“I crumbled on the Tourmalet, the final climb in 2010”

Hitting the numbers: analyse your previous year’s riding

SUMMER has gone, the leaves are falling, there’s a nip in the air and winter is just around the corner, but now’s the time to get planning

your next cycling year. If you want to achieve something, and it might be anything from riding further, losing a few pounds, climbing hills a bit quicker to winning a race, you are more likely to do it if you have a plan.

But before you even start on your plan, you have to review what you did in the last 12 months, decide what worked and what didn’t, and assess where you are now. Do that and you have a starting point for your plan, plus one or two tools, like training

sessions that worked for you, to help you achieve what you want in the future.

Earlier this year (February 24 issue) we did a feature about Andy Edwards, a busy guy who was turning 40 and who had been a decent junior road racer in his youth. He made a comeback to racing during 2010 after 22 years away, and one of the things that stood out was the way Edwards set goals by breaking them down into their component parts, and then made those parts objectives on the way to a bigger goal.

He was also very good at reviewing his progress, and adjusting his training according to what each review revealed. And when he needed advice,

Looking back to go forwardChris sidweLLs writes about reviewing your last 12 months of cycling and using the past to plan for the future

PinpointingBefore looking forward to

2012, review what happened in 2011. Pinpointing moments

where you were flying and also where things went wrong will enable you

to set clearer goals for the future.

Edwards went right to the top. He approached one of Britain’s best-ever racers, Robert Millar, the 1984 Tour de France King of the Mountains, and Millar agreed to help him.

Good modelSo Edwards is a good model to illustrate how to review, how to use a review to set objectives, and how to plan your cycling in 2012. He doesn’t have masses of time for racing and training, so he has to be very efficient with his time, which probably rings a bell with many of us.

Edwards’s first full race season (2010) saw steady progress with a number of good placings and promotion through to second category, which represents a good standard for a club racer.

EDWARDS told us about two pieces of training advice Robert Millar gave him during 2011, which have been particularly helpful in races.

The first was to do with creating race-winning speed. “Make sure you do some tailwind slightly downhill intervals. Why? Because a good slogger never dropped anyone. Racing is about going fast. You can ride strongly into headwinds if you feel like it but there’s no point to

being the strongest guy ever, who can ride 21mph all day, if you want to race”.

And for hill sprints Millar advises: “You are only looking at using the top of the climb, so it only really needs to be 1,500 metres long. Ride 1,200 metres at just over your threshold power then for the final 300 metres make a maximum sprint that continues for a further 300 metres over the top of

the climb. If you can find a hill that doesn’t descend straight away but stay level then that’s ideal.”

BRITISh lEgEnD’S ADvIcE

Coach Millar’s intervals

fitness | Moving forward fitness | Moving forward

He also dipped his toes into two Premier Calendar races, and found that if the course wasn’t too brutal then finishing one was a legitimate objective for someone like him. There’s a lot of satisfaction from riding above your level from time to time, so his 2010 experience was enough to whet his appetite and he planned to ride another in 2011. It didn’t happen because the event he targeted was cancelled, and no one can plan for that.

A gold medal in the Etape du Tour was another 2010 objective for Edwards. Despite having a good ride in the 2010 Etape, and in La Marmotte, Edwards didn’t get gold because, in his own words: “I crumbled on the Tourmalet, the final climb of the Etape in 2010. So preventing that happening again was a major objective in 2011.”

ObjectivityThe bottom line when reviewing is to look at the things that have prevented you doing what you planned to achieve. You also need to be mindful of the things you are doing right, the things that are helping you progress, and write them all down. The most important thing is what is preventing you achieve, because if you know that you can work to remove it. When Edwards consulted Robert Millar about that in the context of the Etape du Tour, the ex-pro highlighted a lack of muscular endurance as the reason. His solution was to do a lot of threshold work, but at the right time of year.

“Robert has guided me from winter base miles to early-season tempo riding, threshold training through to interval training. It’s a structure I was well versed in from my younger days, but he has taken my understanding to a much higher level, together with adding plenty of nuances,” he says.

The nuances had more to do with racing, but Edwards thinks that a strong endurance base as well as threshold training had big effect on the outcome of the

Millar: hill heroEdwards was a talented junior who came back after 22 years out

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“Draw up a list that includes all the things you’ve identified, then plan training sessions”

fitness | Moving forward fitness | Moving forward

Etape. “I rode quite comfortably up Alpe d’Huez (the final climb) this year, and improved my ranking by almost 150 places. And I had fallen ill the week before and I wasn’t 100 per cent, so I think I can do better. I think the threshold training will be more effective when I do my next Etape.”

interim reviewsIt’s important to say that although we are talking about a season review, you should review each stage of your cycling year too. After a good start to his racing in 2011, Edwards hit a bad patch in April. “It was largely due to starting a new job. I was racing, doing my specific training sessions, but my commute got longer. I didn’t feel tired, but I felt like I had no top end in races.

“Robert told me that it was like what he called Easter legs, when pros would train hard for the spring Classics and find themselves exhausted and in need of a break, which is what he suggested I do. I had a week off then gradually built up again. Robert also suggested I look at my diet, so I went to Lynn Clay, Cycling Weekly’s nutritionist. She identified that I should be having more protein, and that helped my recovery.”

Edwards improved after that, and being fitter helped him get in breakaway moves in races with elite riders in them. Towards the end of the season he scored a good win in a road race that had two national masters champions in the field. “I don’t have the best sprint, so I have to get away

towards the end to win, which as a tactic can only

work if you are fitter, but I think that anyone coming

back will have three years of improvement ahead of them,

so that fact has helped me set objectives for next year,” he says.

Look backTo undertake your review you need to look back very carefully at the training you did in 2011. Try to isolate the things you did that made you better. Very often this is the kind of training and the way it was mixed in the three to four weeks before you achieved a measurable improvement in fitness. Plan to include this training mix in your run up to important objectives in 2012.

Next look at what held you back in 2011 because doing this

IF you want a successful 2012, then it’s imperative you set goals. Whether you adhere to the SMART principle or indeed SWAT, there is one thing you must address, and that is to find the balance between a challenging goal and an attainable one. Setting easily achievable goals will leave you unfulfilled and if barriers aren’t being pushed, then you are unlikely to improve. On the other hand, goals that are too hard may have a detrimental effect on your performance. Forever pushing yourself in a quest to reach a goal, which is impossible to reach will not only leave you exhausted, but also deflated once the goal hasn’t been achieved. You also run the risk of injuring yourself, as you are constantly pushing the body to become stronger, faster or thinner and not giving your body adequate time to recover.

Another top tip to try is once you have decided on a goal, commit to it by writing it down and telling someone. Announcing it will set the goal in stone, providing motivation, and give you a real buzz and heightened sense of satisfaction once the goal has been achieved. Telling a friend may also help as they could provide that extra push when you need it.

gOAl SETTIng

top tips for a better 2012

helps you set interim goals. Did you get dropped on short climbs? If so you need to work on speed and power. Or were long climbs your weakness? Losing some weight could help improve your climbing, and increasing your muscular endurance by doing five to 10-minute intervals at your anaerobic threshold certainly will improve it.

Finally, are there things you haven’t done that you think might help you? Weight training could help on short, sharp climbs, for example. This is where a coach or a fitness instructor might be able to help. Or you might not be eating the right combination of food, so maybe a nutritionist can help, or read a good book on the subject.

Jump forwardOnce you’ve done your review you can use it to set goals. Many coaches suggest using the SMART method, which involves making your goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. This is good, but possibly overcomplicated and the words aren’t very emotive. So — let me to introduce you to SWAT goal setting. That’s Scary,

What does it take, Application and Training.

Scary goals get you out of bed in the morning. I’m not talking about the unachievable here, just a goal that when you close your eyes you can see yourself achieving if everything went right and if you tried really hard. A scary goal should inspire you, it should make you smile when you think about it, and it will make you apply yourself to thinking about your cycling and training, otherwise you won’t achieve it.

What does it take? is the question British Cycling ask at the beginning of everything they take on. They look at a discipline or an individual race and using input from different specialists, write down what it takes to win. The man who planned Mark Cavendish’s world road race title, Rod Ellingworth, tells me he’s even subjected the Tour de France to this process and has pages and pages of ‘what does it take’ notes on the Tour. He’s promised to reveal them if a British racer wins one day. So, write down what it takes to achieve your scary goal. For example, if it’s a gold medal in the Etape, you need to find out the route and what the average speed will be for gold.

Application means applying your ‘what does it take’ analysis to your circumstances. You need to draw up a list that includes all the things you’ve identified. Then you need to plan training sessions that address those things, and ways of measuring your progress, which become

interim goals. Taking our gold medal in the Etape, for example, an interim goal might be riding for half the distance on your own at the average speed you’ll need on the day.

Training — you have to get this done. Resolve now to treat training sessions like business meetings. You wouldn’t be late or miss a business meeting, so apply that to training. You don’t have to change your life. Come up with a plan that addresses the answers to what does it take, but the plan must fit your life, while at the same time taking you out of your comfort zone. The warm glow of pride you’ll feel, plus the extra fitness and wellbeing, will be well worth it.

Ask yourself how you can improve for next year. What can you perhaps try,

which you didn’t try this year? By thinking outside the box, you may see ever-so-slight

improvements that could give you the edge over your

counterparts.

Training with brother Chris, a second-cat Liverpool Mercury rider

Edwards in the Sotonia Heath Race break

Think outside the box

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