Crit Practice and Intervals

This year Evolution has been holding crit practice at the Ride Sally Ride course every Wednesday at 6:00.  At first it was a few guys going around having 3-on-2-off little crits and it eventually grew to about 10-15 showing up regularly and making for a damn good workout.  It's not Greenbelt, but maybe one day it can grow to something like that.  Mid week racing seems to have helped my training immensely as my 1-2 minute efforts have gotten better and better throughout the season.  Although I occasionally do some intervals in a structured manner, I really hate them and would typically rather chew glass.

Crit practice allows you to do structured intervals in a group setting, if that makes any sense.  Since you're going around a loop, you can do your 1-2 min efforts either off the front, on the front, off the back, whatever, and know you're not going to get dropped since you can catch the group as it comes around.  Although it's not that much of an issue these days, in the past I have been on group rides and sat in a little too much because I was worried I'd be spit out the back in the middle of NoVA with no idea how to get home.  With crit practice, blowing up is the name of the game, if you get dropped, who cares!?

The other great thing about doing fast laps is that you get to work on a couple of important race situations - attacks, bridges, and positioning.  Although it's not as aggressive as a real race it's not a bad simulation.  The attacking practice is really important for guys like me that don't have that much experience racing.  This year was the first year I have been something other than pack fodder, and so working on attacking finally became relevant.  Attacking is a lot more than just riding hard off the front and most lower cats really f this up.  Most of the reason why cat 4/5 races are such a big blob with no breaks is not because the riders going OTF are weaker, it's because riders in the pack that think they are "attacking" to bridge up are actually just dragging the field up.

I have to go off an a tangent here.  It's really annoying when guys ramp up the pace with everyone in the pack right on their wheel.  Don't they look behind them and see that the end result of their move is to just suck everyone along and force a reaction from the pack?  There is 0 reason to do this, except in the following circumstances which apply to maybe 1% of the times someone nails the break back:

• Your team has a sprinter in the pack and you want to prevent any breaks from getting a gap because you're confident that your team has a better chance of winning in a field sprint than out of a break.  However, even if you have the bomb-diggity cat 4 sprinter extraordinaire sitting in the field, what's the harm in trying to bridge to the break instead?  You're going to blow up your lead out train or something?
• You love to be a sled dog to chase anything and everything that goes off the front.  Sounds like a personal problem to me.
• You showed up to the race and your coach told you to pull everyone around all day because you missed all your threshold workouts last week.
• You're trying to get recruited as the lead out man for the best cat 4 squad in Northern Virginia.
• The cameraman taking pictures is on the back straight so you really need to position yourself well for that.

I really want to hear from people who think there are some other valid reasons for this move.  I just call it negative racing, it prevents anything interesting from ever happening.  I don't actually believe most guys are doing it on purpose, they just don't actually know what an attack is.  Staying seated and rolling off the front at 1 mph faster than the guy behind you is not an attack.  An attack requires gapping the field by 10-15 bike lengths is a few seconds. Otherwise someone will just sit on your wheel and take a free ride.  If you look back after 10 seconds and the whole field is behind you, you're not attacking.

Anyways, crit practice is a great place to work on this.  Timing of an attack at the end of the race is as important as raw power.  I am not a strong rider when you compare my power data against other competitive riders in my category.  However, I've managed to cat up this season with positioning and timing, essentially knowing when to use the sad amount of power I have.  When I went all out at Hagerstown, it was an all or nothing commitment.  If the pack caught me, I'd be going across the line dead fucking last.  That's the type of commitment you need to have when going for the W.  If I was a sprinter, I'd sit in until the last 200m but the best I can do in that situation is a top 5.  In the 3s, my best pack finish will be out of the top 10 I'm sure.  Crit practice helps define your limits and allows you to test out the attacks.  The week of Hagerstown I did two all out attacks in practice with about 600m to go just to see if I could create the gap and hold it.  It worked well enough, so I tried it in a race.

Maybe we can turn crit practice into a Greenbelt style training series, but honestly the current format might even be more conducive to training since it allows everyone to take some risks.  With limited bragging rights, you're just worried about getting a good workout.  At least I hope that's how people use it.

Upgrade Time

With the win at Hagerstown I'm officially sandbagging with 2 wins in 3 races and 27 upgrade points.  Therefore, I submitted my upgrade request, hopefully in time for Giro di Coppi. If I can manage a top 10 there maybe I'll get a couple points towards my next upgrade, which is going to be a bit harder than the 4-3.  I haven't done a ride over 50 miles in weeks and never at race pace so it's a little, can you say, ambitious to think I can even stay with the lead group in this race.

Cat 3, the ultimate cat, here I come.

What Getting Knocked Out Taught Me About Cycling

A couple weeks ago I was on the Reston Bike Club "1" ride, or simply the racer-types that get out and try to rip each others legs off on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the summer. Well, apparently we were going down Stuart Mill after Birdfoot and there was a crash. One of the riders hit a rock, bounced into a teammate, and then went down hard right in front of me. I don't remember any of this, but apparently I rammed into his bike/body at almost 30 mph and went over the bars, landing on my head and shoulder. What followed was a slide across the pavement on the side of the head and shoulder and a KO. 45-60 seconds later I got up, called my wife, and stumbled around. I'm not going to dwell much further on the actual accident and immediate aftermath, but I do want to add that all the guys that stopped to take care of me and the other rider were awesome. Although I was conscious, my memory of the day has faded into oblivion and I pretty much have to take people's word on what happened.

Well, the moral of the story is that getting knocked out is good for your racing! Before the accident I was sneaking into the top 10 throughout the season but I'd never had a podium, even as a cat 5. Just two weeks after the wreck I placed 1st in the Washington County Stage Race Criterium and then two weeks after that I won Hagerstown Criterium, the MABRA championship. Seems like getting creamed and using your head as a street sweeper helps...

The reality is, I've been decently overtrained for most of the season. The Zatopek effect (http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2010/04/history-lesson-the-zatopek-effect.html) pretty much defines my results this season and hopefully I can learn from it next year. The problem with the whole overtraining/training issue is that most training plans are designed for 1-2 peaks per season. When you're racing for upgrade points, it's difficult to focus on just a few races since they don't offer enough possibility to earn them. Therefore, if you're following a proper season training plan you're going to go into some race weekends with major fatigue in the legs. At the level I'm racing at (cat 4), it's not as critical to have a strict schedule with peaks in your season as it is for higher level riders. Basically, as long as you lots as a cat 4 you will win races if you recover correctly. Peaking is not as important as recovery between hard workout blocks. I'm not saying you can't do both, it's just a lot more difficult to plan for when life gets in the way of training and you need to make adjustments to your weekly schedule.

My personal experience and evidence this year is enough to make me fully appreciate the value of some time off the bike. Every single one of my good results was after extended time (more than 4 days) off the bike shortly before the result. Let's go over my season so far...

• Vint Hill: Went there at the end of a tough training block. Was totally destroyed and barely finished both races. The week before Jefferson Cup and I felt like all my work over the winter was out the window.
• Jefferson Cup: After Vint Hill I became sick and rode maybe 1-2 hours the week before the race. I got 4th and if it wasn't for the shock of being near the front I could have done better. Coming off of the Vint Hill results this was great news.
• Morgantown Road Race: Still recovering from being sick the week before and ended up 5th only because I bungled a 3 up sprint for 3rd. Still working off the good form I was on after taking 4-5 days off due to sickness.
• Murad Road Race: Again, took some time off the bike because of business travel. Came back and got 4th in that race. Again, felt awesome and like I had a lot more in me, just can't sprint.
• Washington County Criterium: First race after my concussion. 10 days off the bike, started riding two days before the road race. I win from a 3 man break after attacking on the final lap.
• MABRA Championship Crit (Hagerstown): I took a really easy peak week before the race and the legs felt better than ever. Didn't feel like I used any energy during the race and when I went for my solo flyer on the last lap it stuck as I rolled across the line 50 yards in front of the chasing field.

Moral of the story here is that all of my good results come after significant time off the bike in the week or two before the race. Although I'm not as fit as I would be were I to follow the training plan as prescribed, for the race calendar I'm riding and for my goals (upgrade!) getting my base fitness as high as possible and then properly resting every 3-4 weeks is critical. My rest weeks were only a 25-30% decrease in training stress (TSS for those training with power) and they should have been closer to a 50-60% decrease. The caveat here is that this works for my body and might not work for others as effectively. However, given all the other anecdotal evidence out there, it seems like many amateur cyclists fall into the same trap of thinking that if they're not wasted tired they're losing fitness. It took me getting sick and getting knocked the f-out to show me the way.

Hagerstown Challenge MABRA Championship Criterium

Bike racing at every level is serious business. Every rider, whether part of a cat 4 amateur team or a ProTour team, feels the same emotions and goes through the same thoughts when planning for a race (or at least we think we do!). Sure, we're not riding for a paycheck but we occasionally forget that and prepare for a race like we are. This was the mentally of our Evolution Cycling Team p/b Long and Foster when setting up for Hagerstown Challenge Criterium, at least from the perspective of laying down some race day plans and ambitions. 

My initial strategy for the day began while looking at the list of preregistered riders. I noticed that there were not a lot of teams with big representation which was good for the tactics I was hoping to employ. With only 4-5 riders for each team, I knew that they would have difficulty organizing a chase under two specific situations 1) Break aways and 2) Solo flyers in the final laps of the race. Without good team organization, the field typically hesitates when reacting to moves and I was hoping to take advantage of those moments.

Once we had the team together and warming up, we made another decision to work with The Bike Lane team since we knew a couple of the guys and also to grow our virtual "team" from about 5 riders to 10. The goal of the collusion was to ensure that we tried to get into any breakaways together and not to chase each other. It was during the warm up laps that we came up with our final overall strategy.

1. Make it into a break. I usually like to bridge to breaks because I like that psychological carrot and frankly I just don't have the wattage to put down at threshold to sit out front dangling until someone joins me.
2. If a break fails, I was going to attack shortly after start/finish on the final lap. The goal here was to take advantage of the disorganization and the general unwillingness of riders to pull back late attacks when there is only 1k to go. Positioning and timing would be key to the success of this type of move.
3. As a result of #2 above, other teams would have to chase. We had a rider in the field, Jeff, that had a good 5s-15s jump, so he would serve as our sprinter for the day. The plan was to force other teams to chase the 1k to go move and put our guys into position for free. Theoretically.

Since we didn't really have an actual sprinter in the group and most of us have not practiced or raced much together, no one was thinking of a leadout and so the plan was to use tactics and other teams to stretch it out at the end.

Throughout the week and during the warm up my legs have have felt pretty good. Unfortunately, nerves were extremely high and I had too much coffee so I was jittery. It didn't help that an ambulance was on the course and that everyone we talked to said there are crashes almost every lap. As the race began, most of the nerves went away but I could still feel the coffee. Now all I had to do was stay out of trouble for the first half of the race and let the plan develop.

Thankfully, the inevitable crashes were minor and not that big a deal to dodge. It helps to anticipate where they are going to happen and position yourself with an out. Because of the potential for crashes, the constant shuffle at the front end, and the fact that it was very easy to move up on this course I decided to tailgun this part of the race. It paid off big time, because after the race I was able to download the power data and see that my average power and normalized power were very close to each other for a criterium. It meant that I was not doing big accelerations out of the corners while still maintaining position. I was actually able to soft-pedal through an inside line and pass 3-4 riders that were hammering out of the saddle at each corner.

As the race developed, my legs were really looking for an opener. The "breaks" that developed were very small and never had enough gap on the field for me to bridge up, I could see that the field was not interested in letting anything go. Since I felt like I had some decent form, I decided to go out alone and see what happens. After 2 laps out front with what looked like a 10 second gap no one was joining me so I let up and rejoined the field. As I was watching other attacks form, I could tell there was nothing worth joining up the road because the field kept reacting to every move off the front. At one point there were 5-6 guys trying to form a break but they were all gapping each other so they effectively just dragged the field up with them.

The final 10 laps were all about positioning so I moved back up and tried to prevent being swarmed. My nerves came back big time at this point and I almost psyched myself out. Nick, the NCVC rider that won Reston the week before, was in the group so I was watching for him to make a late move. It never happened, and with 3-4 laps to go I knew I was going to try my flyer on the last lap. Throughout the race and especially at the end, everyone from Evo was near the front of the race and getting in position very well. With 2 laps to go, I made sure to be in the top 10 and as I passed start-finish on the bell lap I moved up to third wheel behind Nick and one of my teammates (Jeff). At the top of the little hill there is a 120 degree turn that everyone takes very wide. I was able to accelerate to the top of the hill and take the corner well inside and much faster than others, immediately getting out of the saddle with an all out 20 second effort. After sitting down and looking behind me, I had a good 100 yard gap and the field looked spread across the road. Perfect! The hesitation of the main group worked perfectly and no one wanted to chase. I didn't take this for granted and really buried myself at this point. The power data for this 2 minute effort showed that I beat my personal best by almost 6%, so I was motivated! Coming around the final turn I did another out of the saddle effort and crossed the line what looked like 50 yards ahead of the field.

However, as I cross the line I begin to have second thoughts! My victory salute is really weak because all I can think is "Oh crap. That wasn't the last lap. I just went off the front with 2 laps to go and now I'm cooked." Turns out it really was the final lap! Wow, now that feels really good. After a few seconds of confusion on my part, I realize it really is my win! Last year, I told myself and others I would win this race and by some miracle I did.

The cool down lap begins with Jeff riding up next to me, congratulating me, and getting plowed into from behind and crashing. It was not a light bump, it was a very forceful ramming. As Jeff falls, I ride over his bike but thankfully don't run over Jeff and also stay up myself. The guy who ran into Jeff had probably sprinted for 30th and we were a good 200 yards past the finish at that point. What a crappy way to end a great race - Jeff was pretty banged up, his right shifter destroyed, and his Orbea frame cracked. The fact that the guy didn't even stop to check on the result of his carnage is what really made this a classy move. Jeff, always with a great attitude, is still more focused on my win than on his broken bike and bruised ribs.

Well, I get to wear the MABRA jersey next year and have a nice big target on my back. Looks like another long winter ahead of me on the menu!