: 1 minute on, 1 minute off (cadence goal: 110 rpm).

Cool-down

15 minutes easy riding

Workout Two: Race Prep

Warm-up

Warm up for 10 minutes at 56-76% of FTP.

Main set

Complete the following:

• 20 minutes of tempo (85-90% of FTP) with 5 bursts (10 seconds each) to 200% of FTP and return to 85-90% of FTP. Ride at endurance for 5 minutes at 70%. 
• Now do 4 x 2 minutes, with 2 minutes between each. Try for 135% of FTP watts on each one. Do 2 additional efforts if your fourth one is still at least 120% of FTP.
• Now ride at sweet-spot (88-93%) of FTP for 30 minutes, smooth and steady, and do 10 bursts within this 30 minutes: 200% of FTP for 15 seconds before coming back to 88-93% of FTP.
• Finish with 2 hard efforts, each 5 minutes long with watts at 110% of FTP. Rest for 5 minutes between each.

Cool-down

10 minutes easy riding


Be sure to get in a good recovery shake afterward!


Want more awesome workouts? Contact us to try our custom training plans personalized specifically for you!

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Hunter Allen is a USA Cycling Level 1 coach and former professional cyclist. He is the coauthor of Training and Racing with a Power Meter and Cutting-Edge Cycling, co-developer of TrainingPeaks’ WKO software, and CEO and founder of Peaks Coaching Group. He and his coaches create custom training plans for all levels of athletes. Hunter can be contacted directly via info@peakscoachinggroup.com or through PeaksCoachingGroup.com.

Image credit: Rena Schild / Shutterstock.com

What Can You Do in Three Weeks?

All the grand tours are three weeks long. The typical build cycle in training is three weeks long. The life cycle of the cabbage worm is three weeks long. Most women recognize they are pregnant at three weeks. Three weeks, twenty-one days. How much can you improve your fitness in three weeks? If you gave yourself a three-week training camp, how many more watts would you produce at the end of it? How much fitter would you become? How much body fat would you lose? How much could your bike handling skills improve?

How to Interpret Power Data and What to Do With It

“I just bought a $2,000 power meter, and I'm faster.”

Are you?

One of the single most important purchases for any cyclist who wants to be faster is a power meter. Just as important, however, is knowing how to use it. A power meter can't do you any good if you don’t know how to interpret the information.

Variations on a Theme: Threshold Work for Cyclocross

It’s the time of year when thoughts turn to cowbells, barriers, and mud. Yes, it is time for cyclocross. Rider approaches to cross vary widely; for some, cross is the focus of the season and they’re just ramping up their training, while others are winding down the road season and thinking about extending the racing with some cross. In both cases, there is a need to rebuild FTP (functional threshold power), but in a cross-focused way.

If you've been racing all summer, your power at threshold has declined as you focus on racing and recovering. Even if you haven’t spent the summer racing on the road and instead put in some long base rides to build aerobic fitness and endurance, you'll want to get a good block just topping off the tank, as it were. Nearly all riders know that riding in their sweet spot (88-93% of FTP) is one of the most time-efficient ways to increase FTP, but for cross there are some minor adjustments that can be made to make the workouts even more specific.

When it comes to specificity, let’s think about what makes a cross race different from other races. First, think about the start. The first half to full lap of a cross race is perhaps the hardest few minutes you can experience on a bike as everyone fights for position into the first technical sections. So the first recommendation I make is that EVERY workout begin with a five-minute blowout effort at VO2max intensity (zone 5 power).

The next thing about cross is that the effort is never steady; instead, there are lots and lots of jumps at near max intensity. In this way cross is like a technical crit, but with a key difference: in cross there is no pack and very little drafting. Yes, there are moments when you aren’t pedaling, but it’s not because you’re being swept along by the pack but because you’re setting up for a corner or obstacle. Besides those moments, you need to be on the gas, so we design workouts that mimic that kind of effort.

There are two ways I address this with my athletes: intervals with jumps and intervals with bursts. Essentially you perform tempo or sweet spot interval (e.g. 45-60 at 80-85% FTP or 2 x 20 at 88-93%) and at set intervals you perform either a jump (a 10- to 12-second sprint) or a burst (30 seconds at 110%+ FTP). The jumps help with accelerating after a slow corner or a remount, the bursts with those times in a race when you want to respond to or initiate an attack. But the key is that after the intense effort you don't let power fall below the zone for the interval. This forces your body to make a hard effort without easing off to recover, just like the uneven efforts you find in cross races.

Below are two of my favorite variations on classic workouts aimed at cross. I usually start with the tempo-with-jumps workout and begin with 30-45 minutes (depending on the length of the race) and work up to an hour.

Cyclocross Workout 1: Tempo with Jumps

WU: 10-15 minutes working into zone 2, with 3 x 1-minute fast pedal/low power efforts with 1 minute recovery between.

MS1: 5-minute blowout VO2max effort. Do 5 minutes at 110% FTP or Zone 5. Think of this as the first few minutes of a cross race; even if you’re not going for the hole shot, you need to maintain or improve your position. Recover 3-5 minutes afterwards (as you get stronger, decrease the recovery interval).

MS2: Ride 60 minutes in Zone 3. Within this effort do 12-20 all-out jumps of 10-12 seconds. Recover immediately to Zone 3 after each jump. Start with 12 jumps (every 5 minutes) and add more each time you do the workout.

CD: 10-15 minutes in Zone 1.

Cyclocross Workout 2: Sweet Spot with Bursts

WU: 10-15 minutes working into zone 2, with 3 x 1-minute fast pedal/low power efforts with 1 minute recovery between.

MS1: 5-minute blowout VO2max effort. Do 5 minutes at 110% FTP or Zone 5. Think of this as the first few minutes of a cross race; even if you’re not going for the hole shot, you need to maintain or improve your position. Recover 3-5 minutes afterward (as you get stronger, decrease the recovery interval).

MS2: 2 x 20 minutes sweet spot, with watts 88-93% FTP. Within this effort, do 5 x 30-second efforts at 110% FTP. After these 30 second efforts, return immediately to sweet spot, never letting watts fall below 88% FTP.  So, you are doing the bursts WITHIN the 20 Minutes. Recover 5 minutes between efforts.


CD: 10-15 minutes in Zone 1.


Photo: PCG elite coach Iain Banks powers over a cyclocross course. Original photo credit: Alex Pline.

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Christian Sheridan is a Level 2 USAC cycling coach, an assistant professor at Bridgewater College, and a father of one living near Charlottesville, Virginia. He has coached athletes at all levels and has helped several athletes upgrade from Cat 5 to Cat 2. Christian can be contacted through info@peakscoachinggroup.com or www.peakscoachinggroup.com.

Peaks Coaching Group Continues to Expand Internationally

Peaks Coaching Group Expands in Brazil, Japan, and India
Bedford, VA, USA – August 6, 2014

Peaks Coaching Group is the leading international endurance-based power training company for cyclists and triathletes. The founder and CEO of Peaks Coaching Group, Hunter Allen, is widely known as one of the top experts in training with power and is the coauthor of the authoritative book Training and Racing with a Power Meter. Peaks Coaching Group has been growing rapidly in the last several years as power training has become the new norm for competitive cycling and endurance training. We are pleased to announce that PCG now has affiliate groups in two countries, Brazil and Japan. Both groups are owned and operated by PCG coaches who have been trained and mentored by Hunter Allen. In addition, PCG continues its international expansion through coaching two professional cycling teams in India, Trek Firefox and Specialized Kynkyny.

In Brazil, PCG elite coach Cris Solak owns and operates Peaks Brazil. Cris has been coaching for over fifteen years and is an accomplished pro triathlete himself and a Brazilian National Champion. Hunter Allen commented, “Cris has been part of the PCG team for over five years coaching PCG athletes as well as working at PCG training camps. Brazil has always been a hot spot for power training, and now we have Cris and his team to handle the needs of so many interested cyclists and triathletes in Brazil.” Cris is excited about bringing power training to Brazil. “As a coach,” he said, “I combine my extensive racing experience and years of athletic studies with Hunter’s proprietary power training education, and I can provide the ultimate coaching experience for my athletes.” You can read more about Cris and his coaching on his website: http://peaksbrasil.com.br/.

In Japan, PCG elite coach Takashi Nakata owns and operates Peaks Coaching Group Japan. Takashi is an experienced coach and athlete with twenty-five years of road, track, and cyclocross racing at national and international events. “I have always wanted to pass on the cycling knowledge that I have obtained in the US while traveling in California, as well as Hunter Allen’s expertise of power training and education, to help Japanese riders achieve their potential,” said Takashi. “The scientific and quantified approach to training that Hunter and the PCG team bring to the table will be exciting to help advance the Japanese cycling culture to a more international level.” Hunter Allen, who has mentored Takashi, commented, “Takashi is a sponge for power knowledge. His analytical mind and background studies mixed with his racing background are perfect for really grasping the technical power concepts that are needed to run Peaks Coaching Group Japan.” Takashi has begun to translate the PCG blog into Japanese to bring Hunter’s power knowledge and articles to the Japanese cycling community: http://peakscoachinggroup-japan.blogspot.com/. Takashi’s site already has over 1,300 reader hits a day, and as Hunter said, “Coach Takashi’s future with power training and Peaks Coaching Group in Japan has huge growth potential!”

In India, PCG  has been working closely with renowned Indian coach Srinath Rajam to develop two pro teams. The response and growth from the Indian athletes has been tremendous. Tim developed a team coaching approach for the India teams that includes not just the pro team but over 100 competitive cyclists training and competing regionally and nationally. The PCG coaches have been teaching and training the athletes about power, as well as race tactics and strategy. “It has been an honor to work and coach with Sri and the Indian cyclists,” Tim said, “and it’s been exciting watching them grow and become strong international teams.” Srinath Rajam has coordinated and sponsored this aggressive cycling development in India and is looking forward to UCI pro status in 2015 for Team Trek Firefox and Team Specialized Kynkyny. Click here to find out more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MLu8Fx84Lk.

Bills, Bacon, and Beer: Mastering the Extracurricular Skills of Cyclocross

By Gordon Paulson, PCG elite coach

Image Credit: nwwineanthem.com

Cyclocross racing is different. Apart from the mount/dismount, suitcase carries, step-through dismounts, and bunny hopping, a CX race can present rare and mysterious challenges unlike those of a typical criterium. You’ll need to be prepared. Before you line up for your first CX race, make sure you’re ready for that ‘cross-distinguishing element: the hand-up.

Now if you want to get technical, there are most likely rules against accepting hand-ups in your ‘cross races, and there’s no feed zone. But it’s ‘cross; what’s a few rules to get in the way of general craziness? Hand-ups are as much a part of the culture as the dismount.

There are basically three types of hand-ups you should prepare for: bills, bacon, and beer.

Using a Power Meter in Cyclocross Training and Racing

By Hunter Allen and Dr. Andrew Coggan
an excerpt from Training and Racing with a Power Meter, Second Edition

PCG elite coach Christian Sheridan crushes cyclocross.

Using your power meter in cyclocross is not only effective but arguably one of your best weapons in pushing yourself to the next level. Cyclocross has its own unique set of demands: you must be able to create quick bursts of effort over small obstacles, leap off the bicycle, and run while carrying it for up to thirty seconds, all while maintaining a pace at your functional threshold power (FTP) and above for 40-75 minutes. It’s nearly impossible to hold a steady power or even look at your power meter during a race or hard training session. However, you can use your power meter to learn quite a few things about the demands of CX and tailor your training so that you’ll be ready for the next race.

Power meter files from CX races typically average about 20-40 watts below an athlete’s actual FTP, because there is so much down time when the athlete is either coasting down a technical hill or off the bike and running, and because of the lack of traction on many of the courses. Putting the power to the ground skews the power down, and one has to take this into consideration when reviewing CX power files.

Because of these running and technical coasting sections, it’s hard to determine the exact muscular demands of CX. When viewed in a quadrant analysis plot, a CX race contains the largest amount of the effort in QII, which represents slow pedaling and higher force, but QIII (slow pedaling, low force) and QIV (fast pedaling and low force)  are also heavily involved in CX.

When you examine your power file from a CX race, one of the first things you might notice is that it looks a lot like some of those criteriums you did earlier in the year. Loads of stochastic power spikes, easily discernible laps, and big race-winning type efforts are all commonalities to road criterium races. Many aspects of a CX power file are very interesting, such as the power bursts needed in the race, the amount of rest in each lap, and the overall training stress accumulated in the race.

One thing that is important to identify in a CX power file is the number of watts above your FTP and how long each of these efforts were; in other words, how many matches you have to burn. A CX “match” is a little different than a match in a road race or a criterium, because most likely you’ll already be at your FTP and then have to do hard efforts above it, depending on the terrain and your competition. The matches are really just bursts of flames coming up from the already raging fire! However, identifying these flames and their intensity will allow you to train more specifically for the effort. Use the “fast find” feature in WKO+ to help identify them.

After reviewing hundreds of CX race and training power files, I have determined that another specific training workout good for CX is a variation on the Level 7 micro-burst workout. I call this workout the 30-30-30 workout because it’s comprised of 30 seconds at 150% of FTP, 30 seconds coasting (0% of FTP), and 30 seconds of running. By extending the intervals to 30 seconds, it changes the type of workout from a level 7 to a level 6 workout, since at 30 seconds the anaerobic capacity system is highly utilized. The 30-30-30 workout is done continuously for 10 minutes, and then a rest is taken for 5 minutes before doing two to four more sets total.

The 30-30-30 Cyclocross Workout

1. 15-minute warm-up at level 2
2. 5-minute hard effort at 110% of FTP
3. 5 minutes easy at level 2
4. 2 x 10 minutes of 30-30-30, which is 30 seconds riding hard as you can, 30 seconds coasting and not pedaling, 30 seconds dismount and running fast. Ride 10 minutes at level 2 after each 30-30-30 effort.
5. 4 x 2 minutes anaerobic capacity work at 150% of FTP. Rest 2 minutes after each.
6. 10 minutes at level 2
7. Finish with 10 x 1 minute fast pedaling at 110+ rpm; 1 minute on, 1 minute off at 80 rpm.
8. Cool down for 15 minutes.

One of the most important reasons to use a power meter is for the ability to train to the demands of a specific event, and this is highly applicable for cyclocross. Addressing the specific need of a strong anaerobic capacity, along with highly tuned technical skills (dismounting the bike, running with the bike, and remounting) creates the perfect blend of a workout in the 30-30-30. Along with this anaerobic capacity workout, CX demands a strong FTP, so the traditional level 4 FTP workouts done at 4 x 10, 3 x 15, and 2 x 20 minutes at FTP are important for the successful CX racer.

Sam Krieg, PCG coach and elite cross racer, said, “The ability to train with power on your ‘cross bike and develop specific ‘cross workouts has allowed me to not only coach ‘cross riders more specifically but also improve my own fitness. My favorite workout is the 30-30-30 that Hunter developed, because of the structure it provides, the nearly identical similarities to my ‘cross races, and it forces me to go hard for the entire ten-minute set.”

Kris Walker, the national champion in the 2009 masters (45-49) time trial and the 2008 masters cyclocross events, adds, “As a classic steady-state rider, my forte is my ability to hold a constant power for the entire event, and cyclocross is very challenging to me because I have to train my weakness, anaerobic capacity. After reviewing my power files with Hunter, we were able to determine just exactly how much anaerobic work I was going to need in order to be on the top step of the cyclocross national championship podium.”

Cyclocross is another discipline within cycling in which using a power meter to train more quantitatively and also more specifically to the demands of CX allows users to improve their performance. A key component of this improvement hinges on the ability of the athlete to mimic the demands of upcoming CX races and develop training routines for them.

Good luck out there!

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Hunter Allen is a USA Cycling Level 1 coach and former professional cyclist. He is the coauthor of Training and Racing with a Power Meter and Cutting-Edge Cycling, co-developer of TrainingPeaks’ WKO software, and CEO and founder of Peaks Coaching Group. He and his coaches create custom training plans for all levels of athletes. Hunter can be contacted directly through PeaksCoachingGroup.com.