Coach Carter

I will share a little secret with you this week....a tip on how to get the best race performances ever; how to refine your fitness to levels envied by your fellow competitors this season: but you have to promise to keep it to yourselves – after all, you don’t want everyone benefitting from it, do you? Ready....

The short-cut to great races is training.

Mmm, not that enlightening really is it? We all know that surely? OK, the vital part I have omitted is that racing is not training. This has come up a lot in my conversations with riders this week: a challenge riders face once the race season kicks off is maintaining the training momentum. It is incredibly challenging to keep a training focus and fitness development at the forefront of the athlete mind. For many of my riders, their key event is still 8 weeks away – that is typically 2, 4 week blocks. If they were in race shape 8 weeks off their peak event I would be worried – often, they are racing at only 80% of their capacity – yet they see their competitors and want to be at their level.

Of course, I understand this feeling – I have been there, done that. A key to me finding a new level of performances as an athlete was firstly giving myself over entirely to the process of periodisation and secondly, to committing to prioritisation of fewer yet big peaks in a race year. Without these, I was destined to stay a mediocre time triallist. Instead I gambled and got my reward. In my final year, I raced just 6 times!

I sometimes struggle to tie my athletes down to a race season plan – and even then, a few have thrown challenging curve balls at me and my planning by scheduling in ‘last minute’ races. Of course, it is the perogative of athlete’s to choose and tweak their race plans: things happen to change the direction of a year. But, those athletes that give me their race ideas well in advanced can have far more faith in the grounding of the plan than those who can’t finalise their aims nor communicate those priorities to me.

Why does it matter so much? Surely, if the aim is to ‘get fit’, racing can only help get you into shape? To some extent, yes – undoubtedly, there are some benefits of racing to bring on race form. You may have come across the phrase “race yourself fit” – I doubt its getting ‘fit’ but more race pace efficient: for time triallists in particular, riding in the race position, at race powers, at race cadences will get your body more ‘practised’ at that movement, and therefore more efficient. More efficient means less oxygen per watt, allowing you to push more watts for the same oxygen uptake. I think all my riders experienced a drop off in powers as they shifted from road bike to time trial bike riding at the beginning of the season.

There is also a mental aspect – going through the race preparation, staying focused – these things all need implementing in the overall plan. Equally however, too much elevation of the psyche to the race scenario can be mentally draining. Its why I pride myself in having a group of riders that enjoy racing in September as much as they did in April – fewer excursions into the increased mental intensity of racing keeps you fresh (Lesley calls me her 'head glue'!). Before National Championships for example I advocate 3 practice races to be sufficient – so a rider with two goals of races over 10 and 25 miles might do 6 races in March and April. That is still a race every other weekend.

So, let me get to the crux of the issue i.e. racing is not training. Let us consider a time triallist who wishes to raise their race power from 250 to 270W. Each time they race a 10 mile time trial, they race at maximum effort, and the result is 250W (see picture on the left, click to enlarge). No matter how often they keep racing, all they can do is give their maximum effort – over time, they will get an improvement, but purely down to the improved efficiency I talk of above. This progress is likely to a) be very slow and b) ultimately limited (as they haven’t improved fitness, just efficiency)

If instead they train at the weekend, we have the opportunity for them to ride ABOVE their current maximum. Look at the session in the picture on the right (click to enlarge). Getting the rider to work at 270W for blocks of time, they can ride above their current maximum – and this is the key to enhancing training stress and allowing overload. Racing does not allow overload, you can only ride at your maximum.

Perhaps a clearer way of presenting this is to calculate the total work done in across a race at 250W for 23 minutes and a training session incorporating 5 x 5 minute blocks at 270W: the former gives 345kJ, the latter 405kJ. The breaking down of the effort into blocks allows more work done, but also to make this work done at the intensity at which the body needs to become accustomed to. This latter point is crucial – take a similar training session I like to call ‘redline’ (3 minute blocks above and below a sustainable power). An athlete using this session pushes their body’s physiology to bigger extremes in the 3 minutes above the sustainable power than they might hold in an hour long race. In the case of redline sessions, we encourage the body to get better at clearing lactic acid. Maximum race effort is not as demanding as a well planned training session. In the race, you sit at your maximal lactate steady state, so you don’t ask the body to clear lactic acid at the same rate as in the redline session. Ride at maximum week in week out, and all you get is riding at maximum. You need to ride BEYOND maximum to provide overload to the body, and for it to re-build stronger.

Using the bath analogy - work above steady state to turn on the tap (lactic acid production); recover a little to drain the water away (clear the lactic acid); and you will maintain a bathful of water at a controllable level. Training allows us to keep the duck right on the edge: by increasing the energy production by opening the tap; but draining away the consequences of the metabolic 'waste'.

How do we turn this into practical advice?

• Sit down and really consider what you want from your cycling – consistent year round performance OR fewer, bigger peaks. Neither is right nor wrong: just choose according to your wishes and be honest with the consequences of this choice
• Choose 2 or 3 events that will allow you to practice performance in your chosen goal – use these to perfect race preparation, race pacing and nutrition strategies
• Make sure you race no more than every other weekend, thereby giving you one weekend to devote to training and achieving that ‘beyond maximum’ approach to performance development
• If you are struggling to hit training targets due to lifestyle / work commitments leaving you lacking in time or creating tiredness, consider dropping your race at the weekend to prioritise the training: it will take you further in the long run

On a personal note, it is rumoured that my ‘bike riding’ is now bordering on ‘training’...my plan to take me towards the London to Paris with more confidence has required me to build the miles up in each ride. A few milestones to tick off – I can cope with 4h comfortably now, so I now want to build through 80 and 100 mile rides; eventually reaching the ability to do a few back to back rides before June. On Sunday, I had the excuse to tick off the ‘80’ goal, riding up to Broadbridge Heath to watch my rider Tom in a 25 mile TT. At 6:30 am I sent a text to Tom telling him I was on my way – his ‘you must be insane’ text did not deter me! At 1:30pm, I realised he was right – 5h15, 87 miles later I returned home, walked straight through to the lounge, collapsed on the sofa and put on the TV to watch Cancellara waltz away with Paris-Roubaix (awesome display!). I was pleased with my ride, in the main because I coped with it mentally (a long ride for me on my own) and also nutritionally my strategy was good – 3 bottles of PSP, 1 Go bar, and 3 Go gels. My recovery nutrition was even better – one slice of carrot cake. I wonder if that will be made available to me after each stage of the L2P?  ;-)