Coach Carter

This weekend, I spent a lot of time with my athletes who ride under the Team PBscience umbrella. Team membership is open to all the riders I coach, and we now have 7 riders. Building the squad to this number has allowed us to start entering teams into team time trial events – and on Saturday, we had our first ride at an event near Aylesbury.

In preparation, I took the team to Reading track for a practise session the Friday before the event. For a few of the riders, this was the first attempt at team time trialling, and for most of them, the first time they had ridden together. We were without one of our squad, Craig, as he has recently broken a bone in his hand and is stuck to the turbo L. This meant Lesley stepping up into the men’s squad – I don’t know who was more scared, Nathan and Dan, or Lesley!!

It was the first time I had coached on the track for a few months now, so I had spent some time last week creating my session plan, ensuring a progression of skills, drills and expectations. One thing I have learnt from running sessions is how important session planning is – it can feel a little ‘over the top’ but its a requirement to get the basics in place to ensure a smooth (and safe) session. The main advantage is that it allows you to see the progression of demands and goals you place on the riders. I split the 2 hour session into two halves, starting with those basics. Again, it can feel a little ‘over the top’ when working with a group of experienced, adult cyclists, but a lesson I learnt with the a3crg ladies squad when I coached them skills work for my British Cycling qualification 2 years ago. It is easy it is to assume basic skill competency. It is worth stripping back, taking things apart and rebuilding them. So on Friday I covered essentials like observation and communication, riding in a line, riding on a wheel and bike handling. It was only in the second hour I let them loose to ride in their 3-up formations of the next day.

Racing in teams is quite a different experience to riding on one’s own. For a start, a lot of athletes enter endurance sport BECAUSE they are individuals. To have a group that gels is fortuitous: but even then, a lot of work needs to be done on communication, on developing empathy, and awareness of not only one’s own strengths / weaknesses, but those of others. I think one valuable lesson most of the riders learnt from this weekend was that just because THEY operated in one way, it was not necessary the preference of their fellow team members. This applied to how one warms-up, how they run their pre-race routine and what is their focus. It helped that we had a team meeting on Friday night, as we all stayed at the Majesdski Stadium Hotel in Reading – this allowed us to discuss these issues, including our anxieties and priorities. Whilst team time trialling brings a level of lowered expectation (as riders are released from hitting a certain time), it brings an added pressure of not wanting to let those in your team down. So, we talked through expectations, and team roles. I also had the opportunity to explain to the two teams how their physiologies work – as combining riders with different riding styles and fitness profiles is a science. By the time race start came, everyone was ready to go!

As well as Team PBscience, I was also able to watch some of the other athletes I coach who ride for other teams. One team were the riders of a3crg, a group who I have had the pleasure of working with for a few years now, and specialise in team time trialling. Paddy, Jez and Seb have ridden quite a few races together now, so would be expected to be well drilled. However, they faced some challenges in their ride together too – illustrating how you can never fully be in control of performance. From the outside I perceived their major challenge being flexible in approach. Over the seasons, they have implemented different strategies – of pace, how hard to hit the front of the paceline, how long to stay on the front etc. Each time, feedback is generated – from the riders, and from me analysing race files. This process never ends – athlete performance is not a static value, nor is the course terrain or environment. One difficulty faced this time around was that all 3 riders have different form right now – so, a strategy that worked well in September may not be appropriate now. Normally, an athlete in this part of the season has less ‘top end’: this makes it harder to hit the front hard (a requirement to keep group speed the same). Even with recovery from the drafting effect when a rider sits on ‘the train’, at this time of the year it is also difficult to repeat this effort for a period of ~1 hour. Similarly, a team has to decide if the early season races are about the performance outcome (i.e. result / time), or about practising a strategy that will probably compliment their late season fitness – this comes back to a point I often raise with my athletes: knowing the goals that have priority in a year.

(Photo of the a3crg team courtesy of Sarah Brooke Photography)

So, its after this weekend that I have had time to reflect on how important getting the basics right is. In an athlete’s long term development, it’s easy to see progress in performance as linear – once you become competent in a skill we can become complacent. However, in order to keep stretching ourselves, we need to check back in as to whether our foundation is still solid. For me in my progression as a coach, I need to keep an eye on the essential core skills of communication and coaching knowledge – this weekend certainly gave me that practise!

You can read about how the athletes got on by visiting this week’s PBscience athlete blog. Dan is doing a great job in keeping this blog up to date, so be sure to check in each week to see how everyone is getting on.