The Conspiracy or the Equalizer….Why does everyone get a head start? Princeton Valley Cyclo-cross race…

Guess rumor got out to the folks at Overdrive Cycling that I’d be attending this years Princeton Valley Cyclo-cross race in Eau Claire on the Sat after Thanksgiving.

Figured if Smithers , Trevor Koss & the rest of crew doing the 60minute race got a good margin from the get go, I’d be out of the running.  Guess what!?  They were right!!   

In something that may only come as a small surprise, I wasn’t on the start line when they said go.  Got there a nice half hour before the race just enough time to register & warm up on the cold 30 degree day.

It was a short course with laps only 5+ minutes long, I wanted to get in one good solid pre race lap before the start.  No one was at the start line when I took off.  As I rounded the back side of the course up on the hill I could see people starting to line up.  And about 3/4 thru the lap, I heard a bunch of loud cheers.  I thought, boy I hope that was just a rousing pre-start cheer.  To my dismay in short order I see a string of racers leading it out across the pavement & onto the golf course. 

No need to imagine the expletive that escaped my lips without a filter.  Quickly you adjust your expectations from contending to just getting back out of the DFL place.

So hence the chase began, when I crossed the timer, it had me some 80 to 90 seconds back.  So it took 2 laps to start reeling in & passing guys,  it usually came in groups of two or three. 

Outside a few bad choices on the twisty corners & chicanes that make the Princeton Valley course a very good cyclocross course I was able to keep up a strong effort for 8 of the 11 laps.  I’d regularly see Smithers where the course would cut back on itself, not falling further back or gaining anything on him either.

Finally the effort of chasing caught up to me in the final 3 laps & wasn’t able to finish on the same level that I started.   Had the powertap in play so it made for some good analytics to diagnose after the race.  If someone says racing with a a power meter doesn’t makes sense?  Take a look at the power file afterwards & see if there’s not some clues as to what specific training you could be doing to make improvements. 

Despite having next to zero cyclo-cross specific efforts (on/off type intervals – sprinting for short distances & then coasting, sprinting than coasting, etc.) because of working on increasing my 60min threshold output lately.  My legs felt fantastic for the race.  Much to my surprise building up my threshold even alittle bit over the months of Oct/Nov paid dividends in making the harder efforts much more manageable.

As the race finished I was able to move up to 6th, just a few seconds short on the 5th place guy.  The always speedy Trevor Koss took the win as he threw down a really hard race from the get go to put distance on 2nd place Chris “Smithers” Smith.   On the final time sheets from what I could assess – without the deficit I’d started with I’d of landed in 3rd, or maybe been able to give Chris a run for 2nd.   Still all in all a really good fun race, a great course and it’s put on for charitable reasons. 

Keep it on the radar & considering doing it in the years to come.  Great excuse to burn off Thanksgiving calories & get a race level effort in the legs before the MN & WI state cyclo-cross championship races the following two weekends.

60min of pain & perseverance… a true Threshold Test….

On of the joys of cycling (or just about any sport) is the chance to challenge one’s limits.  At least that’s my own personality & mental make-up.  For good, bad or otherwise, I seem to be stuck with it.  It’s not for everybody and that’s good too cause who wants everyone to be the same anyways.  Some do it for fun, some for the bliss that MTB or road biking brings.  Me?  Well, in the words of Count Rugen from the cult classic the Princess Bride.. when you have a deep & abiding interest in pain…

Thanks to some suggestions & guidance from a fellow competitor who’s come a long way in their own personal development as a cyclist over the years, which I’ve come to admire, I went to my coach with a question about how to better change my performance & potential in racing. 

I’ve gone the traditional route of interval training for close to 8yrs always working on trying to increase that gold standard of power training “the 20min threshold test”.  Not familiar with it?  It’s beating your brains, lungs & legs all out for 20minutes to produce the highest level of power in watts you can sustain for that period of time.  Whether you’re initiated in it or not, it’s about as fun as rolling a boulder uphill.  Heart rate is thru the roof & every fiber in your body is strained. 

The idea is the 20minute effort is an adequate enough duration to estimate what a person can theoretically do over longer periods.  In most cases that’s true… in some others, it’s not.

Over the years?  I kinda got pretty good at the 20min nut buster. I could find the “pain cave” and bury myself in it. Producing results that by most standards far exceed the comparable results I’ve achieved in actual race performances.  My coach repeatedly would tell me, “Aaron, really you’ve got nothing to worry about.  Your 20minute numbers are nothing you have to be shy about.  It’s every bit as good & better than most of the very top regional guys”.  But when you have high standards for yourself & you don’t quite have the results to match. You question “what’s wrong with yourself or is your coach blowing motivational smoke up your bum”.

Interesting enough, talking to other athletes you find that the coach isn’t wrong.  On one hand that feels good… on the other it stills leaves you with a  WTF feeling.

Well, as soon as we think everyone is created the same & a given academic theory of training that is supposed to force certain desired physical adaptations… only it doesn’t.    It’s time to go back to the drawing board. 

For myself, that meant turning some conventional training wisdom on it’s head.  Without a lot of boring details, it basically meant that although I had a decently developed short term power output (less than 30minutes).  I’d have a greater “drop-off” in power than what is normally expected for someone once I went into longer distances of races going an 1 to 2hrs. 

Seeing as you’re not gonna find a lot (or any) 20minute MTB or ‘cross races.  The only option is to figure out a way to trick the body into stretching out the power output over a longer period of time & not drop off a cliff.

So begins the experiment…. and the blog title.

Going over to a full 60minute Threshold test is not necessarily a treat.  Take that above described painful 20minute test and now apply for a full 60minutes… it spells O-U-C-H times three.

Needless to say, with any luck & unearthly fortitude anyone can persevere it.  Getting them to sign up again?… is probably akin to asking a women to give birth a second time…. wait until the memory is distant & very faded.  And somehow it’ll get done.

So tackled that 60minute effort tonite, with both good & bad results.  Required some unplanned biking maneuvering to dodge a car that pulled out in front of me & some big ring shifting issues aside.  Even so the first 20minutes were actually not too bad trying to find a decent sustainable pace.  Approaching 40minutes, it feels like that relative ease of the first 20minutes abandons you altogether & any space you have in your heartrate to maximize your power output is no longer there & at it’s limits.  The final 20minutes leaves you on guts & mental fortitude to try & find a way to hold on.  I don’t know if it was my guts or mental state that gave up first but the final 5 or 6 minutes wattage was dropping like free falling skydiver. 

The results were just short of what I expected, but better than anything I did previously.  And though still a statistically significant drop in power from my best 20min efforts, it’s improvement.  It’ll be interesting to find out how much or what kind of progress can be made between now & next spring. 

The long & short of it all?  We’re all made differently, our bodies have natural tendencies be it from genetics or environmental factors.  One theoretical training approach doesn’t equate to the same results for everyone.  If you’re looking at training, give the conventional wisdom training theories a try and certainly try them for a good long time, but if you hit up against a wall enough times and all the other markers of your potential point to being able to do even better.   Consider a change in approach & find a resource that’ll help you with it.  You’ll be glad you did.