I always found the beginning of a cycling season to be
filled with both anticipation and anxiety. The anticipation was certainly to
get that adrenaline flowing again, to unleash the competitive monster
inside me. The part that I always loved about racing was, well, the racing.
That said, the training required to be a professional cyclist was (and is) both
painful and tedious and especially anxiety-filled at the start of a new year.
Quite simply, the preparation I did in January would determine how my
season would turn out. This was the purgatory time that created anxiety with questions in my mind: Did I spend enough
time at the gym? Did I spend too much time at the gym? How long will it take me to get fast again?
January was the time to reflect on what I had been
last season and what I was to be in the coming year. It was a time for
self-assessment, recognizing where to focus the time to improve: sustained
power, top-end speed, time-trialing, accleration...whatever. The natural tendency is to spend more time on facets of riding where your strengths are because it feels natural and good. It takes discipline to keep focused on the areas that need improvement. The ability to maintain that discipline is one of the differences between being good and being great. I needed to be clear on what the
goals were, and what it would take to peak for specific races at specific
times. I would work with the team's physiologist to design everything in
training backwards from those goals. Looking ahead to the long season it was difficult in January to get into the swing of things, but without goals, impossible.
After a hard racing season consisting of over 14,000 miles
of riding and over 100 races, a much-needed rest from the bike was in order.
Typically, November through December was "time off," but only off the bike, that
is. There was always plenty of hard work to be done in the gym in terms of 2-4
hour workouts, usually 5 days a week.
For me, time spent in the gym meant from November through sometimes February and did two things:
1. made me about 20% more powerful in summer, during the peak portion of the cycling season
2. made me suffer like a dog and feel like an 80 year old man when starting to ride in January
I had mixed feelings about gym work and wasn't a big proponent of it throughout my 8-year cycling career. It made me feel like crap, lethargic, and unnatural upon returning to the bike in the early season. Still, I had
by far my best season in 1993, which was the result of many factors including a disciplined gym regimen from November through February.
January was typically the first time my road bike's tires hit
pavement in the last two months, apart from the Thanksgiving Day beer ride. I
can recall every "first ride" in January of every season I raced. Due to the work in the gym my whole body would feel so tight and the bicycle was a foreign torture device designed to rip off
my legs. I can clearly remember every pedal stroke, thinking, "how did I get so
slow?" and "when did they make these hills bigger?" Plus, the crisp
January air reminded me these virgin lungs had been in hibernation for the last
couple months. In just two months my heart had forgotten how to pump the necessary volume of blood that I demanded while climbing. My heart seemed to work so hard trying to learn again what my body demanded of it. My body wasn't used to the pain yet of training, let alone racing. I would
come damn close to bonking on a 50-mile spin. Throw out the 12-21 gear
clusters that I used during the racing season! These were times for the low gears, like the 12-23 or 12-24.
It's funny how now in 2002 the low gears are standard equipment on my
machine. Not that I've rethought my 75rpm cadence; I'm just slower now.
Climbing onto a bicycle when it's 30 degrees out, or worse,
raining torrentially was no easy chore, but training had to be done
day in day out. Wearing gloves, leg warmers and over jackets were the order of
day in January. Mental toughness was, and still is, forged on rainy, January rides. Every
pedal stroke I would think of my competitors and tell myself that "they" were
not tough enough to be out here for 4-6 hours in the freezing rain like I am. I
motivated myself by envisioning being on a solo breakaway in a European classic
like Paris-Roubaix. Those were weeks of tough miles with occasional rides with teammates or group rides to break up the monotony. Every day in my
journal I would enter notes about my progress: heart rate, weight, ride length,
how I felt, what gears I used, my effort level, etc. I knew how important patience and focus were to achieving my goals for the season.
I always felt in cycling that January was the most trying time for my ego. The work
spent in the gym coupled with the necessity for putting in "base mileage" gave the
appearance I wasn't riding well. I often found myself holding back the reigns on group
rides with the "Kings of January, " typically, inexperienced cat 3 and cat 4 riders
that had been training their eyeballs out all winter. The "Kings" felt the incessant
need to always try and drop me on every incline and/or occasion. My competitive
instincts made me want to "put it in the big meat" (53 tooth chain ring
ed.) and show them who their daddy was. Via con carne, we used to say.
(literally, "go with meat," or show some balls ed.) Fortunately, I
learned early on it's best to do my talkingin the races in the season. So if
these wankers got to fulfill their fantasies by saying to their friends how they
"dropped a pro" on a January training ride, so be it. My sole focus to prepare for
races like the CoreStates U.S. Professional Championships in June, like in 1993
against one Lance Armstrong for a record $1 million. What those speedy, "50 mile-
wonder" riders didn't see (and probably couldn't fathom) was that after completing
their 50-mile "death ride" I would put in an additional 50-70 miles to get in
6 hours of training. Patience, keeping focused on my goals, and showing discipline in
January meant success in the summer.
Eventually, the early season training would get perceptibly easier as my body would again quickly grow accustomed to the long, hard miles. With a lean frame of 5'10" and 145lbs, it didn't take long to cut down to race weight, 140lbs with less than 5% body fat. Once again, my present 165lbs cheeseburger-ridden body can only look back upon the my former racer self and laugh. My speed would come eventually, slowly increasing by the smallest increments. With a training schedule built from macro and micro cycles, progress was measured in the minutiae. For motivation I would always tell myself "the more I hurt now, the more I will make everyone else hurt on the climbs in the summer." The biggest mistake of inexperienced riders is to think that if they jump on a bike and start training 500 miles a week, they, too, can be a pro. It doesn't work that way. It took me 8 years of building up and building up my body to be able to train professional distances. The harsh fact is in cycling progress comes very, very slowly. Year built upon year. And it all starts in January!
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