'Flat ground power' seems to be my biggest weakness (I do relatively well compared to the other guys at climbing, techy bits, and descending). I also just read Friels 'fast after 50' which pretty clearly states that high intensity training is crucial. Plus, I want to improve for cyclocross, which highlights my flat-ground power weakness, and is commonly on rougher ground.
There's a city park near my house with a couple of ball-fields, tennis courts and a kids water/spray park, and well kept deep lawn around the perimeter. It's a medium sized park, about 1x2 city blocks, and I have found it takes me over 3 minutes of very solid effort for a lap around the perimeter, I get bounced around quite a bit, which is good for both xc and cx (getting better at putting down smooth power on a rough surface). From how I feel after, it seems to be a very solid workout, and because it's so close and handy, I could do a warm up, interval, rest, interval, cool down, and be done for those days I've only got 30 minutes for a workout.
There may be a similar park near you that you have not considered using as an interval track, - the soft grass really sucks the power, and the better riders seem to 'float' through the rough stuff. Ideally we should all be really comfortable riding on rough surfaces, - at least more comfortable than our competition.
This came about after watching my son run at the State cross country meet, which is always on a small rolling-hills grass golf course. Afterwards, one of the kids said "we need to do more hills". I asked my kid how much they run on grass, he said "almost never", -ah-ha!, they're missing the principle of specificity.
Talking to a cx racing buddy about this who trains with a HR monitor all the time, he was telling me how his perceived effort on rough ground (including grass) is much higher than the effort according to his HR, so the idea is to be ride rough ground more and get the perceived effort more in line with the HR or actual power.
- Just my newest training idea, maybe it give a couple of you guys some ideas.
There's a city park near my house with a couple of ball-fields, tennis courts and a kids water/spray park, and well kept deep lawn around the perimeter. It's a medium sized park, about 1x2 city blocks, and I have found it takes me over 3 minutes of very solid effort for a lap around the perimeter, I get bounced around quite a bit, which is good for both xc and cx (getting better at putting down smooth power on a rough surface). From how I feel after, it seems to be a very solid workout, and because it's so close and handy, I could do a warm up, interval, rest, interval, cool down, and be done for those days I've only got 30 minutes for a workout.
There may be a similar park near you that you have not considered using as an interval track, - the soft grass really sucks the power, and the better riders seem to 'float' through the rough stuff. Ideally we should all be really comfortable riding on rough surfaces, - at least more comfortable than our competition.
This came about after watching my son run at the State cross country meet, which is always on a small rolling-hills grass golf course. Afterwards, one of the kids said "we need to do more hills". I asked my kid how much they run on grass, he said "almost never", -ah-ha!, they're missing the principle of specificity.
Talking to a cx racing buddy about this who trains with a HR monitor all the time, he was telling me how his perceived effort on rough ground (including grass) is much higher than the effort according to his HR, so the idea is to be ride rough ground more and get the perceived effort more in line with the HR or actual power.
- Just my newest training idea, maybe it give a couple of you guys some ideas.
