Steel City Endurance Racing

Hey team,  a quick note about how to repeat your former success in cycling performance.

On one hand, there were a handful of people this weekend who felt dull, flat, tired, fatigued, etc during their racing.  On the other hand I have a few athletes who have said to me, “I felt great for X weekend and I want to do that again for Y race in 2 weeks.”

So how can you figure out why you felt flat for one race or weekend, yet felt great on another?   Check your training diary!

You are keeping a training diary, aren’t you?  By reviewing the workouts and recovery you had prior to an amazing performance, you can look for common elements that helped you feel great on that day. Perhaps it was a combination of workouts you did 2-3 weeks before that you felt were particularly helpful, or perhaps it was your total training volume or maybe you had a great massage 3 days before the event, etc, etc.

Perhaps you feel like you peaked too early in the season…and by looking back you can see that the 4 hour rides you were doing on January 1st led to some mental burnout that you never recovered from… If you have a training diary that is kept up to date, you have all of this valuable information at your fingertips so that you can attempt to repeat great builds and tapers and “off -seasons” that lead to great performances.
It may be close to the end of road racing season, but cross season and mountain biking races are yet to come.  It’s not too late to start keeping a training log. Your log can be as simple or as complex as you like.

My first training log was a weekly Nike planner that had motivational sayings all through it.  Then I progressed to an online training log at the website beginnertriathlete.com I logged every single workout that I did from my 2nd year in residency up until last fall (I admit, I finally got tired of it…but I also wasn’t training for anything in particular when I stopped updating it).

But I can look back on my training and see exactly what I did to prepare for my swim from Alcatraz (I felt great!), my best ever 5k run time, and most recently, my 25% improvement across all power levels when I put myself on my own training plan this past May.

If you are not already keeping a training diary, please start today!  It can be paper or electronic: an excel spreadsheet, a word document, a blogger or wordpress blog … all of those are free. Other free options are an account at beginnertriathlete.com. The great thing about their training logs is that it is pre-setup for mutliple workout activities, swim and bike of course, but also many others…strength training, etc.
You can also check out workoutlog.com, trainingpeaks.com and addaero.com for other commercial training log options (Training peaks does have a free option).
Of all of them, my favorite by far is the one at beginnertriathlete.com.
If you make an account there, I post on the forums by the name AdventureBear.  And if you ever have questions or want me to review your training, it’s easy for me to add you to my buddies list and take a look at your logs and workouts.

What kind of information should you log?
The basics are:

• Date
• Activity (run,bike,swim, strength, yoga, etc)
• Workout (specific intervals, hills, duration of intervals, # sets, type of riding)
• Duration of workout in TIME, then in Miles if you choose.  Why Time first?  It’s a vital element of future planning…how much time do you have available to workout?  How much time did you spend training in the past? Was it effective or not? Do you need to improve the quality of your workouts so you can decrease the duration and still benefit? etc…)

Notes about the workout…keep it short and simple.”I felt great”, “Did all the intervals”, “sore from yesterday’s run, but finished and felt better as the ride went on,” etc.
Now go forth and document!!

-Coach