National Champion!

Athlete Mina raced at CX Nationals in Bend, Oregon. After the great training she had put in over the past few months, she was confident she could win.
Her hard work paid off. Mina raced a near perfect race and got the "W". Her second National Championship.
Congratulations!

Do you have a plan?

"Fail to plan and you plan to fail". This saying has more importance than you realize.

In order to be successful at anything in life, especially sports, you must plan for it. Amongst other things, you must plan out your race schedule, your training schedule, and your training times. Then you must plan on the best way to make everything happen. "Winging it" only works for so long. The best athletes are the ones who have planned their success.

What's the first step in this planning process? Goal setting. You must set realistic yet challenging goals to keep you motivated and on track.

An example of a goal would be -
Eat healthy

That's a great goal, but how do you eat healthy? What are the steps to eating healthy and how do you know if you are doing it?

You must break your goals down into more goals and tasks. If your goal can be broken down, you are not finished making it.

In order to eat healthy, you must know what eating healthy means. A better goal would be-
I plan on buying more fruits and veggies to have on hand at home for snacking. I will stay away from highly processed (packaged, sugar filled) foods and buy more "natural" foods that have not been as processed. When I will always remember to eat a healthy snack (ie banana and milk) after my ride. Etc, etc.

Goals have to be broken down, and down, until all you have to do is follow the steps.
Plan to succeed.

Fix yourself now, so you can ride strong in 2010!

After a season of riding, racing, traveling in the van, car, and airplane your body is probably a bit out of whack. Sitting on the saddle followed by sitting in the car followed by sitting/laying on the couch can start to create muscle imbalances in your body. Now is the time to "fine tune" your body.

You may have muscle imbalances, flexibility imbalances (or both), pedal stroke imbalances, or mental training imbalances. If you have one imbalance, there is a good chance you have another one too.

Fix those imbalances so you can ride stronger in 2010.

Good "fixing" exercises include-
-Pilates (my favorite!)
-Yoga
-Massage
-Single leg pedaling
-Stretching
-REST
-Walking

1-1

What does better fitness combined with more confident skills bring you?
Wins!
Such was the case for Athlete Mina over the wet, snowy, muddy weekend of CX racing here in Colorado.

Keep up the good work!

More Skills

Cyclocross is all about skills. If you've got them, you can get away with sub-par fitness. If you don't have the skills, you better have great fitness to get you through the entire race of using your energy to get through the technical sections.

However, if you've got both, you're golden.

11 year old Mina tuning in her CX skills before school.

Continue to work skills in with your training and recovery plan during the week. Every new skill will help you become a more confident rider and thus a faster rider too.

The bike change

Cyclocross is known for it's consistency to provide the racer with varying conditions. In turn, the racer needs to have a wide range of skills in their back pocket to handle the different courses, conditions and competition.

One of such CX skills needed is the ability to have both and "pit bike" and a "pit person". In extremely muddy races the ability to change bikes throughout the race is extremely necessary. The more mud that cakes on your bike will make it increasingly harder and harder to ride. The bike gets heavier, the tires get caked with mud and don't provide traction, and the drivetrain can get jammed and stop working or break.

However, if the racer is able to get a clean bike every few laps, they will be at a huge advantage. I clean bike can make the conditions seem not so bad, allowing the racer to go faster.

But there's a catch; in order to get a clean bike every few laps, the dirty bike must get cleaned. That's where the pit person comes in. The pit person is just as busy as the racer. He/she has less than 5 minutes to get the old bike, clean the old bike and hand it off to the racer before starting the process all over again with the original bike.

The bike change should be practiced and perfected before being used in an important race because if it is muddy and you have both a pit bike and a pit person, you should use them! It will help you.

Sand in your pedals

Athlete Renee braved the snowstorm and went out and raced at the Boulder Reservoir. She and Coach Alison learned all about riding/running in the sand.

Both women's pedals got gunked up by the sand and they either couldn't clip out (Alison) or couldn't clip in (Renee). The solution? Loosen pedals and spray some lube in there. They may be too loose for other conditions, but with the sand/mud they will work perfectly. Just make sure to tighten the next time you ride.

Make your own!

Barriers...the roadies demise.
How to do you learn to like the barriers? By being good at them!
How do you get to "be good at them"?
Practice!

"But where do I practice barriers" you may be asking. The simple answer is... at home! Make your own barriers! Use what you have at home or what's close to home. That's the great thing about Cross riding; it can be done anywhere!

No excuses!

Cross skills...Learn them!!

Cross racing requires the rider to have skills. These skills include but are not limited to, bike handling, cornering, shouldering the bike, mounts, dismounts, etc.

However, if you don't know what you are doing wrong or how to improve how do you get better? You find someone who does know what their doing and have them teach you.

Athlete Renee joined the Sports Garage Cross practice and got more than she had hoped for.

She learned form the "Pros" how to ride 180's AND pass someone.


She also learned her bike fit wasn't ideal for Cross. The Pros helped her with that too.

She left the practice feeling more confident and excited for next week.


Do you want to learn too?
Join us at Sports Garage in Boulder Tuesday mornings at 7:30am.
See you there!

Skillz vs. Fitness

Question- What's more important in a cross race- good skills or good anaerobic fitness?

Answer- Both!

Reason- good, even great fitness will only get you so far in a cross race. If you are not good at cornering at high speed or riding through mud, roots and sand you will not reap the rewards of your hard training. In order to succeed at Cyclocross you have to be efficient at getting on and getting off your bike, and know how to ride through the technical sections without wasting a lot of energy.

However, it doesn't matter how smooth you are through the technical sections of the course if you can not sustain anaerobic power for 40+ minutes. You must train your body to be able to go hard, recover, go hard, go harder and sustain that power for the rest of the race. If not, after 25 minutes of racing you will explode and the rest of your race will be extremely painful due to your body not being able to clear the lactic acid.

Remedy- One to two days a week, work solely on your skills. Cornering, mounts, dismounts and being smooth and comfortable while doing it.
On another 1-2 days a week, work on your power at threshold WITH accelerations and recovery. Then come race day, you will reap the rewards of all aspects of cross "fitness".

Pay attention to the warning signs

Your body, just like anything else, has ways to communicate. Learn to listen to the warning signs before it gets too late.

For example-
Warning sign #1 - after a short ride a saddle sore shows up.
#2- start to feel crooked on bike.
#3- crash in CX race then sit in the car for 12 hours.
#4- power to the pedals just doesn't feel there. Still feel crooked on the bike.
#5- left knee starts to hurt.

I knew after warning sign #1, I should have gone to the Chiropractor, but I was/still am cheep. So, I ignored my body's signs that things were not right. It took until my left knee hurt to walk and still hurt while riding.

Today, I went to the Chiropractor and half of my lower body muscles were "shut off". I was crooked, weak, and sore. I have learned (again) my lesson. I will listen to my body and what it has to say.

To ride or not to ride...that is the question

October 1st. The weather outside is cold (30 degrees), and windy. Motivation to ride is only meager. Maybe one should ride the trainer and/or rollers?

Question- What to do? Ride or not ride?
Answer- It depends on your goals. Are you a roadie who's season just ended and your next race is March 2010? Are you full on in the Cyclecross season? Or are you just wanting exercise to burn off the margaritas and fajitas from last night you are feeling guilty about?

Reader Digest Answers-
Roadie- stay on the couch. October is the one month you can rest guilt free. You should NOT be riding. Training starts Nov. 1st.
CX racer- Get out and ride! Cross season is a fall winter sport. Suck it up, put on your hat, gloves, tights and get your workout done.
Guilty eater and drinker- if it makes you feel better then ride! There will be others out there riding to keep you company. The more you ride, the more you can eat and drink!! :)