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Cycling Training Tips

How to Win a Bunch Sprint

Most races end up in a bunch sprint, which normally is exclusively for the sprinters. But it is only a small percentage of Training4cyclists.com’s readers who are pure sprinters and play a role on the last 200m. I will now make a short description of how you can win the next bunch sprint ”“ at least in the theory”¦

1. Pick your parents carefully
When it comes to true sprinters, genes play a big role. Sprinters are born to be sprinters. It is said that you can make a slow donkey to a faster donkey, but you can never make a donkey to a race horse. This animal is simply born to be slow and it is the same situation for many non-sprinters. Naturally born sprinters have a higher percentage of fast twitch fibres than normal people. Road cycling sprinters are not as pure sprinters as you see them in track and field. This is because the sprinters have to carry themselves a long distance before they can see the finish line.
Before you give up, it is important to notice that in many races, stronger riders use the terrain to challenge the sprinters before the final 200m. They attack on the hills and make jumps in the crosswinds. That is their chance to beat the sprinters. So if you already know that the sprinters are faster than you, then you have 3 options: Attack, attack, attack”¦ Got it?

2. Be patient
Save your energy for the final km. Until then, your job is to get through the race as easily as possible. There are many riders who could do a reasonable sprint, but they do not do it as they spend energy on desperate attacks because they do not believe in themselves. So make your decision before the race and stick to it. If you decide to go for the sprint, do it 100 percent. Otherwise forget about it.

3. Get in position
Sprint is all about position. If you are not in position you will never win a sprint even if you are the fastest sprinter. Keep the wheel of a sprinter you know is going to be among the first riders. If you are lucky or talented, you might have team mates that will help you get in position.

4. Be strong
Power is important, and for sprinters power is essential. If you want to make an incredibly fast sprint, you’ve got to train for it. That means specific sprint and anaerobic endurance training, and maybe strength training. You can read more about strength and sprint training here at this blog.

How to Win a Bunch Sprint Read More »

Expert Tips on How to Analyze Your Power Meter Files

Here is an interview with Dirk Friel who is a co-founder of TrainingPeaks.com. One of his jobs is to help professional riders and coaches to analyze data from power meters. Since one of the biggest topics here on Training4cyclists.com is power meter training, it is a pleasure to get some additional info from one of the experts into analyzing of power meter files. This interview is quite long, but I hope you enjoy it, there are several good points waiting for you!

Read the full interview with Dirk Friel here!

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SRM and PowerTap Are Not Allowed in the Pro Tour 2009

APRIL FOOL: UCI has declared that power meters like SRM, PowerTap etc. will not be allowed in the Pro Tour next year. There also a couple of other implementations for next years’ Pro Tour that may surprise some of you. I will give you a short summary of the press release:

Why Power meters are no longer allowed:
Ӣ There are significant better results from riders using power meters which indicate that they have a huge advantage during the races than other riders. UCI wants to make everybody equal (at least their equipment status) to make a fair competition.
Ӣ UCI has chosen to avoid dictation of how riders should ride from e.g. power meters or radio communication. These steps should make riders using their instincts instead of just acting like a machine. UCI has already disallowed radio communication in the U23 Nations Cup this year and implements the same rule in the Pro Tour 2009.

The press release also indicates that 2009 may very likely be the last season with heart rate monitors, carbon wheels and disc wheels. Service cars leave the peloton from 2011 which should be time enough for riders to learn what to do when they have a flat tire. Seems like it is going to be old school cycling in the future…!

My comment:
I think this decision is a huge step backwards for pro cycling. Power meters have shown their relevancy in broad range of situations and made training even more sophisticated. UCI can’t disallow power meters in training situations which means that riders using power meters will still have a great advantage. UCI is obviously not aware that the biggest advantage of power meters are in training rides and post-race-analyses. During the races the bonus from having a power meter mounted is minimal (except time trials). But having data files from the races is a really helpful thing for analysis of performance.

I have started collection of names on people who dislike the mistake of UCI:

Support my campaign: Legalize SRM and PowerTap

If you want to support my campaign, please write your name here. I will send the full list of names to the President of UCI. 10408 riders have already shown their support in this way.

What do you think? Should power meters be disallowed next year?

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My Goals as Cycling Coach 2008

I thought it might be interesting to have a little insight look to my work as cycling coach in 2008.

This season I have significantly reduced the number of riders I plan training for. Thus, I have only 2 riders that receive training plans in 2008. These two riders are both very talented and focused on optimizing their training with power meters, so I still spend quite a lot time on coaching. The most important reason I have reduced the number of athletes is time. July 2007 I became dad for the very first time and in January 2008 I finally graduated as medical doctor at the University of Aarhus.

Becoming dad was the most fantastic experience ever and makes every day even better. Thus, I have naturally given the highest priority to my little daughter, Lea. Finishing of my studies on the university also took a lot time and starting in my first job as medical doctor is obviously also quite time consuming. These two factors made me conclude that I had to reduce the number of athletes if I shouldn’t reduce the quality of what I did.

As I mentioned previously, I will only be coaching two riders this year.

U23 rider makes progress with SRM power meter

The first rider is Jakob Bering who is riding his second season as U23 rider. He rides for a continental team called Team Designa Køkken. I have been coaching him for more than 6 years. He won a silver medal at the national championships for U23 last season and played a central role in Denmark’s team victory in Tour de l’Avenir (Tour de France for U23). He is a climber and is currently training very hard to peak his performance in a stage race in April. Hopefully he will be representing Denmark in the U23 World Championships later this year.

Jakob uses a SRM power meter in all intervals and until now I have been very satisfied with the numbers I receive in my inbox. He is stronger than last year and compared to last season we’ve known the dates for peak performance in months. There is a huge difference from planning a peak performance in two months instead of just two weeks (or less..!). Now he is a more integrated part of the national team, which gives me a better possibility to plan his training and tapering compared to last year where every little stage race was like having an exam. When I plan a tapering protocol for a specific race I usually start at the peaking moment and work backwards. If I have 14 days, I start with the day before the big event, then the day before that one and so on until I reach day 1 in the program.

Tapering protocol is a corner stone

Thus, my programs are often identical in the final period because the tapering protocol is a corner stone in all my training programs. Though these tapering protocols look identical they might be adjusted to some specific requirements in the upcoming event.

Junior rider focusing on climbing

My other rider is Rasmus Malmkjær who is a talented junior rider. He rides on a very strong junior team which is probably the strongest junior team in Europe (Team Festina Hobro). His speciality is climbing steep climbs, so I hope that he will make some good results in some international junior races in southern Europe this year. He uses a Polar CS600 to optimize his results. Climbing is his number one skill, but on home ground in Denmark he will still be a strong rider, though he will be not strong enough to compete with the best riders on windy, flat roads. My biggest challenge is to make him produce as many watts as possible compared to body weight, making him an even better climber. We won’t focus much on flat races, because that will never be his speciality.

Challenging jobs as cycling coach in 2008

Thus, I have some really challenging and exciting jobs as cycling coach this year even though I have significantly fewer riders. I have received several emails with questions about why I’m not posting so often and I hope that this post explain why. Since July 2008 I have re-published some articles that deserved some additional attention. I hope that all readers understand and in some way respect this decision.

What coaching jobs I will do in 2009 is still uncertain.

If you have any questions or comments to my plans for 2008, feel free to post a comment.

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What is a Good Resting Heart Rate?

This is a very common question among cyclists. I have heard several people discuss this topic and have often seen them compare registrations of early morning resting heart rates. The fact is that you can only compare these values with your own previous registrations. The reason for this is that we all have a different anatomy of our cardiovascular system. But these systems are all based on the same physiological mechanisms. Thus, we can learn from each others’ physiological experiences and adaptations, but we can’t compare individual heart rate values. E.g. your resting heart rate is 58bpm while your friend’s heart rate is 42bpm, still I can’t say which one of you are in the best shape nor have the highest VO2 max.

Autonomic nervous system regulates resting heart rate
The resting heart rate is closely related to the autonomic nervous system. You will probably already have noticed that your resting heart is lower when you are in good shape. This is because of a larger stroke volume or more correctly a bigger parasympathic drive on the sinus node. This is one of the central adaptations to endurance training.

Know your resting heart rate
A good reason to know your normal level of resting heart rate is that you can use it to discover overtraining or illness. If your resting heart rate is 10-15 beats above normal, you might have a disease. In that case I will recommend you take your temperature and look for other symptoms. Avoid intensive training or races if you don´t feel well.

Some values to compare with (don’t do it”¦)
There are great deviations in normal resting heart rates. Many well trained cyclists normally have a resting heart rate in the 40’s, some in the high 30’s and few in the low 30’s or lower. There are also well trained cyclists or even professionals in the high 40’s or low 50’s. And as I said previously: Don’t compare values with others’”¦

What is a Good Resting Heart Rate? Read More »