Steel City Endurance Racing

Women's & Men's Cycling Team

Forge your fitness this winter: Planning off-season training

Posted by Coach Suzanne on 10/21/09 • Categorized as Training

“Fortunate, indeed, is the man who takes exactly the right measure of himself…”  - Perter Mere Latham
Hey Team,  I hope you found the information I shared on strength training helpful. Please give me feedback, otherwise I won’t know what sort of information will help you best with your training!
Evaluate this past year of training and racing
This email is about taking stock of your past year of cycling in order to plan the upcoming season.  Without a firm idea of your strengths and weaknesses, it is impossible to plan a training schedule that will help you improve. And without knowing what your goals are, you will never know if you are on the right track or how to get there.
Most of the times you’ll read that you need to identify your strengths and weaknesses.  This can be really hard. A sneaky way to identify those things is instead to ask yourself,
-What did I enjoy most about the season?
-What did I like  about the season?
-Do these things match up with my strengths and weaknesses?
FInally look at areas where you felt you improved.  Can you correlate that with the type of training you were doing surrounding that time?  (Do you keep a training log so that you can review this stuff???)
Think about where you want to go next season
Once you’ve done that, you need to think about what you want to accomplish next season.  Think about this as specifically as you can. Specific races, specific course goals, specific times, specific turns on specific courses.  Try not to frame this in terms of someone else’s performance.
An example of combining all these questions may be:
-what did I dislike? The twisty course at that one criterium where Susie from Philadelphia rode away from me and I never caught her again.
-what did I like? Every sprint that I was in…because I usually win or place in the field sprint!
How do these match up with stregths and weaknesses? In this case, it sounds like cornering is a weakness and sprinting is a strength. Creating season goals for next year is pretty easy once you’ve identified these things.
Create goals that are specific, measurable and achievable
For example, a great goal would be, “I want to improve my cornering ability on the XYZ criterium so that I can stay at the front of the pack and compete in the sprint finish instead of wasting energy getting dropped and reaccelerating on each turn.”  Now get even more specific.  How much do you want to improve your corning? What speeds were you taking the turns at? What gears were you coming out of the turn in?  how much faster do you think you can go? Is there a place nearby that can simulate this set of corners?
Here’s how to implement this specific goal. Go out to a parking lot or park with little to no traffic. Set up a course that mimics the race…turns with the proper radius, a long straightaway to build up speed into the turn, etc.   Have someone time you through the set of turns, or on a representative “lap” of a simulate course. As you practice your cornering skills and accelerations out of the turn, keep timing yourself on that same set of turns. TIme yourself at the beginning and end of the practice session as well as at the begiinning and end of a 4 week block of a cornering focused training block.
If you can’t measure your progress you can’t manage it!  By setting a very specific goal, “I want to take the turns at XYZ without slowing down before the turn and accelerate out of it in my 53/18 gear at a cadence of 90″.  Notice how specific this is, rather than just saying, “I want to finish top 3 at XYZ race”.  With the latter as your “goal” (I want to podium), you have no focus on how to train and how to improve. By identifying specific features and working on them, you are guaranteed to see improvement.
This obviously applies to fitness based goals and not just skills based goals, but both are vital for success and enjoyment of your racing season.
Your Homework:
Take an exact measure of yourself.  Ask yourself these questions:
-What did I enjoy most about last season?
-What did I enjoy least?
-Does this correlate to my strengths and weaknesses?
Now brainstorm a list of goals for next year. Make this list as specific as possible, and focused only on what YOU can control and achieve, not based on someone else’s performance.
Examples:
-i want to improve my 10 mile TT by 2 mph by the beginning of June.
-I want to improve my 20 minute lactate threshold field test by 3 minutes compared to last years test at the same time
-I want to improve my threshold wattage by 10% compared to last year by the first Mingo Race
-I want to not get dropped on the last hill of Mingo during the last lap of the race.  (Look at your HRM log or powerfile log for last year’s race, identify the laps, identify the watts and/or speed for each lap. Create some training simulations to mimic that effort and progressively work towards the goal).
Everybody now put your brian to work! You cant plan a season’s training, even with 7 months till Mingo, until you know what your goals are, what your weaknesses are, how to address them and create a plan to do so.
Please feel free to email me if you want to discuss these things in private or over email. I want to help everyone this season have their best season yet.
-Coach
5214_1208388136845_1442962325_588098_2122271_n“Fortunate, indeed, is the man who takes exactly the right measure of himself…”

- Perter Mere Latham

Hey Team,

I hope you found the information I shared on strength training helpful. Please give me feedback, otherwise I won’t know what sort of information will help you best with your training!

Evaluate this past year of training and racing

This email is about taking stock of your past year of cycling in order to plan the upcoming season.  Without a firm idea of your strengths and weaknesses, it is impossible to plan a training schedule that will help you improve. And without knowing what your goals are, you will never know if you are on the right track or how to get there.

Most of the times you’ll read that you need to identify your strengths and weaknesses. This can be really hard. A sneaky way to identify those things is instead to ask yourself,

  • What did I enjoy most about the season?
  • What did I like  about the season?
  • Do these things match up with my strengths and weaknesses?

Finally look at areas where you felt you improved.  Can you correlate that with the type of training you were doing surrounding that time?  (Do you keep a training log so that you can review this stuff???)

Think about where you want to go next season

Once you’ve done that, you need to think about what you want to accomplish next season.  Think about this as specifically as you can. Specific races, specific course goals, specific times, specific turns on specific courses.  Try not to frame this in terms of someone else’s performance.

An example of combining all these questions may be:

  • What did I dislike? The twisty course at that one criterium where Susie from Philadelphia rode away from me and I never caught her again.
  • What did I like? Every sprint that I was in…because I usually win or place in the field sprint!

How do these match up with stregths and weaknesses? In this case, it sounds like cornering is a weakness and sprinting is a strength. Creating season goals for next year is pretty easy once you’ve identified these things.

Create goals that are specific, measurable and achievable

For example, a great goal would be, “I want to improve my cornering ability on the XYZ criterium so that I can stay at the front of the pack and compete in the sprint finish instead of wasting energy getting dropped and reaccelerating on each turn.”  Now get even more specific.  How much do you want to improve your corning? What speeds were you taking the turns at? What gears were you coming out of the turn in?  how much faster do you think you can go? Is there a place nearby that can simulate this set of corners?

Here’s how to implement this specific goal. Go out to a parking lot or park with little to no traffic. Set up a course that mimics the race…turns with the proper radius, a long straightaway to build up speed into the turn, etc.   Have someone time you through the set of turns, or on a representative “lap” of a simulate course. As you practice your cornering skills and accelerations out of the turn, keep timing yourself on that same set of turns. TIme yourself at the beginning and end of the practice session as well as at the begiinning and end of a 4 week block of a cornering focused training block.

If you can’t measure your progress you can’t manage it!  By setting a very specific goal, “I want to take the turns at XYZ without slowing down before the turn and accelerate out of it in my 53/18 gear at a cadence of 90″.  Notice how specific this is, rather than just saying, “I want to finish top 3 at XYZ race”.  With the latter as your “goal” (I want to podium), you have no focus on how to train and how to improve. By identifying specific features and working on them, you are guaranteed to see improvement.

This obviously applies to fitness based goals and not just skills based goals, but both are vital for success and enjoyment of your racing season.

Your Homework:

Take an exact measure of yourself.  Ask yourself these questions:

  • What did I enjoy most about last season?
  • What did I enjoy least?
  • Does this correlate to my strengths and weaknesses?

Now brainstorm a list of goals for next year. Make this list as specific as possible, and focused only on what YOU can control and achieve, not based on someone else’s performance.

Examples:

  • I want to improve my 10 mile TT by 2 mph by the beginning of June.
  • I want to improve my 20 minute lactate threshold field test by 3 minutes compared to last years test at the same time.
  • I want to improve my threshold wattage by 10% compared to last year by the first Mingo Race.
  • I want to not get dropped on the last hill of Mingo during the last lap of the race.  (Look at your HRM log or powerfile log for last year’s race, identify the laps, identify the watts and/or speed for each lap. Create some training simulations to mimic that effort and progressively work towards the goal).

Everybody now put your brian to work! You cant plan a season’s training, even with 7 months till Mingo, until you know what your goals are, what your weaknesses are, how to address them and create a plan to do so.

Please feel free to email me if you want to discuss these things in private or over email. I want to help everyone this season have their best season yet.

-Coach

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