Is achievement more important to you than enjoyment in racing?

Did you pack in road racing because you weren’t getting the results you had hoped for or because it was no fun? Or was it no fun because you didn’t place very well?

Are you now feeling the same way about XC?

The mention of your clubmate doing well seems quite telling – but he did twice as much training as you? So are you gonna be able to double your training?

Like many here I have a strange fascination with your racing psychodrama threads, but I honestly think you might be better off having a bit of a break from it. Maybe just ride for fun, have some adventures and see if you still feel the lure.

PS. I ride six hours a week and you’d probably beat me in an XC race, if that’s any reassurance?

Is achievement more important to you than enjoyment in racing?

No, I do enjoy it, I’m just frustrated about my perceived lack of advancement.

Did you pack in road racing because you weren’t getting the results you had hoped for or because it was no fun? Or was it no fun because you didn’t place very well?

it became no fun with pieces of broken Carbon flying around my ears. I don’t feel the same way about XC no, I enjoy it, and will continue. I crashed Sunday and am quite sore but I’d no intention of stopping nor will I omit tomorrows race.

Like many here I have a strange fascination with your racing psychodrama threads

I need to stop posting clearly, quite an sad reputation I’m building here. 😐

I ride six hours a week and you’d probably beat me in an XC race, if that’s any reassurance?

Its only a reassurance beating a fit capable rider – not saying your not but otherwise I may as well enter the Dad’s Fun race and crow about smashing a win on here, which would all be wrong.

Oct-Dec = Base
Dec-Mar = Build
Mar-May = Speciality XCO or XCM plan / B races
May-July= Maintain / B races
July-Aug- Maintain/rest/ A race (Bonty 24/12)

That’s a whole chunk of maintenance work.
Fully 25% of the year devoted to treading water waiting for your A race to come around.
Ample time there to build towards a peak for a specific XCO event late May, then take a week or 2 chilling out before rebuilding targeting 24/12.

Overall though from what you’ve said, you seem to me to be on the right track – just keep on working away, re-evaluating once a month or so and the progress will come.

Sorry fifeandy I made a mistake – May-July is TrainerRoads XCM plan leading towards the 24hr, where some races will substitute the intervals so should read “Speciality XCM”. eg:

Oct-Dec = Base
Dec-Mar = Build
Mar-May = Speciality XCO / B races
May-July= Speciality XCM / B races
July-Aug- Maintain/rest/ A race (Bonty 24/12)

Also, our club has a Tues/Thurs hills smash ride which if time allows I’ll also use as a substitute to a interval session, using the 12km there and 12km back in Z2 deliberately.

Anyway, I think the penny has dropped – I’ll look into getting a coach for a season to help shape my plan & motivation, learn when to “Build” and when to “Rest” and not panic over a negative result, then basically live with the tools I have at my disposal, albeit limited more than others perhaps.

Again – thanks for the valuable input, I hope this thread is also useful to others.

Another Kryton ‘failing at racing’ thread and like a moth to a flame, I feel compelled to respond.

Firstly, you can’t buy speed. Ok, you can but its not like TT’s where there will be a noticeable difference if you change wheels/frame/skinsuit. Spending £1500 on a hardtail won’t make you any quicker than sticking with what you’ve got. You just want a bit of retail therapy because you’re not getting the results you want. £1500 isn’t going to buy anything better than what you’re already on. You’ll buy it, you’ll place the same or worse and you’ll be even more depressed.

Second – as those who have said on many of your threads before – get yourself a coach. Club runs aren’t training. Combine that thought process with doing intervals the day after a race and it tells me you don’t really understand what you’re doing regarding training. A coach will tell you if you’re doing too much. A coach will know that if you’re racing a TT, will it help your results in other disciplines? I’d say not, but I’m not a coach. So ask a coach. If you can do a quality interval set the day after a race, you didn’t race hard enough. If you did race hard enough, you’d have got no benefit out of the intervals. Recovery rides….there’s a reason they’re called that…

Third – ride your MTB lots. The best season racing that I ever had, I was riding my race bike pretty much every time I went out. Commuting, trail centers, gentle road rides – even using it on the turbo. By all means run some cheaper wheels, but ride what you race all the time.

Fourth – pick one discipline and stick to it. So far I’ve seen you post about road racing, crits, XC (what the hell is XCO?) and time trialing. Jack of all trades, master of…You’re spreading yourself too thinly and unless you’re at the top of your game – Mr Bouttell as an example – you’re not going to get the results you want.

Take the £1500, spend what you need to on a coach and work with them to improve your results. Bottrill was apparently winning national TT’s on 8 hours a week. A couple of other lads I know do minimal training but race to a high level in crits. They won’t go near the longer distance events because they just can’t commit to the time needed to train for them.

To summarise

Don’t buy a new bike
Get a coach.
Ride your MTB (or whatever discipline you pick) lots
Pick one genre and stick with it. Don’t do the others unless it’ll benefit your ‘A’ races.

Another Kryton ‘failing at racing’ thread

I’m not failing?

XCO is “XC – Olympic” aka short course / 90min XC races. And I only ride TT’s as a “power interval / self test” to justify my road bike a bit more.

At least he’s giving racing a go, that’s hardly failing is it?

Ahem.. might be worth stalking a few pro’s etc on facebook/twitter. You can usually get some good tips off em. 😆

Well this thread is hardly full of high 5’s and champagne is it!

I don’t know you, or what you do apart from what you’ve posted here. You seem unhappy with your race results. Plenty of people have suggested what you could do to improve them. The overwhelming majority haven’t mentioned buying a new bike.

And I only ride TT’s as a “power interval / self test” to justify my road bike a bit more.

When did you do this? Not long ago was it? In between weekends where you were racing? Whilst I’m probably coming across as one, I’m not trying to be a dick – its just that your threads always seem to follow a similar path. If you have some disposable income available and you already have a power meter, work with someone to show you how to use it properly. I bet you could improve your results significantly without increasing your hours per week or buying a new bike..

EDIT: And whilst I’m at it, racing isn’t a massively cheap thing to do and requires brownie points from the other half for ‘time off’. Therefore I understand you wanting to do better. I made a conscious decision after my first couple of races that I’d either commit to some proper training or give up. I can’t see the point in not doing well, or more accurately, as well as I personally could do.

Valid point there about picking one discipline and sticking to it. Use the others as a bit of variety and sod the results.

Even for those with unlimited time (pros) trying to be competitive in different disciplines (or even different specialities such as climbing/TTs) takes a good chunk of time to adjust to. Can even be seasonal.

Since i packed in the full time racing, it’s either been one, or the other. Or maybe a swap over in the middle of the season, depending on whats in the calendar. i.e. if the national MTB champs is on a course i like, i might focus on early season RRs until maybe May, then switch to MTB in June, until the nationals. Still doing the *other* discipline to keep my eye in, but not driving all over the country looking for the biggest best hardest races. Just mooching down to the local summer evening league instead.
Then take a break until the cross season starts. Rather than doing one then the other every weekend of the year……

Kryton, just to follow up on the general theme here – getting better is about your legs; training harder than you thought possible and for that a GOOD coach really helps.
I did a small xc race recently on my Blue Pig (30lbs of slack, steel hardtail) and it wasn’t a complete disaster (I came second :wink:) primarily because I train really, really hard, really really consistently, under the guidance of a really, really good coach.
All my bikes are metal, all cost under £1200, but I spend 10-12hrs a week training and virtually none of it is pleasant.

I generally enjoy my racing because I aim to get something from every race, be it experience or results. One thing I’ve learnt is that it entirely depends on who turns up as to what position I’ll get, so why worry about it? The pleasure comes from improving ones ability and to do that you need to train really hard.

Good luck mate, forget the bikes, tear your legs off 4-5 times a week and bask in the millimetric self improvement that it brings.

Tuesday nights after the kids have gone to bed is alone time for me, so I’ve spent a couple of hours contemplating todays thread and re-reading some of Friels MTB bible, particularly about planning, recovery and Veterans.

I think its now clear that I’ve been ill disciplined with both my training and my resting, recognition of ability, time age and planning. Weirdly I’ve been focused on physically and mentally battering myself yet unfocused on much else.

This is my fault and no one elses, its now up to me to spend the rest of 2016 on the back slope of an adjusted Veteran season and to work with a coach to plan Nov. 16- Oct 17 properly for Mountain bike racing.

Its been a public reminder / lesson, but that in itself encourages varied input which is very much appreciated. We learn lessons in life and march on come what may – thanks and see you at the races maybe. 🙂

Good reply by rollingoughnut. This bit amused me…

but I spend 10-12hrs a week training and virtually none of it is pleasant.

Does make you question your sanity sometimes! 🙂

Interestingly this thread has made me think about my own training. I think I’m getting less time on the bike while trying to structure my training than when i was just riding. If anything I’ve been over-resting in training weeks and under resting on rest weeks. Think I also need to accept that for fitness I’m better off on turbo than trying to replicate offroad. Will beast myself in the morning!

Ferrals, this year and if I reprogram as above my plan would be the same – most likely a reduction in “miles” but and increase in “effort”.

Reading Friel last night though, I believe I understood that what Miles I can get in for Z1/Z2/Recovery would be best done on an MTB to keep Technical skills up to par. But at those levels a person does a lot less Miles on an MTB than on a road bike for the given period.

Thats where I’ve been heading Kryton, but I’m just not sure my effort has been high enough, so from now on I’m thinking I’ll use TR sessions to beast myself on Tues and Thurs, weds will commute to work a low tempo and Sat and Sun will be mtb rides (sat hard offorad efforts, sun long z2 rides).

I don’t think that the z2 mtb is enough to one technical skills need to be riding offroad all out too. However I’ve been doing a lot of offroad hill climbs and while fun, the line choice, grip aspect means out and out effort is lower. Hard to balance it all. Especially when its a lush day and the last thing you want to do is sit on a turbo!!

miles hours in zone

speed work/power

Actually, Kryton, I enjoy reading your openness as it echoes mine. It is frustrating when you feel like you are training loads yet are not seeing the results you want to, or expect to. I only had one experience with a coach and it didn’t work for me, BUT I had a lot of personal matters going on so although I was putting the time in I was likely not dealing with it mentally.
It is only natural to beat yourself up, but what you should then try to do is look at why you failed and then next time reduce the chances of failure.
So much of the battle is mental. Feel good about what you do, see the reasons why you are doing it (resolution of training) and then see the results and then grow the results by learning from your failures and addressing them in training. 🙂

It is frustrating when you feel like you are training loads yet are not seeing the results you want to, or expect to.

This was me winter before last but looking back on it now, comparing it to this winter, it was a bit of an unstructured inconsistent mess and not really that hard either. Working with a coach on the plans has definitely helped with this.

One more thing and I’ll shut up. It’s really easy to think you’re doing a set amount of hours a week.

Just check the reality by dividing the last years hours (tp or connect) and divide by 365 and times by 7. The result may be sobering.

This thread is giving me the almighty fear I’m not doing anything like enough training!!

What adsh says. Training Peaks has nice charts for this that’ll show you averages over time periods for things like duration and TSS. It only takes a skipped session or two, or a patchy week, for things to drop off a fair bit. Training Peaks is nice too in that you can put all your planned workouts in and if you complete them it’s green, if you don’t it’s red, partial is yellow. A month of green is a sight to behold… 🙂

(^^^ that unsightly yellow was a session I had to finish off on the turbo, so should be green!)

If you’re using TSS/Duration to build up a load during a block of training too, you can see this clearly in the graphs, and if you skip sessions you can see the effect it has. And it’s all reflected in the PMC chart too with your ATL/CTL/TSB.

Well that was an interesting race – two things:

a) Having cleared my head of expectation based on what we now know as less than perfect prep, and just decided that “what will be will be”, I was much more able to focus on what I wanted to do, visualise the race, spend some mental time riding it, and put my Strategy together. As a result although it was hard race I really enjoyed it, picking off targets and focssing on my strengths to do so, including moderating my urge to overtake on a final climb – my weakness – saving energy to outsprint the guy by 10m to the line.

b) I got comments from top ten finishers about last weeks amazing staerting sprint to the line. Initially this was a confidence boost, and very flattering, I appeared to have earned a little bit of something. The bad news is I was marked on the start, shoved onto the second row, and as I tried throughout the long 250m uphill sprint start to pass doors were firmly shut on me.

Still finished 10th though with a few more good riders turning up than previous weeks, and very pleased with the evening.

Beer O clock!

Joe Friel is good, especially the bit about Vets needing a bit more recovery. If you want to get faster, it’s the quality of your training sessions that’s important, not the time. I’m 43 and it takes me 2 days to recover from Sunday’s XC race – if I don’t leave it long enough, I can’t make a quality effort and that can be disheartening as well as ineffective.

PS Good job on the last race!

Nice one Kryton!

I’m 43 and it takes me 2 days to recover from Sunday’s XC race

I’m 34 and it still takes me two days!! Though I tend to train on the tues anyway

Maybe there is a case for trying some of the new HRV (Heart Rate Variable)software like ithlete? The only problem with it is you need a bluetooth HR strap as it won’t work with a Garmin strap.

From what I understand, you take a reading every morning and it reads your heart rate and then some clever software works out how fatigued you are and recommends training or not.

I’ve downloaded the software but dont have a compatible HR strap at the moment so can’t vouch for it but I hear some really good things about it and TrainingPeaks are raving about the new HRV data

Maybe there is a case for trying some of the new HRV (Heart Rate Variable)software like ithlete? The only problem with it is you need a bluetooth HR strap as it won’t work with a Garmin strap.

Hmm quite fancy a play with that. Just ordered a Polar H7 to give it a try. Shall report back in a few weeks.

if your HR is 10bpm above average at rest then rest. I try to train in 4 week cycles, with 2 complete days off at the end of each cycle. Remember Hard days are supposed to be hard, easy days are supposed to be easy, very easy in fact.

Can you please post an update review on your Cube?