Hermes

This year was my tenth year of racing. I have not done a formal count but conservatively, I have averaged 12 race days per year consisting of road and track time trials and team events and road hill climbs. The first couple of years of racing, I did mass start races in both road and track to upgrade to a Cat4. Then I stopped doing mass start races.

Last year, I decided to just focus on sprinting. Sprinting is about strength/weight and CdA/power. The stronger and lighter one is while being aero, the faster one can accelerate and go. The ballistic nature of sprinting was extremely fatiguing on my muscles and other systems. And it typically made me sick. However, being sick after a hard sprint or Wattbike workout is normal for elite sprinters. I also managed to pull a muscle / tendon in my ass that plagued me most of the season. It is better now and only took 1.3 years to heal.

Sprinting does not burn many calories so weight control is more difficult but the equations in the above paragraph do not go away. Many sprinters however, think that weight gain is okay and more power / strength will result with increased weight. I am not sure of that and if I look at the Brits notably Jason Kenny 5' 10" 176 pounds, he is in impeccable shape. IMO, sprinting is much harder on the body, mind and life than classic endurance racing. Also, just sprinting was not that much fun. I would be at the track for 3 hours and get a warmup, jumps and 4 efforts lasting maybe two minutes each including a windup with most of my time hanging around in the pit feeling like crap waiting for my ATP-PC system to recharge.

I had success doing it and improved my 500 meter time at an age when we are supposed to be slowing down. Which BTW, I do not buy into just stating classic dogma.

This year, I decided to go back to pursuit which seems to be more complimentary to my road time trials and quite frankly hill climbing. My ass got better and I prefer the endurance aspect of racing over pure sprinting. And, I know how to train for sprinting and throw in some sprint work that I think helps with my 2k pursuit. I believe that having more strength is always a game changer for athletes with maybe the exception of world tour grand tour racers.

With respect to fatigue, I have found about 6 months is a cycle for me. That makes training for the world championship track very difficult if one starts racing in February and training in October the previous year. If I start racing in February, I peak in July for districts and maybe nationals and get slower as I approach October if I continue to train. At worlds in 2011, I talked with one of the British coaches about how the brits handled a long season. They take a mid season break and then rebuild for track worlds.