Training Choice... Running or Cycling

[danfoz]

Some notes/observations/suggestions:

A good night sleep the night before the night before is important. I personally never sleep well the night of a race.

Longer rides usually do translate into more gas in the tank in the lower categories. Many beginning racers I'm familiar with are working on training short cuts and high intensity plans to accommodate busy schedules. Not much beats good old fashioned time on the bike when it comes to getting faster, especially if you are riding less than several hours a week.

In my own neck of the woods the masters (i.e. the old geezers) usually run race laps on par with or slightly faster than the Cat3's. That is the reason this 45 year old Cat 4 prefers to race with the twenty and thirty something 4's and NOT the masters. But maybe your geezers are slower than ours.

If you are hitting a 200 yard hill during a crit (which I imagine means multiple climbs of the same hill during the crit) then your training needs to accommodate those physical demands. I have a similar hill in my local park in which races are run. Beyond making sure I can hit that hill 10 times in the big ring before my racing season starts, my own strategy is to make sure I start the hill at the front of the pack and let riders slowly drift past as we climb. By the top I'm halfway back in the pack and after the rise I focus on getting back to the front. Strategy and tactics are important and can be used to mitigate weakness or lack of fitness.

Always ride in the drops if you are pulling or bridging a gap. Simply riding with ones head an inch or two lower will translate into a couple mph gain for the same effort.

Everyone gets dropped.

Some lessons can be learned from others but some can only be learned by ourselves deep in the pain cave. Don't be afraid to stretch yourself and test your boundaries. it's the only way to really get in touch with our limits so we don't exceed them when it really matters.

 

[danfoz]

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .


Use leg speed to accelerate back up to race speed rather than relying on brute force and having to jump out of the saddle for every acceleration.

Way too many riders bang away in one gear for an entire crit and kill themselves by hammering huge gears in every acceleration until their legs are toast. There's a time and a place to really jump up and go in a big gear but that's usually an intentional attack, a bridging move or contesting a prime or the finish and not something you should do for every acceleration or every hill on every lap or you're making it a lot harder on yourself. You pay to have all those gears on your bike, use them!

Great advice in these two points. Using leg speed and cadence to close gaps in lieu of leg strength is a huge factor in saving power for when it's really needed.

 

[wbkski]

Fantastic advise everyone. I will work on the fundamentals that everyone has mentioned. I realize that at this stage of the game, I have to learn my way to the front. Its more than just brute strength. I do remember someone saying.. "stay to the outside"... maybe that was just bad advise. Moving up inside the pack makes more sense from an energy conservation POV. And... guilty as charged as far as going around the course in one gear. I knew I had those other nine cogs for a reason! Riding in the drops... huge advantage. Riding in the drops... scary... because of the other no-so-seasoned riders and their erratic moves. Again.. .more practice. The hill thing has me spooked. It was a gradual hill to the base of the real climb. I can remember struggling through the entire hill section. I'm certain that I was in the incorrect gear trying to keep myself at the front of the pack...

My next race is Wednesday. I'll let every one know how it goes. And thanks for taking the time to respond and give your welcome advice.

BK

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Just to be clear what I was referring to above was learning to move up 'inside of the pack' meaning slithering safely through the inevitable holes that open up between riders on smooth and predictable diagonal lines (bike racers in the peloton move like a bishop in chess, never a knight) not moving up 'the inside' or 'the outside' sure either of those can work when necessary and ideally when they're the wind sheltered side of the field but I'm talking about learning to move within the field instead of around the field.

Jumping up the inside(inside line on the course to pass the entire field) repeatedly can be a boneheaded move that can lead to trouble in lower category racing and lead to some very aggressive defensive moves to keep you from doing it too much in upper category racing. It's a shorter line to the corners and looks attractive but if you don't execute it well with a clean inside-inside turn you'll sweep right across the front of the folks turning on more predictable ouside-inside-outside lines and if the cumulative skill of the field isn't up to it you'll often cause a big pileup. Not to say theres' never a time or place to charge up the inside but it shouldn't be your standard riding line and do it with a clear understanding of what you're up to including potentially cutting off other riders or finding yourself suddenly cut off if you don't get to the corner before those on the normal line dive through the apex.

So yeah, the advice you heard about staying outside is very good advice especially as you first learn the game, far more cornering options if you approach a turn wide. You can follow the flow of everyone else taking a clean outside-inside-outside line (that should be your go-to move), if there's enough road you can stay on a wide arc outside line and often pass folks by pedaling all the way though your more gentle corner, you can slide underneath folks in front that are leaving a big door open and exiting the turn slower and wider than necessary and can adjust your line as necessary mid turn (gently and predictably for those around you) if something unexpected happens like someone clips a pedal and loses it in front of you. Approach on a tight gutter line on the inside and you have far fewer options so you'd better know what you're up to if you go that route.

And riding in the drops is definitely the place to be if riders around you are sketchy. It's way too easy to lock handlebars with another rider if you're riding up on the brake hoods, that's far less likely with your hands planted deep in the drops. And if you are unlucky and get tangled up in a wreck it's far better to have your hands down in the drops to avoid the reflex action of sticking your hand out to brake your fall which often results in a broken wrist or collar bone. Ride the drops for aero reasons unless it's really easy and you're super comfortable with the pace and always ride the drops when chasing hard or attacking or sprinting at speed or when at risk of bumping elbows with other riders at speed as it's much safer. If you can't comfortably stay in your drops for the length of your crits then adjust your bike fit so you can as they're not much good if you can't race down there.

-Dave

 

[vspa]

There are 4 flights for each crit.  ABC and D.  I started out in D and was doing pretty good, then went to C and am having my head handed to me.

lets go back to the beggining, as a novel racer like you said, you should ease and adapt slowly into it, stay with D for one season at least. If you need more motivation set your self for higher finishing places and eventually win a couple of crits, why not. Then you move into C and so on. Your actual racing form won't change a whole lot from not sleeping properly the night before, i don't mean like going out partying but waking up hours earlier from nervousness or anticipation, so that is not that big of a factor. Regarding gears, the most usual way to exit a turn is to stand on the pedals on the same gear you had coming into that turn, it is a different approach than say a F1 sports car, where you shift 3 times until you get the same speed back after the turn,

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Originally Posted by vspa .

... Regarding gears, the most usual way to exit a turn is to stand on the pedals on the same gear you had coming into that turn, it is a different approach than say a F1 sports car, where you shift 3 times until you get the same speed back after the turn,

I'll give you that you do ride the gear out of the turn that you had entering the turn, IOW crit riders don't do a lot of shifting mid turn while they're coasting to avoid striking pedals. But that gear as you enter the turn should have been chosen based on expected speed at the exit and experienced crit riders will shift as much or as little as their speed variation dictates. So if it's a particularly tight bend or exits into a rise or you're deep in the field and have to slow for a clogged turn then downshifting sometimes several cogs only to upshift again as you wind out each in succession on the following straight is very good riding. In that sense it's a lot like a sports car driver in tight turns who's trying to stay in the best part of his engine's power band. Same thing with smart crit riders, don't lug down your engine trying to accelerate with the huge torque requirements of overly big gears out of slow sections, use your gears as that's why we have them.

In general the further forward you ride the less speeding and slowing you'll experience and the less shifting you'll have to do deal with that slowing and the subsequent accelerations. But even right up on point some courses force some pretty dramatic speed changes and some anticipation and heads up use of the gears can make those a lot easier.

-Dave

 

[wbkski]

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .


I'll give you that you do ride the gear out of the turn that you had entering the turn, IOW crit riders don't do a lot of shifting mid turn while they're coasting to avoid striking pedals. But that gear as you enter the turn should have been chosen based on expected speed at the exit and experienced crit riders will shift as much or as little as their speed variation dictates. So if it's a particularly tight bend or exits into a rise or you're deep in the field and have to slow for a clogged turn then downshifting sometimes several cogs only to upshift again as you wind out each in succession on the following straight is very good riding. In that sense it's a lot like a sports car driver in tight turns who's trying to stay in the best part of his engine's power band. Same thing with smart crit riders, don't lug down your engine trying to accelerate with the huge torque requirements of overly big gears out of slow sections, use your gears as that's why we have them.

In general the further forward you ride the less speeding and slowing you'll experience and the less shifting you'll have to do deal with that slowing and the subsequent accelerations. But even right up on point some courses force some pretty dramatic speed changes and some anticipation and heads up use of the gears can make those a lot easier.

-Dave

Riding in the drops is something that I'm working on. I'm forcing myself to do it more just on regular rides. I can definitely see the advantages. When you're in the drops, do you have your brake levers positioned so that you have at least 1 finger on them while riding?

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Originally Posted by wbkski .

Riding in the drops is something that I'm working on. I'm forcing myself to do it more just on regular rides. I can definitely see the advantages. When you're in the drops, do you have your brake levers positioned so that you have at least 1 finger on them while riding?

You should have your brake/shifters positioned so you can easily reach them from the drops position. Some handlebar styles make this difficult or make it tough to access the controls easily from the drops but also make the brake hoods position comfortable based on the bar's bend radius. So you may have to play around with brake/shifter positioning and if you can't work it out you might consider an alternate handlebar style. FWIW, I strongly prefer the current generation of compact progressive radius drop bars like the Ritchey classic curve or some of the 3T bars like the Ergonova. They make it easy to set the controls where they're accessible from the drops but still have a good hoods position and the drops position is only slightly deeper than the hoods position so you get a low position on the hoods without the drops position being ridiculously low. But mainly make sure you can access the controls easily from all your riding positions.

In terms of whether you actually should keep a finger on the brakes at all times. Yeah, a lot of beginning crit riders do just that but I'd encourage you to work on your positioning and confidence so that you're not riding that way all the time. Sure sometimes it's tight and dicey in a technical section with tight turns but IME the folks that keep their fingers primed on the brake levers for an entire crit are the folks that grab their brakes at any slowing or any movement in the field. That can be a huge energy waster and can easily lead to the typical lower category crit pileups that happen all too often. Sure there's a time and place for subtle or not so subtle braking when riding fast in a crowd but good riding lines and moving the nose of your bike out into the wind to do subtle speed control instead of feathering brakes can eliminate most braking and the need to always ride with a finger on the brakes waiting to use them. Yep, this takes practice and confidence and a certain blind trust in the chaos around you but it's part of the skill of racing fast in tight quarters.

Keep working on it, ride more crits and look for ways to stay off your brakes whenever possible. And definitely ride your drops. If you need bike adjustments to make that happen then make those adjustments but it shouldn't be any scarier to ride in your drops and if your bike is well adjusted it shouldn't be unreasonably uncomfortable.

-Dave

 

[wbkski]

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .


You should have your brake/shifters positioned so you can easily reach them from the drops position. Some handlebar styles make this difficult or make it tough to access the controls easily from the drops but also make the brake hoods position comfortable based on the bar's bend radius. So you may have to play around with brake/shifter positioning and if you can't work it out you might consider an alternate handlebar style. FWIW, I strongly prefer the current generation of compact progressive radius drop bars like the Ritchey classic curve or some of the 3T bars like the Ergonova. They make it easy to set the controls where they're accessible from the drops but still have a good hoods position and the drops position is only slightly deeper than the hoods position so you get a low position on the hoods without the drops position being ridiculously low. But mainly make sure you can access the controls easily from all your riding positions.

In terms of whether you actually should keep a finger on the brakes at all times. Yeah, a lot of beginning crit riders do just that but I'd encourage you to work on your positioning and confidence so that you're not riding that way all the time. Sure sometimes it's tight and dicey in a technical section with tight turns but IME the folks that keep their fingers primed on the brake levers for an entire crit are the folks that grab their brakes at any slowing or any movement in the field. That can be a huge energy waster and can easily lead to the typical lower category crit pileups that happen all too often. Sure there's a time and place for subtle or not so subtle braking when riding fast in a crowd but good riding lines and moving the nose of your bike out into the wind to do subtle speed control instead of feathering brakes can eliminate most braking and the need to always ride with a finger on the brakes waiting to use them. Yep, this takes practice and confidence and a certain blind trust in the chaos around you but it's part of the skill of racing fast in tight quarters.

Keep working on it, ride more crits and look for ways to stay off your brakes whenever possible. And definitely ride your drops. If you need bike adjustments to make that happen then make those adjustments but it shouldn't be any scarier to ride in your drops and if your bike is well adjusted it shouldn't be unreasonably uncomfortable.

-Dave

Thanks again for all the advice. I need new bar tape anyway so now is as good a time as any to adjust the levers to where they make sense.

 

[danfoz]

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .


Sure there's a time and place for subtle or not so subtle braking when riding fast in a crowd but good riding lines and moving the nose of your bike out into the wind to do subtle speed control instead of feathering brakes can eliminate most braking and the need to always ride with a finger on the brakes waiting to use them. Yep, this takes practice and confidence and a certain blind trust in the chaos around you but it's part of the skill of racing fast in tight quarters.

+1. It's good to have easy access to controls but in a tightly confined pack hitting the brakes abruptly won't make you any friends. To avoid the fella behind rear ending you try focusing on a real smooth brake application and sometimes if you only need to scrub a little speed it's better just to sit up a bit and let the wind catch your chest (or if on an outside line move into the wind slightly as mentioned above). It works remarkably well at race speeds. Also the one and only time I advocate overlapping wheels is when one needs to scrub the speed a little slower and the "parachute" trick causes a little overlap. Then just get back in line asap.

 

[wbkski]

Originally Posted by danfoz .


+1. It's good to have easy access to controls but in a tightly confined pack hitting the brakes abruptly won't make you any friends. To avoid the fella behind rear ending you try focusing on a real smooth brake application and sometimes if you only need to scrub a little speed it's better just to sit up a bit and let the wind catch your chest (or if on an outside line move into the wind slightly as mentioned above). It works remarkably well at race speeds. Also the one and only time I advocate overlapping wheels is when one needs to scrub the speed a little slower and the "parachute" trick causes a little overlap. Then just get back in line asap.

I like it. I went out today an practiced cornering. I'm feeling more comfortable in drops and angling the bike through the turn much like I do when I'm on skis. And... you mentioned the "overlap"... I got yelled at hard on Saturday for that. Evidently the guy yelling at me must have just found out he needs to squat to ****.

 

[danfoz]

Originally Posted by wbkski .

I like it. I went out today an practiced cornering. I'm feeling more comfortable in drops and angling the bike through the turn much like I do when I'm on skis. And... you mentioned the "overlap"... I got yelled at hard on Saturday for that. Evidently the guy yelling at me must have just found out he needs to squat to ****.

Too funny. Ultimately its prioritization of risk determined at runtime. IMO there are scenarios where a few seconds of wheel overlap is actually safer than jamming on the brakes.

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Originally Posted by danfoz .


Too funny. Ultimately its prioritization of risk determined at runtime. IMO there are scenarios where a few seconds of wheel overlap is actually safer than jamming on the brakes.

Agreed, hanging out overlapped on someone's wheel but not far enough to fend them off if they move over on you is not a good idea but it's basically impossible to pass or move through the field without some transient overlap. The tighter the group is bunched the more overlap you can get away with when necessary as folks get locked in by those around them and can't make hard moves left or right. But as it opens up (and it's generally fairly open in lower category races) you do have to stay aware of protecting that important region around your front wheel.

But even while paying attention to that there are times when a moment of overlap while bleeding some speed or as you begin to slide up to pass someone is just part of the game. Sure there's some risk that the rider will pick that moment to shift sideways but again awareness goes a long way towards keeping you upright.

Take a Cat 5 skills clinic and they'll teach you to be very aware of overlap and often tell you to avoid it at all times. And yeah if you're talking about just boating along overlapped to the cassette in front of you, you're asking for trouble. But it's not really possible to flow through the field and advance without some moments where you're coming by another bike, just don't linger there with your front wheel exposed for others to take out.

BTW, (to the OP) if you haven't already, pick up a copy of Thomas Prehn's book: http://www.amazon.com/Racing-Tactics-Cyclists-Thomas-Prehn/dp/1931382301 some very good info in there including some good discussion of cornering lines and pack riding skills.

-Dave

 

[wbkski]

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming .


Agreed, hanging out overlapped on someone's wheel but not far enough to fend them off if they move over on you is not a good idea but it's basically impossible to pass or move through the field without some transient overlap. The tighter the group is bunched the more overlap you can get away with when necessary as folks get locked in by those around them and can't make hard moves left or right. But as it opens up (and it's generally fairly open in lower category races) you do have to stay aware of protecting that important region around your front wheel.

But even while paying attention to that there are times when a moment of overlap while bleeding some speed or as you begin to slide up to pass someone is just part of the game. Sure there's some risk that the rider will pick that moment to shift sideways but again awareness goes a long way towards keeping you upright.

Take a Cat 5 skills clinic and they'll teach you to be very aware of overlap and often tell you to avoid it at all times. And yeah if you're talking about just boating along overlapped to the cassette in front of you, you're asking for trouble. But it's not really possible to flow through the field and advance without some moments where you're coming by another bike, just don't linger there with your front wheel exposed for others to take out.

BTW, (to the OP) if you haven't already, pick up a copy of Thomas Prehn's book: http://www.amazon.com/Racing-Tactics-Cyclists-Thomas-Prehn/dp/1931382301 some very good info in there including some good discussion of cornering lines and pack riding skills.

-Dave

An excellent fathers day gift! Thank you!

 

[cyclightning]

Edit : The advice given by others here is spot on and matches my fairly limited experience.

 

[wbkski]

This is too funny.... I was just thinking of this thread today in the gym. I rode with a group yesterday and two of the riders were "triathletes". Interestingly enough, they smoked the group going up a local canyon. I couldn't help but think its because of their cross-training in the other disciplines. For me, I guess the only true way to see if there is any validity is to find out for myself and then report back. I think I have enough time left in the season to perform a limited test period. News at 11...

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Originally Posted by wbkski .

This is too funny.... I was just thinking of this thread today in the gym. I rode with a group yesterday and two of the riders were "triathletes". Interestingly enough, they smoked the group going up a local canyon. I couldn't help but think its because of their cross-training in the other disciplines. For me, I guess the only true way to see if there is any validity is to find out for myself and then report back. I think I have enough time left in the season to perform a limited test period. News at 11...

I'd suggest that successful triathletes are all very good at riding solo into the wind or in other situations that require solid sustainable power. I'd credit more of the way they rode to that then their multisport training. IOW, give them credit for training a lot of hours per week and focusing on solid sustainable power not just following other rider's wheels all the time. Perhaps the cross training helps to some extent but I'd guess those fast triathletes would have been even faster if they put all of those weekly hours in on the bike and didn't split it across three sports.

FWIW, I've seen some interesting and good things with my sustainable power when I transition towards cyclocross each summer and introduce some running. Whether that's because I'm dropping my overall training load at that time of year and peaking a bit or whether the running itself has extra benefits is hard to say but I'm not dead set against running if it's not too much and not too close to racing season where leg speed and short punchy speed on the bike is so critical. I've talked about it with others here and elsewhere over the years and I'm not the only cyclist that has seen solid sustainable power when running is supplementing some cycling but still from a specificity standpoint it's hard to believe that spreading your training energy across three or more sports is going to be as beneficial as focusing that energy onto the bike.

-Dave

 

[vspa]

FWIW once i started trainning seriously for cycling, towards the end of high school, my leg speed on field sports such as soccer suffered notoriously, where i live you couldn't just leave soccer out of your schedule, kind of compulsory sport for us to socialize and have some fun with your peers,

 

[wbkski]

Originally Posted by vspa .

FWIW once i started trainning seriously for cycling, towards the end of high school, my leg speed on field sports such as soccer suffered notoriously,
where i live you couldn't just leave soccer out of your schedule, kind of compulsory sport for us to socialize and have some fun with your peers,

I agree with spreading myself thin over three disciplines. I'm a boat-anchor in the water anyway. I think I'm going to try to incorporate two 5k training sessions per week just to see if things change. I may up that to 10K as most of my cycling races are about an hour.

 

[jordanaustino]

Having run cross country in high school, I found that running helped me to increase my steady state power. That was with an increase in total training load and decrease in cycling. I also find that from a muscular stand point I lean out when I run. There has been some research which has suggested that running increases V02max more than cycling as well. I wouldn't cut out much cycling volume to run, but when daylight hours are limited running has a benefit of being pretty easy to do when it is dark outside. Up to 10 mile runs are a part of my off season plans.