Peaking is a cyclist’s nirvana. If training has gone well, you are strong on the bike, riding fast with little effort, recovering quickly enough to attack several times in a race or race several days per week and your head …
Category: Coach tips
Going the Extra Mile: The Costs and Benefits of Supplemental Training
Racing, especially stage racing, favors those willing to train long and hard and to suffer intensely, so serious bike racers exercise in ways that sound crazy to non-racers. Occasionally, some racers train to such an extent that even us cyclists …
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Beyond the Intervals: The Deeper Benefits of Power Meters
Power meters are great tools. They assess current physical ability, track training progress and improve performance, but those benefits are only the beginning. These devices allow for comparison of your physical abilities to competitors’ before signing up for a race. …
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What Are You Really Trying to Do? Prioritize Performance
Mike races bikes. He has been getting faster on all sorts of terrain and has become competitive on flats and descents, but not on climbs. A photo of Mike shows beautiful mountains behind a rider cornering aggressively on a long …
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See You Next Year? Knowing When to Stop Racing
The end of the road-racing season has arrived. Even the most serious roadies are relaxing, having the annual beer, and taking a few easy weeks before resuming training. In the coming months, they will connect with teams and coaches as …
Accepted Truths Are Sometimes False
For convenience, riders and coaches accept certain truths regarding bike fit, tactics, training and health. Some popular beliefs include: Athletes need plenty of sleep; they must use the right equipment for the job; set the saddle straight and level; bike …
Ready for the First Races of the Year?: How to know and why not to race too soon
This article is for people who haven’t trained as well as they might have for the new season. It is also for anyone with underprepared friends. Good friends won’t encourage the undertrained to race or do hard club rides. Read …
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Endurance Training is Boring? Are You Kidding?
More and more scientific evidence piles up in favor of training programs that are heavy on high-volume, sub-threshold endurance work and light on harder efforts. Studies of elite and world-champion runners, cyclists and cross-country skiers show that they typically spend …
Discipline: Good and Bad Habits and Why We Mess Up
It’s 9 p.m. on Friday. Mary got home from a long workweek several hours ago, had a quick dinner and showered. She’s ready for bed. She’s also excited about a club ride she’ll be attending for the first time early …
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The Vocabulary of Road Racing: A glossary of tactics
Racing without a fundamental understanding of tactics is like going to a joust without a lance. You’re going to get skewered. In the absence of tactics, the strongest riders would win all bike races. Strategy and tactics are the tricks …
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The Big Picture: Today’s Performance Reflects Years of Diet and Training
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.- Johann Wolfgang von Goeth Several years ago, the training blogosphere was atwitter with posts from …
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Life is Not Fair, and Other Good News About Being an Athlete
This article by Scott Saifer, M.S. first appeared in ROAD Magazine in April of 2014. “Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give …
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So You Want to Become a Cycling Coach
For more than 15 years, my colleagues and I have been hiring and training cycling and other coaches and then watching them develop. In that time we’ve had a chance to see what makes for a successful coach and what …
I Guess You Had to Be There: What you need to know about bike racing but can’t learn from a book
Riders take certain things for granted. We believe the bike will go where we steer it, that we’ll pedal harder when we want to go faster and if we pedal hard enough, we’ll be able to catch the group or …
Does Your Coach Make You Angry?
Most people are averse to change. That is, in part, why so many people knowingly continue unhealthy habits. Rare is the person who likes to hear that he or she is making self-defeating choices and needs to think or act …