The Average Joseph

Szechuan Sauce Recipe from Rick and Morty

2017-09-24T11:24:00.000-05:00

This video is awesome, it shows you how to make Szechuan Sauce, but there isn't a list of ingredients for those of us who need to read the list. So I wrote it down.

Ingredients

1/2 Cup Water
1/2 Cup White Vinegar
1/2 Cup White Sugar
1/2 Cup Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 Tsp Sesame Seed Oil
1/4 Tsp Onion Powder
1/4 Tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 Tsp Ginger Powder
1/4 Tsp Marmite
1 Tbsp Corn Syrup
2 tbsp Corn Starch
1 tsp xanthan gum

Utensils

Sauce Pan
Something to stir (whisk works best)
Spatula
Fine Strainer

5 Tips for improved Streching

2017-05-14T20:48:00.001-05:00

We all know stretching is important, and most of us don't do it enough. So make sure that every session is effective with these 5 tips that I've picked up over the years of training:

Stretch warm muscles - Study after study shows, and confirms that the best time to do flexibility stretching is right after activity. So do your best to stretch after your workouts. But for the hard days the muscles might be a little too sore for deep stretching, and some days you're just too busy to fit in the extra time right after a workout. So if you have to stretch later, do so after a hot shower, or warm up the muscles with a quick yoga session. The extra 2-3 minutes of activity will make the stretching many times more effective.
Repeat stretches multiple time in a session - Think of stretching like a strength workout, do the stretches in sets. Pick a series of stretches and repeat the routine 2 to 3 times. The portion of the stretching that does the most is the first 10-15 seconds where you get into the position, and actively increase the stretching. So repeating this is critical.
Actively try to relax the muscles while stretching - Focus on the muscles being stretched, feel the stretch. Increase the stretch and breath into the muscles, focusing on relaxing it while holding the position and form.
Stretch muscles in pairs - Only stretching one side of a joint can lead to imbalances, so when stretching across a joint, stretch the muscles for flexion and extension.
Adjust your posture and form to target the muscles you need - Every stretch position targets multiple muscles, and we are all different. So for some a stretch might really stretch one muscle and for another, the same stretch might really stretch another. Design your stretching routine to target specific muscles, and know where they are. When stretching, adjust your position so you feel the stretch where it's supposed to be.

Try these and tell me if they helped you! What are your keys to getting a good stretching workout? Thanks for reading!

Rolling Thunder 2016!

2016-10-28T10:43:00.000-05:00

Rolling thunder CX in Missoula was this past weekend and I felt I really needed to write about it. This is for a couple reasons. One, it will go down as a significant percentage of the race time I’ve had this year, it’s always an awesome race, and the clarity and decisiveness with which I raced and remember the race can serve as an excellent example of the strategy that exists in CX.

So let’s start by talking about how awesome of a race it is. The race is in Missoula, MT. Right off the bat, its’ going to be fun. As of the writing, I have yet to be within eye sight of Missoula and not have fun, so I’m convinced it’s impossible not to have fun in the general vicinity. This year was a little more chill because they only had a Saturday race. My girlfriend and her sister came out to watch and partake in the festivities, so we spend the day hanging out and checking out downtown Missoula. Good to relax and see some cool shops. I was particularly impressed by Liquid Planet, everything from coffee to beer, and liquor, very cool place. After that, I hung around a little more and packed up ready for the race. As was the case last year, the beer at the race was provided by Big Sky Brewing, as well as the course grounds, and the beer was on tap, free. I cannot think of a better way to get people to come check it out, and it did not fail. As the sun began to fall below the mountains, so the fun began, the large groups of those who’d race earlier and those there to catch the P/1/2 men and women started to assemble. Right off the bat, I was impressed by the women’s race, super fun to watch. The crowds were already getting rowdy, and the women provided an exciting race to cheer for. Gaps were small, and every racer from point end back was chasing the rider in front of them full gas.

As for the men’s race, I was expecting a few things. First off, this year, as you might know, has been a little tough for me in trying to adjust to having a part time very physical job. I’ve been struggling to get to races, and as a result, I’ve been struggling to stay motivated to train. The fitness is low, but by some miracle, I’ve been holding on to race speed and motivation. Last year, Kevin Bradford-Parish and I had an epic battle Saturday night going back and forth lap after lap. Attacks, catches, counter attacks, and responses. It was a blast to race, and I hope to watch as well. In the end Kevin got me, but I was pretty confident that things would be different this year, as I wasn’t at that same level, let alone stronger. But to my surprise, I didn’t see him on the start line. But I did catch glimpse of a rider, Alec, which I’d raced against a the Cougar Cup in Pullman a couple week earlier. I knew I could beat him, but I knew he’d be one to watch as I’d have very little room for error. He pushed me to my limit last time. I started second row, and taking a look at the starters on the front row, I knew I had a lot of work to do as it was filled with a lot of talent. Each rider had the ability to put me in trouble, and if things didn’t go right, I’d be battling against all of them.

So here is where the lessons come in. I knew I had to measure my efforts, the big moves always come in lap 2 or 3, so on the start you have to burn only what you need to stay relevant. Off the line I was a lot farther back than I wanted. Maybe 10^th wheel, not a loss, but vulnerable for sure. I was keeping my eye on Alec, and the 3-4 riders who at that point had made themselves prominent. With one eye on them, and one on the passes, I tried to make smart passes, looking for opportunities where riders were missing lines or trying to rest and getting the wheel. Very measured effort to move up. On top of all this, they had a 2^nd lap prize. First rider at the end of lap 2 had a $100. So I made sure the lead was within a hard effort of contact for the entire first lap. I was beginning to think that prize was out of reach, but as traversed the off camber section known as the stegosaurus for the first time, I had the leaders in range and on the long bumpy pedaling section I was able to not only make contact, but get in 3^rd wheel. Coming around a slick paved corner, I pushed the line, and had my elbow into the tape in an attempt to make full contact with 2^nd wheel. As I accelerated out of the corner, I heard that unmistakable sound of metal and carbon scraping behind me. Looking back I saw Alec (who was on my wheel) sliding out and slowing or worse, the riders behind him. This was right before a couple sections where I knew I had an advantage. With a gap established I burned a couple matches to solidify the gap and tighten up the lead group as we began to set a nasty pace going into lap 2.

Its worth noting here, that the presence of the gap, the effort I had to put in (but the ease with which I could move through traffic) was in large part due to the pace at the front. The pace was high so I had to maintain a high pace to move up, but at the same time the high pace meant riders were on the limit, and in single file. So efforts to make passes we abound because the traffic was thin. This also meant that the riders on the front where full gas. Often times you can take advantage of this by riding fast but smooth, allowing small gaps to open before corners and then nailing the corner and hitting high exit speeds and hard sustain efforts and saving the top end accelerations for passes and attacking later. Meanwhile the guys at the front are burning those matches and putting themselves in debt.

As I hit the front group in the first couple corners of lap 2, I sat on, followed the wheel. But the pace remained high and I could see the rider in from of me putting those little effort that means he’s full gas. I was on my limit, but not over it, so I sat on taking some much needed rest. I followed through the net third of a lap until we hit the long pedaling section again. I went to the front and lifted the pace just a little bit. I took control and make the pace I wanted. Through the running barriers I went the pace I was comfortable at, which was clearly just a little over what the other riders liked. Final, coming into the hopping barriers just before the end of the lap, I pushed the corner, and accelerated hard into the barriers, hoping them smooth and fast and sprinted hard out of them. Followed those up with a series of 2 180 corners where I was on the limits of grip and accelerating hard out of, I put in 2-3 seconds of time on second. Coming into the finish straight, the decisions was either sit up or go for it. Knowing how hard the last lap was, the gap I had, and the fact that Alec and most of the field was already chasing hard, it was a pretty easy choice for me, it was time to go for it.

Not only was the situation perfect for the move, the long game always suits me. I normally have some pop, but the lack of efforts in training had my top end and repeatability in question. But regardless, staying consistent, putting in smooth, fast laps is what I can do. The thing that you learn from doing Over under intervals, or tempo with burst intervals, is that when setting a pace and feeling it out, you need to look at not only the effort you’re putting in, but what effort you’ve already put in. Coming off of a couple hard laps, I knew the pace would feel a little harder than I wanted it to, but I would be recovering even though it hurt. So I kept it in gear, putting in a second here and a second there on the riders behind.

The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I focused on keeping the laps consistent and each lap I tried to sprint in a new section that I hadn’t yet, looking for time to be made up, and looking to have negative splits. I doubt I did, but having something to focus on helped me to keep the as on, without blowing up. I did have enough to time to grab a quick beer going through the final lap, through the barriers, near the beer stand. So thank you to the unaware gentleman who’s beer I grabbed and chugged. It seemed only fitting.

So before I close out this post, I want to discuss some of the mistakes that the other racers made, how I capitalized on them, and hopefully this will highlight the importance of being aware of the subtitle strategy involved in a cyclocross race and the importance of being prepared to take advantage of mistakes quickly. I’ll also spend some time talking about how these are different for shorter races, such as cat 3, cat 4, juniors, and such.

If you’re racing for the win at a race, it’s important to remember that you’re not going to win the race in lap 1 or 2. Especially in a 60 minute race. No one is tired enough to get a meaningful gap, and everyone is still able to recover from their efforts. This was one mistake, the riders went all on, trying to win early. At the very least they rode like it. You can take advantage of this by sitting in, following the wheels and doing some research. Look for their trouble spots, allow small gaps to open up if you know they will close (especially in turny sections), and let them waste energy. As you see them fatiguing, roll past, or blast past depending on the situation. The riders going hard are making you a bet. They bet that the pace they are holding is hurting you at least as much as it’s hurts them. If two riders are equal, the rider pushing the pace is going harder than the rider following. So this a place you can gain an advantage.

When the race hands you gifts, take them. A crash just off your back wheel, as dirty as it feels, you gotta go. At the very least use it to give yourself some rest, but really you should be upping the pace. The riders that went down will have to chase hard, and the riders who got caught up will be overly nervous and making mistakes and wasting energy, all you need to do is encourage that to get a big advantage. But you can’t count on these. What you can do it be ready to take advantage of them and make sure you’re not in a position to be caught in a crash. This means riding far enough up to avoid these, staying off wheels you think might crash, and leaving a gap so you can avoid them if possible. It all depends on the pressure behind you.

Something that’s important to keep in mind is this is all based on 60 minute races. In a 60 minute race fatigue is much more a factor. But as the race gets shorter and shorter, you can’t rely on fatigue as much, you need to be more aggressive. Rolling thunder was a 5+ minute lap, I made my move after 2 laps which was very early in the race, but if the race had been 30 minutes or 40 minutes, that would have been a significant portion of the race gone. With more than 45 minutes left to race, I could afford to take risks to open up the gap a little bit on laps 3-5. But with a shorter race, you want to focus more on consolidating your advantage, because if you make a mistake you won’t get a second chance as often because the race will be coming down to the final much quicker. This is why a lot of racers struggle to adjust to the higher categories. In the earlier categories, the races are so short, so being aggressive is beneficial, but when you move up to the cat 3 race, or the cat 1/2, you will be punished for the earlier aggression. The racing strategy is different and you have to keep that in mind.

With my lack of serious training as of late, I’ve been able to rely on my strategic ability to still win races, taking racers where I might not be the strongest and play to my advantage to still pull through and punch above my level, and even win. In a sport where every advantage can mean seconds and places, or even the win, you have to look everywhere, strength, skill, strategy, gear. Ignoring any of these is like leaving money on the table. And the best way to improve your strategy is to think through each race and identify where you can be better and identify where you were good. This helps to reinforce the good and allows you to work on the bad.

Introducing Premium Athlete Coaching

2016-10-15T10:19:00.002-05:00

I have been fortunate to coach some amazing athletes other the past handful of years and it has been as successful as it has been fun. In an effort to grow my business and expand my services, I am introducing a new coaching program. Along with my current offerings of Training Plans, Limited Coaching Adviser, and Full Coaching, I am happy to introduce the Premium Coached Athlete. This new level of coaching seeks to offer the most comprehensive coaching possible, expanding upon the full coaching by adding layers of new analysis, access to the latest metrics, and a lot more communication than the full coaching offers. This level of coaching means that athletes have access to whatever level of of service they need, from the most simple, to the most comprehensive through JM Coaching.

Previously my highest level of coaching was Full Coaching. This level offered a complete coaching program, suited to serious athletes. It was a closed loop coaching program, with training plans and workout schedules driven by testing and analysis. Training plans based on proven science and experience, and as the relationship developed, so do the workouts. The planning and workouts grow with the athlete, their strengths and weaknesses are identified and accounted for in the custom training program. Athletes get workout feedback to help them get the most out of each workout, and make sure they are on the right track.

The new premium level of coaching seeks to offer the same closed loop coaching, analysis, and feedback of the full coaching, but expand and deepen at every level. To do this, the athletes gets more of the basics, and access to advanced offers.

The first difference is access to the advanced analysis. A full coaching program offers access to what I would consider the essential metrics for quantifying and predicting fitness. The Premium Coaching offers access to every advanced metric that I can offer, and access to new metrics and trends as they become part of the coaching world. As new ways of understanding athletes performance make their way to the coaching world, the premium athletes get the first shot to see what benefits they can provide. At this time, The essential metrics I use are Stress (TSS, TRIMPS, or Estimated Stress), duration, time in zones, intensity specific stresses, to help track specific performance, as well distance, work, RPE, Quadrant Analysis, and subjective ratings. Premium Coaching expands these to include W Prime Exp, W Prime Balance, Dynamic Threshold Tracking, and Workout Specific Tracking. In addition, this is an ever growing list, as new metrics become relevant and implemented, premium athletes have access to them.

Another key difference is that this analysis becomes daily. Full Athletes get weekly analysis, which for most is sufficient to get a lot out of the training. But for those who are fully focused on their training, and those who are completing multiple workouts a day, getting daily updates becomes much more valuable because the pace of the training is that much higher. This means getting feedback on rides while the effort is still fresh in your mind and in the legs.

Along with the increase in analysis frequency, the athlete also gets more frequent communication to go along. This is a reflection of the increased pace of the training, the coaching needs to be more responsive, it needs to react quicker to the training, and more communication is a huge way to do that.

Premium Athletes also will get customized workotus. With all the added analysis, this opens up a coaches ability to understand the athlete's strengths and weaknesses on a much deeper level, and means that workouts can be fully customized to their needs. Full Athletes already get some customization, but this is usually in the form of adding volume when needed, or increasing or decreasing the number of intervals. Premium Athletes will have fully customized workouts, when the need arises. This means workouts are exactly tailored to the target events. Whether that means specific efforts, specific skills or drills, or specific training levels. The workouts are specialized to target exactly what the athlete needs when they need it.

Finally, as new services become available, premium athletes get access to them. Athletics and coaching are constantly evolving, and with the premium service, you get to stay on the forefront. Not only when it comes to trends in coaching, but as I develop new offerings as well. The premium level has access to it all. Some offering on the horizon include "virtual skills training" and workout videos, and course specific pacing and strategy discussion.

The goal of the Premium Athlete program is to offer a more complex and deep level of coaching to athletes. Through my years of experience, I've learned whats essential for an athletes success, and I've also learned how to turbo charge that success. That is where the premium program comes from. This level is for those who are fully committed, for those who want to leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of their best performance. Because of the added time commitment for me as a coach, at this point I can only offer 2 slots to athletes. So if this service sounds like something you're interested, don't hesitate, contact me to express that interest and make sure you don't miss out! Check out my services page for a description of the service and to contact me about getting started.

JM Coaching for Cyclists

Athlete Interest Form

Catching up, getting back in it

2016-09-23T10:08:00.000-05:00

A lot has happened since my last post so here is a little recap to put some context on this post.

I had very high hopes for the season. Going back to January, I started working at the local airport part time to make what coaching wasn’t covering in the budget, and although the work was physical it wasn’t affecting my training too much. The hours were a little tough which put sleeping and a social life at odds, but through the winter and spring I was able to train in the middle of the day when the sun was out. And training was going well, the number were going up, and I seemed to be breaking through to a new level, at least when it came to threshold.

But as I began to plan my season out another characteristic of my job became more of a problem, I worked weekend and getting time off was not only going to be difficult to do for all the weekend I wanted as one might expect, getting any time off was a challenge because the station is chronically shorthanded. To make a long story short, I only managed to race 2 times by the time July came around. I raced the opener and the second race of the Northwest Epic Series, a 4 race series consisting of 50+ mile MTB races. I was able to win both those races, as a result of being on great form. But The lack of consistent racing was taking a toll mentally on me.

MTB nationals came around and I made sure I was able to go, pulling all kinds of favors. And it turned into a great weekend. The result didn’t quiet measure up, but seeing Tim and Evie, and a long list of other good friends all again, the ability to ride in such an amazing place, and of course the thrilling competition reminded me of just how special racing is, and how lucky I was to be able to do what I did the last couple years. It also motivated me to no end to get back to that level and ability to travel. I felt unfinished, and I still do.

With a few more races on the calendar, I worked to make sure I was getting out as much as possible, and unfortunately the only one I was able to swing was Chequamegon. The lack of racing continued to wear on me, and it reached a bit of a breaking point. About 2 weeks after nationals I just decided I needed to take a break and re-evaluate where I was and what I was doing. About a month of time off and I began to get the itch to at least train again, and as Chequamegon grew closer, I resigned to becoming content with what I thought was an inevitable disappointing finish. But the race was too important to skip, it’s important for more than just the race, it’s family, community, and it’s tradition.

The weekend itself started off with a challenging time getting to the midwest, almost not making my flight. But I managed to make it, get a rental car and drive up. I was very relaxed and focused on spending time with family and having fun. It was amazing seeing everyone, all the people that make up the midwest MTB community. I felt like a winner before Saturday even rolled around.

But when Saturday did roll around, despite my attitude and expectation, it was a very sudden and easy shift to put all the focus on the race. I guess I’ve been racing long enough that when the race starts, the only thing I know how to do is go all in because I was focused. This was my 14^th chequamegon, and my 7^th 40.

After the anthem was finished and we put our helmets back on, the ATVs started up and we rolled down main street. This is an interesting time of the race. For the leaders it’s a mix of light hearted, calm before the storm, and an important time to focus and get ready for the effort. The race hasn’t even begun yet, but one misstep and it could be over. We make the left and then the right onto the highway and with each pedal stroke, nerves tense, and legs twitch. You can feel the speed and intensity building as the effort very slowly starts to build until the quads take off.

I was waiting for it, and I knew I could hang. You never forget how to pack surf, and that’s what I did. I’ve raced enough years now that I know when you need to be at the front, and I know how far back is too far. What I’ve gotten better and better at is doing it effortlessly. We make the small climb up a slight right and Rosie’s field is in sight. This is the first hurdle to clear. Timing your entry into the field so that you don’t get pushed back is critical. Over the years they have opened it up and it’s made it safer which we all appreciate. I nailed it this year and was sitting top 10 through the field and onto the trail on the other side.

As the front group made it onto the trail the first signs or effort start to show a couple riders fall back and the front group forms. I kept waiting for the effort to overwhelm me, but to my surprise it didn’t’ I made a few mistakes before OO, but was able to maintain position. At this point there was nothing left in my mind except the race and the effort, but I had felt like I’d already surpassed my expectations.

Eventually I got tailed off as I made a bad move through a puddle, I was able to catch on, but that was the start of the end. I caught on, lost it, caught on, tail gunned for a while and eventually was totally off up fire tower. But the fact I’d made it to fire tower in the front felt pretty cool. The rest of the race I was chasing hard with David Lombardo and Mark Lalonde, until I lost them on the Birkie Trail. I ended the day in 11^th, a very good finish regardless, but something I am proud of considering the year so far.

I learned a lot from the race, about myself, the midwest community that I miss very much, and about the race that I care deeply for. A big thing I’ve been learning about this whole year and was punctuated with Chequamegon was that my motivation to train is mostly rooted in racing. I love to ride my bike, and I can ride and train without racing, but to train at the level I do, it takes more than just enjoying the time on the bike, you have to be ambitious, motivated, and extremely hungry. Not everyday is a wonderful day on the bike, I’ve found that training take you high and low. And I feel as though I’ve been to both, but the payoff is showing up to a race and giving it your all, the payoff is in the performance when it counts. I wasn’t getting that this year and it made it tough to train and at a certain point I broke.

Another big thing I learned about myself, twice, is that even after time away from the bike I can hold onto the fitness. I was very worried that after the time I took off, I would lose a lot of the fitness and racing ability I’d spent years working on and what I came to find both at nationals and at Chequamegon was that I’ve built something that can’t be taken down easily. I often tell my clients that training is like building a brick house. Each workout, each day, each effort, they are bricks on the house and once laid they are there to stay, but I don’t always listen to myself.

Finally, I learned just how special the midwest cycling community really is, both as a community, and personally to me. Everyone is so welcoming, and at the first sight its smiles, memories, and picking right back up, even after almost a year away. It’s amazing, and I’m lucky to be a part of it, even though I’m thousands of miles away. I still feel like a Midwesterner. And I still bring the pain every time I toe the line at a race. There is a grit and determination that I learned from racing in the midwest, and I will never lose that.

The rest of my season will be somewhat low key. I’ll be moving on to Cyclocross by hitting up as many of the MFG series as I can out in Seattle. Hopefully planting some roots as part of that community as well. I’ll also be hitting rolling thunder in Missoula, an amazing and fun race in October, and I’ll be working hard to make next year go a little better and make sure I line up at a ton more races, make my way to the midwest a lot more, and take a few steps closer to knocking out some big time goals.

Warm Ups: A how to and helpful tips

2016-06-20T11:28:00.003-05:00

Warm ups have become an essential part of any workout over the past 10 or 15 years. As a community of coaches and athletes, we’ve come to a consensus that a warmed up athlete is better than one who isn’t. what we haven’t come to a consensus on yet is what a good warm up is, however. Well, because the internet is a place for people to put in their two cents, I’ll add in mine and hopefully it helps you have your best racing yet.

The first thing to discuss when looking at warm ups is the why. We know we should, but why should we? There are some big reasons based on what it can do for you physically. The warm up can be exactly what the body needs to prepare itself for the hard efforts to come. Getting the body moving and the heart rate up will increase the blood flow to the working muscles and decreases blood flow to those that aren’t. The effort activates all the supportive systems that help the body cope with the effort and supply the main components with what they need to do the work. In short, a warm up will flip the switch on your body putting it in perform mode. But what a lot of people easily forget is the mental side of a warm up. A consistent warm up serves as a mental preparation too. If you get used to having intense focus while training, doing a similar warm up also help your mind prepare by relying on habits. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been having a bad day and I just don’t know if I’ll get my workout done, let alone do a good job. But I’ve come to know that if I put the clothes on, prepare the bike, and get to my warm up, I’ll be ready mentally regardless of mental state the day put me in. I think this is because my mind doesn’t know any other way to be after the warm up, it only knows to focus. Having this habit is one of the biggest things that allow me to train day after day, mentally speaking.

So knowing the purpose, we can better execute, because we now understand the reasons. So what is a good warm up? There are different warm ups for different activities, but in general I say the longer event, the shorter and the less intense the warm up should be. For most events, under 4 hours, some structure and targeted intensity is helpful. But with the recent string of 50+ mile MTB races I’ve been doing, the warm ups have been pretty simple. You can find the outline below.

Endurance MTB Warm Up – primarily used for MTB races that are 4-6 hours long

Spin easy for 5 minutes, make sure everything is set; bike, gear, nutrition.

Spend the next 10 minutes slowly increasing the effort from easy spin to tempo. Focus on pedaling complete circles as you increase in both cadence and effort. Focus is the key here.

Spins easy for the remainder of the warm up, maybe put in a couple hard short efforts, but keep the legs going until you get to the line and go.

While these instructions are great, lets dive a little deeper. What should you be thinking and feeling through the warm up? Because your goal is to prepare the body for the effort, and activate the performance systems, we will probably feel this happening. You should feel a wave of heat come over your body as your heart begins to beat faster and the blood start to pump. This usually takes me 5-10 minutes of riding to feel. You want to feel the legs start to loosen up and get into a rhythm. You want to get to the point where the motion of spinning the legs just happens with no though, so you can focus on pedaling hard. And speaking of focus, what should you be focusing on? You want to get your head in the game as much as your body, so start thinking about the race, what will the tactics be, what will the start be like, what do you think will be the best way for you to handle the start will be? Think through your nutrition and gear, remember yourself preparing it and instead of wondering if it’s good to go, tell yourself it is good to go. This will help you clear your mind and focus on the race. Think through the race, visualize happening what you want to happen. I do a lot of visualization especially the night and day before the race, and I like to finish this up some on the day off. Doing this visualization is a way to take all those thoughts and move them from your conscience mind to your unconscious mind. This is important, because in the heat of the race, there isn’t time for thought, only reaction. So you want to inform those reactions as best you can.

Just like a workout, or a course, the more you practice something the better you’ll be at it. So remember that you might not get it right away. But keep at it. The more you practice the more it will work and the better races you’ll have.

JM Coaching: Caleb and 2016

2016-05-20T10:03:00.004-05:00

2015 was a good year for Caleb and we've already taken the time to meet him in this previous post, here I caught up with him to ask him a couple questions about 2016.

2015 was a good season for you, how do you look at it? Do you consider it a break through season for you? Or were you left feeling hungry after with unfinished business?

2015 was definitely a break through season for me. I accomplished almost every single one of my goals, went from top 30 to top 10 in the WORS pro field, and asserted myself as one the up and coming juniors in the U.S. 17-18 UCI cyclocross scene. Overall I am very happy with what I accomplished last season, I narrowly missed making the worlds team for cyclocross but accomplished every other one of my cyclocross goals and had a lot of fun.

In the 2015-16 CX season, what was the the experience like, racing with top junior names at big national event for the first time? On such a big stage?

It was definitely intimidating to line up against so many other big names at the big events. Starting in Providence, Rhode Island to L.A. to nationals in North Carolina I gained more and more confidence and realized that I could actually race with the big names and be competitive with them. This fall I hope to firmly establish myself as one of those big names in the U.S. junior cross' scene.

What are you hopes for spring and summer 2016? What about 2016-17 CX season?

This spring and summer one of my goals is to score some podiums in the Wisconsin Off Road Series(WORS) pro field and hopefully score some top fives. I also have set my sights on a mtb nationals podium in California as well as winning Ore to Shore and the Chequamegon Short and Fat. For the 2016-2017 cyclocross season I hope to travel to Europe and race, as well as make the worlds team and be on the podium at nationals. Locally I hope to win multiple Wisconsin and Chicago series P/1/2 races and nationally I hope to win my first 17-18 UCI race! It should be a very exciting season!

What has JM Coaching been like, how does having a coach effect your training?

JM coaching has been fantastic and has taken my racing to new heights in leaps and bounds. This is my third year with JM coaching and it is going to be my biggest season yet. Having a coach is very very important, as much as a rider thinks they may know about training and racing it is vital to have serious structure behind your season. Also, having someone on your side who is very knowledgeable about all aspects of being a cyclist and can provide insight to your season and racing is extremely important. Working with JM coaching has already brought me so much farther than I thought I could go and I can't wait to see what else I can.

Breaking Through

2016-05-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

I'm sure I've said it before but 2015 was a little bit disappointing for me. I had a great summer, traveled a ton, raced a lot, and trained a lot, but I just didn't get the results I was hoping for. There was something missing, something I wasn't doing or getting. I could feel it, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I came away from the summer in debt and a little down on myself having nothing to really show from it.

After coming to terms with the situation I decided I needed to get a part time job, I got a job working at the local regional airport. The job is physical, stressful, has wacky hours, doesn't pay great, and can be extremely stressful. But in some ways it's been exactly what I needed. It has been rewarding, pushing me to work harder and not take what I have for granted. I had a challenging time getting used to the sleep schedule and making sure I was getting enough sleep, but learning to do so has helped me re find my discipline. The physicality and the stressful nature of the work has me coming home mentally and physically tired sometimes, but it's taught me to accept the situation when you're body is just worn out, and made me stronger when it comes to full body strength and forced me to become more disciplined in stretching and recovery. It has put me in a pinch, and I'm adapting. This is something I was missing last year. I was too comfortable, I wasn't challenged. And I wasn't putting in the extra 1 or 2% that it takes to really get better on the bike.

I've also come to terms with the direction my training was going, and saw a stagnation. Something needed to get changed up. I was doing the same things and getting the same results. I thought back to when I first started training. The feeling of training as hard as you could every day. The excitement of new places, new people, new goals, and new achievements, it's really what drove me in the sport. I had lost it and if I was going to continue pursuing my dreams I was going to have to rediscover it.

This little personal quest began with setting concrete goals. I had never really sat down and planned an "end game". I had always just been chasing the dream of being pro. it was an amorphous goal, but it didn't matter because it was so far off. But as I got closer and closer to it, the lack of definition started to hold me back, I needed to set my sights on something real. I wrote a post back in the middle of January about my goals, if you're curious you can read it here.

Setting these goals helped me work backwards and map out the intermediate goals I needed to accomplish in order to get to where I wanted to go. One of the big goals was to increase my threshold up a lot so 2016 has so far been pretty focused on that. I had always rely heavily on sweet spot intervals and long tempo days to get my threshold up. This year I started things off with a big block of strength in the gym and a much slower build up. Normally, a person would build at between 4-7 TSS per day per week, I was shooting for closer to 3-4 points TSS per day per week. I also planned rides to hit both the longer side and the short side of threshold during base period. It all seemed to pay off. I was able to go from a PR 20m effort of 383w to 400w, pushing my threshold up to ~380w, nearly half of my 4 year goal.

If you'd like to check out the ride, here it is

https://www.strava.com/activities/536073407/overview

So what did I learn from all this? The biggest thing is to mix it up. You have to figure out what works and what doesn't, stick to what works, but also remember that anything and everything will change at some point and you have to adapt and move with the changes. I attribute the gain to 3 main things. First the weight lifting. This is the biggest addition to my training this year. I've never done anything in the gym anywhere near as targeted or as long. I spent almost 4 months in the gym. The next big thing was I got a fit from Brice at B&L. I'll have more on the fit process at some point. what we found was that I was compensating for muscular imbalances and flexibility issues by riding in a certain position, and that position was limiting me. The changes were extremely small, but the results speak for themselves. Most importantly, the knee pain I'd struggled with for a long time has all but dissipated. And finally I think a change up in the workouts played a big role. I went from doing a lot of sweet spots and long tempo rides to flowing through sweet spots, to FTP builders, and now onto Over Under Intervals. The sweet spots are great, but they just aren't hard enough. In the early season they do a great job of getting your body to remember it's capabilities, but to push through, you need to go harder. So the FTP builders are simply that. 10 minute intervals, maximum efforts. I started with 2x10, then moved on to 3x10. They were super effective. The rides only lasted 80 minutes, but I was dead tired after each one. Plus the slow ramp rate had me going into them well rested. I'd always follow them up with 2 days of additional volume and effort. I'm now moving on to Over Under Intervals. These are when you ride above and then below threshold alternating for 10-20 minutes. The FTP builders help build your capacity for power, and the over unders increase you fatigue resistance, allowing you do the efforts over and over.

Besides the above, there has been a clear shift in my perspective. I wouldn't say that I've recaptured that feeling from before, but I would say I've found a new motivation that gives me the same drive.
I have a clear understanding of what I was doing before, and what elements of that I can bring back, what I can't do anymore, and how to get where I want to be. I know how to write the plan, and I know that I can follow the plan with enough focus and hard work.

So what can other riders take away from this? The workouts themselves are a good place to start, but it's more important to realize that we are all different, and we change. The training has to change with us. The training has to work inside the rest of our lives whether we work full time, part time, take care of kids, go to school, whatever it is. There has to be room for us to be who we are and there has to be an environment where we are prepared to challenge ourselves every time we stomp on the pedal or hit the trails. It's also critical to remember that no matter what you do, there are always going to be diminishing returns. The training has to change over time in response to life but also you abilities. There is no simple solution for this or that. The workouts dictate the performance and the performance has to dictate the workouts. There has to be the back and forth, to make sure there is always a challenge.

JM Coaching Skills Quests: Wheelies

2016-04-29T10:03:00.000-05:00

Ask anyone, doing wheelies is cool. But it's a lot more than just cool. Learning how to wheelie can help you become a better bike handler. The key to racing face and having fun is keeping the bike under control but the fastest riders are able to take the bike right to the limits of that control and race there. To know where those limits are you gotta find them and practicing and doing wheelies is an excellent way to understand how far you can lean back (or forward, or side to side) before you start to fall. And practicing often will help you become comfortable on the edge.

Here are my 4 steps to learn how to master wheelies:

Step 1: Weight Shifting

Wheelies at their core are just a balancing act. You're trying to learn how to balance on the rear wheel. To master your balance, you have to master your weight, your awareness of it's position relative to the wheels and cranks, and controlling it. The first step there is learning how to move your weight around while on a bike. Weight sifts are one of the most core skills to learn on a bike. Once you master simply riding, you have to learn how to separate your bike and body. The most you're able to do this, the more agile you can be and the faster you can go in just about any situation.

The best way to practice weight shifting is to practice leaning the bike side to side while standing up and leaning forwards and backwards as far as you can while keeping both wheels on the ground. A key thing to remember is to keep you weight going through the pedals as much as possible. Control the bike with you pedals as much or more than you do with the handle bars.

But knowing how to shift your weight is only half the battle. Stiff riding is a habit and a bad one. Bad habits need to be broken and the best way to break this one is to practice riding on easy trails and exaggerate you weight shifts. leaning the bike more than needed, focusing on keeping your bike and body independent. Obviously this over exaggerated leaning and shifting isn't the optimal way to ride, but teaching yourself to keep the bike moving under you by over doing it, will help break the habit of of locking everything up when the going gets rough.

Step 2: Wheel Lifts

Wheel lifts is another skill that fall under basics when is comes to racing bikes. It is less true on the road, but even there knowing how to get the wheels off the ground on occasion is helpful, but in mountain biking is critical. Once you've mastered the weight shifting with the wheels on the ground, the next step is to lift the wheels.

Start with learning to lift the front wheel. To lift your front wheel, lean back, and thrust the bike forward, and finally lift the up on the handle bars. these three motions combined with get the front wheel off the ground, and increasing the intensity of any or all will get the wheel higher off the ground. But be careful, start slow and easy, get comfortable with how much leaning or pulling gets the wheel to move and slow keep pushing the limits, higher and higher.

Once you're comfortable with the front wheel, move on the rear as well. If won't help you with your wheelie, but it can help with bunny hops. The process is much the same. Lean forward and thrust the bike back, lifting up with your feet (angle your feet toe down and push back and up if you don't have clip in pedals) to get the rear wheel up. Start slowly and once you get comfortable push the limit farther and farther until you're lifting like a pro.

Step 3: Wheelies!

Once you know how to get the front wheel up, its time to learn how to hold it there. To lift the wheel, you lean back and thrust the bike up while pulling the bars, but that will only get the wheel up, and often if you rely on the thrusting too much you're not going to be able to hold it. To wheelie, lean more, thrust less. The goal is to get your weight directly over the rear wheel so that you can balance over it. You can use the pedal to help you balance if needed. If you start from a slow speed, and pedal in an easy gear while lifting, you can pedal on and off the help keep the wheel up. Much like the wheel lifts, start slow, just try to hold the wheel a little bit, and then try to hold it longer and longer until you start develop a comfort with where the balance is. Try starting on a hill and using the pedals more. It also helps to practice without your clip in pedals so you can catch yourself if you fall. Trust me, it will save you tail bone.

Step 4: Master the balance

When you start getting comfortable with the balance point and using the pedals to help balance you, start trying to rely more on the balance and less on pedaling. Pedaling can easily become a crutch to help you balance, but the key is to only use your balance to hold the wheelie.Again, it helps to practice without clip in pedals, because you can catch yourself easier and save a fall.

So when should you practice this? When you're schedule is tight it might seem hard to justify spending time doing wheelies, but quiet the opposite is true, you gotta practice them. Recovery days, post ride cool downs, bike checks. These are all good times to practice. Even if its only 2 or 3 minutes, if you practice often you'll notice improvement.

Coaching Advisor

2016-02-29T09:00:00.000-06:00

One of the most common issues people who train and/or race in endurance sports is they would get a coach, but why waste the money. They already know about training science and beyond that they enjoy learning about the latest science and tracking their own training. But you can tell they don't have total confidence in what they are doing.

And how could they! Even the smartest, best coaches often have their own coach. Why? Because one of biggest benefits a coach gives you is perspective. Everyone needs someone on the outside looking in, help you make decision and giving you confidence in what the training plan says, helping you make adjustments when needed, and giving you the motivation and accountability when the training gets tough.

Thats why I started offering the Coaching Adviser Plan. The coaching adviser plan gives you access to someone to bounce ideas off, to give you a gut check when things seem off, and the help you get back on track when things need adjustments. It isn't full coaching, there isn't someone watching your every step. This plan relies on you to provide the day to day monitoring, making the small decisions that have become second nature at this point to you. But when things get difficult or you just don't have the time, I'm there to keep you training on track.

Premium TrainingPeaks Account, with online data storage, analysis, and daily workout instructions sent directly to your email
Full Annual Training Plan using periodization techniques. Firm but flexible plan.
Testing and analysis to drive training intensity and targets.
Data Analysis to monitor training
Communication every 2 weeks via email or phone.
No minimum commitment.
$75 a month, $50 startup fee.

These plans are more customized to fit what you need. Don't have time for calls? No problem. Need email reminders once in a while, I can do that. But what everyone get is the confidence that nothing is left out, and that the plan is sound.

If you interested we'll start by identifying what it is that your training is missing and write up a plan that gives you what you need, nothing you don't and that you only pay for that.

Athlete Interest Form

New Job

2016-02-09T13:04:00.000-06:00

As some of you might have known, I started working for Alaska Airlines in late January. The airport in Pullman is pretty small, but very busy for it's size. With only one gate, and 4 flights a day it requires people working there to know how to do everything from checking in passengers to working the ground service. I won't go too much into it, but so far I'm enjoying it and it works well with my training schedule and other responsibility, but no doubt it's testing me everyday.

Tested. Trusted. True. I am PowerTap

I started out with a flight to Portland and Seattle for a week of orientation and training. The classes were fun and engaging, but did put some disruption in my training. At this moment in the season, I'm transitioning from full time in the gym to getting on the bike and building the volume. Right as I was making that transition, I had this first trip. So I had to get creative. Luckily the hotel I was in had a small gym with weights, so I was able to get the weight lifting in, but I had to move the rides around a little and substitute some runs for rides. But over all I was able to make it work. then 2 weeks of on the job training working flights. I feel comfortable with the job, and I think it will be a good fit. I do end up working funny hours, starting some shift at 4am and ending some days 1:30am. Obviously not back to back days with those two, but getting the sleep schedule to move around is tough and really can affect the training. So I'm doing everything I can to keep myself flexible while also trying to keep myself from having to work a highly variable schedule. I can do 4am, and I can 1:30am. but I can't do both without it disrupting things. After those 2 weeks, it was back to Portland for more classroom training and now I'm back home, getting back at it with 2 more weeks of on the job training. these next couple weeks will be tough with the schedule shifting from early to late, back and forth a few times. But it's not going to stop me, it's just another obstacle.

Not a bad job.

I don't want this post, or this blog for that matter, to be about complaining though. I'm solution oriented and that's what I want this blog to be about. A collection of lessons, not problems. So how am I dealing with it? Well, first off this job is teaching me a lot about discipline. I've been disciplined, and I've been very much not. Last summer was pretty amazing, such a fun experience and amazing that I got to travel like I did. but it wasn't sustainable, in part because I wasn't utilizing my opportunities and I wasn't working as hard as I could have been. No doubt, the time to recover was huge and played a big part in my success last year, but there might have been too much rest. There might have been too much relaxing. Looking at the training, and looking at all the time, I was wasting a lot, in the name of recovery. So this job will be good. using some of that extra time in a useful way and keeping the bank account happy. The key will be to not allow either work or training to get in the way of the other. Then I still have coaching on top of that. Sometimes I don't feel like doing something, but I'm learning how to get a sense of satisfaction out of getting it done, doing what I have to do to make this dream happen.

And speaking of this dream. A huge change is in the dream. My dream has always been pretty vague. For whatever reason, I just wanted to be "PRO". But what I've come to learn is that making the leap to being "pro" isn't a thing, at least not for me. Only a select few just make it. If making that leap is like jumping across a canyon, then I'm building a bridge. A huge component of that was setting concrete goals, planning them out, understanding what it would take to accomplish them, and setting that plan in motion. I've got experience in setting goals, but over a season. These goals are multi-year. But having that finite direction is helping have a sense of urgency. Understanding the magnitude of what I'm trying to do, however small or large, is helping understand and prepare for the work ahead. But most importantly, it's helping me set a plan that is sustainable and within reason. No more extremes, no more blind leaps of faith.

And this job is part of that plan. It's a fun, rewarding job. It's a part time job, and it allows me to train while working and having time to still coach. It's going to be a lot of work, it's going to push me. And that is awesome. While I was looking back on the past, the riding and training, the trips, and what got me to where I was, I came across something. As the last few years have come and gone, what I was missing was the excitement. Driving to Missoula and racing my bike 3 years ago was crazy, it was fun, and it was something that excited me. It was something that I could get behind and devote myself to. 2016 and beyond, I want to capture that and hold onto it. Going outside of my comfort zone, challenging myself in very real ways. Allowing myself to fail or succeed, and forcing myself to rise to occasion. Putting the trust back in myself, knowing that I've done the work, I've planned it out, and trusting that I can do it.

2016, a year of stuff and things.

2016-01-25T11:30:00.000-06:00

What does 2016 hold for me? I’ve made it clear that it’s a new year with new focus and new goals. So here’s what I’ve got planned.

The big factor in 2016 is that I’ve started working. I got a job working at the local airport for Alaska Airlines. I’m sure you’ll see plenty about that to come, but what it means for racing is that I’ll probably racing less and training more. So I’ve shifted my focus away from the big long trips to shorter trips and more local racing.

Here are the races

·         NW Epic Series 5/14, 6/11, 7/16, 8/27
·         Dakota 5-0 9/4
·         Chequamegon 9/17
·         Ore 2 Shore 8/13
·         Whiskey off road 4/29-5/1
·         Grand junction off road 5/20-22
·         US Cup Sea Otter 4/16
·         WORS Cup 7/23-724
·         US Cup Missoula 6/8

Sea Otter and Grand Junction are the big maybes there, but the rest are in the works. The new focus is on longer more endurance based races. I want to shift the focus to something new, and something that will help me step up to the next level or 2. Just as each season starts with base, then speed. I want 2016 to lay the foundation for the good things to come over the next 4-5 years and beyond. I think this means racing longer and harder. If I can learn how to go hard for 2-3 hours or more, 90 minutes should be a cake walk. That’s where the NW Epic series comes in, along with the Whiskey Off-road, Dakota 5-0, and Grand Junction. They lay the foundation for the later races like Ore 2 Shore and Chequamegon.

I’m hoping to win at least one of the NW Epic races and place in the top 3 overall. Knowing who all races, this should be a good challenge, and will pit me against Olympic hopeful Spencer Paxson and the best of the Northwest. These races are anywhere from 50-100 miles off road in the rough Pacific Northwest terrain, often muddy. If that doesn’t toughen me up, its hopeless.

I’m also putting more emphasis on the 2016 Midwest epics like Ore 2 Shore and Chequamegon. On pathway to winning Chequamegon a top 5 is the next big milestone. Out of all the races I do, I’ve got the best understanding of where I fall short at Chequamegon, so I feel that I can use that to hit my weaknesses and find that next level.

If you’re planning on being at any of these races, I’ll see you there!

JM Coaching - Caleb and 2015: Above and Beyond

2016-01-24T09:51:00.000-06:00

Everything I’ve discussed so far doesn’t work for only Caleb, these are pretty general methods. Certainly the actual implementation would be different based on the specific needs of a rider and the specific demands of the events they plan to compete in, but for the most part, the metrics and methods of monitoring is pretty universal. My hope is that you might be able to take some of it and progress your own understanding of training. But now lets talk about what makes Caleb’s training a little bit different from what most would do. Lets talk about what makes Caleb the athlete that he is.

The biggest thing that a lot of coaches seem to overlook is skill. Whether its on the road or off, technique, skill, and experience are huge. We’ve all seen it, that one rider with too much power and not enough handling skills. Like a dragster trying to race formula 1. Caleb committing the time to training allowed him to fit in more skills training, but how do you integrate skill sessions into your training? What are the right time and how much? One huge way is to end training session with a little time messing around, riding trails or practicing skills. This is a great way to improve skills because although 10 minutes at the end of a workout probably won’t have you doing nose wheelies around corners, consistently getting that time in will help you cement skill learned in skill session and keep you comfortable on the bike.

Beyond these sneaky little skills sessions, you still need some actual skills days. One way to do it is to trade active recovery days with skills sessions. Pick a couple skills and get out there and practice them, keep track of what works and what doesn’t and discuss with your coach later. But a huge thing that people forget is that ripping a rut 6 times on an easy day is a lot different than in a race when you’re cross eyed. So incorporating some days where you get out and do race simulations, practice laps, and off road intervals is a huge way to save time and make you faster, not just stronger. This was another big component of Caleb’s training.

Beyond those, Caleb does have a couple qualities that make him exceptional. I think he’s physically gifted. As much as we hope, there isn’t much anyone can do to get that if you don’t already have it. But he also has two qualities that I think anyone can learn. He’s incredibly motivated, and he gives every workout all he’s got. Staying motivated is all about balancing the training load such that you’re always hungry, and learning how to push through when the training does get to be a lot. A good training plan will keep the athlete hungry and push them to the limit every 3-4 weeks. If the athlete can consistently push through that 3-4 week limit, then the training becomes hugely beneficial.

Caleb also pushes himself hard on each ride. I don’t know exactly how he approaches it, but I do know that each workout I see from him, the numbers are pretty consistent, consistently high. Getting out and training, going 98% is hard, but won’t stress the body the same way as giving it 100%. The short way to say it is that 98% is a fast way to maintain what you’ve already got. But if you go out and give it 100% each ride, each interval, consistently, you’ll see the real improvements. The difficult thing is that when trying to measure human output, the difference between giving it just less than 100%, and 100% is about the same difference as the difference between physically feeling good, and physically being tired. So it becomes very difficult o measure. That is why knowing your body and keeping good notes is very important. Somedays you just don’t have it, some days you phone it in. Both look similar on the charts, so being honest and keeping track helps maximize the training. Caleb hits both these marks. He give it everything and when he can’t or doesn’t, he is able to know and writes it down.

Hopefully in reading this you’ve gotten two things. You hopefully have learned a little about my training philosophy, and how I approach planning and tracking. If you’re looking to have your best season ever, don’t hesitate, now is the time to make that contact and get started. But far more importantly, I hope you learned a little about Caleb, how he trains, and what makes him successful. And beyond that, how you can improve your own training by learning from his success. I know I’ve learned a lot from him.

JM Coaching - Caleb and 2015: Intensity

2016-01-19T07:21:00.000-06:00

Last time we looked at the role that volume played in 2015 for Caleb. We learned that a consistent and increasing build was critical to keeping Caleb strong enough to complete the workouts, as well as keep motivated, but a certain level of fatigue was necessary to improve. But volume will only build capacity for training. The real side of training that both prepares a racer for races and give them the speed is the intensity. While volume is pretty generalized for all riders, intensity is highly personalized for the individual and the demands of the events.

Just like volume there are multiple ways to look at intensity. I heavily favor a few metrics; time in power and heart rate zones, anaerobic stress, interval numbers, and work above threshold. A lot of people will use intensity factor to measure intensity, but intensity factor doesn’t tell the whole story because it’s influenced by time and extra riding will give an artificially low IF. To me, the key to measuring intensity is measuring the amount of high effort. This follows from the basics of training. If you want to increase you endurance, you need to ride more. So if you want to increase your top end, you should do more top end. So when measuring the “dose” of high end, you want to measure the efforts as direct as possible. I also use time in power and heart rate zones with a grain of salt for the same reason. The charts are difficult to make objective data driven discussion from and the raw data doesn’t tell any unique stories. So I use it as a guide. With that said, here are some insights into what Caleb’s year looked like.

Anaerobic Stress

Anaerobic Stress for the later part of the season

This stress metric measures the amount of effort expended specifically above threshold. The stress is calculated in such a way that it specifically looks at above threshold and the long and short terms stresses respond in a way the models the anaerobic energy systems adaptation periods. It works similar to TSS (with a stress component, short term, long term, and stress balance). There isn’t anything too ground breaking here except that it makes seeing the anaerobic trends a million times easier. But as far as Caleb’s season is concerned, there isn’t any real magic here . Just like anyone would, we concentrated the anaerobic work at the back end of the season where the high power is needed. Increasing threshold will help you hang on the back of the group, but increasing your anaerobic capacity and repeatability will get you to the front and to the next group. A big challenge we faced and one might face here is that it requires power to calculate and often the big days are race days. So you need to get good at estimating it or have a power meter for racing. Luckily, Caleb was able to race with a power meter a few times making estimating and tracking much easier.

W prime is sort of a new metric for me this year. It is the amount of work completed above threshold. Nothing too difficult to worry about, although writing my program to automatically calculate it is nice. But golden cheetah will do that too. Specifically, what was huge was the combination of the data and the ability to track the race data and how I matched up in terms of total W` burned for a given ride/race, the maximum amount burned in a single effort, and the amount burned over long periods of time such as across days and weeks. Again, we had to estimate some of these since he didn’t always race with a power meter, but even with heart rate, you’re able to make some intelligent guesses.

Interval trends.

With the lack of complete race data, my best way of tracking Caleb’s fitness quickly became tracking interval results. The power of intervals should be pretty clear to anyone who does them. The added intensity, at any level of effort, the consistency, and pushing limits, is what triggers your body to adapt. But the consistency, the all out nature, and riding at the limits can also be incredibly telling. In the world of performance cycling, like much in life, we learn the most when we run on the limits. This is why a big trend in a lot of my workouts is maximal efforts during intervals. Now that doesn’t mean every effort is all out as much as you can do for a given effort. But it does mean that every workout should have a goal, and if that goal is to get stronger, then that workout needs to push something to it’s limit. By finding the correct metrics for those intervals, and tracking them, you can track fitness in a very real way. Everyday, every ride, every pedal stroke is a day in the lab.

Next time we'll finish up our analysis with a look at what Caleb did above and beyond. Thanks for reading.

Setting New Goals

2016-01-15T13:24:00.000-06:00

Part of the new approach is a little bit of a change up in the focus, the races I’ll be doing, and the trajectory over the course of the season. Being a coach, I’ve learned help all type of people set goals for the season, but I wasn’t doing this for myself so much. My goals were always vague, which is a sure fire way to miss your goals. So for 2016 I’m making an effort to really set concrete goals and stick to them, make decisions based on them, plan things more carefully and earlier.

Before I go into my goals specifically, I’d like to talk about what writing this blog post has done for me. It has forced me to write all this stuff down. I don’t think that means the only way to reach your goals means writing a lbog post, but what I think you have to do is make those goals real, concrete. Writing them down, posting them for yourself to see and reflect on often, making them public if you have to. They have to be real in your mind, then you start to chase after them. If you’re feeling a little bit lost either on the bike or off, write, talk, look at what you’re doing and make it real. Then you can make the goals, the dreams, the process real.

So long term what am I looking to do?

Win a State Championship. I’ve been racing a while, and when I tell people I’ve never really won much, it surprises them. But after 5+ years of racing very seriously, I have never won a jersey, I have never won a lot of big races. So a big will be to win State Championships. For 2016, I’ll probably set my sight on the Washington State CX Champs. But I hope that is only the beginning. I’d love to win some on the MTB too. But I haven’t nailed down the process and races as much there.

Race a World Cup XCO in Europe. I’ve always dreamed of racing in Europe. But I’ve always dreamed of doing so on my terms so to speak. I want to earn it, I want to RACE, not participate. I see this as being more realistic in 2017, or 2018. This is going to mean getting faster and proving to everyone and myself that I belong in the big races.

Reach 6 watts per kilogram at threshold. This is a bit of a numbers thing, so sorry to geek out. But It’s a game I think almost everyone plays. In my last post I talked about how the numbers can lie. Power specifically isn’t everything. But It does count for a lot. 6 watts per kilograms is a lofty goal, but when I look at it isn’t too far out of reach. Last season, I topped out at 383. for 20 minutes and reasonably set training targets around 370w. At 160 pounds, that puts me at 5 watts per kilogram almost exactly. What do I need to do for 6 watts per kilogram? I reasonably can get down to 155 pounds, so that means 420 watts. Like I said, that’s a big goal, but over the next 3-4 years I see it happening with hard and smart work. In writing my goals here, I was searching for things I could really hang my hat on and be proud of. That’s a big one, and I’d be very proud of that.

Win Chequamegon. I grew up at this race. I’ve always said if you’re looking for me in mid-September, your best bet is Hayward, WI. For the last 13 years, that’s where I’ve been and it was a race that has inspired me to race at a high level. Winning it would mean everything to me. I have no doubt that I can do it, but It will take everything.

Win an elite XC national championship. This falls under pipe dream goals, but I think you need those. As I said earlier, I don’t have a lot of jerseys and a stars and stripes least of all. This is the type of dream that happens a long way down the road. I’m talking 10 8-10 years down the road. But I’ll have my eye on it.

Hopefully in writing these goals, I can help inspire you to write your own.

Thanks for reading.

JM Coaching - Caleb Swartz and 2015: Volume

2016-01-13T12:04:00.000-06:00

Even before Nationals, Caleb Swartz was having an exceptional 2015-16 CX Season. As a coach, this is what you hope for, he’s a good kid, he does the work and he’s incredibly positive and motivated. But how did he get there? It was a long time in the making for sure. I’ve been working with Caleb for a few years now, and 2015 and 2016 have been in our sights for a while now. But specifically I want to take a quick look at 2015 and what we did. There is a lot to cover so I'll be splitting this into multiple posts. Today let start with volume.

When it comes to training, volume refers to the amount of training. There are a lot of ways to measure this such as time, distance, and stress to name a few. Generally I use time, stress and, subjective measures of fatigue to understand the capacity and load of volume. So lets take a look at what Caleb had this year.

Time:

As a junior, it’s important to be careful when it comes to all measures of volume, especially with time when you factor in he is still going to school, has friends and family commitments. But the goal with volume for Caleb was to help transition him from the shorter rides which he had become accustomed to, into the longer rides that were going to help him increase his endurance and fitness not only this year, but down the road. We did this by starting with increasing the number of rides, but not increasing the length of any particular rides. That meant a lot of 1-2 hour rides early in the season. As the base period progressed, we started introducing a few of the longer rides, such as 3-4 hours. It might surprise people that Caleb only clocks in a handful of rides over 3 hours, and most of those were on his own will, not prescribed. It was the consistency that helped him improve fitness and endurance.

Stress:

I measure stress with a handful of metrics, but they all help me manage pushing athletes the correct amount, and in the correct ways. The easiest thing to do when training is to do too much too soon. With Caleb, he would definitely out ride himself if there wasn’t someone there holding him back a little. And that was my goal, to keep him hungry. Combine that with a long MTB season before CX, it meant a long slow build, as much as possible. We also didn’t have much previous data to work with, so I needed to be careful about pushing him too much, because essentially we were in uncharted territory.

Notice the slow and steady build, keeping the stress balance (yellow) right in the -5 to -20 area. This is certainly not pushing someone super hard, but every time I told him to ride, he couldn’t wait. Managing stress is connected to managing fatigue which in turn manages motivation.

Fatigue:

As I mentioned above, keeping the stress low and manageable helped keep Caleb motivated through the year. I almost never heard him asking me to take it easy. But in the later part of the year it was time to push him more to get the speed and power to come out for the main event, Cyclocross. You’ll notice that in the later part of the season the Stress balance spent a lot more time in the -30 to -40 range at times. As a junior, care needs to be taken, and there was a lot of focus placed on keeping careful track of how he felt. Part of becoming an athlete is learning to listen to your body and know when fatigue is good and when it’s bad.

Next time we'll look at what roll intensity played.

New Year, new focus, new goals

2016-01-08T12:10:00.003-06:00

2015 saw a lot of changes. It’s only been the last few weeks that I’ve started to really understand how the changes affected my life, my training, and my goals.

The move was huge. I was expecting the move would be an instant shift, all of a sudden I’d be training full time and getting super-fast. And to a point that was true, I did see some improvement. But what I did spend a lot of time doing was looking over my old training files and organizing them, and learning from the. As a coach, this is what I do and it only made sense to do it for myself.

Looking at the data in new ways, finding new trends.

The most glaring trend I saw was that I respond well to big intensity. This point was a little murky until I was able to develop my own data software, because I was able to track certain metrics and compare them to other metrics in ways that I couldn’t before. Above all else, that flexibility in analysis allowed me to see search and refine trends to really target what works and what doesn’t. In doing this, I found that I needed more intensity, in more dynamic ways. I found that when I spent the right amount of time doing hard intervals, and hard intense rides, I was getting faster, I was able to transfer my power into speed much more effectively.

The word speed; that’s an important one for 2016 as well. I’ve got pretty good power numbers, better numbers than most riders I race against. But I’m not winning, why? I think it comes down to speed. I’ve learned to look at power as a very critical measurement. But heart rate isn’t better than speed by itself, in the same way that power is better than heart rate by itself. Where the real benefit comes from is using all these measurements together to build a picture of what you’re doing and what you need to do. So 2016 will focus on developing more speed, not just power.

more time in the gym is part of the new approach.

How is that done? It’s tricky, it seems to me. It’s a process of critically looking at the data, critically looking at the numbers and comparing them to how you think you rode, and matching up the slower times with the mistakes, connecting them and learning to improve. It’s about not being afraid to try new things, not being afraid to fail. Learning what works and what doesn’t. Not just guessing, knowing. With this will come a lot more time on the trails. Some call the trails dirt church, I intend to make them my laboratory.

The next big change is all about goals. Taking my fitness to the next level requires a fresh perspective on my goals. A big lesson I’ve learned looking at my data has been that the last 3-4 years I’ve been building to a plateau. On the one hand, that sucks. I’ve been getting faster, but at a slower rate each year. Improvements have become ever more difficult to find and to come by. On the other hand I’ve reached a high level. I’ve made it to a plateau that not everyone can make it to. I’ve had to realize both these things. I’ve had to learn to be proud of what I’ve accomplished and also understand where I am in the long road to my dreams. And most of all I’ve learned that the road forward is much like the road I’ve already been down in that it’s different than anything I’ve ever done before. It has to new and it has to excite me.

I’ll leave it there to pick back up next time.

Happy trails.

If you need me, I'll be putting in the work.

Cyclocross season is over, sort of.

2015-11-19T12:43:00.000-06:00

This past weekend was the MFG Subaru Cyclo-Cup in Lakeville, WA just south of Seattle. With no Jingle Cross out here, I choose this as my Cyclocross season end. It’s been a pretty quiet season for me, staying mostly local and racing just enough to have an excuse to stay in shape. But let me take it back to the last race and tell the story.

After having a blast at Rolling Thunder I took the week to train a little more in my build up and then made the short drive up to Coure d’Alene for the Inland NW Cyclocross race up there on Saturday. It had been raining in town since Thursday and so Friday I got out in the mud and did some practice. The conditions were the same up in Cd’A so I was excited. The soil is a little bit sandy, but still muddy which made for a lot of fun. Unfortunately I had some trouble in the first lap, flatting my tire and riding a lot of the bumpy rocky course on the rim. My Psi-met wheels handled it like champs, but I lost a lot of time riding the flat and getting a pit bike. But with a fresh wheel and sitting in last place I had some time to make up. In just the lap back on I made it back up with the leaders in sight, but suffered another flat! This one was much closer to the pits, but with 2 rear flats, I had to tell the people in the pits to get something working for me, and ride another half lap on the flat. Back to the rear of the field and more work to do. But I got a fresh wheel, and after being skeptical, it seemed to be holding air.

So I got right to work, full gas to the finish. I had about 5 laps of effort to see if I could get back up to the leader. I slowly picked up the tail end of the field and started passing rider after rider. The course was super slick in some spot, but it was working to my advantage in a lot of cases. I was able to take lines that others weren’t and make passes. It was super fun, but in that suffer kind of way. I eventually made it back to the front end, with the leaders in sight. There was one rider out front, then 2 riders closer to each other riding for second. I was about 1 minute down on 1^st, and 30 seconds down on the other two with 2 laps to go. During 2 to go, the two riders split up and I was able to catch and pass the other. With one to go 30 seconds down on1st and 15 seconds down on second. I gave it everything I had, but at this point I was writing checks my legs couldn’t cash. In that last lap I was able to close the gap on second, literally, just off his back wheel for a moment, but at that point we were coming into the final section and I just didn’t have it to go any faster. We came in just a few seconds apart, third for me on the day after 2 flats and a hard fun, sloppy race.

Sunday, I decided not to race. The mud is hard on the bikes and this race just wasn’t worth risking the equipment. Mostly it was a tire issue. I only had 2 tires left and I didn’t want to risk flatting them, and not having them for Subaru CycloCup. I stayed home, trained and kept the focus on the UCI race. But it wasn’t just equipment. I was undoubtedly tired and just wasn’t mentally focused enough to push through and race. Disappointed in myself for that, but understanding that this is the time of year to give yourself a break, at least for me being focused on the mountain bike.

The Sand was a real challenge.

The following week, I had some good training. I was feeling like I was back at it, training not only hard, but to my limit. The day off might have helped, but I also think the mental break gave me the juice to push it a lot harder. I feel I had a break through workout with some race winning intervals that Monday, knocking out all 8 with some big, big numbers. And finishing the workout feeling completely spent, in that satisfied kind of way.

I decided to keep the good training going and skip the Wild West Finals in Spokane to stay home and get one last bigger ride in that weekend. I was a little bit behind on where I wanted to be, and in hind sight I think I made the right call. The following week was spent relaxing mostly, working, and getting ready for the coming weekends race. Oh and learning to swing dance. Sort of, our group got a little bit distracted and we ended up singing karaoke mostly, but still welcome fun.

On Friday I loaded up the car with local buddy Jason to drive to the host house in Puyallup (still don’t know exactly how to say it) and getting some sleep. In the morning I did a lap of the course, before getting some food. The area had had rain for the week prior, and it was still raining. Raining harder than it normally does. The course was super sloppy. It started on pavement before turning into the grass which had become a giant mud puddle. A few deep mud corners and straights followed before heading past the pits on the way to the run up. The run up was pretty long and a complete mud pit. Luckily there were foot holes, because the mud was seriously 6 inches deep. The kind of run up where you’re running, but it looks like you’re just walking. Heavy and slow and at the top you were rewarded with a short flat before a ridable (but very slick) uphill to get to the top of the course. The next section was full of deep mud as we tackled a big off camber chicane. Out of all the section, this was true mud. It was a proper deep mud, all-out effort just to keep moving. Not much in the way of spectators there, but a super fun section. Then a fast gravel downhill into a long pedaling section where I was making up a lot of time. Some more corners, the pits again, and then barriers and a sand pit. The sand pit was extremely hard to ride. I was happy to see pictures of even the leaders running it because I was worried it was just me. There were a couple more muddy sections and then the finish.

Riding with fellow Psi-met-er and crazy dude Anthony Clark.
He was caught up in the crash and was my ticket back to the front.

But that description only goes so far. One of my favorite parts of the course was the general character of the mud. The ruts in the corners were deep, 3-6 inches deep and you could just rail them. I originally had pretty low pressure in my tires but opted for a little more because of how hard you could push the ruts. It was not only fun, but seemed to be a place where I could make up time. A lot of riders were opting out and riding the long lines around which in some cases was faster so I did that, but in a lot of cases I was rewarded for taking the risk and railing it on the inside for the pass.

Saturday I had a good start and quickly found myself in a position I’d been in before, fighting for the top ten in a C2. I was sitting in a small group fighting for 11^th with 10^th just up the course. All but one rider couldn’t handle the pace and eventually left me to go fight for 10^th up the course. I was disappoint at that moment because the gap was growing, and I was in the hole and soon joined by Carl Decker, fighting for 12^th. It was a good battle though. Carl came around me and started slowing the pace a little bit. He had just broke away from the group behind. My attempts to pass were unsuccessful as he would block and when we came to the finish straight to see 2 to go, we just worked together. I made a move to get in front before the pits, but in a corner coming into the run up he had a better line and passed me back. We ran up together, but I was faster there, but couldn’t get around. On the remount I attacked and tried to get away on the climb, but in the muddy chicanes made a mistake and we were back together. Coming into see 1 to go, we again came back together. I made my move just like I had before but this time took his line and went into the run up first, pulled away there, and continued to attack up the climb stretching the gap out and eventually he seemed to give up. 12^th place, no point, but a fun battle with Carl.

Sunday was a little different. The major course change was that the run up was replaced with a long paved and gravel climb, and the barrier and sand were moved. Sand first then barriers. It also didn’t rain as much so the mud was drying up and turning into peanut butter.

I had a terrible start, missed my pedal on the start and came into the first corner nearly last. But I was lucky there was a pike up in the second corner that I was able to avoid. Came out in the top 25 or so and kept pushing to try and get closer to the top ten. I really wanted points that day. But the legs just weren’t having it. I seemed to be bouncing off the rev limiter, if you know what I mean by that, missing a gear. But as the race continued I seemed to find my rhythm and starting riding smoother. In reality I found that it wasn’t a leg issue as much as I wasn’t riding the ruts as well. The peanut butter is less forgiving than the super slop mud. Everyone was dealing with day 2 legs. But once I found the rhythm I was able to go from 18^th or so to 13^th in the last couple laps, passing people like they were standing still in some cases. No points again, but worth the fun, and made some cash as well. So thank to MFG and Subaru for the great event.

So that’s a wrap on my CX season, sort of. I’ll be heading up to Spokane again for the inland NW CX finals on Sunday, but I’m taking this week off and planning out next year’s training as well as getting ready to hit the gym for some weight lifting. Thanks to all my sponsors for the support this year and this CX season. it was short, but it was good. I've had a lot of fun battling with Kevin at the local races and last weekend was one of the most fun I've had at a CX race in a while with the conditions.

I’m working hard to make next year my best year yet. I feel as though I’ve hit something of a plateau in my racing and that means something has to change, I have to get stronger and smarter or I’ll start falling behind. 2016 will be a little bit of a make or break year… Wish me luck.

Rolling Thunder and the CX season thus far

2015-10-27T13:21:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I went over to Missoula for the Rolling Thunder Wild West Series Race. It was awesome and hosted by Big Sky Brewery. The Saturday race was at night under the lights, and went through the brewery. But before I get a head of myself, let me set up the CX season thus far.

Cyclocross has taken a little bit of a back seat to Mountain Bikes this year, as I'm really trying to have a break through season and need to focus on the training more. But I'm still getting out and racing some CX. I live in the middle of 2 series and only a few hours from a couple more. So there are a lot of races to choose from. I've got the Inland Northwest series, very local. I've got the Wild West Series which stretches from northern Idaho and Montana. Then if I want, I can drive to Seattle and Portland areas where there 3 more series, Cross Crusade in Portland, MFG and Cross Revolution in Seattle. I'm taking the early season to stay a little more local. I spent the first weekend up in Sandpoint, ID for the Crosstoberfest. A great course, very technical and challenging, good crowds. A friend and fellow UCI racer was there, Kevin Bradford-Parish. We are usually pretty close in the UCI races, but this he's definitely got a little more of an edge than I do. We had an excellent battle day 1 in Sandpoint, came down to the last couple laps, but he got me, and day 2, I was a little off the pace as I'm just not in the shape to handle day after day.

The next weekend, I was able to stay super local with races in Pullman on Saturday and Moscow Sunday. The race Saturday was held by the Washington State University cycling club, and the course was amazing. There was a lot of elevation changes and technical features really pushed the limits of what I could do and how fast I could do it. This allowed me to get out a big lead quickly and ride my own race. Sunday's race was in Moscow at the local CX practice course, Sky Ranch. It's pretty flat and open so the race was a little more tactical than Saturday. Plus the wind was really blowing and the other rider I was battling Kaler, was very strong making it hard to get away. So I played the tactics a little more, and made a move about halfway through. Once a had a gap established I had a little mechanical trouble, but had enough of a gap I was still able to pull out the win.

Following that I took a weekend off to get some good training in. I heard that rolling thunder had good prizes and good competition so I wanted to be in a little better shape.

And the race lived up to all the hype. Saturday's race was held under the lights at 7:30pm and as I warmed up, the crowd grew and grew. I have raced the Pro XCT in Missoula for the past 3 years, and what an amazing event. Missoula sure knows how to put on a race because Rolling Thunder was no different. The course was good and the event had all the festival amenities to get the party going. With Kevin there again, and the crowds pumped and cheering loud, it was going to be an awesome race. Put on top of that, a first lap prime of some cash and a bottle of Wild Turkey, it was go time.

When the gun went off, I wanted to have a good start to get out front going into the first cornering section. I really wanted to push the first lap because I knew that if I could isolate Kevin, I would have plenty of room to ride smooth and technically well to save some energy because I was riding smoother than Kevin. Must be all that trail riding on the CX bike. The lap featured a cornering section, into an open run across a road, and then down through a sand pit. It then had some corners up and down a bank. the first set was ridable, the second was not, and third was also ridable. It then went into a spiral, a ramp and drop over a car, a long bumpy straight, through the brewery with barriers. After a few more corners there was a slamming combo of shorter barriers and then a table top jump into a woop section. And after a couple straights, the lap was done. So I pushed it hard until I got to the spiral, where I eased up a little and things regrouped. Kevin went to the front and started going for it and I hopped on his wheel with Owen Gue the only one who could follow. I was able to make the pass through the indoor barriers and then hopped the outdoor barriers and hit the jump and woops like a mad man to open up a small gap. But Kevin burned a match to close it and tried to take the inside on the final corner before the line to get the prime. He came inside, but had to slow way down so I was able to get on the gas early and sprint past him. So much action just in the first lap.

The next 20-30 minutes were pretty chill as we established a gap and let it slowly grow a little bit. we traded pulls and got the gap comfortable. But by no means were we completely working together, I think we were both trying to figure each others weakness and start to figure out how we were going to win. I figured that if I could just stay with Kevin, I could win by riding the barriers and the jump/woops as I could faster than he could. So all I had to do was stay with him. with about 35 minutes to go, Kevin attacked, I followed, and pulled him back. Then I attacked a few minutes later and got a gap, Kevin held me within a few seconds and eventually pulled me back. He attacked and got a small gap with about 15 minutes to go and I started working to pull it back, but was having trouble. I held the gap within 2-3 seconds for a few laps, but then it started to grow to 5 and 6 seconds. Around then I start getting a little cramp in my calves and just couldn't push it full gas anymore, especially in the running sections. with 2 laps to go I knew it was do or die, so I went full gas, the calves were both cramping bad and it was all I could do to just hold the gap, maybe pull back a second, but at a price. I overshot a corner and hit a post, going over the bars. I had plenty of a gap, and only half a lap to go, so no worries, but I was on my limit. And I was on my limit for almost the whole race. Haven't gone that hard in a long time. Looking forward to having a few more of those battles this year, and hopefully a win too.

Saturday was a little smaller and more for fun. I had a good first few laps, a stretched the pace hard to get a few seconds gap. They took us through a lot of Saturday night's course features backwards. the woops into jump was super difficult to clear and the sand was a little more challenging too. Once I got away I focused on riding as clean and fast as possible, trying to both get in a good workout and push the body on day 2. With a good gap, the crowd was pushing me to ride some sections that were difficult and I tried them, even got the up and down banking 2 times.

The rest of the season has me focused on the UCI race in Tacoma this coming November 14th and 15th, as well as starting to look towards 2016 MTBs. I'm also going to hit up the rest of the INWCX and Wild West CX series to see if I can place overall in both.

Chequamegon: Not so special legs for one special race

2015-09-25T13:03:00.001-05:00

Another year and another Chequamegon has come and passed. Not to make it sound like a chore, it’s something I look forward to every year. I’ve been going since before I can remember and haven’t really missed a single year, as a spectator or as a racer.

Steve Tilford gave a pretty good account of the race. If you’re interested, his post is here.

http://stevetilford.com/2015/09/21/chequamegon-2/

I’ll summarize by saying that after the traditional roll out of town things got going, but not as hard as normal. Noticeably absent this year were any big names from outside of the off-road world. Chequamegon has a special ability to pull talent from all areas in the racing world and see who stacks up best, but this year it seemed like there was the raw horsepower of the road world missing. We hit Rosie’s again going a little bit slower than we have in the past making things a little bit dangerous, but some wet grass and mud and a few hard moves on the front had things strung out like normal. But as I reflect back I should have already recognized the hesitation was there.

Things progressed mostly as they do. The first 5-10 miles are always about establishing a group at the front. Moves go from all over in Rosie’s but it mostly serves to whittle down the group and once we hit burkie trail it only gets smaller. But this year the group was bigger than it has been in the last few year. I was doing my best to hang in there. It wasn’t killing me which had me feeling confident for the race to come because at this point I’m usually struggling to hang on. It’s usually the second hardest part of the race for me, the first being when I get dropped later on.

The pace slowed as the group established itself, and like before it seemed slower than normal. There was a lot of looking around and a few moves, but nothing that could stick. That was until Jeff Hall went. At first I didn’t know who it was, I was caught sleeping, and I think we all were. But when I heard it was Jeff, I knew it would be a serious move, a race defining move. But I, like most, figured it would be pulled back. I envisioned the group eventually pulling it back and in the process setting up the winning move going into fire tower or something.

But everyone seemed to wait for someone else to do the work. I was content to play my card. I knew I wasn’t racing for a win, I was racing for a top 5 so I placed my best that those who were racing to win would put their effort in to earn it. But there was a hesitation from everyone and Jeff was more than out of sight. This was before OO. The next 45 minutes consisted of most of us realizing the win was riding away. There were efforts to bring him back, but you would get one rider do a pull and the next rider wouldn’t pull through. A few times there was cooperation, but never for more than 2 riders. An attack would always break it up.

During this time I also started to feel my back tighten up. I have struggled a little with this in the past, but it’s hard for me to ignore the crash I was involved in and I have to think that it played some part. I had been feeling my back tighten up since in training. But it started to hurt and the pace was getting faster as we made our way towards Fire Tower. I did my best to hang on, but I just couldn’t manage and was dropped before Fire Tower. But it was just before, because on the climb I could see the group up the trail and had a chance to make contact if everything went my way. I nearly made contact with Josh Bauer on the climb and pushed hard to make it happen.

I began to pay the price for that effort on the back side of the climb as I slowly faded and lost sight of Josh. I continued to push but I was mentally and physically beaten at this point. But as I made my way through the last 8 miles of Burkie trail, I started to see him again. And as I began to close that gap, so did the group behind me. Seeing them, and likes of Ian Haupt, Isaac Neff, and others. I didn’t want to be caught so I pushed the pace to try and catch Josh and work together. But when I did he had already decided to sit up wait for them, but I still didn’t want to thinking they would catch him and sit up as well. But they didn’t and soon I was in the group. I hung on as best I could but the group split up in the last few miles and I was on the losing end of that.

But coming into the final section, I had a little win as I passed Josh before coming into the bowl area and then passed Isaac at the top of the final climb much in the way they Brian Matter did when he beat Bishop last year for the win, although my pass was for 16^th place.

Overall, I was disappointed in my result. Yes I have reasons but I’m not the type to be happy in a situation like that. I would be lying if I said that the crash was the only reason I didn’t have my best race. Motivation had been on the decline partly due to the crash also since MTB nationals. With all the travel, it was starting to feel like a long season. I’m back home now and the focus is on a restful off season, where I’ll mostly race cross and then hit the gym.

A Case for Training Scientifically

2015-08-10T15:57:00.002-05:00

As a coach, I am usually the person, or type of person, that someone comes to when they decide they want to start training more seriously. So I see a lot of people who are considering taking the step deeper into the world of cycling and all the factors that go into that choice. I’ve seen people decide to train seriously, and I’ve seen people who’ve decided that the serious training just isn’t for them. Obviously as a coach I believe that the best way to train is scientifically, but I also see the challenges. What I’d like to do in this piece is to make my case for scientific training, in the way that an academic might. What is the difference between training seriously and scientifically? What are the benefits of training scientifically, what are the problems and how do you deal with them? What role does the coach play and what role does the athlete play? Why a person might chose to train scientifically, and why might someone choose to avoid it?

First off some definitions. I’ll keep this short because it can muddy the water, but I also plan on posting more of these definitions later. Let’s start with what do I mean by “serious training”? Serious training is when someone is committed to their training at some level. It doesn’t mean it’s priority number one, but rather it means that it is a priority, it is on the list. When planning their life out, training and racing has a place in the conversation. The level of commitment can depend on everything from age, job, children, location, anything, but if training makes the list then you must care about it. And the level that you are committed is how serious you are. Now to train “scientifically” means to train by scientific principles. Just like seriousness, there are various levels here, but if you’re applying the basic ideas of science to your training you’re training scientifically. So that means if you have a method of testing and confirming results; and make training decisions and adjustments based on those results, you’re training scientifically. And the more exact you get, the more scientific you’re training. It’s important to keep these two separate in your mind I feel. You can train very scientifically, while also not being very serious, and you can train very seriously, without being very scientific about it.

So hopefully you’re seeing the difference already between serious training and scientific training. Everybody is different, but they all fall on a scale of seriousness and they all train at different scientific levels. But the difference is that seriousness deals with the commitment level, whereas training scientifically deals with the decision making process and the method used for answering the basic questions like how much should I ride and how hard?

I think it should be pretty obvious that the more committed a person is, the more improvement they will make. So the level of seriousness is directly tied to how well you’ll perform, but it is also directly tied to other things like time, life situation, life goals, and even cycling goals. So in most cases, a person will be as serious as their life allows them to be. Some may work to change the situation, but we train as hard and as seriously as we allow ourselves to. But on the other hand training scientifically is not linked to time, or life situation (at least not as much). Granted some are limited by money and cannot afford the equipment, and not everyone can work with a coach, and most don’t have the knowhow or the time to analyze data. But that doesn’t mean you can’t train scientifically. At the most basic level, training scientifically could simply mean that you take notes after each ride. How did you feel, how fast did you go, how many miles? It means that you’re recording some input and some output and looking for trends in how the input changes the output. The input might be you ate a cheese burger and the output might be you felt sick during your ride, but by noticing that when you didn’t eat a cheese burger and you felt better, and making sure that you don’t eat cheeseburger before you ride or race, you’re making a basic decision based on data. On the other end, you could be taking power, heart rate, RPE, and a whole bunch of other data. Your ability to make clear decisions increases, but you’re still making the choice based on inputs and outputs.

So what are the benefits? Why should you train scientifically? You should train scientifically because it allows you to make the most of your time. Let’s say for instance you start training with the purpose of racing cross country mountain bikes. You train 3 days a week and race 1 day. You have 2 hour on those 3 days. What should you do in that time? The most basic ride would be to just hop on the bike and ride. You would see improvement for sure. It would get easier to ride after a few weeks and you might even notice you’re going faster. But now let’s say you want to get faster, what do you do? You start taking water with you, you get clipless pedals, you take recovery drink. All these things will certainly make you faster, and so much so that you’d probably notice. But lets say you’ve been training for 2 years and you’re trying to get faster, but nothing seems to work? You tried some intervals and they didn’t seem to help, and you tried a new diet and it wasn’t doing anything as far as you could tell. The problem is that you have no way of knowing, long term, if something is working. Very few improvements in any sport once you’ve been training for a significant period of time are sudden and drastic, they are usually slow and steady. So you’ve hit a plateau not because you’re not still working hard, but you’ve lost your ability to make training decisions based on input and output. You no longer can learn from your training. It’s as much a mental issue as it is a physical issue. You can continue to make improvements by improving your ability to learn, but making your ability to observe better and more fine. This might mean a heart rate monitor, a power meter, but it could also mean rating each workout on a scale of 1 to 10 using RPE, and perceived performance. The key is to think about what works and what doesn’t.

So that all sounds incredible, but what are the problems with all this data and thinking. The biggest problem I’ve seen and run into myself is a problem of perspective. It’s very easy to lose sight of the big picture. Some things happen quickly, but most are slow increases and most improvements will start out as decreases in performance. So it becomes important to have the correct perspective and that largely comes down to experience, but also removing yourself from the situation, this is where a coach is the biggest help. The other big down fall is data overload! We have so many options for collecting data these days and it can a blast to keep track of it all, but it can also be overwhelming as well. If you’re overwhelmed by it all, it can cause you to look for the wrong trends, and look at the wrong performance parameters, and see the wrong things as the issue of the cause of success. Again, perspective is important here, but also clarity. The solution is to stick to the basics. The closer you can copy racing in training, generally the better. Race simulations are critical to both understanding the output of your training, as well as learning how to deal with the intensity of racing. Finally the biggest problem is not realizing your own individuality. While scientific studies are an awesome way to learn about how your body works and for getting new and interesting ideas on how to train, you have to remember it wasn’t tested on you. So get out there and test it before you just believe it.

I’ve already alluded to this, but what role does the coach play in all this? What about as an athlete, what is your role? Can someone just coach themselves? Having a coach has the obvious benefit of not having to think much about the data, your time is free to enjoy life and not have to wrangle data or worry about what you’re going to do next week for rides. But the coach can also do something that the athlete can’t. The coach can step out of the situation and look at the data much more objectively than an athlete ever can. It’s important for a coach to get inside the athletes head a little bit so they can draw from their own experiences, it’s also hugely beneficial for the coach to step outside the situation and look at the data for what it is. Of course the athlete has the role of actually pushing the on pedals, but I think the most important role the athlete can have is in thinking about how it felt. Basically like keeping a diary. I think of it like a car racing team. You have the car, you have the driver, and you have the mechanic. The mechanics have lap times and all sort of numbers coming from the car, but they can’t feel the car. Only the drive can feel the car. It’s the same thing with cycling. Only the athlete can feel their body and only the athlete can feel the effort, what it felt like and how it compares to before.

So why might someone want to train this way. By now I hope it’s obvious, the ability to get faster is much better when you start looking at what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. What effect does this have on that, what works and what doesn’t work. But beyond that a person can learn so much more about themselves when it comes to evaluating training objectively using data. A person can open up their capacity to work harder and smarter by know what works and what doesn’t, regardless of how it felt. So why might someone not want to train this way? Simple, it’s all about goals! If you want to get faster, you have to train hard and you have to train smart. But it takes some sacrifice and moreover it takes some focus. Often times you’re sacrificing fun rides with your friends to train specifically, and when cycling stops getting fun, it’s really not worth is. And this is all on a sliding scale, Just like you pay for commitment with free time or life responsibilities, you pay for training scientifically with training fun. For some it’s worth it, and for some it just isn’t.

Thanks for reading.

Tips for Traveling

2015-06-10T10:53:00.003-05:00

With the summer time here, so is the travel. Whether you’re traveling across the state, or traveling across the country, it’s going to be a departure from your normal training routine. Here are my 5 top tips for making travel a little easier on you.

11 Pack as efficient and light as possible. The more stuff you bring the more you’re going to have to worry about. But at the same time, you want to make sure you have everything you need. So how do you reconcile these two? Do what you can to use as much as you can for multiple purposes. Separate all your stuff into groups; essential stuff, things that would be nice to have, and things you don’t need. If you don’t need it, don’t bring it. If you need it, bring it. But you’ll find that most of what you bring falls in the middle. And things in that category can usually be consolidated. A good example is a pump. You don’t need a pump, but it would be nice to have. What’s the compromise? Bring a frame pump or small pump and a digital pressure gauge. It’s much smaller than a floor pump, but you can still set your tire pressure just as well. So what are my essentials? Helmet, shoes, bike glasses, gloves, kit, socks, food and water.

22 Bring a piece of home. As much as you want to pack light, on longer trips comfort becomes an issue. So make room to bring a small piece of home with you. Something to entertain you, or something that comforts you.

33 Keep you daily routines consistent. Your body works best when you keep a consistent time schedule so do your best to maintain your normal rhythm while on the road. Try to wake up at the same time, get to bed at the same time. And do the same things you normally do when you wake up, and the same things you normally do before going to bed. Keeping that consistency will help you save energy and keep calm.

44 Keep your motivation by keeping it fun and exciting. Traveling is a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. Make sure that you enjoy it as much as you can because when you’re having fun, you’re going to go fast. The excitement will help you stay focused and stay motivated.

55 Have your schedule planned out. As much as you want to keep it fun and spontaneous, make sure that you have the important stuff, the race, the drive, the reason you’re traveling in the first place, all planned out. Not having to think too much about making plans will help keep your mind clear and keep you relaxed. If you plan things out well, it will help you relax and it will help you have more fun.

Racing in the Southwest, Part 1

2015-05-03T13:37:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting here in the back of an SUV, next to my bikes and bags, getting ready for bed. It’s at the end of a long road trip and it’s got me thinking what the heck am I doing here? Tonight, and for the next 4 nights I’ll cuddling up with carbon, as I sleep in the back of a car, to save some cash. I wouldn’t say it’s ideal, but there is something about it that gives me a sense of commitment to my goals.

At the end of long training blocks, or long racing trips, or anytime that I’m specifically tired, I get very thoughtful. Sometimes it’s with a big grin on my face, thinking, “how in the hell did I manage to have such an awesome trip”. Sometimes it’s a little less enthusiastic, “how did I mess that up so bad?” This time it’s somewhere in between, fitting, because I’m somewhere between where I was and where I’m trying to get to.

It all began about a month ago, back home in Pullman. Although home is hardly a proper term since I moved to Pullman only about 5 weeks prior. But it was long enough to start to feel comfortable. As my training was starting to come around (more on this later), I was gearing up for the first bout of races in the south west. I had 4 US Cup races on my calendar, some back to back weekends, some with time in between. I was left wondering how I was going to hit them all. Races 1 and 2 were, obvious, drive down, race, and stay with an uncle in LA. But then there were 2 weeks off, so I decided I’d take a buddy up on his offer to come stay with him up in Pinetop, AZ at 7000 ft. I thought of it as being a little altitude training camp. Then came round 3, so back to LA. But the final round is Sea Otter up in Monterey. I wasn’t too sure on how to handle that, so I kind of said I’d wing it. All told, it would be a long time on the road, 6+ weeks and lots of time in the car.

The only good part of the drive down, Idaho

The drive from Pullman to LA, was awful. I’ll admit that the first few hours were beautiful as I drove through Idaho and the mountains and canyons that came with it. But as I hit Nevada, it got flatter and more boring. I ended up driving on what I now know is called the loneliest road in America. It lives up to it’s name. After a full day of driving and some sleep, I made it to LA and pre rode the course at Bonelli. If you had a chance to check out the coverage, you might have seen how difficult the course is, but in either case, here’s my take. The Bonelli course is difficult because of all the accelerating. Not just out of corners, but up hills. There is lots of climbing, and it’s all the kind of climbing that I’m awful at, very steep, very slow, and loose. I’m just a little too heavy still, and just don’t quiet have the skill or strength to make it up those types of climbs gracefully. After pre riding on Friday, I knew it would be a hard race.

The logs at bonelli. Kind of dumb, but very challenging.

Not from the course, but a picture from the top of
Bonelli Park, overlooking San Dimas

And it was. I was pulled after 4 laps, with a similar feeling in my body that I had last year. I didn’t have the top end, and I didn’t have the power to weight to excel at that course. You truly have to attack every single corner, hill, or obstacle to be successful there. You have to be on, and I wasn’t on yet. Plain and simple I wasn’t good enough. So what did I need to do better? I think a large part of it was training. Both my training just wasn’t there yet, and I’m just not strong enough period to be able to fake it, if that’s even possible at Bonelli. When I say my training wasn’t there yet I mean that my training hadn’t gotten to the intensity early enough. This is partly by design, it’s a long season, and I need to pace myself, but I also dealt with injury in late January and February, so I was set back there as well. But what else? Focus. My focus was a little off. Part of this is feeling unprepared, and then not caring as much. But that doesn’t mean I can take the race off. I need to still prepare like it’s game time, because it is. This contributed to me holding back a lot too. I wasn’t aggressive, and I was trying to conserve. XCO is just too short to hold back very much.

So I learned some lessons from Bonelli, but I feel that I both had a better race, and learned biger lessons from the next race, Fontana. Fontana is an awesome course, very old school with a longer technical climb and then one long downhill full of big hit technical corners and high speeds. Thursday, I got out to the course to pre ride, but to practice going fast and hard on course, something I hadn’t done at Bonelli. I did 4 laps. The first 2 were solid, but more for learning the course. The second 2 were all out, as hard as I could. I took my laps times from those laps, as well as HR and Power data and tried to understand what type of pace I could hold for the entire race time. I figured out that I maintain 17:30 laps, by staying within myself. So I set myself a goal, be consistent, and do 6 17 minute laps.

In Between Bonelli and Fontana I did some riding on the back bone trail
and on the roads in Malibu

Friday, I chilled at home, and did my openers on the road near my uncles place, something I would regret later. Saturday, the call up procedure was a little screwy, made worse by what I learned that if you didn’t check in Friday, you lost your call up spot and got put to the back, damn. So I was near the back and got caught up in a crash on the first straight of the race just past the start line. Some dude crossed in front of me and took out my front wheel. I went down quick, but I was back up and riding even quicker. The race starts out down a series of long flat straights before hitting some single track and finally up a long road climb. I was dealing with traffic and trying to move up the whole time, and once I got to the single track I was standing still, finally we made it through and up the climb, but again I was waiting for riders in front of me. But out of all this, what had me the most worried, was at the end of lap 1, after all those issues, I still turned a 17 minute lap. Meaning I probably went out too hard. So I did my best to stay within myself, but I was pulled out another 17 minute lap, then another, and another. I knew I couldn’t keep it up, but I was too invested to stop now. On lap 5, about 45 minutes in, I stated to pay for my efforts and pulled a 19 minute lap, and was pulled. For my troubles, I did finish in the top 60, better than bonelli, and was happy with my race in general.

I feel like I raced very well, I paced myself ok, but the legs just didn’t have the top end yet, the intensity just wasn’t there yet. I am learning to feel the legs better and better and in some ways that’s incredible, but in some ways that’s not. It’s good to understand the body and know where you are, because that means you can get to where you want to be. But allowing yourself to use that as a crutch, feeling that your legs are not 100%, and then you allow yourself to go a little bit easier. It’s tough to do, but you really have to give it your all every time you race. I feel that this is a major difference between racing on the road and racing off road. The trend to shorter and more technical courses has made the races harder, but in a different way. It doesn’t matter how hard you go, you just can’t get as tired racing for 90 minutes as you can racing for 3 or 4. This means that there is never any reason to hold back. I’ve noticed that those who attack every ride or race are the ones who excel.

Next time, I’ll continue talking about my trip, and the training I did up at 7000+ feet, thanks for reading!

Repairing ESI Grips

2015-04-15T16:58:00.006-05:00

I’ve talked about ESI grips on this blog before, so you know that I’m a huge fan. I’ve been running the grips for as long as I can remember, and I wouldn’t run any other grip. And now that they’ve come out with their road tape a few years ago, you can bet that all my road bikes will be decked out with ESI as well.

But my only concern ever running ESI grips has been their durability. But that is no longer an issue. At the Fontana US Cup race I had a crash on the starting straight when some dude rode right into me on the start. I went down but was back up very quickly. I had a pretty good race and when I was done I went to talk to Gary, the founder of ESI grips. We were chatting about the race and the course and he noticed that my grip had a little rip in it. I was a little bummed, but knew that I had a spare set at home to replace it with. He said nonsense and grabbed some of their new silicone tape. I had heard about this stuff being used for making chain stay protectors, and all types of wrapping jobs on a bike. But Gary had another use.

He took a rag and some rubbing alcohol to clean the grip off. Then he took the silicone tape and wrapped it around the ripped end of my grip just short of 2 times and cut it. He made sure the end was tightly wrapped and pressed against the grip and he was finished. I was a little bit skeptical. Was that really going to work?

It’s been more than 2 weeks and not only is it holding, but I barely notice that the grip was repaired. So thanks to ESI grips for making the best grip on the market, and thank to them for making the customer experience even better by making repairs such a snap! Saved me the hassle of getting new grip and putting them, and even better, saved me some cash. Make sure you Check out ESI Grips!

Thanks for reading

Big Day in the Sky

2015-04-05T01:10:00.002-05:00

Short post today, about today's ride. It's been a while since I've really felt complete pain and fear on a bike and Saturday's ride had both.

https://www.strava.com/activities/279420975

Here are the numbers

172.4 kms
5:38:10 time
2028 meters elevation gain (6653 ft)

A big day for sure. But the real lessons had more to do with the location. I left for the ride from Pinetop, AZ, a town at about 7,000 ft. I've been staying here with a friend and getting some training in between US Cup races. The ride took me up to about 9200 ft give or take (google and strava say different things). I've been up to 10,000 ft before and my body didn't like it much. But I've been ok here at 7,000. Number were low all day, as expected from the elevation. But when I got to the Mexican Hay Lake Climb, it was something different. The climb started just outside of Eager, AZ at 7,040 ft. It was an amazing climb. I didn't get a chance to get any pictures. I was pretty focused on my 2x20s up the climb. But as I went up, up, up, the legs started to really hurt. More than I thought they could. But it wasn't just my legs, my whole body was getting weak. I went into survival mode. We all have our mountains to climb and Saturday, mine was literally a mountain. When I got to the top, I felt relieved, only to find that there was a strong head wind across the top. The next 25 miles, I pushed through the wind that felt like I was riding through thick sludge. When I finally made the turn, I had 15 miles of cross winds to deal with.

So it was a tough day on the bike. But the point I want to make isn't that, its what I learned. Often times the hardest rides are the ones where you learn the most. You learn about yourself, your limits whether physical or mental, and you learn how to overcome something you thought you couldn't.

Lesson 1: Nothing Lasts Forever

As much as it seems like it at the time, the hard parts always come to a close. When you're struggling hard on something, and you start to doubt yourself, your minds eye closes up. It's easy to only think about the doubts, but doing so will only make them come true. Keep your eye on the prize, because tough times always pass.

Lesson 2: Eat!

This sounds like a simple thing, and it is. But it's one that I've found easy to neglect. Personally I've started using homemade rice cakes, and Mikes Mix Sports drink for the long rides. But whatever you use, use it! The ride put me on my back foot, but I was fueled up to fight back. But eating enough also pays after the ride. If you're getting back from rides and eating everything in sight, you're probably not eating enough while riding. Eating more during rides keeps you fueled up and your body doesn't overreact when it's done, and that is key to keeping light. I've found that when I eat enough while riding, and if I do it consistently, that I eat less when I'm done and I lose weight a lot more easily. So eat and drink up!

Lesson 3: Sunscreen

Again, something that is super simple, but easy to neglect. Wear your sunscreen! Last year traveling out to race and train in California I was pretty bad about sunscreen and I could feel it. My skin was constantly dry and tight feeling. But even more than that, the heat and skin damage was making it harder to recover. Whether it was the extra energy expended repairing skin (probably small), or even the difficulty sleeping because my skin was raw. Training isn't about having sweet tan lines, it's about getting faster and stronger. So do what makes you better.

Lesson 4:

I've known this for a long time, but I feel it belongs here. Challenge yourself. Put yourself to the test and do everything you can to overcome the challenge. Getting faster is about pushing your limits and learning how to perform at that higher level. If you feel comfortable, you're not training right. And most likely doing what you've always done, just harder isn't the solution. Mix it up a little.