VT Biker

SORRY - I SAW WATERROCKETS WORKOUT BIBLE. PLEASE IGNORE THIS.

Okay - quick background:

I spent all season riding long rides (80 - 100 miles in the mountains on Saturdays and 50 - 100 miles in the plains of Colorado on Sundays). I would then ride 1-2 times during the week, for about 30 miles each time, keeping a fairly hard pace.

Before that, I had not gotten on a bike for 2 years due to work, and wanted to use this season for racing. After a full season of the above, I decided a few weeks ago to see how I would compete in a criterium (my goal is to race next year).

At this criterium, I got dropped by the pack after 2 laps, and could not catch back up. So this leads me to the conclusion I spent way too long doing base rides, and not enough time riding intervals. However, I have heard so much information about intervals, but I was curious more about how to organize my intervals into a training plan?

For example:

A) I know I cannot just do 1 minute on, 1 minute off intervals only, as this will not benefit me for longer efforts.

B) How do you guys typically progress on your intervals? Do you focus for 1 week, month at a time with a specific interval routine, and then switch? Or do you perform different interval routines during the week?

C) How long between intervals. I have heard not to wait until heart beat is normal, as this is not replicating effort in a criterium. But then I have heard that without sufficient rest in between, you will not give your legs the chance to fully work on each effort.

I want to use the entire winter to train for next season, so come spring, I am ready to go, and can see where my fitness stands, versus taking another 1 - 2 months of training in the spring.

mkadam68

In any training for races, your training needs to simulate the races. In other words: yeah.. you trained wrong for crits.

First, you need to be able to ride fast. Not long. Then, you need to be able to respond to accelerations. In the lower category races (beginners), accelerations will tend to be short duration. Consider crits to be a series of intervals in the corners while recovering in-between. In this regard, you really only need a max of 20-sec intervals (unless you plan on breaking away). So, to replicate crits: 10--15secs on, followed by a 20-second recovery at speed. Repeat, ad nauseum.

Once you start broaching the topic of breaking away, then you can get complicated.

VT Biker

mkadma68:

thanks for the response. I was taken aback at how quickly I failed at keeping up with the pack. I thought at least all of my riding (and the "A" group I ride with are quick) would allow me to keep up. Now - some of it was dumb strategy (in order to move up, I got out of the pack, and rode on my own on the left, so I did not get the benefit of drafting. However, we hit a hill, the sprint kicked up, and I did not have the power to match. But if I was in race shape, I should have been able to at least stay with the pack.

Brian Ratliff

I would suggest that you get "The Cyclist's Training Bible" by Joe Friel and read it cover to cover. It's a good book about training for racing. You don't need to do everything it says (actually, the specific workouts are geared for a rider who's been racing already for more than 2 or 3 years), but you need to read it to gain insite into training for the sport you have jumped into. You are likely kind of on the right path, but stuck in the "never easy, never hard" no-man's land between doing relatively short but very hard efforts (intervals) and doing much longer, but easy, endurance efforts. Most recreational cyclists "train" this way, so you aren't alone, but it is far from ideal.

As a cyclist new to racing, you should be doing long endurance rides of 2-3 hours at an easy pace and "long" intervals of the 2x20min on/5min off variety. The word "base" should not even be in your vocabulary at the moment. It takes a couple years of constant training just to form a solid base of fitness to start a periodization plan.

FWIW, your failure to hang with a crit is very likely related to your inexperience at racing. If you don't corner at full speed, don't draft closely; if you are afraid of taking corners two or three wide, ride bar to bar, etc; even a very strong rider will find themselves spit out in short order. Don't sweat it. And don't think it isn't because you weren't strong enough. Crits, as popular as they are in parts of the US, are a unique type of race that favor a linebacker type rider who is more or less fearless. Most other races on the road favor a different set of skills and strengths.

Because you are just starting, you really don't know what you are in terms of strengths or weaknesses. Next year at this time, you might find yourself to be a monster sprinter once you learn to handle yourself in a race. Or you might find yourself to be a great climber who is absolutely ill suited to racing crits. The point is, you don't know yet. So train your basic skills and fitness, and find out next year how you are at the whole racing thing.

SpongeDad

15-20 x 30s all out/30s soft pedal is one good interval. But some longer intervals are also a good idea. 5-6 x 3min on /3min recovery is a pretty classic interval where the "on" is whatever effort you can hold for 3min and do consistently for 5 or 6 intervals.

VT Biker

Unfortunately - I am 5'9" and about 145 pounds. Climbing seems to suit me, but again, I have not done the training or racing to know whether critsare not going to work for me.,

VT Biker

Thanks for the advice.

agoodale

I'm about the same size. Don't worry about not being a linebacker. Doing well in a crit has more to do with positioning then all out power (paging CDR). You may not be able to dominate a pancake flat crit but technical crits or ones with a hill will tend to favor a "smaller" & more agile rider.

VT Biker

I am going to look for it tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice

grolby

This is the danger of generalizations; you've got four inches and twenty pounds on me, and I consistently place well in crits when I have even a moderate level of fitness. Criterium racing is by far the most skill-based road racing discipline, and success has more to do with handling skills, positioning and attitude than build and raw power, though a good jump certainly helps, and more power is obviously beneficial as well. It simply isn't as critical as it is in a road race. I don't tend to do very well in flat, fast crits because that's where a lack of power is a major disadvantage. Technical or hilly crits, on the other hand, are a real strength of mine; I've gotten my best results so far in races like that. Build the skills and you might find yourself not only keeping up but getting solid results.

I think the pack skills are probably a significant weakness for you right now. You may be getting gapped because you're not comfortable cornering fast enough, drafting close enough and riding in a tight group of riders. Those are important to work on.

zstjohn

I agree with all that you're saying but of course the bolded point. If you want to bike race base should be a consideration. Regardless of your experience base is important. I've only been riding for 3 months (2 months seriously at about 900 miles a month) but from the literature i've read and advice from my coach base is fundamental. I guess if you literally started 2 weeks ago, didn't take it cycling seriously, or were older/overweight/out of shape then yeah just being on the bike would be the best choice.

Brian Ratliff

I've been riding and racing just a bit longer than that.

"Base" is a term from periodization. Friel's book says flat out that the body isn't ready for periodization until it has a certain fitness level, usually achieved over the course of two or three seasons. True base fitness is built up over the period of years; it's not done in a mere few months. The "base" that everyone talks about is simply a period of time in the periodization schedule where the already relatively fit rider rides long, relatively slow, miles to prepare the body for more intense training later.

The new rider just needs to get hours on the bike, both at low intensity on long rides to learn what it's like to be in the saddle for hours at a time, and at very very high intensity during intervals (but skip the short 30 sec-3 minute anaerobic intervals at this time; again, on Friel's advice - those just will lead to injuries and burnout in newer racers) to know what it's like to go hard. The new rider should start the training plan in December and learn how to ride 2x20 minute intervals twice a week at maximum sustained power over both intervals (IOW, both intervals are done at the same power level). If you don't have a powermeter, use a trainer, put a rear wheel speed sensor on your bike, and use speed as your guide (speed has a direct relationship to power on a trainer). These long intervals are very important for the new racer. Most recreational riders have endurance, but they lack the experience pushing the limits of their body. Intervals give them this experience.

I think of my training like the process of sharpening a knife. A recreational rider (I was one once, obviously) is a metal blank. To transition to a racer and start putting an edge to the metal blank, you start out with a course file (hours on the bike and threshold intervals). After you have an outline of an edge (end of your first full season of racing), you move onto a finer file and the course stone; that is, you start integrating the rough outline of a periodization plan. Finally you have an edge and you start the normal (yearly) sharpening progression of medium stone to fine stone to sharpening steel: full periodization. Periodization is the seasonal sharpening of an already sharp knife - you start the season with a medium stone and work your way up to a sharpening steel just before your peak. Starting your racing career with a course file and progressing deliberately to a periodization cycle will put an even, well shaped edge on the blade that will last over years of periodized sharpening cycles. Skipping over the early parts will make the edge uneven and rounded; you can put an edge on it every year, but it won't be consistent over the whole blade, it won't be as sharp as it could be, and it'll dull quickly with use.

And now I've stretched the analogy as far as it goes .

Anyway, this is what has worked for me over the last three years. I started by just doing a lot of 2x20min intervals, along with a lot of just plain riding during the winter for the first couple years. The first year, the intervals schedule was not terribly steady; it got better in the second year. This last season (my third season) was my best; I did it with only the rough form of periodization with a winter of pure base, threshold intervals in the spring, and then spent the rest of the season racing my way into a fairly high level of fitness. I raced everything from hilly road races to time trials to crits to track. I gained tremendous insight into my strengths and weaknesses this year. There was never a time when I burned out; if I started to feel ragged, I took 4 or 5 days off and my attitude was looking up again with no loss of fitness. Next year will include more aspects of periodization and hopefully more results. I'm an amateur; I got into this sport too late in life to become anything but that, so to me, the yearly progression of training and fitness is part of the appeal of bike racing.

echappist

out of curiosity, how much do you find your FTP drop between the end of one and the beginning of the next season?

umd

This is why I don't like crits

Brian Ratliff

I haven't done enough testing to determine this really, but I haven't seen any appreciable drop over the off season in the numbers I do have. This is probably because I am still in the "startup" phase of racing. My FTP has been steadily increasing year to year, and I haven't seemed to have bumped into the ceiling is yet (crossing my fingers on this one ).

mattm

Fearless, sure - but linebacker? By that do you mean "big"?

I dunno, guys I see winning crits are all over the spectrum in terms of size...

But maybe you're just saying b/c of your build, and I'm saying this because of mine. =]

Brian Ratliff

By "crit" I mean the traditional, pancake flat, 4 corner crits like they have in SoCal. Not the artsy fartsy 6 or 8 corner technical crits on 20 foot wide roads or the crits with "20 feet elevation per lap" (which turned out to be more like 50') that we get in the PNW (or at least in OBRA).

And also, "win consistently" is different than "win once in a blue moon on a weird course in a 20 person field".

VT Biker

But unfortunately, road races are harder to come by. They demand more work on the part of promoters, specifically in terms of logistics and getting the race approved by all localities the course will run through. Much easier to work with one town, where all spectators and racers are going to be focused, making both the logistics, security, and financial case all the more appealing for the promoter when working with communities.

All I can do is try to build up my leg strength. While weight does not matter as much in a crit, there is still some power to weight issues, otherwise, bike weight would not be an issue in a crit. In fact, aside from the additional leg strength, upper body weight would seem to be mostly a disadvantage, unless your riding style involves trying to make a solo break and TT ahead of the pack. Not likely.

lovestoride

i strongly dislike crits, im a **** sprinter and my fast twitch muscles in cycling suck, but my climbing and overall long term intensity can beat most of the guys i race crits with. i've found that cat 5 and sometimes cat 4 races really favor sprinter type riders for 90% of the races. Everything is a sprint and nothing last longer than 30 seconds intensity wise.

constantly going from 20-30 sucks, while staying at 25 and occasionally ramping up to 29 is fine. i guess its just because i focused on tri's for most of the season so i got good at riding for a long time at intensity.

godshammgod

I really think this advice is spot on, at least in my short experience. In the past few months I've been riding more with the intention of racing. Initially I spent a lot of time just riding a lot, but throwing in longer periods of high intensity. Nothing ''structured'' per se, but just learning what it really feels like to go hard (fast group rides have also helped too). Personally, that's been the biggest thing for me. For a long time my whole view of what it meant to really ride at my limit was completely skewed.

grolby

That's odd, given both that most of the crits I've raced are artsy-fartsy technical crits, not flat, and even the national championship crit course has traditionally been technical and included changes in elevation. If your definition doesn't describe the criteriums that most riders are racing, is it really very useful? I've done essentially both types back-to-back in a race weekend before (Grant's Tomb in NYC, and then a minor league baseball stadium parking lot "circuit race" that was a crit with no free-lap rule); completely different results, yet both courses would be considered "crit" courses by a typical racer. There are multiple kinds of road races, why not the same with crits?

Your problem is strategy and attitude, not physiology. If you're faster than those guys, ride faster. Cat 3, 2 and 1 races are typically held on the same courses as Cat 4 and 5 races. What happens differently when non-sprinter riders win those races in the higher cats?

In the interest of full disclosure, the point of view I come from on this is sheer befuddlement at "I don't like X because Y," where X is some mass-start race format, and Y is something about how it's not ideally matched to one's strengths and/or temperament. It's a race, isn't it? What's the problem? Racing is fun! If racing fun were dependent upon my chance of placing, I'd have given up in tears sometime in 2009. If you can't win, find a team and work for someone who can, or just enjoy racing and developing skills. Maybe I would understand if I had ever disliked racing criteriums, but that just didn't work out for me.

VT Biker

Grolby -

thanks for the input. I do wonder if there is something to "picking" your races. And also - is there anything different in a CAT 4/5 race (CAT 4 in Colorado, as this is an ACA State) which make it harder for lighter, less powerful riders to win most crit races?

Does team strategy or longer distance make it harder for larger riders to push it until the final sprint? My impression from others is that the CAT 4 races always come down to final sprints? Why is this the impression? And if this is the case, does this not benefit certain riders over others?

pjcampbell

For non sprinters, I like 3x3x3 - 3 times 3 minutes with 3 recovery.

The longer version (6x3x3), I found did not really seem to help as much, obviously this is at a lesser power.

my best bet at a crit, with crappy threshold power and no kick is taking off with 4' to go.

I haven't tried 30"x30" workouts yet. or 20"x40" or whatever.

Apus^2

Cat 4/5 crits "in general" come down to sprints. Nobody wants to let anything get away.

MDcatV

the best crit racers i know have a well rounded training program and are competent at handling their bikes in pack situations, moving through a pack, and cornering without wasting alot of energy. i've seen crits won at every level from P/1 to Cat 5 by 1) sprinters (most frequently); 2) TT champs (second most frequent); 3) well timed attacks by an all arounder; 4) and those that just happened to cross the line 1st. at the lower category level (3/4/5) anyone can win or do well so dont start the "picking" your races stuff there. by the time most people reach the upper categories they know where their bread is buttered and focus on races that suit them more, and if a race doesnt necessarily suit them, they try to succeed in a manner that does. if that manner doesnt work, then they'll live to play another day.

VT biker, you've essentially done base training. now you need to focus on getting fast.