Alison Powers - Featured Blogger

If there was one magic training tool that you could do to become a better, faster, and more confident cyclist, would you do it? For most of us, the answer would be 'yes". Unfortunately, not very many people do this one thing. What is this one magic ticket? Improve your bike handling skills. While training, most people are focused on how many watts they are pushing instead of how many times they brake through a corner. Being able to carry speed through a corner or sit in the draft of a peloton is free speed. No intervals or recovery days are needed for free speed.

For most of us, we don’t have 15-25hrs each week to train and ride our bike. We have to make the most of what time to train we have. For this reason each training ride or workout session must be quality. The secret, then, is knowing if your ride or workout really was good quality, or if you were just going through the motions.

Over the past 4-6 months, many of us have spent time in the gym, or home gym, strength training. We're making our cycling bodies strong, well rounded, and ready to hammer out a strong and long lasting cycling season. However, no matter how strong you are in the gym, it doesn't necessarily translate into a fast bike rider. In order to make that strength transition to the bike, you need to transition those strong muscles to powerful and quick muscles.

After spending 4 hours re-creating our Off Season Strength Program last month, I was sore. My glutes, upper back, and hamstrings all had signs of DOMS. DOMS (Delayed onset muscle soreness) is a common result of physical activity that stresses the body...

Here in Colorado, our winter weather is sometimes not conducive for a big 'burn lots of calories' ride before eating a holiday dinner. For those that like to ski and/or play in the snow, winter weather is great for them. For those of us who prefer to ride our bikes over the holidays, snow and cold is not so great. The good news is you can have your pie and eat it too, thanks to a high quality trainer workout.

Here at ALP Cycles Coaching, we decided to use this opportunity to create a new workout. Just like President Elect Trump, this workout will take you by surprise, kick some butt, then leave you feeling mentally and physically drained.

As coaches, we continually look for ways to make our ALP athletes better, faster, stronger, and more knowledgable. We want them to be the best athletes they can possibly be. 

Personally, when I think back to my racing and training career, I wish I had known many of the things I now know as a coach. So, that lead me to think of ways we can teach our athletes this 'high performance'  knowledge so they can raise their game to the next level. With some brain storming we came up with a new training/learning/teaching camp. The ALP Cycles High Performance Camp.

Wednesday was our monthly ALP athlete ride and it was all about cyclocross (CX). In last week's Blog Post Friday, ALP Coach Alison Powers, wrote about how 50% of CX racing success (or lack thereof) is solid bike handling skills. We put that to practice, broke down individual skills, and worked on several important CX specific drills.

Our 4-day Climbing Challenge has come to an end. The Challenge was just that, it was challenging and hard. The 4 days of climbing over and over again, on top of our Saturday ALP Ride got people out of their comfort zones.

“The most important take away is to find a coach that you know will be your partner, your teammate and will work with you 100% toward your personal goal.” by Alison Powers, ALP Cycles Coaching It’s that time of year when many people start to think about 2016 and their cycling and performance goals. Having […]

First, it’s best to determine what you’re looking for in a coach. by Alison Powers, ALP Cycles Coaching Finding a cycling coach is pretty easy. If you Google ‘Cycling Coaches’ many options come up. Here is the Denver/Boulder area, there are at least 40 coaches you can choose from. However, finding 1 – a good […]