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As the competitive
season begins, cyclists are sometimes similar to bears emerging from
hibernation: disoriented, sluggish and clumsy, yet hungry. Everyone is hungry
for that first taste of competition, to feel the rush that comes with pushing
off the start line for the first time in a new season. By focusing on a few
specific items in your training, you can start the season with more grace and
success. Add Some
Speed
May times, cyclists
spend the majority of the winter riding by themselves or in small groups. While
this works very well to achieve the Foundation Period goals of developing the
aerobic system, the average speeds for these rides are relatively low. More
importantly, your power output during a solo ride is often steadier than it will
ever be in competition. To succeed in races you have to have the power you
developed in long steady workouts as well as the agility to change your speed
rapidly, initiate attacks and respond to accelerations. In preparation for the
beginning of the racing season, you need to reacquaint yourself with speed.
Fast group rides are one
way to add a speed component to your training. Ideally you were participating in
a few of these rides each month throughout the winter, but if you weren’t, this
would be a good time to seek one out. Riding your bike inches away from other
riders while rubbing handlebars and shoulders at 25+ mph is good for you. You
should find that your reaction time and your tendency to exaggerate small
corrections decrease as you regain your confidence in a fast-moving field.
I recommend riding
early-season groups rides a little under-geared in order to avoid the temptation
to sit in the draft, lazily turning over a big gear. Doing so reduces your
workload; so much so that data from PowerTap To further improve your
comfort level at high speeds, add some downhill sprints to your training
program. These sprints serve at least two purposes: developing peak power and
improving your handling skills for sprinting. A powerful sprint is also
beautiful to watch because when you have good technique, your body movements out
of the saddle are smooth and fluid and the bike just rockets forward. Unrefined,
a sprint can be messy; arms and legs flying in different directions, bike
flopping side to side and going everywhere but straight
ahead. To start these downhill
sprints, gather speed (25-30) as you approach the bottom of a hill, then let it
rip. You want to initiate the sprint while still going downhill, but finish it
after the road has leveled out. As the road levels out, you lose gravity’s
contribution to your momentum and have to work harder to maintain your speed.
Sprint with your head up, hands in the drops, and shoot for a “finish line”
about 200 meters down the road. Reassess You
Skills
Your first seasonal dose
of racing can be exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. It takes Lance Armstrong a few races to
feel settled in the peloton as well, so you shouldn’t feel like you’re the only
one. To alleviate mid-pack jitters, you should spend a little time refreshing
your pack and cornering skills. I don’t want the first
corner you take at full speed this year to be in your first race. Instead, you
should go to a business park or parking lot after work hours and practice
bombing through corners. Be sure to be careful of cars and respectful of traffic
laws; reasons empty parking lots may be safer than roads. Use cones or existing
curbs in the parking lot to simulate corners in races. As you practice, change
how the corner is set up (90 degrees, 120 degrees, 180 degrees), your approach
to it, your exit from it, etc. When you feel comfortable, exaggerate the
movements to expand your comfort zone: lean the bike further than normal, cut
the corner closer to the inside and farther to the outside than normal, or
change your line in the middle of the corner. These are all common responses to
racing situations, and you’re more likely to respond correctly if you’ve done it
in practice. These cornering drill workouts don’t have to be long or involved;
some athletes do them during recovery rides or on their way home from other
workouts. Don’t Get Ahead Of
Yourself
The cycling season can
be a long one, lasting from Feb-March to October. At the very beginning of the
season, you need to incorporate speed work into your program so you can race
effectively, but you shouldn’t totally reshape your training yet. One mistake
people make is to abandon the workouts that develop their aerobic engines too
early, replacing them with too many hard group rides, intense interval sessions,
and races. It’s normal and expected that your racing performance is going to be
less than optimal when the season starts if your goal events are still five
months away. For the amateur
competitive cyclist, I’d recommend adding one or two speed-focused rides into
your weekly training program. If you normally train five days a week (one rest
day, one recovery ride, five training days), adding two shouldn’t adversely
affect your overall aerobic and lactate threshold training. If you train three
or four days/week, keep your primary focus on your interval workouts and add
some downhill sprints or cornering drills on the way home from your
rides. Early season training
should include long intervals that work on developing your power at lactate
threshold and further improve the power you can produce before you reach lactate
threshold. Duration is key to these
workouts, and for those athletes using a PowerTap One of the funny things
about cyclists is that our friendships are sometimes so related to our sport
that we don’t see some “friends” between the last race of one season to the
first race of a new season. When you come out of hibernation and reenter the
social and competitive environment of the racing peloton, arrive with grace and
power and you’ll quickly become the alpha-racer. Originally published in Cycle Sport magazine, March 2004. Chris Carmichael is Lance Armstrong’s personal coach, founder and CEO of Carmichael Training Systems (CTS), and author of The Ultimate Ride and Chris Carmichael’s Food for Fitness (on shelves June, 2004 – preorder now!). To learn what CTS can do for you, visit http://www.trainright.com/. 
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