I came across this article on
Gamjams.net written by BJ Basham and posted almost a year ago. It's a fitting time to bring this article up seeing as this weekend is the first of the Snowball Crit training series and it serves as a great reminder as to what training races really should be. Training! Learn something new, test your limits, and have some fun!
Here's the article:
Put some Training in your Training Racesby BJ Basham
USA Cycling Level II Certified Coach
The start of the season is approaching and the early spring training
race series are about to begin. Many riders see these inexpensive crits
and road races as the start of the racing season and they approach the
training races the same as they would any other event in the calendar.
This is fine to a point, but ideally, training races should act as an
extension of your normal training program to help prepare you for the
big events in the heart of you racing year.
So how do you get the most out of a training race? First of all
remember that it is about training and not so much about racing. The
training goals of a training race can be quite varied depending on your
racing experience and capabilities. With some riders, training races
are a great place to work on pack riding skills. For others, the
training races can be used to try out tactics and to work on team
strategies and techniques. And for others, training races make for the
perfect place to find their limits, strengths and weaknesses.
For any athlete I work with, my only rules when it comes to
incorporating training races into their program is first of all to
actually go into each training race with a goal to either try something
new, work on a weakness or try some tactics without worrying about if
they work or not. And, I do not want the training race to totally take
the place of training for that day. Most spring training criteriums and
even some road races are not really long enough to get in much of a
workout, so augmenting the training race with extra time on the bike to
make it into a full training day that includes the race and then some
endurance or skill training is the ideal.
There are many things we can learn from a training race, especially
if you are racing with a power meter. The most helpful data comes from
events where the rider fails in some way. We can look at what was going
on leading up to the problem and then figure out what can be done to
avoid the failure the next time around. We might find that the rider is
not attacking hard enough to get a gap on the field, or we may find
that the rider is simply working too much and too hard in the race
until eventually they just cannot keep up. The training races give us
a great opportunity to make mistakes that we can learn from and to find
out what we need to work on.
So how do you put some training in your training races? Have a goal
for the event and remember that it is more about training and not so
much about racing. After the race, think about what happened in the
race, both good and bad, and see what you have learned. Talk to your
coach or teammates about the race and see if they noticed something
that you may have missed. Training is about getting stronger and if you
have learned something that will help your racing, you will be
stronger.
--
BJ Basham is a USA Cycling Level II Certified Coach with Peaks
Coaching Group. He lives in Faifax, VA and competes in most of the same
races you do. To learn more about his coaching practice and philosophy,
just email him.
The link to the original post:
http://www.gamjams.net/2007/03/put_some_traini.html
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