I ran across this post this afternoon and it was too good to not share.
While not directly applicable to mountain bike racers, it should come in handy for any of those planning to take to the roads this summer, or simply enlighten others to the types of challenges a road rider encounters… And here I thought road riding was boring ;-)
Read the full post on the Rite Van Vlaanderen blog!
I might be a little premature, but I hazard to proclaim that spring is here (despite the weather yesterday). April is fast approaching, and with the sun setting well after 7:00 it looks as though we can leave our vampiric, sunless winter behind us.
As the sun rises on a new season, thoughts turn to long days of tearing up the local singletrack, or for those of us longing for more epic challenges, thoughts may turn to stage racing.
Unfortunately, when preparing for your first stage race, I’m not sure you ever feel 100% ready – you just try to prepare yourself as best you can. In an effort to ease some of your trepidation and potentially avoid some painful lessons being learned in-race, I will impart some sage words of wisdom based off the extensive experience I have (ie. 1 race ;-).
With that said, I’ll apologize ahead of time for the somewhat monumental nature of this post, but I feel (or at least hope) that most of this advice may prove helpful. So grit your teeth and bear it, with strength and determination you can make it to the end ;-)
I’ve pooled my deep reservoir of knowledge into eleven provocative sections:
With the surge of bicycling commuters across North America, Google has finally added a “bike there” option in their next-to-ubiquitous online mapping application. From Google’s description, it’s pretty much everything I’d hope it would be… Optimizing the route for bikes by “taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible.”
While definitely handy for a guy like me who commutes on a regular basis – I can see this as a real boon for those thinking of getting into cycling either as a hobby, or as transportation. Rather than have to struggle through traffic and wonder if there were better ways to get from A to B, Google Maps now takes the guessing out of it.
As with all good things (it seems) this feature is only available in the States right now, but after the recent adoption of Google Street View here in Canada, I’m optimistic that Google Maps by Bicycle won’t be far behind!!
So, this week I met with my new coach, a Mr. Mike Sarnecki. He’s going to see me through the following months, as I get ready for my second race season. Though I haven’t seen my new training schedule yet, I’m guessing my volumes are about to increase here right away. I have some big goals this year though so I’m ready to put in some solid time. In prep for this, I’m going to need to be a bit more diligent about my diet – specifically, my caloric intake. I’m happy to report, I’ve dumped all the weight I gained over the Christmas Holidays (some 9 lbs) and I’m back to a reasonable fighting weight. This is good news but, I’ll need to be sure I’m fueling my body properly moving forward, or risk dropping more weight, which I don’t want to do. More than that though, this year I want to make sure I’m fueling my body with the ‘right’ stuff, so as part of that, I started to dig into the Fat vs. Carbs debate.
Happy Monday to you all! Winter in Edmonton (Alberta Canada) for me is mostly a long, dark and cold expanse of time devoid of any real biking. Winter means it’s time to get out the trainer and start to think about which new movies and which TV series I want to get caught up on; last winter it was Rome, and Seinfeld. Ken on the other hand, has been consistently riding all winter long for a few seasons now, and of course, he’s been givin’ me the gears for cowering inside as much as I do. This year though, I’ve managed to get out there ‘a bit’ more, and let me tell ya, once you get movin’ and warmed up, it’s pretty sweet and in some ways more fun than summer riding.
When it comes to training, I’ve always understood that you can’t really make up lost time; if you miss a session or two, you can’t just go out and ride that much harder next week to make it up – that’s just a fact. If you miss training time, you just have to let it go. Trying to play catch up will only lead to overtraining, or under recovery and further limit your progress. If, or should I say, when, this happens to you, the best thing you can do is be glad for the additional rest you’ve had and just get back to your regular routine. So, if you can’t make up lost time after the fact, can you try and make it up beforehand?
One of the best (if not the best) by-product of racing is the environment and people that it puts you touch with. This past year during my first season back racing I was lucky enough to join up with the Deadgoats – an awesome group of guys and gals. I will admit that they’re a pretty hardcore bunch, but it’s been good to get back into the mix, and there’s nothing like riding and surrounding yourself with people that are better than you to raise the bar on your riding. One of my newbie cohorts this season was Kyle Husband. He managed to squeak in every type of racing you can think of, and even won himself a new bike frame at one of the races. In light of his diverse experience I thought I would get him to share some of his thoughts as he looks back on his first race season.
I’m fortunate enough to live on top of a big hill. I’m fortunate enough to cruise down it every morning on my way to work, and fortunate enough to have to grind back up it every evening. The unfortunate by-product of this is that I go through brakes in fairly short intervals. The really unfortunate extension of this is that the brakes on my commuting/cross bike are cantilevers.
As anybody who’s ridden canti’s can attest, they are, and forever shall be, the devil.
Nothing shakes the fillings out of your teeth worse than a set of badly aligned cantilever brakes howling their way down a hill. Having run canti’s on mountain bikes ‘back in the day’ I can tell you will 100% clarity that installing/aligning them is anything but a science. It is a dark and mysterious art… One that I am still struggling to master. That said, should you find yourself in the same boat as I, I thought I might share some tidbits of knowledge I’ve picked up along the way.
While I was struggling not to get lapped in my last cyclocross race of the season (Dairy Queen Double Dipper), I noticed my breathing was out of control! I mean, I was gasping for air and dyin’ out there! This got me talking to myself, which is always a good sign of solid mental health. “Breathe man, c’mon breathe! In, out, in, out!” I kept telling myself and to my surprise, I found when I focused on this, I felt better, though maybe only by a fraction and only until I hit the next hill. So, up popped the obvious questions, am I breathing correctly? Do the pros know a breathing technique of some kind that I don’t and if there was a way for me to improve my breathing technique, could it make me a faster rider?
I didn’t know Kirk Hamilton was a rider at first. I find it funny but it was actually a lot later on that I found out he was an Elite level XC racer and bike afficianado. I’ve since had a pleasure of riding with Kirk (or what might be better described as, trying to keep up to Kirk) and it’s been interesting getting to know him better. He started where I am now, just a wee Novice racer with a big dream, and he successfully made those strides to get up through the ranks. I was fascinated by that story because, I wanted it to be my story – with every ride and race I wanted to get faster and be able to move into Sport and then maybe even Expert. Who knows if that will ever be in the cards for me, but, as our next Feature Rider, Kirk will explain himself that this kind of progress can come with a price.
So without further ado:
It happened. After eight seasons I had enough, I was burned out from racing my mountain bike, I was finished and frustrated, wanting nothing more than to hang up my shoes and helmet and do something, anything, other than ride my bike. Somewhere along the way in the summer of 2008 I lost my way and I forgot to have fun. I grew tired of the seven-day routine of the weekly race regimen and viewed training days with the same disdain as cleaning the bathroom: something only done out of necessity…
If you enjoyed the post, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed.
© 2008 TypeBased. All Rights Reserved | Background photos: Ahm Mingus | Login
Powered by WordPress. Design by 