Winter Training Seminar

I spent most of the afternoon today at a training seminar put on by Terry Ritter, a local USA Cycling expert level coach. (Sorry, he doesn't have a website.) I had expected that I would be familiar with most of the information, from reading the Friel and Morris books, and it turned out that this was largely true. However, also knowing that I'm no training expert, I expected to learn quite a bit, I just wasn't sure what it would be. It turned out that this was also true.

So, some highlights of the new stuff I learned:

1. One of the main themes in the seminar was to work on your aerobic system. True, there are gains to be made by working on the anaerobic systems, but mountain biking is still primarily an aerobic sport. Note that, in this case, Terry also considers threshold intervals done to increase LT to be working on your aerobic system.

2. Terry hit the topic of testing pretty hard. He is a big fan of testing frequently to A) help sustain training conviction and B) to help assure that the training is working. Again, there's nothing new here, but testing is something I haven't done in the past, and I think that needs to change if I want to get serious about going faster.

3. Terry made an off-handed comment about most beginners, especially light riders, tending to use tire pressures that are too high. Since I fit this description, maybe I'll go out and do some more experimenting with this once the ground gets to be a bit more representative of race conditions (which won't be for a few months still). I know I do tend to err on the side of too much pressure rather than too little.

4. Tapering. OK, so I'm familiar with this concept already. That being said, since I'm still pretty new to this whole race thing, I was not planning on doing a taper or race phases this year. I figured it would be better to continue building fitness and not worry too much about race results. While this logic makes sense, Terry changed my mind on the soundness of my plan. One of the points he made was that the purpose of tapering is not only to achieve peak race fitness, it also serves to unload physical and mental training stresses put on the body up to that point. Ultimately, I think that this unloading will be beneficial to me, so I'm going to re-adjust my plan.

5. The nice thing about working with a local coach is that he understands the conditions that we have to deal with. For example, in Michigan, the weather doesn't tend to be conducive to riding from sometime in December to sometime in March or April (about a third of the year!). Granted some people do ride outside, but it's tough to do it consistently. Anyway, considering this, Terry is a big proponent of using indoor trainers (even in the summer, which surprised me). We spent a lot of time talking about how to make riding trainers more tolerable. It's not a big deal for me right now, as cross-training is still appropriate at this time of year, but it will start to become a bigger deal in the next few months. Either that, or I'll just have to get used to riding in the cold and snow!

OK, I guess that's enough for now. Once you start getting past 5, they sort of cease to become "highlights". All considered, this was a good seminar for me to attend. It's made me think a bit more about what I'm doing now and what I need to do if I'm committed to going faster.