High Intensity Time!

Yeap! It’s the end of Sept and I haven't done one workout that involved an interval since June, so it’s about time. I have done some really tough group rides, but I have not done one workout that consisted of me primarily working on my high end form. I jumped back on the bike in August and have just been focusing on training rides that were at least 3 hours. I finished 3rd at the 6hrs of Santos on just 5 mtn bike rides since June, and placed 7th in Tallahassee on just 4 more rides. So I don’t have much on the legs, and both of those results have been my best to date. There are good things to come for 2007, and I can feel it.

What I have doesn't seem like much of a program, but it is. Last year I was doing very intense interval workouts in the month of July/August (Which was a waste), and I ended up losing form before the end of the season. All this spring and summer I just worked on developing my riding style and doing 30 miles training rides on the mtn bike at least twice a week. So this year I have purposely made my program sluggish so I can put in the intense workouts at the right time.

After the race in Tallahassee I was really motivated to get back and train because the program is going better than expected. I didn't attack one climb at the race, and I was able to put in 3 solid laps (With the exception of crashing and losing time the last lap) and my legs felt fresh.

In the car on I-10 I knew what was next to really have a coming out party to put the top 5 on notice in Reddick. That would be double workouts for 10 days to wake up the high end muscles. 2 week would be perfect to implement the program and rest the legs. What I dreaded the most was the 100 meters sprints on foot, but they have been the most beneficial workout in how successful my Road Race season went in the spring. I clocked over 40mph 3 times this spring, and I won all 3 of those races.

Monday I got up and did the OLD (One Legged Drills) workout that I purchased for my ipod from CTS. It is a beast of a workout, and I can tell you that your rpm's will go up on the mtn and road bike for sure. But it is not a workout that you can half-step through. Monday night I did a 90 Timetrial in my fat-burning zone to flush out the acid from the race.

Tuesday I did 5 sprint of 100 meter at full sprints on foot, and this does a lot of things for me. It gives me a chance to really get ballistic with my legs. It takes my heartrate Threshold Breathing right to the top level. It gives me a pretty intense leg burn, and that trains my body to buffer off the lactic acid better. Directly after the sprints I went to the patio and did fast pedaling workout for 1 hr. My legs felt a little tapped out at work, but I was still going to do the afternoon road ride. I got to the ride and my legs felt weak, so I tried to sit in the middle of the group which was even harder because the riders were letting it get stretched out and I would have surge to get back on. I was determined not to take a pull though. By the time we were on 84 at the sprint point Bob asked me if I felt good, and I said yes. Not even 5 seconds later he was giving me a monster lead out from a way, way, way, way, out. I hate going out that far, but Bob loves that kind of effort. I put my head down and stay on his wheel, and there are 2 riders on my wheel. I don't really feel like I can rip it by the time he pulls through, so I let off and wait for anyone of the riders to make a move. As the Bike America guys make a move I ride up right beside him, and surge to take the sprint. At the light I thank Bob for the monster lead-out, and a couple of riders go off the front. By the time we get to Weston Rd and get caught by a light they are gone. I asked the group if we want to work together to bring them back. I tell them not to take a pull more than 15 seconds and no hard or gorilla surges. It's about 20 of us, and about 8 riders that are working to bring the riders back that were up the road. When a rider is in the front for more than 15 seconds I yell, “Pull through". I even get a couple of funny looks the first couple of minutes, but it eventually turns into a group of riders that are trying to function as a team to pull back the breakaway group. Just as we have the riders up the road in sight they break off, and we finish off the ride with the same primary group doing the work. Job well done! It was actually nice to show leadership skills to the group. Normally, I shut my mouth and get the workout that I need for that day.

Wednesday, I'm back to my 1 hr workout of one legged drills and I know that it is paying off because my Avg Cadence has gone up dramatically. One month ago it was 91rpm for the dump road ride, and this past Thursday it was 96rpm. The only thing about these workouts is it makes my mtn bike training ride unpredictable. I have only had a couple of mtn bike training rides that I felt good because I have been normally doing really hard workouts the day before. This day was no exception. I did the first lap with Dean Yobbi of my Active Cycles Team. I kept the pace pretty snappy and I was trying to keep my heartrate in the 150's and after the gun range it keep spiking on all the steep climbs. I gapped Dean by about 20 seconds and going into the Outback Extension I backed it off for about 5 mins assuming he had to recover. Brian Woods jumped in with us going to Crime Scene. I made a mistake in Ted Twisted Trail and I let Dean and Brian pass me. I thought I would simple creep back up to the guys, but Dean must have been drilling it because my heartrate was in the 160's and I was still getting gapped, so I let them go. I'm going to stay with my plan of not ripping it during my double workout phase. 5 minutes later I catch up to Brian Woods as he has been unhitched from Dean and we finish out the lap.

Bob Mc, Adam, and Richard Diaz are out getting ready as we come out. My legs are on empty and I can feel it. Every time Richard Diaz is in the front he has always been hurting me. After about 15 minutes I decide to cut out all the big climbs and try to make it a road ride. After that lap I know it is over, so I spin my legs out for 20 minutes and call it a day.

Thursday
Before work I'm back to my sprints and fast pedal exercise. This time I do 7 sprints of 100 meters, and the last 3 I really gunned it at the end. I love this workout because it really opens up the anaerobic pathways. By the time I get on the bike I have already had an incredible legs flush, and I'm ready to ride. The fast pedal workout is 10 minute warm-up, 2 mins of pedaling between 110-115rpm, 2 minute recovery. 3 sets of those with another 3 minute recovery. Then 2 mins of fast pedaling of 110-115 rpms, with 1 min recovery and another 3 sets of those. That workout continues for 1 hr. I'm telling you at the end of this workout my heartrate was maxed out on the fast pedaling interval. My shins felt like they were going to explode. I leave the house at 5pm, and ride to the dump, and my legs felt good. I take one pull and get up to 34mph, and that confirms how good I feel. It was a headwind, but I walked away from the group to get up to 34mph. On 84 I’m behind Chris Fredericks that is drilling it and I take another pull, and decided to sit in and not go for the sprint, but surge right after that. Things break up before the sprint point and Bob is up the road with a rider in tow. Some riders start surging and I jump on and feel great. I jump out and charge up to Bob just as he is winning the sprint and I pass him at 36.5mph. The group is way off the back and 5 of us Time Trial it away from the group. After about 10 minutes one of the riders sits up, so 4 of us get out act together and share the pacemaking and finish out the ride without the group catching us. After this I do another 20 mile ride back home. I take Friday off so I can go to the apple store and buy another ipod video. I had a 60GB ipod that was under warranty and they couldn't figure out why it kept pausing, so I got another one for free. They didn’t have 60GB, so they upgraded me and got the new ipod classic 80GB ipod. SWEET!

Yeap! That is 24hour Solo playing on my new 80GB ipod. I'm not going to run out of music on a training ride for a very long time. Maybe forever.



I got home and dumped all my video and audio on it. I have a program that compresses DVD movies into a QuickTime files, and can be put on my ipod. I put over 80 movies onto my ipod. Everything from Batman Returns, Pitch Black, Transformers, The Lord of the Ring Blade, and Matrix Trilogies, and all 6 Star Wars Movies. I have over 200 music videos, The complete season 1 & 2 of Martin and Chapelle Show. 17 books on audio, and 5GB of music. I'm good to go. It took about 4 hours to get all of that on their from my itunes library.

Saturday was orientation at my college so we had to work until 4pm. After I got off and went home, I changed and went out for a 2 hour fat-burning ride. My legs were tight so I decided to take it easy in the beginning, but my avg spd and cadence was higher than normal, and my heartrate was in the 130's. By the time I got to the Mobil station to refill my bottles I had completed the first 20 miles with an avg spd was 20.3mph, so I knew it was going to be slower on the way back based on the headwind that was expected. I got back going and about 10 minutes later I had not gone under 22mph, and I was actually starting to feel better. With 30 minutes to go I still had a very high avg spd for the 2nd hour and I had no acid build up in the legs to would merit me backing off. I brought in the last 30 minutes really strong and my avg for the second hour was actually higher at 20.7mph. The sprint intervals are starting to pay off because my legs are starting to feel like they did in the spring, so duplicating the same program is going according to plan. Now, if I can stop wearing myself out before I get on the mtn bike.

Sunday I decided that I was going to do 4 laps at Markham no matter how I felt or how gutted out the course would be because of the massive rain we got over the last 2 days. I got out there and had to go around to the mtn bike park the back way because there was a Jamaican Festival going on in the front part of the park. When I get there Luis C, Luis M. and Danny are about to go in, so I quickly get ready and we go in. I actually want to just complete 4 laps just to get the legs accustom to the time and distance of the XC race. I’ll let the speed come around later, but it’s more important now that I complete 3 hour training rides that are more than 25 miles and that is my goal for the day.

The trail is wet but not too bad that you can’t manage having a good ride. Luis C. is keeping a nice pace of 10.6mph, and I’m happy. The legs feel good, the HR is low, and it’s not too hot. This is perfect conditions to have a nice training ride. We finish that lap, go back to the car and top off bottles and go back in. Luis is setting the same pace again as the last lap, but he makes a mistake and I pass him. Shortly after I pull to the side to let him get back to leading the lap, he makes another mistake and I pass him and about a minute later my chain drops down to the granny ring. I have it set up so that my derailleur does not go down to the granny ring. NICK! Where are you? I get back up to the group and Luis M. has slightly lifted the pace and at the end of the lap he clears some logs and when he lands his front tire burps some air, but he is able to keep from crashing. I finish out the lap and go back to the car for a gel and water. Luis C. comes back and says that he had bonked that lap and felt sloppy but had topped off the body with food and Gatorade. I tell him I’m going to do the last 2 laps back to back, so he should take another water bottle like me, and he does. I ask him to set the same pace because I really don’t want to ramp it up at all. We go in and nail down a 2 lap flow. What I know about how I ride is once I nail down a flow I really don’t want to go faster. I have set my body into that zone, and I want to start and finish there. Luis rides in spurts. He’ll go through a section and start drilling it, and I’ll feel under pressure. Not pressure to get dropped, but the irritating feeling of being pushed out of the optimal training zone. The next minute he’ll be under the optimal zone. So that was what I notice about the back to back laps. He rides similiar to Matt, in that he is punchy as he goes through the lap. He can't nail down a pace that can eventually crack a rider, but instead decides to do mini surges. But we finish the 2 laps in the same time almost to the second, and my HR Avg was the same for both laps. See, that is a training ride to me. When your heartrate is 7bpm higher from 1 lap to the other, what is that? That is speed racing on a training day. I’ll get back to that later.

This is going to get deep, so I hope you can put it all together like I have, or at least I think I have. If you have some views or points to add, please leave a comment. I would love to hear what other rider’s concept for training is.

I have to give you the observations that I have found this year as my style has truly developed. It’s strange training with different riders because the tempo changes so much from rider to rider. Different riders train with different Methods of Operation. The concept I have is the most simple, but complete. I train for HR zones, because I think that is the best way to monitor your form getting better. If you can train at a certain HR zone, you are training your body to buffer off acid at the zone. Training in a zone means that you should maintain that zone throughout the lap even if the course goes up and down. If there is a section that is going to raise your heartrate 10bpm when you hit it, wouldn’t it make since to back off 10bpm before you get there? Doesn’t that give your legs more integrity in this phase? If you hit every climb at full throttle, then you are teaching your legs that you only have high end, and not low or middle effort. There are riders that can’t do a lap at 8bpms lower than normal avg HR. It’s because the speed would be too slow for them. And it’s because they are used to hitting the climbs at a certain speed, effort, and wattage. To me that’s not training, that is taking advantage of the fact that you know your home training course.

If you do zone training, you can go anywhere and ride at a good clip. Why is it that there are riders that are good at one course, and poor at another course? They have learned how to hit every turn at their training course like it’s a dismount in gymnastics. But that doesn’t translate over when they go to another course.

What are you training when you are out there riding all out? Skill or Ability? That is a question that is truly thought provoking. An athlete walks in the door with ability from the “Athlete Gods”. Skill is what allow that ability to flourish.

If you develop the training zone, the concept is to eventually lift that zone as race season approaches. I know there are other factors, and I’ll cover them.

Intervals you ask? Of course you have to be able to redline and manage it, but that should be something specific. At the end of the building phase, go out on a totally different workout and just work on high end intervals. Just because you can do a really fast lap at your course does not mean you can do intervals. Do intervals, and check your HR so see if you can keep your HR avg the same for each interval. Now you are working on a skill, and not overusing your Ability. Now when you go back and train, you are going to buffer off lactic acid even better at you normal training zone. You haven’t even had to ramp it up, but you are faster, and your legs will feel fresher. If this is your foundation, then you’re riding style, techniques and approach to how you handle your bike is next in line. You learn to manage your technique, and as you get faster, your technique lets you know how far you can push that envelope. I can’t see any inherit problem with that type of approach, because it's truly a system. Now you can tap out your skill level, then you can start to work on pushing the limits of your ability. That is how you find out what you are made of as a complete athlete.

Now to this speed racing thing! This is to all of those knuckleheads that just can’t hold back and are constantly looking down to see if you can beat the time you did the week before. Before I get critical, let me say I used to be just like you. I may have been worst than you, but I’m always looking at how to be a well-rounded bike racer, and that shit is totally played out. At his point it actually seems primative. Some riders are training like they are primates, but who is going to be the athlete that is training like he is standing "Upright".

Wrap your helmet around this concept, and see if it makes sense. Right now the season is about to be in full swing come next weekend, so ask yourself, are you Riding good, or are you a Good Rider? Did you work on all the skills that have held you back from be the complete rider/racer? Have you maximized all the techniques that has allowed you to be a superior bike rider/racer?

Good form is about riding better, which is short lived once you are on the downside of your peak. But being a better rider is fundamental. If you are the type of rider and every one of your training rides consist of you going through the trail and you are riding to beat your time from last week, then how are you working on being a better bike rider? You are trying to ride better for that day, which does not carry over to a better foundation. If you were a boxer, would you go out and hit the punching bag has hard as you can every single day? There has to be some days that you workout on power transfer, foot and hand speed exercises, speed work, cardio, weights, sparring, etc. Of course you have the suckers that think they can do all of that and go full blast in the gym. BULLSHIT! I have been a pro athlete for over 20 years, and you just can’t train like that if you want a long career. Contrary to what athletes believe, the muscles have a brain of their own and it’s better to understand how they work instead of forcing them to do what you think of. If not, they are going to sell you out when it matters. OK, that is my “Keeping it Real” moment of the day.

What I miss the most about being on B&J is they had really solid training rides, with a clear perspective. That was for the training ride to operate like a group rode ride. Since 2006 all of the rides consist of the “How fast can I drop and have the riders behind me chase me” concept, and I don’t subscribe to that. For all of 2007 I have LET all the knucklehead with that attitude drop me on all the training rides. If you are riding that hard on a Sunday training ride, how do you save something special for race day? With the Active Cycles group I implement the B&J training style. I let them know that 95% of the time the group starts and finishes together. The group should start to break up 80% into the lap as they can’t handle the constant pace. If I unhitch the slower rider and blow him up in 10 minutes, then he spends the rest of the lap in no mans land and there is not systemic improving to that. How do you become a better rider if that is the case? You may learn to ride better, but are you a better rider? Laying a foundation to being a better rider is a much longer process.

In 2005, I knew that my season was over about 3 races into the season, because I did not workout on developing all my skills and techniques, then maxing out my ability to have the best race season. But I was riding good, I was riding really good. I was not drop from a group ride on the road, or a mtn bike training ride for the entire summer. But my form ran out as the season approached. I also did not have proper XC racing bike. It was closer to an all mtn bike. Lessoned learned, as I came into 2006 with the Pacer-X. Oh! My bad, I mean Racer-X. But for the 2006 season I trained too hard too early, and did not have enough form to last the entire season. Lesson learned again.

So I have learned from the mistakes of those 2 seasons, which I don’t see as a lost cause. In 2005, I went into an Expert level season of racing with nothing in the database of training and racing, but my knowledge of being an International Level Table Tennis player. Knowledge is the key word in that last sentence. I have taken my table tennis playbook on how to train/compete, and that is why 2007 has been a turn around year for me. In table tennis I was constantly fixated on what I needed to do to improve a skill or technique. If those were taking care of, then my ability would determine how well I performed. In table tennis I went undefeated in Florida from 1996-2001, something that has never been close to being duplicated. As a matter of fact no player has gone more than 7 months of being undefeated since my 6 year reign. When finally lost, I packed up my things, put them in storage, and moved to Europe to play in the Pro Tour. From 2001-2004 I lost 4 out of 78 matches. Now that is knowing and perfecting your craft. Now, I know I have successful applied this concept to mtn bike racing. I need a database of experiences before I could be critical about how to put together a winning program. So I took a 3 dimensional look at how I could apply table tennis to mtn biking and what that is going to happen this season is going to be a direct result of that. I'm not sure what is going to happen, but I can say that it won't be the same mistake of 2005-2006.

This is the first season that I know that I have left nothing untouched, and I’ll be putting foot to ass at the end of the season. I’m not even sure if this is about beating the other riders at this point. It’s about successfully implementing and executing a training program that I can say with all certainty that it is better than what I did the year before, and to have the RESULTS to back up that.

See you in the trails

Pacer Out!