Posted by: Coach Carter in Untagged on Mar 8, 2010
The coaching community often wax lyrical about how the process has to be individualised: that one size does not fit all. Sometimes the work that goes on behind the scenes to enable this tailor made approach is overlooked; the coach has to ensure they keep reading around the area, keeping updated on the latest training principles, performance analysis etc. There is also a lot of work one has to do when a particular athlete brings forward a unique circumstance, a unique challenge. My day to day coaching work brings me a lot of variety: yes it means a lot of time reading, researching, but coaching 25 athetes also enables me to learn so much - I feel very fortunate in that regard: it is never in danger of becoming like "Groundhog Day"!
This past week has made me reflect on this individuality a lot. And, with my riders' permission, I wanted to illustrate the nature of the work I have in the run up to the racing season. I have selected 4 'case studies' but these by no means are any more or less challenging / exciting than the other 21 athletes I coach.
"Breaking through the glass ceiling"; Juliette Clark
Since working with Juliette, we have had some head scratching moments together. She is fairly typical of the female endurance athlete: someone who can go for miles and miles without fatiguing. Supreme endurance capacity, what you would expect from a former marathon runner. In our work together, we have regularly measured her 'power-time' relationship: in otherwords, how much power she can hold across a range of times - very short bouts (in the order of 3 minutes) to longer bouts (12 to 15 minutes). We always record a relationship with a very shallow slope i.e. she can hold similar powers over the longer durations as she can reach in the shorter trials. Great for an athlete that specialises in 50 or 100 mile time trials, but a little frustrating when trying to up the power in shorter events like the 10 and 25 mile distances. Let me give you some numbers - she can hold 200W in an endurance ride of 3 hours, but in racing 10 mile TTs we see powers only ~30W higher. The narrow window is common in females and indeed athletes with a lot of slow twitch fibres.
Juliette does wish to focus on the longer events, but a conundrum is how to make her faster over these distances too: in her training do we 1) keep working on her endurance, pushing up her lactate threshold through quality endurance rides, OR 2) focus on raising her ceiling with 'top end' work, hoping this lifts the whole profile up. We've trialled some interesting experiments in the past, trying to lever up the top end of that power-time line: this time last year we experimented with the Burgomaster sessions - 30s all out sprints as her only training for a 2 week period. We made some progress, and it encouraged us to try more stuff like this for the coming season. Currently, we are 3 weeks into a 12 week plan - the first 3 weeks is about 15s sprints (to raise the upper ceiling); the second block is about switching through the aerobic / anaerobic transition (increasing the reps to 40 / 60s); the third block is aimed at making these sets more aerobic (i.e. one minute on, one minute off - equal work: rest ratio); and then finally, elongating the time spent at these 'new improved' powers (3 to 5 minute blocks). A logical gradual progression, aimed at levering up one end of the power-time slope. We hope by levering, that the whole line will also shift upward. Will it work? The research suggests it might, but in practice, we've no idea! All you can do is discuss the pros and cons, and get the athlete to buy in. I'm fortunate Juliette plays that game with me. Her nickname is Robot: all I have to do is programme her in, and away she goes! We'll be re-testing her power-time relationship in a couple of weeks...its a fascintaing process.
"Road to Leadville"; Craig Eadie
Having entered a lottery to get into the Leadville 100 (just Google it, and you will see what he is in for!), Craig told me about a month a go he actually got in - cue simulaneous 'gulp' from coach and athlete! I would call Craig someone who "loves riding his bike" - and having had some great rides last year completing some long distance sportives, you could think he has now bitten off more than he can chew....well, it is a HUGE challenge! He now gets to ride alongside his hero, Lance Armstrong. Its not the distance that is my major concern (Craig has cycled 100 miles before); nor is it the fact its off road (he did a lot of mountain biking in his youth); its the fact we must also factor in the race is all at severe altitude. The race starts at 9000 ft!
Since I still work at the University one day a week, I have been able to get a team of sport scientists to work around Craig. In fact, our first project 
meeting is in the diary. Alongside myself and Dan, we have a nutritionist, an environmental physiologist, and a dissertation student. Its been important to get buy in from Craig's family, and also to make contacts with sponsors: Science in Sport are helping with nutritional supplements, and the local bike shop, the TriStore are also backing Craig.
I am confident Craig can do this, but we both know its about setting up the plan, and living by it day by day. In the world of sports performance, "Consistency is king" - you have to be meticulous. In a recent interview with Marco Pinotti, a rider for the HTC-Columbia pro team, he considers this to be the number 1 aspect of life as a Pro - "Getting better at racing happens when you believe passionately that what you do on AND off the bike will improve your performance"...how true, and this is Craig's chance to do that.
"The physiological twins"; Nic Baldo and Richard Prebble
You might remember last autumn how I started working with two new athletes at the same time - Nic is a young French pro, riding with the Swiss based Atlas team; whilst Richard is an "old hand" on the UK domestic scene. Both had impressive physiology when I first tested them in November: almost like for like with their maximum minute powers and lactate threshold; but also quite distinct in how they reached those scores. Up until now, their training has been in parallel - my philosophy being to develop a sound endurance capacity as a foundation to fitness. However, since their goals differ in time and in type, their training is diverging....
One of the challenges of working with Pro athletes is that their own aspirations must be balanced with those of their employers, their team bosses. The team will have a race programme, often with 2 squads. The riders won't necessarily know what races they will be doing in the next month. And even if it is on the plan, it might change last minute as riders are drafted in / out due to form or injury. For Nic, he wishes to do well at the French National TT champs in late June. His team however need him to be at or close to, peak fitness as from now. In our discussions on his training (we speak via Skype every week, email each day) we are trying to find that balance of moving towards his own goal in June (working on the sustainable race power, zone 4) and the change in pace you need to follow the peloton (sprints, accelerations, short bursts of effort in zones 5 and 6). Its no mean feat. Couple that with the travelling and weekend race commitments, you end up only having 3 sessions per week to develop both these systems. He's doing a great job though, finishing his first two races as the first in his team.
I have to admit to being a little nervous when Richard approached me for training - his palmares inlcude many national championships, and a well established rider in the road cycling scene for the past 2 decades now. Wow, what an opportunity! How do you take an elite rider of his stature and make him even better? Add to the mix the fact that 2 years ago, Richard was diagnosed with type I diabetes.
Like with Nic, I have been working on raising Richard's endurance capacity, in the main focusing on the combo of zone 2 and zone 3 work to lift up his lactate threshold. Data over the winter shows we have done this very effectively. Therefore, it was frustrating for Richard when recently he hit a tricky patch in his training - his condition, drastically affecting his glucose metabolism makes it harder for him to bridge into the area of upper zone 3 and zone 4. Its at these intensities (above the LT) where he needs to sustain the power using more glycogen. We sense there is also an impact on his ability to recover in between these hard sessions - so, like with Juliette's physiology, its requiring very close monitoring and some trial and error.
I am also fortunate to have good contacts in sport science to help me address cases like Richard. This week I had the pleasure of speaking with Nigel Mitchell, the nutritionist at British Cycling and now working with Team Sky. Nigel has over 20 years of experience working with elite athletes, and he has helped diabetics achieve the very peaks of performance. Chatting through some of the challenges of Richard's situation with Nigel was highly appreciated - having a sounding board is critical to help me continue learning. Indeed, I thanked 
Richard too this past week - because if it were not for working with him, I would not have deepened my learning this week around fuelling - knowledge I can apply across all the athlete group I coach. I am hoping to meet up with Nigel this week when he visits Eastbourne to do a talk to our MSc students at the University. I am hoping to talk through some lab testing planned with Richard at the end of this month - where we are going to refine his pre-race fuelling strategy: ensuring we have enough carbs going in to fuel the race effort, but not playing havoc with the blood glucose / insulin response. I am sure I will detail that session in a future post.
All of these case studies are good examples of the day to day monitoring that is essential for the training athlete. Although a coach 'prescribes' a plan, this is all it is - a plan. Plans should be maliable, adaptable, flexible: not only to life around training, but also reactive to how an athlete is coping. I know myself as an athlete that my best performance year was when I gave up on the training plan being 'perfect' and the expectation was to hit every session and its targets. Instead, I learnt that training is just a stimulus for changing the body - for it to build and come back stronger. In otherwords, its not the powers / times / heart rates / distances in training that are important - its the degree of stress that is invoked by the session: whether that is attained in 4 or 8 reps of an interval doesn't matter a jot!
And finally, "Nut case".....Me!
I decided to ride the Puncheur sportif this weekend, 70 miles of 'rolling' Sussex countryside, culminating in the effort up the infamous Ditchling Beacon. The ride started in -3 temperatures, which I suffered at the hands of: not only cold extremeties throughout the 5 hours, but also coming a cropper on the ice one hour in - ouch. My bruised hip is a sight to behold! It was worth it though (I can say that 24 hours later), as I gained another long ride under my belt ready for L2P in June, and also because the food post ride was gorgeous (Juliette was my ride partner, and we discussed my foraging behaviour - I didn't think grabbing a mixture of 6 different energy bars at the interim feedstation was too much....I think it represented a fine feeding strategy!). A great morning, a great route, great organisation...and I might even do it again?