We are entering part of the year when all of our focus is on the first races and how we are going to fare against our peers after a hard winter’s training.  The excitement is part of the anticipation, as the sign on sheet awaits to kick off the 2013 season.

What you maybe haven’t thought about is how you will fit in your training and progression through the racing months, enabling you to get the most out of your racing and still develop specific areas and build towards your ‘A’ event.

This is a real Juggling Act.  So, what are the factors you need to take into account?

• Current levels of fitness
• Ability to recover and how you have trained to improve this over winter
• What your ‘A’ event and ultimate goals are for the coming season
• How much you have improved your weaknesses prior to the racing season
• Illness/injury that might inhibit your racing when started
• Race program leading up to ‘A’ event

So often we see riders head into the season with good legs and improved fitness from the previous year, only to see that form disappear by April.  The normal quotes we hear in the cycling community are that the rider is ‘burnt out’ or has ‘over trained’ during the winter period and simply could not sustain the form.  More than often this is not the case and the loss of form is down to less obvious factors.  More than often it is actually from a cycle of de-training come the race season.  Strange? I hear you say.  Well, not really.

When we hit the race season, we often place all of our physical and mental energy into the weekend and our focus is on results.  Of course, this is not a bad thing, but we have to keep our focus on mid week training and continuing to work on areas we need to develop and specifics necessary for peak events.  The de-training often comes from too much rest pre and post race, which is a far reduced physical training stimulus than may have taken place over the winter months.  An example of this is a typical Sunday race, the lead up and subsequent recovery from this.  Traditionally, Friday is an easy or rest day, Saturday is an easy pre race spin of a couple of hours, Sunday is a race (2-3hrs) and Monday is another rest day.  So, you can see from the example that only 1 day involves proper physical training stress (the race on Sunday); out of 4 days this is not a lot.  Take into account a puncture/crash or abandoning a race, this again constitutes a lowering of any physical training stimulus or progression that is needed to maintain or grow your form.  Of course, there are many individual factors to take into account, but something we should all take on board.

The flip side of this ‘Juggling Act’ are riders on the other side of the fitness spectrum, those who are under trained or lacking ‘race form’.  We often hear these riders want to race themselves fit and into form, but I would like them to consider the following variables to progress and make marked improvements.

Your ability to recover from the weekend’s racing is a big factor in how you train mid week and achieve consistent, structured training.  We often feel an onset of muscle fatigue 24-48hrs after a race and this muscle fatigue is what leads us to take that extra rest day or sub standard training. So, what is the reason for this?  Your body needs to repair damaged muscles from the previous strenuous effort (the race), the nervous system is working to repair muscles and your cells are working overtime to rebuild damaged tissue.  The good news is that this leads to increased muscle strength and fitness.  However, with lowered fitness, your body’s ability to recover from effort takes longer, which in turn leaves you unable to perform constructive training as your muscles ‘heal’ from the race.  Along with the cellular and nervous system’s process, this strenuous weekend effort can also lead to a lowering of the immune system, which can in turn result in illness/injury that will inhibit your training.  This is not just the result of an intensity your body is not used to, but also poor post event care and nutrition.

So, be aware of the dangers that lie come the race season.  Make your goals clear and continue to look at your physical progress and how best you can achieve this through training and regime, rather than overwhelming emphasis on race day.

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Stephen Gallagher, the Dig Deep Coaching Head Coach, is an Irish professional cyclist, who last rode for the British continental cycling team Sigma Sport-Specialized. He previously rode for the An Post-M.Donnelly-Grant Thornton-Sean Kelly Team team. His most notable wins include the FBD Rás Tour of Ireland in 2008, Tour of Taiwan and he has represented his country at the Commonwealth Games as part of the Road World Championship winning team.  

Dig Deep Coaching (formerly Forme Coaching) provides unrivalled complete coaching solutions from specific coaching packages to an array of sports professional services. includes sports massage, sports nutrition, performance testing, powermeter rental, professional RETUL bike fit and more! 

Visit digdeepcoaching.com for more information.

Pactimo is proud to partner with Dig Deep Coaching in Belfast to bring premium cycling apparel to the UK and Ireland.

When we look at top athletes in sports such as cycling and running, we see fluidity in their movement – effortless and ‘smooth’ to the naked eye.  Some great examples of this can be seen in African runners whose physique gives them an edge to run at a high pace with little cost to energy stores.  Another example is that of Elite Pro cycling where the cadence and rhythm of the leg speed is sustained at a high rate, producing high power for prolonged distances on any sort of terrain.  Much research has gone into these areas to identify the performance benefits for athletes of being so ‘efficient’.

Regularly, I am asked by triathletes: ‘What is the best cadence to ride at?’ For many reasons, it is difficult to answer quickly and correctly without looking at each individual’s training and racing patterns.  However, there are areas that can be implemented by triathletes at all levels.  Cycling is not just about pushing as hard as you can on the pedals to reach the end of that leg, get into transition as quickly as possible and hope that you have something left for the run.  It is important to remember your efficiency in the bike leg directly influences your ability and performance in the run.

Factors that influence your bike leg include threshold power, aerodynamics, cadence (pedal efficiency) and fuel efficiency, but we are just going to focus on the cadence part this time.

Improving your cadence and its efficiency should be integral to triathlon training.  If it’s not, then you need to start thinking about it.  One crucial point to consider is your cranks and their length.  Most have two bikes, a road and then ‘race bike’, which ultimately will be triathlon specific.  I hope most of you realise there may be different crank lengths on each bike and you must be efficient on both bikes, so that you can have the optimal performance come race day.  The different crank lengths can make it harder to produce a solid effort come race day if you have not trained your body to be smooth on the race bike.  If you do not know the different lengths of cranks or if one bike is different to another, I would advise you to go look.

So, now you are aware of the cranks, why do you want to improve your pedalling efficiency? 

The main reasons are:

• it helps energy waste

• it avoids stress on tendons/ligaments and joint overload

• it helps to recruit slow twitch muscle fibres which are longer to tire and use less glycogen

You will feel fresher, more fuelled, less likely to get injured and have more glycogen in the muscles come run time.  When all of your opponents have been mashing gears and ‘fighting’ with their bike powering big gears for prolonged periods, you will have the reserves to finish your triathlon with a killer run and gain the result you hoped for.

But, mastering cadence efficiency takes time.

Many people will say that you can ride easier at 250watts (approx 25mph) at 80rpm than you will at 95rpm, which is true, but there are more reasons for wanting to ride at 95rpm than at 80rpm. Everyone is different genetically, but the same principles apply to all athletes: a higher cadence will recruit the cardiovascular system more and this system takes longer to fatigue than skeletal muscles, which are used more when the cadence and efficiency are lower.  Simply put, using a higher cadence will use your heart and lungs more, which do not fatigue as quickly as the skeletal muscles, which is what you will recruit when you start using lower gears.

You want to go into the run being able to start recruiting the fast twitch fibres that have been reserved in your cycle by using your cardiovascular system because you are more EFFICIENT.

The ideal pedalling cadence varies in accordance with the power developed and with the kind of muscle fibres of the athlete: predominance in slow-twitch fibres (type I) will suggest higher cadences (95-105 RPM), while a predominance in fast-twitch fibres (type II) will suggest lower cadences (85-95 RPM).  Just for this reason, everyone has a different answer to the question I am regularly asked. But, what everyone should look at is gradually improving their rhythm.  I would suggest looking at building your cadence around 7-10% over the course of a year until you find your optimal rhythm.

Happy pedalling!

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Stephen Gallagher, the Dig Deep Coaching Head Coach, is an Irish professional cyclist, who last rode for the British continental cycling team Sigma Sport-Specialized. He previously rode for the An Post-M.Donnelly-Grant Thornton-Sean Kelly Team team. His most notable wins include the FBD Rás Tour of Ireland in 2008, Tour of Taiwan and he has represented his country at the Commonwealth Games as part of the Road World Championship winning team.  

Dig Deep Coaching (formerly Forme Coaching) provides unrivalled complete coaching solutions from specific coaching packages to an array of sports professional services. includes sports massage, sports nutrition, performance testing, powermeter rental, professional RETUL bike fit and more! 

Visit digdeepcoaching.com for more information.

Pactimo is proud to partner with Dig Deep Coaching in Belfast to bring premium cycling apparel to the UK and Ireland.

Recently there has been much debate in the press regarding riders, and in particular Team Sky racing with powermeters.  Some riders like Vincenzo Nibali (who races with a powermeter) says this nullifies the race and makes it boring as Team Sky riders are using their powermeters to pace what effort they need to ride at to catch the breakaway.

Whichever side of the fence you sit on with this there is no denying powermeters do benefit when racing…so until we are told otherwise why not use them to our benefit?

I decided to race with my powermeter for all my races this year whilst riding for the Forme Coaching – Pactimo MTB Elite team.  At first I thought this would be so that I could analyse the data post race and write post race analysis.  I didn’t however think I would be looking at it during the race and even thought about covering over the numbers.

In the end I’m glad I didn’t as I have found the power to be a great tool in the 2 races I have ridden this season.

In my last race, the first round of the Midlands Series, it was a big step up in rider quality.  Considering the quality of the field I still decided to stick to my game plan of starting fast which I did completely on feel.  In fact, I didn’t look at the power once on the opening lap I just started off fast and didn’t look down until I was passing the start/finish after lap 1.  When I looked down I was quite surprised to see I was only averaging 370w NP which works out as 92% of my threshold power.  As I said before I know from years of training and racing with power that I can hold 95% of my threshold for the duration of a XC race.  At one point just after the first lap someone shouted to me from the crowd it was a 6 lap race and not to go too hard too soon, my response of “at this pace I can go all day” might have sounded arrogant but it was based on science not theory.

The next 3 laps were all in and around 330-340 NP or around 82-85%, even at this sustainable pace I was able to open up a gap of around 30-40 seconds a lap on the second place rider. Once I got to lap 5 I was told that my lead was now 2 minutes 30 so I was able to back right off to 320W or 78% making sure I didn’t make any mistakes or risk mechanical problems.

The total NP for the race was 335w or 84% so while it was by no means an easy pace I still had roughly 10% left in the tank had I needed it.

Another interesting fact was that I spent a total of 15 minutes or a total of 1 whole lap not pedalling at all but with the nature of a MTB race that is hardly a big surprise.

Like I said at the start whichever side of the fence you sit regarding the use of powermeters there can be no denying when used correctly in the knowledge of your training zones and overall FTP…your confidence and ability to race could decide if you are on the podium or not.

View the full race data.

All photographs are courtesy of Simon Maskell Photography.

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Dan Fleeman’s passion for cycling started at the age of 10. His first major result was winning the British National Road Race Championships in 2004. While living in France, he he took wins in the Prix de la St Amour and the Tour de Beaujolais and later rode with DFL-Cyclingnews in Belgium.  During the season of 2007 Dan achieved top 10 places in the Tour of Britain and the mountainous Tour of Qinghai Lake. His 2008 racing season was spent with An Post/M.Donnelly/Sean Kelly Racing Team whereby his most notable win during this time was coming first overall in the Tour of the Pyrenees.  Also during this time Dan obtained good results by overall coming 13th in the Tour of Ireland and 7th in the Tour of Britain. Dan retired from professional road racing in 2011 to focus on running Forme Coaching, but he still rides and races mountain bikes.

Visit formecoaching.com for more information.

Pactimo is proud to partner with Forme Coaching in Belfast to bring premium cycling apparel to the UK and Ireland.

Part of every cycling year is the usual ‘pre-season’ training followed by the ‘race season’, which is where you want to put into practice the hard work and developmental gains made during the off season.  However, the time between race season and pre-season training is where you can potentially lose those gains or it can be a phase of major influence allowing you to again raise another ‘step’ or ‘level’ in your fitness.

This is often a time when motivation is lost to train and the effort of the previous months has taken its toll on your mental and physical ability to go out and do structured training.  The key here is that you don’t need to have the same discipline or forethought in your training as in previous phases, nor do you need to have the intensity or duration.  This is a phase of MAINTENANCE and continued, unstructured training that will help you find that new higher ‘peak’ fitness when race season comes round again.

So why do this?

A lot of people will come to the summer and autumn, hang their bike in the garage for 6 weeks, or longer sometimes, before dusting off the winter bike to get back into training.  This starts your build up in fitness again at a lower level and will take you longer to reach fitness than if you had continued with a ‘maintenance’ phase.  Also, your peak come race season may not be any different to last year. Why is that?  The reason is that long lay off you had, losing many of the benefits built up over the past 6-8mths of dedication and sacrifice.  What I am proposing is not overly scientific or structured, but a basic continuation of exercise or training during this down time post season.

Basic steps to take

• Maintain aerobic exercise 3-4 times a week.
• Continue a healthy lifestyle without it being obsessive.  Excess weight gain and lowering of immune system can be detrimental come pre-season training phase.
• Stay injury free with new activities.
• Any exercise or training should be fun and without stress.
• Intensity can be continued to maintain fitness, but this must be controlled and not at an effort that will bring round large physiological or psychological strain to the athlete.

So, your objective at this time is to maintain a basic fitness that will help your body continue year round development and help you reach new heights in fitness come race time again, keeping exercise fun, unstructured and maintainable.

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Stephen Gallagher, the Forme Coaching Head Coach, is an Irish professional cyclist, who last rode for the British continental cycling team Sigma Sport-Specialized. He previously rode for the An Post-M.Donnelly-Grant Thornton-Sean Kelly Team team. His most notable wins include the FBD Rás Tour of Ireland in 2008, Tour of Taiwan and he has represented his country at the Commonwealth Games as part of the Road World Championship winning team.  

Visit formecoaching.com for more information.

Pactimo is proud to partner with Forme Coaching in Belfast to bring premium cycling apparel to the UK and Ireland.

Whilst Graeme Obree once said that if you set targets which seem achievable, then you’re not setting your sights high enough, goals still have to be realistic.

Alberto Contador is never going to be a kilometre rider and Marcel Kittel isn’t going to be King of the Mountains.

Whilst your natural physical attributes can be moulded to a certain extent, they determine the direction you should take.  For example, if you don’t have a high percentage of fast twitch muscles, you can’t be a pure sprinter.  If you don’t have good VO2 max and a slow heart beat, it’s going to be difficult to be a top time trial rider.

There are exceptions to all rules, but common sense tells us that it’s wasteful to ignore God given attributes and spend too much time on an aspect of your riding that will never be your forte.  It’s better to learn how to limit your losses in a time trial than to concentrate too much on it at the expense of diminishing natural climbing skills that can win you races.

Very few riders can do everything brilliantly.

So, when you sit down with your coach to plan your season, bear in mind your body type, natural abilities and strengths – but remember too what Graeme said.

10 tips for making 2013 your best season ever:

1. Set race objectives – determine in advance (3-4 months minimum) what the event/race you are aiming at will involve e.g. will it be hilly/flat/stage race/narrow roads/lots of corners?  do you need to improve your bike handling or climbing?  The Schlecks have been looking at the Tour de France parcours since they were announced last November.

2. Basic steps – look at your own abilities with your coach.  Be honest with yourself and analyse which skills you lack to achieve your objective.  Set out basic steps and periodisation blocks in your training to work towards improving these aspects in time for the objective.  Taking the Schlecks again as an example, they know that they must improve their time trialling to win the Tour.

3.  Mini goals – start to work back from this objective and set yourself smaller (mini) goals to aim for. This helps to keep you motivated and keeps goals in perspective and achievable.  This is especially important for maintaining focus when things are going wrong e.g. when injured or sick during training blocks.  The Russian team pursuit team has the Worlds and Olympics as major goals, but with certain World Cups as ‘mini’ goals.

4. Self analysis - during this time of ‘planning’, it is very important to be as realistic and self analytical as possible.  This is when a coach who knows your capabilities is essential.  You are a team working towards your objective.

5. Mark progress – use markers to determine your progress.  This can either be a regular lab test, FTP (functional threshold test) using your power meter or simply, and less specifically, being able to ‘hang in’ with the local chain gang/club run longer than normal or beating your personal best on the local 10 mile T.T. or test climb.  Pros living in Nice often test themselves with timed ascents of the La Turbie Col.

6. Plan early – start a plan that clearly sets out the BLOCKS of training you are going to undertake. These will include, in general terms, what each training block will aim towards, sessions you will do within these and specific training blocks and internal markers within these.  Most pros can tell you now which events they will be riding for the entire season and their training will be planned around that.

7. Efficiency – this is the basis of everything you do.  Making your position and pedalling as efficiently and smoothly as possible directly influences your momentum.  This can involve speed/cadence drills or strength/force workouts.  Robert Millar consciously practised sitting as still on the bike as possible when time trial training to minimise drag.

8. Aerobic endurance – this is essential in all endurance sports.  How we do this can be very different to what one may think.  The normal procedure would be long, slow rides, but this is not necessarily true (this would take a separate blog to explain).  Using fat and less glycogen (carbohydrates) for fuel during long endurance events is another area which can be improved.  As the body becomes better at using fat to produce energy, aerobic fitness improves.  This is especially important for very long, steady state events such as half/full Ironman, triathlons, sportive events, marathons and the like.

9. Threshold – improving your anaerobic threshold is a real must.  Helping your body to utilise and process lactate build up is an essential part of the puzzle to build a better endurance athlete.  This can be an internal aim within each training block e.g. someone who starts their training with a FTP of 270w would hope to achieve a FTP of 330w by their target date.  Along with a reduction in weight (power to weight ratio), this would give major gains.

10. Finer points – this takes in the specifics of the event.  If a hilly race/sportive, make sure you are efficient at producing power on climbs.  Perhaps improve your power to weight ratio for this.  Lance Armstrong was always strong, but didn’t become a Tour winner until he improved his power to weight ratio by shedding upper body bulk.  If you are aiming for a criterium or ‘flat’ event, this power to weight will not make as much difference as in a hilly race.  Therefore, maximising top end, short term power is the way to go for a town centre specialist.  Look at the variables and start to include these aspects in your training.

All of the above points are in general terms and require more detail when being specific towards your own race objectives, but hopefully they will give you some sort of guideline and help you to start thinking about what is important when selecting and planning which races you wish to compete – and do well in – for the coming season.

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Dan Fleeman’s passion for cycling started at the age of 10. His first major result was winning the British National Road Race Championships in 2004. While living in France, he he took wins in the Prix de la St Amour and the Tour de Beaujolais and later rode with DFL-Cyclingnews in Belgium.  During the season of 2007 Dan achieved top 10 places in the Tour of Britain and the mountainous Tour of Qinghai Lake. His 2008 racing season was spent with An Post/M.Donnelly/Sean Kelly Racing Team whereby his most notable win during this time was coming first overall in the Tour of the Pyrenees.  Also during this time Dan obtained good results by overall coming 13th in the Tour of Ireland and 7th in the Tour of Britain. Dan retired from professional road racing in 2011 to focus on running Forme Coaching, but he still rides and races mountain bikes.

Visit formecoaching.com for more information.

Pactimo is proud to partner with Forme Coaching in Belfast to bring premium cycling apparel to the UK and Ireland. 

Pactimo is proud to the the apparel partner for the crankbrothers race club.

Profiling a professional rider’s progression to the Tour de France via the Giro and Critérium du Dauphiné.

Analyzing the riders CTL, TSB and performance management charts pre/during/post TDF. How riders handle the stresses post TDF, e.g. crits and travel along with them maintaining and increasing form post TDF, factors that must be taken into account. How recovery is an essential ingredient and how it is fitted in around travel and racing post TDF. The difference on riders who go to the TDF with the aim of a peak in August/Sept to the guys going for the GC.

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/372674890

Forme Coaching is a Pactimo partner in the UK and Ireland.

What do you think?