You do not have to live in Colorado to participate.
by Alison Powers, ALP Cycles Coaching
Preparing for the World Championships feels like preparing for any other race. Only this time I traveled to Europe about 4 weeks before and raced 2 stage races equaling in 10 race days over 11 days total. After that block was finished it was about some recovery and then back to work continuing to build over the remaining two weeks.
Katie Hall and I spent our lead up to the World Championships in Sittard, Holland. The USA Cycling National Team has a home there where we got to stay with other athletes and staff. We've been learning new roads and having the change to explore this area of the world.
We trained a range of long endurance rides and shorter intervals to get our legs prepared for the 156km of racing this weekend. We knew the weather in Bergen would possible be could and rainy making Sittard a pretty ideal place to prepare. My last set of intervals for the year were some short on/offs. They hurt but I put the picture of suffering up a climb for my teammates in my mind and finished my last interval strongly! After they were finished it was a stress free ride home knowing that I'd done everything I could and now it was time to recover before race day.
The course here in Bergen is going to make for an exciting race. We do 8 laps of our course, it's fairly hilly course but with equally as much down hill. It will be a good hard one. Really important things will be making sure to eat and drink plenty during the race. Being smart and not uselessly using energy. If the weather is cold and rainy, keeping warm over 4 hours will be important too. Using a good pair of gloves, shoe covers, and a hat will help with warmth.
All we can do as athletes is train our best, recover our best, and prepare our best. Trust in the work we do and go into the race ready to give it everything we've got.
