"I can't do that groupride, I'm putting in base."

I mentioned base miles a few posts ago. So every racer has an idea as to what base miles look like. People talk about LSD (long, slow, distance) riding, putting in huge miles without ever seeing the big ring. Just, as it is said, ride lots. More is better, but not necessarily harder at this time of year.

But how long should you really ride? How many miles? At what intensity? The answers to those questions are, unfortunately, highly individual based on your racing level, goals, and available time. A good guideline is to consider annual training hours, as described by Joe Friel (he literally wrote the book on this). When you do this, consider the annual and weekly training hours you put in last year, then look at what you're goals are this year. Are you trying to upgrade? From 4 to 3? 3 to 2? Each of those will require a different level of minimum commitment, can you fit in the 12 hours per week minimum average that a cat 2 racer should be putting in? If the answer is no, you may have some troubles making that upgrade.

But I digress. Let's talk about base.
Aerobic base is built early in the season with longer efforts, most typically in the 20 minute range. Hunter and Allen are all about those. When done right these efforts will stimulate slow twitch muscles to increase mitochondria count, be more responsive to neural stimulation, and increase intracellular glycogen stores. Sounds pretty awesome, right? What will this do for you? It will lay the foundation for your peak season pedal smashing.

So what's the downside? It takes a long time to properly build base fitness, and you have to do long efforts to get there. For those of you who are already time trialists and climbers, this will be your favorite part of the training progression. For those of you who are sprinters or crit specialists, this may be your least favorite. To you I say, convince yourself that you love these efforts. If you can use power when doing them, all the better. At least then you can track any gains you make, no matter how minute. I found it incredibly rewarding when I could squeak out an extra 4 watts for a 20 minute average, something you can't tell with heart rate alone.

Now, if you live in California, like me, you have three options this time of year: focus on cross (I recommend this, if only because my annual training plan is built around the CX season), chill out and have a single peak road season when you start putting in base miles in February like most of the country does, or start getting it in now so you can have a marvelous two peak season and get to smash pedals twice times in 2014.

Happy riding.

Flexible like Gumby. .

So people talk about stretching all the time. How to stretch, when to stretch, why to stretch. There's a lot of conflicting ideas out there. Some people will tell you that stretching is bad, and that it is often, in fact, a source of injury, rather than a prevention. Technically, they're right. Others will tell you that stretching to improve flexibility is important for life long range of motion, minimizing injuries during sport, and improving sporting performance. Technically, they're right too. WTF?

Well, here's the real deal. Stretching when cold, or as part of a warm up is likely to cause injury. Why? Because you have stretch receptors in your tendons that freak out when your muscle becomes too elongated and tell that muscle to contract before it gets torn. Stretching desensitizes these receptors. What does that mean? It means when you stretch before competition, then you kick a soccer ball as hard as you freakin can, and your hamstring gets a little to stretched out, your stretch receptors react too late and you gack a hammy.
To make matters worse, if you decide to stretch before you warm up, you're setting yourself up to actually tear a muscle just by stretching it cold. Example: take a rubber band, toss it in the fridge, take it out an hour later and give it a good stretch. So what's the answer? Don't stretch before a workout.

However, stretching after a workout, when you're still sweating and your muscles are pliable and warm, is a great way to improve flexibility and range of motion. These are good because they will allow you to do the things you do in your sport with more fluidity and economy of motion. For us cyclists it's particularly good for letting you get into an aero position on the bike and not have your back seize up mid-race. Stretching at the end of a workout is a great way to improve general flexibility, thereby improving on the bike positioning, thereby improving speed and power output. This guy has really good hamstring flexibility and core strength. That's a big part of how he crushes pedals on a TT bike.

And in my next post, I'll discuss core strength.

Also, as promised, here's a video of a cyclocross race gone right.