Although I have long recognized the importance of (and my own relative weakness in) the mental side of cycling, it’s only in the last few months that I have begun to consciously “train my brain.”  My usual practice is to set a timer, sit quietly for 10′, focus on breathing, repeating certain key phrases I use on the bike when I really need to dig deep (e.g. “pain is power”) and visualize.  Any timer will do — usually my watch or the kitchen timer — but the smartphone provides much more than a simple alarm to tell me I’m done.

For example, some apps will ring a bell or a gong at set intervals or continuously to help you focus.  Others might play soothing music or white noise such as the sound of waves crashing on the beach.  Even a simple timer like Just Sit provides a neat twist by putting the phone in airplane mode for the duration, which is a great feature for the absent minded.  I have been known to silence my phone for a meeting or a class and forget to turn it back on for hours.

Finally, if you’re less into the DIY meditation, there are a whole slew of “guided meditations” available as podcasts or apps.  These are fairly generic — I’ve yet to find one that deals directly with sports, let alone cycling, but they are certainly effective in helping me clear my mind, relax, and focus.

The next step would be to combine some of those meditation aids with a custom script focusing on those specific mental skills you need to train, recorded with the digital recorder function of your phone and listened to while you meditate. But that is the subject for another post, right after I figure out how to make my phone quit vibrating and ringing simultaneously whenever anyone actually calls.

I’ll be racing the Virginia State Track Championships for the first time next Saturday.  The event is run as a 3 event omnium -a sprint time trial, an endurance time trial, and a points race (in my case a 1k tt, a 3k pursuit, and the mass start points race), and for the past few weeks, I’ve been training for those specific events.

First, let me say that those short time trials are among the most painful moments I’ve spent on a bike, despite their being over in a few minutes.  What I find interesting, though, is that despite their short length, pacing plays as vital a role in them as any longer tt.  For the 3k perhaps that’s not that surprising, but for the 1k, an effort that lasts, at most, 90″, I thought conventional wisdom said to jump hard and hang on for dear life, but for me at least, that doesn’t work as witnessed by the first graph below.

I jump hard, average 545 watts for the first 15″, over my sustainable 1′ power, have a momentary brain fart (or a possible data drop) and coast for 4″ and then as you can see the power starts its long descent to the right until I’m barely above threshold by the end.  (I should note, though, that I’m not coming at these fresh; we’d already done 2x500m, so my anaerobic work capacity was somewhat diminished.)

As the second repeat shows, not jumping so hard at the beginning results in a much better effort.

My jump is nearly 100 watts lower, the power doesn’t drop off nearly as precipitously, and I average nearly 80 watts higher for this effort, despite it being the 4th all-out effort of the day.  So, the lesson here is that the first, second, and third rules of time trialing applies no matter what the distance: Don’t start too hard; don’t start too hard; don’t start too hard.

I‘ve written before about the value of a coach having a coach him or herself (here), but I want to expand on that a bit today by thinking about the advantages (and potential disadvantages) about being able to race with your coach.

Last Tuesday, my coach (Gary Hoffman) and I drove down to the weekly Bryan Park training crit in Richmond, VA.  Since I moved up to the “A” category (Pro, 1,2,3), this has always been a tough race for me.  In fact, for a long time I considered just finishing with the bunch as a strong result.  Because this is a training race, I often race it “stupid” and jump after early breaks, try to bridge up to breaks made, and generally burn my entire matchbook by midway through the race.  This week the goal was simple – don’t get dropped and if at all possible mix it up in the sprint.

To that end, I sat in the entire time, even as the winning break developed right in front of me (that sort of rankled, but if I’d jumped after it, there was no guarantee I would have survived).  I was in the 2nd group on the road on the last lap, sitting 3rd wheel.  A teammate jumped past me on the downhill and someone behind us shouted “go with him”; without thinking, I did.  He did a monster turn on the backside and pulled off and there I was on the front with a little less than half a lap to go.  I took a short pull, pulled off, hoping to jump on a wheel for the sprint, and then as absolutely swamped by the onrushing pack.

From my perspective, I thought I was on the front too early and needed a wheel to follow, but because my coach was in the same race, we were able to dissect the finish and figure out what went wrong for each of us.  In Gary’s case it was pretty straightforward — he miscounted the laps and sprinted with 1 to go.  In my case it was a tactical mistake — what I didn’t realize was that the race was strung out behind us and if I had jumped all out when my team mate pulled off, I would have had a much better shot — I probably wouldn’t have won the bunch sprint, but would have had a respectable finish.

It’s that chance to conduct a post mortem on a race, especially the opportunity to see the race unfold from another perspective that makes racing with a coach valuable, especially one with Gary’s experience.  But even if you don’t have a coach, conducting that kind of post mortem is valuable; just some team mates getting together and talking can provide valuable insight (of course, each rider’s individual goals may make conducting the discussion objectively more difficult).

The ability to be objective is another advantage to racing with your coach, but there are some potential disadvantages.  From the athlete side, you might feel as if you’re under constant scrutiny.  For some that might actually be a benefit — a sort of constant reminder of accountability.  For others it may lead to additional pressure that can compromise performance.  From the coach’s perspective, racing with an athlete requires some juggling of roles or wearing different hats as you’re concerned both with your own success as well as that of your athlete(s).

But as a coach and as a rider, I find the experience quite helpful and that I invariably learn something both when I’m the athlete and when I’m the coach.

Technorati Tags     coaching,cycling,training

As an English professor at a small liberal arts college, one of my teaching duties is first-year composition.  One of the hardest lessons students have to learn is that writing is process and often a long one.  That process should include multiple drafts, and most importantly, having someone else read and comment upon the piece of writing in progress. Once you’ve “lived with” a piece for a while, it’s almost impossible to come to it with fresh eyes, the kind of objectivity a first-time reader (or more importantly for the students, a professor) will bring to the piece.

In many ways, I think training for cycling and writing parallel each other.  Both are time-intensive processes, and neither is conducive to overnight success.  But for me the key connection is the need for an outside observer to provide a more objective point of view.  Even if you are well-versed in training methodology and can design smart, effective workouts, having someone else to look over the mix and timing of those workouts can be key.  My own experience certainly bears this idea out.  Over the years I have worked with three different coaches, one before I became a coach myself, one when I first earned my certification, and one currently.  Working with each coach, my racing took a big jump, and not because they had that “secret” workout that put me over the top.  In fact, I’ve done and/or prescribed nearly all of the workouts before.  No, the major benefit lies in the analysis.  Just like student writers, it’s easy for a rider to get so involved with the details of training that they lose track of longer term goals.  Having a coach, for me at least, provides that “fresh pair of eyes” that I discuss with students.  And invariably not only does my riding improve, but I learn something new about coaching and the sport in general in the process.

The one positive is that my form is coming around; now all I have to do is put the tactical pieces together.