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Cycling Training Tips

Cycling Training

Tapering for an Important Cycling Race

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If you have a major season goal in front of you, a reasonable tapering protocol can supercharge your cycling performance. Even though this is not breaking news, many cyclists don’t benefit (enough) from tapering.

In most cases people train hard and have a big training volume until one week before their season goal. After one week of reduced training volume, your performance will increase and you may believe that you’ve done everything right.

Advanced tapering protocol for a cycling race

However, if you’ve trained structured for months before a single prioritised race, you’ll probably benefit from a longer period of gradually reduced training volume. You have accumulated stress (progressive overload) that takes longer to recover from than just seven days.

Actually, some riders can benefit from up to 4 weeks of tapering and still reach better performance levels.

Have a look at the illustration below:

cycling-race-tapering-advanced


As you can see on the illustration, performance goes up for each week of tapering. And you’ll reach a higher level of performance than with only one week of recovery.

Please don’t focus too much on the numbers, they are only to illustrate my points: Two weeks of tapering is most often better than just one week of tapering and adding another two weeks with slightly reduced training volume may further improve your performance. As I said: you can reduce training volume for a month without compromising your performance.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that we are all different. What works for one athlete may not have the same effects on another. So if you already have a tapering protocol that works, there is no need to make significant changes. However, if you prefer to use only one week of recovery before major season goals, you may find inspiration in this article. Maybe you should try to add one week of extra tapering before your next important race.

I have used the principles discussed above in my e-book ‘Time Effective Cycling Training’ where you’ll find a complete 16-week training program with a tapering protocol for a major season goal.

In the next article, I’ll discuss some of the principles I recommend for interval training during tapering. Stay tuned!

The Forgotten Power of Training Volume

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I’ve competed in cycling races as an athlete for just one season, which was back in 1998. My best friend and I were almost at the same level and did most of our training together. In the spring, my friend began to add 5 to 10km at the end of each ride to add more distance to his training volume.

I remember how I thought ‘what a waste of time’ riding additional relatively low intensity kilometers at the end of a long training session.

What I didn’t realise was that he was doing that little extra to achieve better results.

And it worked!

He performed – consistently – just a little better than me during the entire spring season.

This experience taught me how small tweaks to your current training can make significant improvements over time. And also, it illustrates a valuable point: small changes are easier to consume than major ones.

Sometimes you should take that extra kilometer.

It’s more than just a mental shift.

Even small steps add up over the long term. If you train for five days per week and add 5km to each ride, you’ll end up with 100km extra per month.

That’s more comfortable to consume than adding an extra 100km ride on one of your recovery days.

Also, it gives a mental boost to know that you are pushing just a little harder. If you increase your training volume now, there is a good chance that your performance goes up within 6 weeks.

How much should your training volume increase?

I suggest you add about 2 hours to your current training volume. For most riders, that is probably 20% +/- of their current training volume. If you only train 5-6 hours per week, it might sound like a lot to add an additional two hours to your training volume.

However, it is possible to go up to a training volume of 7-8 hours and still have at least a few days without training per week. Therefore, if you just use a reasonable structure of your training, you can easily increase your training volume without overtraining.

If you are already training more than 20hours per week, you should consider whether there are other areas in your training that need more attention. Adding more volume might not be the answer for you.

One of the most important tips I give to riders is structure.

It’s probably the single most valuable change I make to training plans. If you have a solid structure on your training – with a perfect mix of hard days and recovery – you’ll get stronger.

If you want to increase your training volume and just find it difficult to find enough time for training, I suggest you analyze where you spend your time at the moment. You’d be surprised to see how much time you spend on non-training tasks.

Many riders spend enormous amounts of time on activities where they don’t train.

They chat with each other before and after each training session, they repair and optimize bikes, they watch cycling races on the television and read cycling magazines.

I understand that cycling is a hobby and most of these actions are part of it.

However, if you want to find more time for cycling because you desperately want to increase performance, then you need to eliminate the time consumers.

It sounds reasonable to limit chatting before and after training to a minimum and hold all the discussions on the roads instead. If you add 10 minutes here and there, you’ll soon ride much more than you are used to.

Also, it’s not unlikely you can squeeze an extra hour or two for training if you decide to ride on your bike instead of watching a professional cycling race on the television. Perhaps you have your own time consumer that can be limited or totally eliminated.

Remember that if you overall goal is important enough for you, it is also easier to find the solutions to make your goals realistic (hint: always have a goal with your training). Anytime, you can always ask yourself whether a specific action takes you closer to your goal or not.

Training Volume Does Matter

Interval training is important, but additional volume (at endurance intensity) has proven to improve performance for many athletes. It has been seen so many times that people with large training volumes achieve fantastic results.

You can argue that these riders could achieve the same results with less training. Personally I’m a strong believer of time effective training, but I also agree that volume training is a safe and valuable component in endurance training.

However, it is worth noting that endurance training in itself can achieve extremely good results without any organised interval training. Doing a heavy amount of long distance endurance training combined with a few races has been a winning training formula for many professional riders over the last 50 years.

I can think of many arguments as to why adding VO2 max training or other sophisticated intervals might be better than sole endurance training. However, it is remarkable how well riders that rely on endurance training only perform in races.

I won’t go into a discussion whether these riders should change their training methods or how much you can gain with a different approach.

Instead, I use these riders to illustrate how strong results you can achieve with endurance training and use that as an example on how an increased training volume can make you better.

If you ask a professional rider from the world tour, I’ll be surprised if he hasn’t at least the magically 10.000+ hrs under his belt. Training volume definitively plays a major role for professional riders as well as other race cyclists.

Mountain Bike Training for Beginners

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Here is comprehensive post about mountain bike training for beginners. The article is written by Cecilia Potts who is former junior mountain bike world champion and professional cyclist. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the reading. However, you may need an extra cup midway through this article, it’s quite long… Enjoy!

Mountain biking can be a little intimidating when you’re a beginner.
If you’re anything like me, the first time I took my tires onto an off-road trail it didn’t look anything like the YouTube videos that show up with a search for mountain biking.

My first few mountain bike experience wasn’t worth watching except for maybe for the scenery!

Instead of mastering off-road cycling on the first try, riding a mountain bike was a lot of learning from the school of hard knocks…thank goodness for the bicycle helmet!

The good news is learning how to ride a mountain bike doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, with some planning and basic understanding of physics, your first ride can be as easy as taking a walk in the park.

Before Your First Ride

The bike. The bicycle you select — whether, you rent, borrow or buy—has do two things:

1.) It must match your skill level.
2.) It has to fit properly.

Aaron ‘Moose’ Reichert has made a career out of helping people get into mountain biking. When a beginner mountain bike rider comes to him to get set up with a bike, they’re often drawn to the ultra, high-end mountain bikes they see in the glossy magazines.

Buying the most expensive bike before you’ve ever tried mountain biking isn’t going to make the sport easier to master. Actually, it will probably make it more complicated. The more bells and whistles and “higher end” your bicycle it is, the harder it’s going to be to learn the fundamental skills of mountain bike riding.

Trying to figure out how to set the rebound on your rear shock and adjust your disc brakes is going to take away the focus you need for learning how to stay upright when your bicycle is heading down a bumpy trail.

“The most important thing for a beginner is a properly fitted bike that’s apt to their skills. Too much bike can sometimes be a little squirrelly,” explains Moose.

It’s like giving a 16-year-old the keys to a Ferrari, it’s just not a good match.
Beyond the bicycle there are couple other things that can make or break your first mountain biking experience. Words of wisdom: get a good helmet, make sure you like how the saddle fits your rear end, and invest in a good pair of shorts.

The helmet is one of the most important accessories that beginners often overlook. You will fall and crash as a beginner, intermediate, and even at the professional level. Professional mountain bike racer Jason Moeschler, whose been riding mountain bikes for nearly 30 years, says that a good helmet with a good retention system (the way that it fits and is fastened to your head) is a must for beginners. Another important accessory are your bike shorts.

“The biggest mistake might be giving up on mountain biking because of not being comfortable on their bike. Having the proper bike position, comfortable saddle, suspension setup, and quality chamois makes all the difference.” says professional mountain bike racer Gretchen Reeves.

There are opportunity costs before you even go on your first mountain bike ride. And, for some beginner riders, it’s more cost effective to buy the helmet and comfy shorts and then just borrow a bicycle to see if they like the sport well enough to buy a bike.

There’s nothing wrong with getting a loaner bicycle, but Moeschler cautions before you do take it out, make sure it has been looked over by a bicycle mechanic so that it’s properly tuned.

Your First Ride

The term ‘mountain biking’ is a little bit misleading because ‘off-road cycling’ is really what it is. You don’t have to inch your way up to the top of a steep precipice or barrel down the side of a mountain to go mountain biking. And really, when you’re first getting started riding a mountain bike, it’s better to build the skills you need in a less intimidating environment.

Choose a trail that doesn’t include dynamic terrain and altitude changes. Finding the right trail for you can come from talking with friends who are mountain bikers and asking for advice from your local bicycle shop.

There are also many Internet resources that can direct you to nearby trails and provide ratings regarding their difficulty.

Getting into mountain biking can be frustrating because it’s not like riding a bicycle on a paved surface. Off-road cycling includes the added difficulty levels of uneven surfaces, unmovable objects (trees and rocks), and nature—like puddles, streams and trails.

If you’re used to going out and riding 35KM on the road bike, plan on half the distance on the mountain bike taking twice as long. Point being, even if the trails you first choose to ride on are short 5KM or 10KM loops, it’s possible that it will take more than an hour to cover that kind of distance because of those added levels of difficulty.

Unfortunately, there’s no secret formula for your first ride.

It’s basically a trial by fire.

I wish I had better news for beginning mountain bike riders. However, there is a good and highly-scientific method used to measure the success of your first, second, third, 19th, 443rd and 999th ride…

How many times did you smile?

Really, it’s that simple. No matter how frustrating it was feeling like the little metal ball in a pinball machine as you were banging along the trail, at some point you’re likely to have cracked a smile.

That moment when you were able to pedal up and over a steep incline without putting your foot down, or when you blasted through the stream crossing without ending up going for a swim; those little successes are huge confidence builders and make all the pain and anguish (trust me, there will be pain and anguish) 100-percent worthwhile.

Even though the smiling part is serious, there is a little bit more to helping you have a successful first ride.

Never crash on your mountain bike or use a helmet

Basic Mountain Bike Skills

There are two skills that will make your first mountain bike ride go more smoothly:
1.) Braking.
2.) Shifting.
Braking. It’s intuitive to lock up the brakes when we’re in a dangerous or confusing situation. We do it on our road bicycles, we do it in our cars, and you will do it on a mountain bike. Locking up the brakes and skidding is almost always the first stage of a crash scenario.

Here’s how it plays out: too much speed, obstacle sighted, undeveloped skills to handle obstacle, too much brake, uncontrolled skid, tires lose contact or traction, rider goes down.

The entire crash and burn scene can be omitted from your first few rides if you learn a.) to control your speed, b.) when to brake, and c.) how to brake.

Speed control is just as important when going fast as it is when going slow.

Obviously, when you’re going down a hill or grade you are going to gather speed. Going fast can be fun and it probably will make you smile, but how you handle it is key. When you achieve terminal velocity, you’ve missed the golden opportunity to effectively brake (without potentially breaking yourself).

A good rule of thumb is when you catch yourself thinking or saying, “Whoa, that’s a little fast,” it’s time to put on the brakes and slow that train down. Notice the word ‘brakes,’ as in plural.

Your bike has two brakes, a front and a rear. You need them both.

If you grab a handful of just the back brake, you’ll start skidding and likely going sideways. Not only is this dangerous for you because the risk of losing control and crashing, but it’s also incredibly damaging to the condition of the trail.

Skidding on a trail can cause a rut to develop and ultimately lead to trail erosion. The opposite of using just the rear brake is using only the front brake. Bad idea.

YouTube search the term “mountain bike endo” and watch the results of going all in on the front brake only. The sweet spot for braking is using some of both the front and the rear brakes.

“When you go in for a brake job on your car how many times do you do your need rear brake pads? It’s almost always the front. You do your front. Seventy percent of the car’s stopping power is handled by the front brakes. A mountain bike is no different than a car,” explains Moose.

Shifting. Your bike has gears, use them. Many times when we’re learning how to ride a bicycle off road, we focus so intently on keeping the bike upright that we forget about making it easy for us to pedal the bicycle forward.

Unless you’ve chosen a single-speed bike for your first mountain bike, you’ve got a whole mess of gears to help you keep pedaling as you go up and over hills and through rocky or sandy stretches of trail.

People talk about low and high gears when riding their mountain bikes. You might hear a fellow rider say, “I rode that steep uphill section in such a high gear and crushed it.” High gear, uphill, crushed it, this guy must be be a mountain biking master.

Sounds good, right? WRONG.

This guy made the task-at-hand way too difficult at the expense of his own knees.

Remember this: a ‘high gear’ equals the chain on the smallest cog on the rear wheel, which means you’ll be making fewer pedal revolutions. Yes, it gives you more torque in a situation, but it is also makes it feel difficult to pedal. Like you have to force your weight onto the pedals just to get the wheels to turn.

When you encounter a steep or an uphill section, shift your bike into a ‘low gear.’ In other words, the chain should be on the biggest cog on the rear wheel. This is going to allow you turn the cranks more easily and do what people mean when they say “spin up the climb.” Your legs will be spinning the cranks faster than the bike is rolling forward but you’ll be able to make it up the climb without taking your feet off the pedals.

Shifting your gears is all about timing. The better you get at shifting, the more efficient you’ll be on the trail. Don’t be afraid to try out different gears on the trail. It will take a while to hone on the combinations that work best for you.

It’s a good idea to ride your mountain bike a few times on a surface you’re comfortable with before taking to the trail. Go around the block or on a paved path and practice shifting and braking. Learn what it feels like to shift your bike.

Experiment with the brakes. Try changing gears on a small hill.

You have to pedal to shift the bike properly, there’s a sweet spot of power from your legs that will help shift the bike smoothly without jamming the gears.

The BONUS third skill is balance.

Balance. It’s hard to learn what balance on a bicycle means just by reading about it. But, in a nutshell, balance is all about where your body’s weight is on the bicycle at all times.

The best way to think about balance on a mountain bike is to think of the the bicycle as the lever and your body as the fulcrum. As the terrain shifts or obstacles are encountered, it’s up to you to keep the bike upright. Riding a mountain bike is a very active activity. It requires you to constantly shift your weight forward, rear, and side-to-side.

Going down a hill, you’ll want to move your body weight aft on the bicycle.

This means taking your rear end off the seat and moving backwards. By doing this, you’re removing weight from the front wheel, which will allow you to more easily roll over bumps with out getting pitched forward off the bike.

Think of it this way, if you’re going down hill and you have too much weight on your front wheel, it’s possible that when you hit a bump your front wheel could stop short and your inertia will cause you to continue forward sans bicycle.

Going up a hill you want exactly the opposite stance. You’ll want to scoot forward on the saddle (yes, the skinny part of the saddle will be uncomfortably personal with your butt) or just stand up, while using your body weight to keep enough traction on the rear tire so it doesn’t spin out.

Keep smiling if you fall of your mountain bike

If you don’t do this, and just keep your butt on the saddle, the front wheel will do a sort of ‘pop-a-wheelie’ behavior, and you’ll go over backwards.

“I tell beginners that on hills, you’re always off the saddle in the attack position. You’re a wrestler, you’re a ninja, you are ready to attack! If you are stiff on the bicycle your body can’t receive the jolts,” says Moose.

And, when you’re body’s stiff on the bicycle, you can’t balance as well.

Lateral balance is a little bit more of an intermediate concept, but still an important one to be aware of when you’re first learning how to ride a mountain bike.

Think of orange-barrier cones set up tightly in a straight line. Your job is to weave your bicycle through the cones in an s-shape pattern. How are you going to do that without falling over? Easy, you are going to move your body from right to left as you slalom through the cones.

Same goes when you’re riding along on a skinny section of single track trail that’s lined with the occasional tree. Lateral balance and movements with your body keep the bicycle upright and moving forward.

Braking! Shifting! Balance! No problem piece of cake. You’ve got this. Go out for a ride, then read the next section.

Tips and Tricks
Nobody likes to make a mistake. That’s probably why you’re reading this before you go out for that first ride. You want to know if there are common pitfalls—preventable incidents—that you can be aware of before it’s too late.

How to prevent mountain bike mistakes

Take a skills clinic and learn from riders who are better than you.
Even the pros do it, self included (I’m a retired professional racer). A couple years ago, I was having the hardest time making it through this 25KM downhill without having to stop. For days I practiced, alone, and kept making the same mistakes and not progressing.

An opportunity came up for me to ride the course with mountain bike enduro racing legend Mark Weir and world champion downhill racer Brian Lopes, and I went out with them. They opened my eyes to ways to ride the sections I was having problems with that I’d never even considered. The result was a close to flawless ride my next time on the course, and a new set of skills to apply to the next time I came to a downhill section that I couldn’t figure out.

Both professional racers Moeschler and Reeves agree that skills clinics and following someone who’s a better rider than you can really improve your skills quickly.

“What really helped was riding with people who were better and more experienced than me; this is true for both climbing or descending. Following someone who knows what they’re doing really helps with understanding form and positioning on your bike relative to the terrain,” explains Moeschler.

Reeves adds, “I typically see huge improvements in the one and two-day camps that I have taught. It improves confidence and makes it that much more fun!”

Taking the Next Steps: Equipment

In the Before Your First Ride section, the topic of equipment was discussed. Getting the right bike. Getting a good helmet and a good pair of shorts. After you’ve been out on the mountain bike a few times, and you enjoy it, there are a few more pieces of equipment (and skills) that will help you be a better rider.

There are four pieces of mountain bike equipment to put on your short list:
1.) Eyewear
2.) Gloves
3.) Water
4.) Repair kit

Next to the helmet, eyewear—sunglasses or clear lens glasses—are the most important piece of safety gear when riding a bicycle. It’s likely that you will encounter tree branches, flying rocks, dust, and bright sunlight while out on the trail.

Getting slapped in the face by a tree branch will induce the natural reaction of shutting your eyes (don’t do that! you can’t see the trail then!), but if you have a protective lens covering your eye, there’s a greatly reduced chance that your eyes will be injured. Even simple dust is a problem.

Trust me, you’ll be covered by it if you’re riding anywhere that’s dry. Mud, too. Mountain bike tires have a great way of flicking mud and rocks up into your face. My personal preference is to have an eyewear system that allows me to change my lenses depending on conditions. Tinted for bright light situations. Yellow or amber for low light situations. And sometimes clear.

Mountain biking is said to be tough on the legs. It’s tough on the hands, too. Much worse than if you’re just riding your road bike or city bike around. The uneven terrain causes a lot of jostling of the handlebars. You’re going to be hanging on to those bars. All that movement causes friction between your palms/fingers and the rubber handlebar grips.

A pair of good quality gloves can greatly reduce the blisters that friction can cause and offer your palms some padding.

There are a lot of choices when it comes to gloves. Long-finger, short-finger, padded, no pad…the list goes on. Over the years, I’ve moved to wearing a long finger, dirt-bike style glove. I choose a long finger glove because of protection. My hands are covered with scars—reminders of being an athlete more than 20 years. Long-fingered gloves keep the skin on my hands out of harm’s way. I don’t have second thoughts about heading through brush that might scratch my hands, or worry about scraping up my palms if I do go down in a crash.

Keeping hydrated while riding is really important. Moose says to invest in a water bottle. That’s sound advice, and these days the water bottle has been taken one step farther with the water bladder back pack. Riding with a gear pack that contains a bladder actually kills two birds with one stone.

First, you have a huge reservoir of water with you—more than you could ever carry with just a water bottle. Second you have a gear pack, an easy way to carry just about anything including tools to fix your bike when it breaks. Eventually you will have a breakdown.

Simple bicycle repair is a skill that all riders must learn. There are no bike shops out along the trail. I’ve checked for them already, and learned that eventually you need to learn how to fix a broken chain, change a flat, and make adjustments to your bicycle all on your own.

You don’t need to carry an entire shop in your gear pack or seat pack, but carrying the following items will give you peace of mind and not leave you to walk back to the trailhead: spare tube, small pump, tire levers, multi-tool that includes a chain tool, and a little bit of duct tape.

If you don’t know how to fix a flat tire, learn from someone and then practice. If you don’t know how to fix a broken chain, learn from someone.

And finally there’s the duct tape. I keep a section that’s about as long as my forearm wrapped around a tire lever. I’ve used it to temporarily ‘fix’ broken saddles, fraying cables, and torn bicycle shorts (that was an embarrassing crash). I’ve also used it to connect a makeshift splint to my ankle and finger after a crash. Duct tape isn’t going to make your ride better, but it can help you make it out of the woods before dark and allow you to finish your ride.

Mountain biking is a sport that beginners can become proficient at quickly, and it’s a sport that provides on going enjoyment and opportunities to improve for years to come. I hope you enjoy your new sport and welcome any questions you might have.

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Marginal Gains (Using Tiny Improvements to Increase Cycling Performance)

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Dave Brailsford introduced us to a new way of thinking when he entered the cycling scene with Team Sky and the principle of ‘marginal gains.’ The British cycling coach and manager has won seven out of the last eight editions of Tour de France. Difficult not to consider if there is something we can learn from him. 

I believe it is a philosophy that you can easily use to achieve better results. In this blog post, I will try to explain how you can implement and use marginal gains to your advantage. 

What is the concept of marginal gains?

The beauty of adding small incremental improvements in any process so they can make a significant improvement when they are all added together.

When race cyclists, cycling coaches, and cycling experts evaluate cycling races, there is a strong tendency to look straight at the top of the podium. There is a mantra called ‘the winner is always right.’ It is tempting to find inspiration from the best rider, and there is also a valid reason to pay attention: the winner crossed the line before everyone else. Brailford has had several victories on Champ.

However, ‘the winner is always right’ mentality may limit your creative process of developing improvements to your race performance. It is clear that the 1st place probably did many things pretty well. It is the sum of all his training, race-specific preparation, nutritional strategy, tactical moves, and technical performance that made him cross the finish line before the peloton.

But if you split all the elements that are related to your race performance up in atoms, you will find places for improvements. Guaranteed.

From a scientific perspective, you will have to accept that many of these minor tweaks can not be proved statistically. Even if there is a gain, let’s say 0.5%, it is impossible to prove that there is an actual advantage, but the sum of all these small gains will, hopefully, make a competitive advantage.

First of all, you should focus long term – Rome wasn’t built in a day. Looking for many marginal gains is a philosophy that will not make huge improvements in the short run. There are normally no quick wins. It is no miracle cure. Instead, this behavioral approach will secure you significant and incremental improvements in the long term.

And it should be an ongoing process. You will have to adapt to a routine where you always aim to make things better. As  you get started to implement small gains, they will begin to accumulate, and over time, you will give yourself a clear advantage. 

Actually, I had such a challenge back in 2015 where I got the opportunity to coach Mads Würtz Schmidt who had won the U23 world championship just two months before. I guess this is probably the most difficult time you can ever begin a relationship with a new rider. Seriously, what can possibly be improved next season? 

Though, it is no secret that coaching the world champion is a challenge, but not so easy task. All basic and advanced training advice are redundant and have been implemented for several years. Nearly all professional riders know and how to use solid principles for training, nutrition, and recovery.

Building on all the great principles used from previous seasons makes perfect sense when you wear the rainbow-colored jersey. Just imagine what people and the press expect from a rider who has just won the World championship. There are really no good reasons to make major changes. And lots of reasons to be blamed if the following season is no success. 

So it is tempting to just hit the ‘repeat’ button and let him do the same over again.

In such a situation, it makes sense to consider the concept of marginal gains. Actually, very small changes are not as scary to implement as larger ones. If you make harmless small adjustments, who can say they have significant negative influence?

So I decided to look for tiny improvements that could help him improve further. And set a clear goal for the first season: a pro contract on the world tour. 

Looking for marginal gains using extensive analysis of cycling races and training sessions

Through my data analysis, it was clear that it was still possible to add more training volume and total workload, which is not surprising for a 21-year old rider. There is a logic, natural progress in training volume, training intensity, and total race volume for the most talented riders. Even though you are among the best in your age group, you are not maxed out in training volume. Therefore, the most reasonable way to plan training is to make progress in training volume and add slightly more races (also more difficult races) to his calendar. 

Secondly, there were all those small improvements that made sense from a theoretical point of view. These changes can be considered as ‘marginal gains.’ 

For example: 

  • extended recovery time between sets during weight lifting
  • adding sessions with pace behind scooter as race preparation
  • lowering bodyweight for specific races
  • adding race-specific intervals according to the race calendar
  • heat acclimatization for certain events
  • altitude camps for better performance in altitude
  • aerodynamics in road bike and TT setup

And also several small, technical changes in race setup that could have a positive influence on performance (bike fitting tweaks, ceramic bearings, etc.) Again, it is a question of finding meaningful improvements that you believe will give you an advantage. 

Marginal gains at amateur level

It is clear that a 360-degree analysis of every single process associated with Tour de France makes sense when you are Dave Brailsford. And it makes sense when I coach a 21-year danish rider who has just recently won the U23 world championships. 

But what is the take-home message for you? Marginal gains can be used at the amateur level as well, but it is very important to remember that all the basics should be implemented before you begin to look for marginal gains.

It sounds tempting (and quite easy), but please remember that everything else should be close to perfect (training volume, intensity, frequency, recovery, etc.) 

If you think longer cycling socks will do the trick and make you MUCH faster, you will probably be disappointed using the marginal gains philosophy. 

So get the basics right. 

Then keep an eye for areas where you can add tiny improvements to your cycling performance. If you believe in what you do, there is also a better chance you will succeed.

Mountain Bike AND Road Bike Training – Does it make sense?

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Here’s a classic conundrum: you love mountain bike racing and you love road racing, but you’re not quite sure how to tailor a training schedule that will give you the best of all worlds when it comes to racing each discipline. Have no fear, training to race on the road and on the mountain bike don’t have to be mutually exclusive — AND (and maybe best of all) riding each discipline will help the other.

One of the mistakes I made in my racing career was not spending enough time on the mountain bike. Even though mountain bike racing was “my sport,” and road racing was something that I just did, I spent 85 percent of my training time on the road bike.

Why? Lots of reasons, including:

  • The road was more accessible.
  • Finding trails to fit my training need wasn’t always possible.
  • Daylight – after school or work, I had a finite amount of daylight hours for training.

If any of the above are reasons you’ve chosen to train on the road rather than the mountain bike, I do have some suggestions as to how you can get more time on the mountain bike and still accomplish your weekly training schedule goals.

Suggestion #1 – Use your mountain bike for time trial training

Let’s face it, a mountain bike race is really a mass-start time trial on rough terrain. So why not train for it? One of the reasons I came to like road racing so much (not so much criterium racing) was because road races hardly ever started like mountain bike races. At a mountain bike race, the gun goes off and everyone goes anaerobic within the first 500 meters, and the pace stays fervent for the entire length of the race. I realized my training on the mountain bike had to emulate this.

Find a week night training series and go race your mountain bike. It turned out that there was a Wednesday night training race series hosted within an hour’s drive from where I lived. The training race provided all the benefits of a time trial and I was able to log some miles in the dirt, which also helped hone my off-road skills. Another benefit was being able to see where my pace put me among my competitors.

Suggestion #2 – Pick a section of trail that works for Vo2 Max intervals

One of the many things that I found difficult about mountain bike racing was making good line selections and course choices while being anaerobic. It seemed like the lack of oxygen in my brain (all of it was fueling my legs) was causing me to make silly, time-wasting mistakes in the technical trail sections. I needed practice riding at my max while making my way through tough terrain.

  • Find a climb that connects to a technical section of trail.
  • Ride your first Vo2 Max interval and mark your finish spot.
  • Recover by riding back down to the start of the climb.
  • Repeat. Each time marking your progress.

When I did this, I found at the half-way point of the interval training workout, I covered my farthest distance on the trail. By the time I was onto my last interval, I would finish somewhere near the place I finished on my first interval. It was good to see the positive forward progress, and it also was beneficial to see how my ability to negotiate technical sections deteriorated as I grew tired.

Suggestion # 3 – Convert a long road ride into a long mountain bike ride

You’re training schedule says you need four to six hours in the saddle on the road. You know the pace needs to be Zone 2 and a little bit of Zone 3. Why not take the mountain bike out instead?

No, I’m not suggesting you take a four to six hour mountain bike training ride (though the more I ride the more I enjoy these “epics”). I’ve always equated two to three hours on the mountain bike at steady Zone 2 and some bits of Zone 3 with four to six hours on the road bike with the same Zone effort. Training on the road is always solid, but if you are able to spend a little extra time on your mountain bike, it’s only going to help improve your technical skills. And, it can help prepare you for taking terrain when you’re tired and no longer fresh.

Combining road and mountain bike training – an unexpected benefit.

Remember how I mentioned I didn’t much like criterium racing in the section under Suggestion #1? Well, I still don’t like crits, but I got better at them over time and it was because of the time I spent training on my mountain bike.

Mountain biking is intense. Crits are intense. When you’re ripping through a section of trail, you might find your self braking, immediately accelerating, and leaning to miss a tree or rock all within seconds of each other. I’ve had similar experiences in crits (sans the trees and rocks).

As the pelotan approaches a corner in a fast crit, the first 10 riders or so make it through and never touch their brakes and then accelerate out of the apex. The rest of the field starts to touch their brakes, and as the peloton takes the corner the braking and acceleration becomes more intense the farther back in the field you are. The sketchiness of the riders around you also becomes more of an issue. One guy is grabbing a handful or brake in the middle of the corner and another just skipped his back wheel because he dragged a pedal.

Having spent time training on your mountain bike, you’ve learned to better react and respond to all of the above:

  • Sudden braking and hard accelerations are unavoidable on mountain bike.
  • A sketchy rider who makes a mistake is just like responding to rock or root in the trail.

Because of the intensity of mountain biking, a sudden breakaway in the field doesn’t surprise you, you’re ready to pour on the power and sustain it.

Mountain biking and road cycling compliment each other in many ways. I wish I would have learned earlier in my career how to better use each discipline to help bolster my skills and strengths in the other. Hopefully, you’ll be able to use these suggestions to augment your training program and become more successful on race day – no matter what bike you’re on when you roll up to the starting line.