So, I just heard Adam Myerson say something that is something that I've expressed to many of you on group rides, in the forum, etc. The whole podcast is interesting, but at minute 33 or so, he talks about how and why he holds back his athletes from upgrading race categories.

https://prowomenscycling.com/2016/02/10/talking-cyclocross-with-adam-myserson/

It's old news/broken record territory for many of you who have had more than two minutes of conversation with me, but we do have a great many new members, new to racing and it is worth repeating.

Cross posted:

There are three really great KCC events coming up that I highly recommend. They're the kind of thing that the team tries to promote and encourage all members to attend. I virtually guarantee that you will be faster, stronger and awesomer for participating!

1. Racing Clinic--Saturday 20th, Central Park, 8am, THIS SATURDAY. Led by Marc Bertucco, special guest star John Malcolmson
2. Racing Tactics Talk--Tuesday 23rd, Redbeard. Led by JP Partland
3. All Hands on Deck Ride/Practice Crit--Sunday 28th. Led by JP Partland and other KCC mentors.

Re question on the Training Peaks thread:

Max, remember our discussion about training by heart rate. A really key point worth re-emphasizing is that perceived rate of exertion (PRE) is going to be your friend this year. Go back to the chart and re-read about the different zones and how they are supposed to feel.

When I was just training "by heart rate" back in the day, I used HR as a secondary indicator of my effort level. PRE was more important. Now with a longer effort like 15 minutes, you are going to have a much easier time using HR as an actual guide, but still, I would expect that during your first 15 minute effort, you should go more by PRE than HR. Certainly watch what your heart does, but if you set out trying to get your HR into the low 180s (your LTHR, no?) in a few minutes, that's kind of a recipe for blowing your legs up.

Remember back to your last LT effort (the test?), and remember how that was supposed to feel. Namely, that you felt that burn creeping into your legs so much that if you went just a bit harder, you would sink.

You don't have to get that close to the tipping point, but you get my point. Don't even bother looking at your HR for at least 5 minutes. It's liable to freak you out into pushing too hard if you look down and see 160 bpm.

THEN note where it is during the last 5 minutes of the effort, note how much time it takes to come down after the effort into recovery, then see what it does during the second effort.

While I do have a power meter, I can also tell you that when I was doing 4 x 10 minute efforts the other night, my HR stayed lower than what I know to by my ideal (well-rested, well temp regulated, middle-of-the-day workout time) LT HR. But I've been doing this long enough to know that it was pretty much spot on for when I do indoor workouts at 8:30pm at night after a day of chasing a toddler around the city. And having the watt-o-meter was nice confirmation that I was still able to churn out the appropriate amount of watts for the given workout. BUT, if I only had a HRM, and went strictly by feel, I would have been a-okay. And YOU WILL BE TOO.

Take notes, mental or otherwise. You're new to all of this precise training, and I know it can be frustrating not being able to dial everything, every metric perfectly, but ultimately you need to understand/believe that you are going to be just fine.

You may feel that you are in some way at a disadvantage to others because you do not own a power meter, BUT, in some ways you are going to learn how your body reacts to different kinds of efforts quicker because you are being forced to train using PRE, forced to think about how your legs/lungs are feeling, instead of simply following a power prescription.

Central Park: Cracking the Code Review Sheet

Racing is both very specific (to the course, the competition, the weather) and very general (the general/basic rules of racing remain the same regardless of the variables). And so while much of what follows here is framed within the context of racing in Central Park, there are concepts that are very much relevant to ALL racing theory and practice.

Arrive “early.” In CP and NYC park races in general, you don’t have to arrive 90 minutes to 2 hours early before race time like you should at an out of town crit, cross or road race, but you still don’t want to show up with less than 30 minutes to go before the start. That’s when everyone shows up and the lines are long and painful. GET THERE 45 MINUTES BEFORE START TIME and you’ll have plenty of time to pin on your number, go to the bathroom and line up relaxed and knowing that you are ready to go.

Fuel for thought/legs. Everyone has a different morning routine, and unless you’ve been racing in NYC for some time, you probably don’t have one for 6:30am race starts. Traditional racing theory would have you eating a hearty breakfast at 3am. But that’s impractical and ridiculous for us NYC racers. So whether that means you have a big dinner the night before, a quick bite in the morning before you roll out to the park, with a couple of snacks/gels/whatevers to eat immediately before, during and/or after the race, this is something you need to figure out for yourself. I personally do a big dinner the night before, maybe have a glass of OJ before I roll out, gel pack right before the race, bottle of “juice” on the bike for the race and some food for the roll home.

Pack “heavy.” What you wear to commute to the race course, what you wear while racing and what you wear home is going to be different. Because we don’t have warm cars and dry street clothes to change into after the race, you should absolutely bring an extra dry baselayer, and another thick/warm layer up top for the ride home. If the weather is crap, then you probably also want a second pair of gloves, knee/leg warmers or tights, rain jacket, etc. You can suffer through a short-ish race in most any clothing, but if you have 40-60 minutes to ride home, you MUST be dry and cozy.

Warm-up. The lovely thing about NYC racing is that the commute is basically your warm-up. You just want to make sure that you put in a few minutes of hard, race-paced effort on your ride to the race course. Warming up is critical to your entire racing experience. A good/real warm-up means you are not struggling during the early phases of the race while your body opens up to demands of racing. And for some, a good warm-up is the difference between finishing the race and getting dropped for good the first time up Harlem Hill.

Line up in front. You don’t have to be first or second row. Start-of-race positioning is not as critical in CP or other park races as it is at a cross or techinical criterium race, BUT, why in the world would you give yourself more work than you need to do? And if you start at the back, you are not only literally giving yourself more work to do to move up, but mentally you are starting with a handicap. “I belong back here, so I’ll start here.”

Race at the front. Again, we don’t want you at the very front of the field, but if you can’t quickly count the number of riders in front of you, you are too far back. You want to be in the front 1/3 of the field all day long. Here, you will be well-shielded from the wind, the accordion effect is limited allowing you to keep a steadier cadence and power output, and most importantly, you will be able to see what is happening at the front of the race and actively choose how you wish to react to the action. If you are 30 riders back, and a dangerous move goes off the front, I don’t care how strong you are, you missed that move and the best you can do now is keep your fingers crossed that it was not the winning move.

Save your legs and lungs. The person who wins the race is very rarely the person who went the hardest for the longest. Many lower category races will start in a bunch and end that way too. the last one to two laps of Central Park—or 15-30 minutes of other courses—will be the most intense. You will spend proportionally more of your energy resources trying to maintain position, going with dangerous moves, cranking out max watts on the final sprint. I often say, if you are setting too many power records on race day, you are working too hard. There are exceptions to this “rule” (like 1 minute or less efforts), but the idea is that you want to be as strong and as fresh as possible when it counts. And for most local races, that means being good for the last few laps.

If you are not moving forward you are moving backwards. This is literally true. Sure there are times when you can be coasting along and the field is not swarming in front of you, but for the most part, you must race like a shark moving forward at all times.

Easy on the brakes. A gentle squeeze to scrub some speed, or even just sitting up to catch some wind is a better way to keep with the flow of the race. Many accidents are caused by panic breaking where riders grab a fistful of levers and squeeze as hard as they can. There are times when this is necessary, and you won’t even have to think about when those times are, they will just happen. Mostly though, a gentle squeeze is all you need. If you find yourself breaking a lot, you might also be too far back in the pack. Move up and enjoy the flow.

The peloton is an amoeba. It ebbs and flows and you are part of that. Go with the flow. If you feel the field pushing left or right, don’t fight it, drift along with the bunch. That said, “hold your line” is often heard echoing around Cat 4/5 fields shrieked by anxious racers. This refers to ABRUPT sideways movements. Not the gentle squish this way or that of the field. Related, if you get bumped this way or that, know that this does not mean you will crash. Some contact is incidental and to be expected. Just absorb the blow a bit and keep on keeping on. You don’t have to do much/anything. Just don’t OVERCORRECT by pushing back too hard or jerking those handlebars. That’s when trouble happens.

Know your course. Know where the pavement sucks, know where the wind blows, know where is the easiest/fastest place to advance your position. In Central Park the road dips and dives and twists and winds. The field will gravitate naturally to the apex of turns, leaving a nice “passing lane” on the opposite side. So you might be in the wind for a few seconds or even 30, but in Central Park, the next turn is almost always going to be in the other direction and the field will swarm back around you protecting you from the wind once again. This time, though, you’ll be in the top 1/3 of the field instead of the back of the pack. You can thank Frederick Law Olmstead for that luxury.

Know your competition. This is both harder and easier in NYC than it seems. On the one hand, there are just so many racers out here, on the other, the amount of truly “dangerous” riders are relatively few. But once you know who is worth following and who needs to be let on a long leash that they will invariably hang themselves with, is a big part of saving your biggest/brightest matches (energy bursts) for when you actually need them.

Avoid attacking in the obvious spots. In Central Park, that’s Harlem Hill. And EVERYONE is ready to rock the 1 minute power explosion there. So while some moves get away here on occasion, the proportional amount of effort you have to put in here to get away is sort of ridiculous. Better to save your energy for a longer, harder, more deceptive place to attack, like on the West Side Rollers.

“Racing Stooopid.” So, this was an excellent point that David Yang brought up at the end. We can teach you textbook perfect racing and we will. And that is good. But what you can’t account for is how others will race. It’s a source of much frustration, for many of us. For example, maybe you slipped away in a breakaway, all the big teams are represented and yet riders in the breakaway are not riding to stay away. It might make no sense to you. Maybe the “passengers” have a good reason for riding the way they are, maybe not. You’ll never know. And you can’t get in their heads. What you have to do is recognize “stupid” and do your best to maximize your advantage regardless of the actions of others.

Don’t Define Yourself—until you’ve been training/racing for 5+ years. Folks are way too quick to call themselves “climbers” or “breakaway riders” and this effectively limits your growth as a racer. There are very few pure “anything” riders out there and with good positioning, smart racing and savvy energy saving, you can be anything if you just try!

MAKE MISTAKES! This document talks a lot about what you should and shouldn’t do. But the reality is that I want you to make lots of mistakes, try different things. We talk about not starting your sprint from the bottom of Cat’s Paw Hill, but you know what? It can be a truly valuable learning experience for you to try and see how your body reacts. See what happens. It will likely emphasize the points we were making, or maybe even you’ll discover you have a monster diesel sprint like John Malcolmson!

I really wish I could have made it to the clinic this morning, @Marc Bertucco. Thank you for posting this recap.

Any chance there's a similar clinic in the works for Prospect Park? 

MaxThorn said:

I really wish I could have made it to the clinic this morning, @Marc Bertucco. Thank you for posting this recap.

Any chance there's a similar clinic in the works for Prospect Park? 

Good question. KCC aims to please and there are a number of experienced riders who are not only local to PP but know that park like the back of their hand. Any experienced Brooklyn-based riders interested in leading? You could private message me and we could talk how to structure this type of clinic if that was a limiting factor in your decision.

I'd definitely be interested in a PP version, or at least a summary like the one posted for CP. Thanks so much for that, @Marc Bertucco !

Tactics Talk is TOMORROW NIGHT @ REDBIRD.

Here's the thread http://kissenacycling.vanillaforums.com/discussion/1111/tactics-talk#latest

If you're coming, let us know.  Kasia would like a head count.

I'm hoping we have enough people to do a criterium clinic both this Sunday, May 22, and Saturday June 11.

Details can be found here: http://kissenacycling.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/85788/#Comment_85788

Click on "awesome" if you're thinking of coming.

Will not be there the 22nd, but will be there June 11 (will be doing Castelli Cat 5 in Prospect Park that morning)

Scott Kuhlke said:

Will not be there the 22nd, but will be there June 11 (will be doing Castelli Cat 5 in Prospect Park that morning)

ACK!!!! How did I miss that?  Maybe I should shift to Brooklyn?    

Anyone know of a good crit course near Prospect Park?

any chance we could go to Floyd?  There is not a registered race that day, but don't know if its open to the public or one needs a permit to do so?

Scott Kuhlke said:

any chance we could go to Floyd?  There is not a registered race that day, but don't know if its open to the public or one needs a permit to do so?

Floyd is a possibility, but it's so windy and wide that the efforts feel more about power than speed, and corners/tight spaces are pretty much a non-issue.

Floyd can be configured to a smaller course with tight corners in almost anywhere we want. Cones can be our friend.