September 2016

Race Report: Performance Evaluation at its best

The race is over, you have made it back home. Your to-do list includes cleaning your bike, looking over your training plan for the next day, and uploading your data to Training Peaks and maybe Strava. What else is missing? Your Race Report.

From a coaching perspective, race data is pure gold. Due to adrenaline, expectation, stress, and competition, racing provides excellent insight into an athlete’s potential. Tons of data, each bit, can be analyzed and interpreted. All of this is objective. However, there is a subjective portion of this analysis that is equally, if not sometimes, even more important. The racer’s evaluation and this piece of the pie are the one most overlooked.

Race Report Power Distribution Curve — Athlete Power Distribution Curve – WKO4

Quantifying performance during a race is easy with all of the gadgets available, from power meter to heart rate to SMO2 monitors. Training Peaks and WKO4 provide the analysis tools. However, the race narrative requires more information. What was your Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)? How well did you hydrate before the race? Is work stressful? The mechanism to capture all this data is the Race Report.

Amateur racers come from all walks of life, switching from spandex to business attire come Monday morning. So when they take the preverbal pen to paper, the output is equally diverse. Race Reports range from the coldly analytical to the award-winning novelette. Some reports are informal storytelling around the coffee shop while others appear on a blog. While the style and means of dissemination differ, effective Race Reports contain the same item, the athlete’s reflection on their performance.

The Race Report helps the athlete reflect on his experience. What went well? What failed? Were goals met? Why or why not? The Race Report gives the coach invaluable information to be used in training plan development. It is the story behind that new FTP number or new 1-minute power number. For example, a CX racer felt he had mounting/dismounting down. During a race, he came into the barriers slightly ahead of three riders. Post-barrier, he found himself in fourth. How could this happen? That experience, not visible in just data, gives insight on the confidence and the speed the athlete could negotiate on this part of the course.

The Race Report also provides an interesting mental picture of the athlete and the race. Ironically, when an athlete does well, they respond with talking about tactics and making the break. When their expectation is not met, it shifts to fitness and preparation. The Race Report provides the ice-breaker for some tough conversations. For example, a female athlete wanting to podium at a major race has the power numbers to finish in the top 3 in most local races, yet lacks confidence during more aggressive crits. The power files show matches still left to burn, and the Race Report tells of losing position in the final lap. The numbers show it was not fitness that held her back, rather confidence and opens to door to the discussion of racing in a couple of men’s fields to overcome this challenge.

For a coach, the most useful aspect is the insight on their actual power numbers. If the athlete hit a new five-minute number, was it because they were trying to bridge and the “rabbit” in front of them was enough to get them not to sit up at the four and a half minute mark.

The ~~Formula~~ Template

There is no formula for writing a race report, but here is a simple template that I use.

The Event
– Name
– Where
– When
– Type
– Finishing position and the number of racers

Course description – nothing too long but note any key elements. An eight corner crit is very different than a crit on an oval track.

The content of the race reports provides the reflection of the athlete on their performance. A quick note on timing. Bicycle racing is like everything else. Ofter a day a good performance, becomes great, at the end of the week, it becomes eligible for the archives on Mount Olympus. For a bad performance, each day it worsens. So take the time, the evening of the race, or at the latest the next day, to write out your thoughts.

Warm-up / Prep – this is a significant category. What was the athlete’s mood? How did they sleep the night before? What was their nutrition? Did they follow their pre-race schedule? (More on this in a future entry)

Assessment of their training – this helps the coach and the athlete fine tune their training. Does the athlete think that they were ill prepared for the power requirements of the race? Did they get dropped because they just could not match the strength of the rider in front? Did they ride off the front because the other riders just could not keep up with them?

The Race

This is a narrative of the race. In the athlete’s view, how did it play out? What were their failures and their successes? What could they have done better? Talk about the finish. Was there a sprint finish, how did they feel? Were they tactically sound?

If they were first, how did they get there? If they were on the podium but not the top step, why not first? If they were just field fodder, why did I lose?

Yes, writing a race report takes time and thought. I like to have my athletes either write them that Sunday night or reflect on their performance during their Monday recovery ride and then after the ride write it out. A good race report will give both the athlete and the coach a valuable means of evaluating their performance and should be completed after every race, from first place to a DNF.

Don’t wait too long to write the Race Report or it turns into a fish story….good races become Olympic Gold medal stories, and bad races are epic fails.

Want to read some of KyleCoaching athlete’s Race Reports? They are here.

Utilizing Power with your Cyclocross Training

Another cyclocross season is here and it’s time to step-up the training. Over the past three years, the science of cycling analytics has continued to expand. A spectrum of software and internet sites provide the means to analyze daily rides, identify strengths and weaknesses, track adherence to a training plan and a whole lot more. In late 2015, TrainingPeaks released the long-awaited WKO4. One item heavily discussed was an update to Dr. Andy Coggan’s Power Training Levels. The update was termed, Coggan’s Individualized Training Levels, iLevels for short. In a nutshell, it blends Coggan’s original training levels tied to a threshold and critical power model based on performance.

We, KyleCoaching, transitioned to iLevels at the beginning of the 2016 season, and it fundamentally changed our training philosophy. For those of you who race cross and have a power meter on your CX bike, we can use these Coggan precepts to refine your training plan.

To understand how KyleCoaching uses these iLevels along with your power data for cyclocross, we start with a discussion of periodization, how each phase is constructed, the requirements of a cross race, and finally, what your workouts will look like and how we will measure them.

For this discussion, I assume your cross season runs from September to early December. If you are racing US Nationals, then we can expand the plan out to that date, but for discussion, let’s assume the season will end around the first week of December.

The first thing to do is set the stage using periodization. Since cross season only lasts about five months, the traditional Annual Training Plan (ATP) does not fit. I will set it up using Base, Build, and Perform. We define Base as June to August; Build August and September, and Perform as September and November.

During Base, we focus on high volume, steady state intervals, and other workouts that build muscular strength. Cyclocross plans usually do not incorporate a Base period because most athletes are gaining a solid aerobic base during their road season. The high volume gives the athlete the aerobic base necessary to do more high-intensity interval work. I like to see most of my athletes coming off of a road season with a Chronic Training Load (CTL) of greater than 80 TSS/day.

The Build phase of a cross training plan consists of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), repeats, running (especially sprints) all done on a cross-like course, on a cross bike. During the Build phase, we focus on Functional Reserve Capacity (FRC) and Functional Threshold Power (FTP).

During Perform phase, we assume the athlete is racing almost every weekend. With that said, the Build and Perform phases may look similar. However, the target of each phase differs, as we shift from focusing in on the athlete’s FTP to the maximum power they can produce.

Why does this sound so different from your standard road training plans? Cyclocross places different demands on the rider compared to road racing. Your typical cyclocross race is between 30 and 60 minutes. Before you think, “Sounds like a grass crit!”, remember that one can sit in the group and recover in a road crit. In a CX race, there is nowhere to hide, which requires very specific energy systems.

The primary systems used during a CX Race are the ones that produce FRC/FTP and muscular endurance. These systems are supported by the athlete’s muscular strength and the force (torque x RPM) that they can supply to the pedals. As I mentioned earlier, a good aerobic base will help support high-intensity training but having significant stamina, being able to do long tempo rides, and active recovery rides just are not necessary.

How do we develop plans to support these systems? During the fall months, everyone becomes a Time Crunched Cyclist. The days get shorter; weather begins to change, and family obligations from Soccer practices start to interfere with nightly rides. The first thing we do is rank in importance the systems that need to be developed for cross.

The most important system is the FRC/FTP system. If you are used to the old Coggan training zones, this is VO2Max workouts. These are intervals that last between 2-5 minutes and are in the athletes FRC/FTP training zone. We start with three intervals and work up to about 8. These intervals mimic the stresses of VO2 efforts in a typical cross race.

The next system to work on is the athlete’s Threshold. Threshold training is fundamental in the KyleCoaching philosophy across all disciplines. Once again workouts consist of intervals of 10-20 minutes at one’s lactate threshold.

Equally as important is the athlete’s Fatigue Resistance. In short, how hard can the athlete go and how repeatable is this effort. In cyclocross, the rider is going full bore then rest, repeat, repeat, repeat. It is paramount in cyclocross to be able to repeat this action over and over.

Once of the factors of repeatability is muscular endurance, the ability of a muscle or group of muscles to sustain repeated contractions against a resistance for an extended period of time. This is not tempo event; it is on and off as mentioned above.

On what do you need to focus to succeed in CX? As you would expect, the answer depends on your strengths and weaknesses as well as your time constraints. On some days, your training session may look like something you did for the road season. Other times, very different. Your workouts will target these two systems, as well as muscular strength. If needed, we can also add some beer hand-up practice.

References:

Critical Power Model
The Power Behind Cyclocross – 5 Key Analytics
What is the Performance Management Chart?
WKO4

Race Report: Bikenetic DirtyCrit (The Crit that wasn’t) – Chris Spurrier

August 27th, a typical warm day at the end of regular MABRA road race season. Bikenetic is known for hosting the last cyclocross race of the year and this year they decided to try something new to close out the road season and bridge into the cyclocross. This event proved to turn typical into the extraordinary, and that it was.

The format was crit racing on gravel at a farm in Virginia, what could go wrong with this? The format was enticing enough to bring out some of the local pros who for most of the race gave the moto (on a dirt bike) a run for their money. We had the typical cyclocross crowd and quite a few roadies on regular road bikes.

A mixture of a cross, road, and commuter bikes toed the lines for each start. I was an early register, so I got a call up for the 4/5 race. Knowing I had a call-up I wanted to treat this race more than the C race my coach set it up for. I wanted to “see what I had”, so much I slacked off a little after a harder weekend of training the week before. Typically I would give up during a race and settle for chasing rabbits later in the race. After all, I was convinced I wasn’t going to do it; cx started in three weeks and I wanted to announce myself.

Typical warm-up getting my HR up and losing up the legs, chatting with a friend I hadn’t seen since last season and making sure the equipment was good. I noticed my legs were tight but figured they would loosen up, or at least hope they would. Finished my warm up a little early because I wasn’t missing my call-up and got to the line about 10 mins before my race. We got our pre-race briefs and the call-ups start. I found myself at the perfect spot on the line ready for great start with no huge obstacles for the fist 500ms.

“30 seconds to start,” I focus on my line and make sure I’m clipped in, press the start on the Garmin and GO! I take off like a bat out of hell leading into the first turn with an 180HR and a field on my ass. “Crap what am I doing this is a crit, not a cross race, there are no obstacle to put between me and the field”. I settled down a few and was finally passed by the “roadies”. I am holding my own in the top 5 for the second lap and them we got the 90 degree turns, a few bad choices and hard accelerations to stay up there took their toll and by the second lap I was in the top 15.

Going into the 4th lap I started to hurt, and worked hard to ignore this, by this time my teammate got up to me and told me to hop on and I followed through into the 5th lap and got cut off hard by someone who thought they had a line. This settled me into the 20th place or so.

I worked here for 3 or 4 laps and soon the group I was with got “lapped” or so we thought and we hopped on their wheel. This spiked the HR and power and the group I was with originally wimped back a few spots and settled back into our groove. With 4 to go I am realizing my legs are feeling better (finally) and am starting to get pissed that I had not pushed hard enough and we started to pick the pace up. I was also wanting to throw up thanks to the heat and trying to drink with gravel dust in my face and throat.

With two to go we started to get passed by again what I thought was 3-5th place (they weren’t) but we hopped on their wheel and the pace picked back up. as we crossed the line with 1 to go I knew I wanted to make a move and leave it all on the line, but as we got closer it looked like the lap cards read 0. I sprinted towards the line and everyone else followed, but no one eased up. I asked if that was the finish, figuring 1st had lapped us. Turned out that was not the case and I was now riding hard with the few that tried to pass us a lap earlier.

Now I knew this was the last lap and after the second turn we ramped it up and picked off a few lapped riders. After the 3rd turn me and another guy took off to open a gap (racing our race of course) and we walked away. As we made the final turn I saw the 200m sign and a lapped rider on the right. They guy I was racing was on my wheel but was staying right so I scooted left and as we neared the lapped rider I moved towards the center to force the guy behind me to slow just a hair, and then I sprinted at the 100m sign. In the end, I got him and it felt like a win, for 23rd place.

This was sketchy, fast, and fun as hell race. I went all in to push myself to hurt and not give up, dust covered and struggling to breathe I think I accomplished this. I felt as though I kept pushing until I couldn’t anymore, thanks to my training I found a reserve and had second chance to do something. Really only two things I wish had gone differently. I pre-rode the course but not at speed, had I done that I would have known my tire pressure was too high and I would have been able to keep the rear wheel on the ground. The other would have been to be more confident in the turns, I race in the mud and on the gravel regularly but I was being way to conservative.

In the end cross is coming and I feel the strongest I have ever been, I cant wait, and I owe much of it to the coaching and support from my coach and teammates.