Crank Cycling

At the end of every season you should take a break from focused training. I’m not saying you shouldn’t ride your bike…not at all! But you should stop looking at your heart rate monitor, your power data and even your personal training duration for a few weeks. This helps to relax the mind, rejuvenate and reboot yourself. We don’t often think about it, but disciplined training is mentally taxing; it’s just plain tiring. Sometimes at the end of a good season the body will feel like it is ready to keep going but the mind still needs a break.

After this ‘cooling off’ period I usually add very loosely-structured training with small goals to my riders’ training diaries. These goals are usually pretty simple: do a 4-hour ride 3 times a month, accumulate 3 to 5 hours of tempo per week or maybe do a club ride just for fun once a week. These workouts and weekly goals are low stress, low commitment and allow your brain to slowly get used to the mental workload that is coming when training season arrives.

Riders should find that rides during this time of the year are meant to be fun, motivating and inspiring. This is also the time when you should review how your riding and racing season went during the past year. New-found inspiration and motivation will help you see the future and all its possibilities. You should try to assess whether or not you’ve met the goals you set for yourself this past year and whether you want to try and improve on your gains. Maybe you want to attack those shortfalls that you may notice in this review. Maybe you’ll want to set entirely different goals for the coming year. It’s all possible, and it’s up to you!

Setting goals is paramount. If you’ve never set goals in past seasons you should try doing it this coming year. If my athletes are planning on competing in the upcoming racing season, I have them try to set at least three goals to strive for. After all, if you know what goals you want to achieve you can then measure how close you’ve come to attaining your desired results and make adjustments in successive years.

Setting goals is one of my favorite parts of riding and racing because I have the opportunity to entertain all the possible things I can try to accomplish, and that’s just fun! But remember: goals should be challenging and attainable. After you set some goals you should make sure to keep a record of the training you do, being sure to add comments about how you felt during and after your training sessions. You should also make sure to set milestone markers to measure whether you are moving in the right direction in order to attain your goals.

In my next blog post I’ll talk about setting accomplishable goals for your next season.

See you on the road,
Coach Jesse Eisner

Did you have goals this past season? Did you achieve them? If you need help setting goals for next season and you need direction in how to achieve those goals, let the coaches at Crank Cycling know. We can help!

A key component to having a good race is having a tried and tested routine that you stick to. You will have some pressure and stress while trying to accomplish your goals. So it is important to feel comfortable leading into the day of your race. You already must be a disciplined individual to prepare physically and mentally for your race. Taking that discipline and utilizing it for your race day prep is important.

Pick a routine that you know works. Try to sleep the amount of time you normally when training. If your race is on a Sunday don’t add tons of extra chores around the house Saturday. You and your coach have done efforts that should mimic your event. Pick foods that you have eaten before these hard efforts and that you know sit well in your stomach. All testing of new foods should be done during training, months before your event. Give yourself extra time during preparation. Plan for everything to take longer and expect that you will need that extra time.

Because competition is stressful physically and mentally it is important to not add any extra stress. Make sure you are comfortable. Plan your meals ahead of time. What will you eat the day before and the day of (pre and post event). Choose the clothing you will wear to your event, during your event, and after your event. Make sure your equipment is the way you want it. Do you always use red TT bars at a time trial. Make sure they are on your bike not your workbench.

Just like discipline in training discipline in preparation is very important. Practice your preparation. You will most likely have similar events leading up to your peak event. Try new things months in advance. Repeat what works, and right it down to review later. Repetition is key to dialing in your routine. Finally if its not broke don’t fix it.

It is always important to remember life is not perfect. Things can go wrong. We all have had mechanical at inopportune moments or forgotten a helmet. If your are having a challenges here are a couple things you can do. Take a deep breath, ask for help. If it can’t be helped let out your frustration out and than let it go. It is very important as an athlete to have multiple goals. Pick two or three races you want to do well at. Then choose multiple metrics to measure your success. There is almost always a success in your performance.

If you want to take your training to the next level, let the coaches at Crank Cycling know. We can help you meet whatever training goals you have!
See you on the road,
Coach Jesse Eisner

So it is the end of your season and it has been a long one. You just finished the Everest Challenge which has 30,000 feet of climbing. Or maybe you just did a five day UCI stage race in the Caribbean. For some of the riders I coach, this is the way their season ended. When your season has ended with such lofty goals, you can be left with a lack of drive to continue training.

Some riders force themselves through periods where they lack motivation. This can, and usually does, lead to overreaching and eventually burnout or over training.

It is important to give ourselves time to relax from the rigors of training and racing even if you have come off a stellar season, accomplished your goals, and have a new level of fitness. It is important to remember that even if you are not physically overreaching or over trained, that you may be mentally tired. Our minds need just as much care as our bodies when it comes to recovery.

There are always alternative training methods to maintain and rebuild a high level of fitness. These alternatives can give us a break from a rigorous training schedule and still be fun. One method that some cyclists use is Cyclo-cross. Cyclo-Cross is like mountain biking and running mixed into the same workout on road style bicycles. Cylco-cross race courses are run on road, grass, and single track trails with minimal technical sections, but have areas where the rider must dismount and carry his or her bike while hurdling barriers.

Mountain biking is also another good alternative of riding. At the end of a long season, our training and competing can become only a means to an end. Sometimes this leads us to forget about the fun aspects of riding bicycles. Most of us started riding bicycles because it was fun and our competitive natures pushed us to compete on our bikes. Mountain biking leads us back to trails, keeps our brains engaged picking good lines on technical sections of these trails, and usually leads us to mud; and everyone knows that getting muddy is fun.

If you want to be as functional as possible in your off season, lifting weights is also a good thing to take up at the end of your season. Weight lifting is something you should talk with your coach or trainer about as you can very easily injure yourself lifting. Lifting weights should also incorporate the same movements that your cycling discipline does.

When starting to rebuild your overall fitness and transitioning into the off season, it is important to break up the rhythm of your training to include cross training and conditioning in a fun environment. Allowing your body to rest and recover from anaerobic efforts is important. Allowing your mind to rest from pushing yourself to accomplish your workouts is also very important. Training comes in building cycles. All building cycles whether weekly, monthly, or yearly should include rest periods.

Our long term goals as athletes should include rest, recovery, and relaxation at the end of a long season and taking that time will renew our inner drive. I am writing this blog post from Monterey, California, where I just took a few days off to relax, read books, and ride a mountain bike on beautiful Fort Ord, and believe me, I got muddy.

If you want to take your training to the next level, let the coaches at Crank Cycling know. We can help you meet whatever training goals you have!
See you on the road,
Coach Jesse Eisner

It is essential to know your strengths and weaknesses before adding specificity to your training plan. There are two common approaches, 1) further develop your strengths, and 2) focus on your weaknesses. Riders training to their strengths dedicate time and energy where their skills and abilities already lie; others, focus on their weaknesses in order to develop a well-rounded set of abilities. The Crank Cycling Climbing Camp can help both types of riders.
The Crank Cycling Spring Climbing Camp is where a dedicated rider can harness the power of specificity in order to achieve new levels of performance. After determining a focus area and attaining a base-level of cycling fitness, adding training specificity complementing and stretching your abilities is the next step. If you are a climber, more climbing and specific gradients that mimic upcoming events, including appropriate duration and intensity, is essential. Planning on competing in a century race with a 3-mile climb? If so, then you will want to reflect that exact effort in your training. Do you have upcoming touring century rides? The first goal for specific training is to start with duration barely exceeding your existing limits. To maximize your training, the goal is to incrementally extend that duration until reaching the desired effort level for a given event. Accurately answering the following questions will effectively shape your training program:
1) Does the event have repeated efforts such as a circuit race?
2) Is the event a point-to-point event with continuously rolling terrain?
3) Are there repeated climbs?

After these efforts are added into your training plan you can take specificity a step further
by adding continuous blocks of the chosen discipline to stimulate further adaptation—a training camp is a perfect opportunity for this. Training camps can be as simple as a long weekend with multiple days of riding, or as intricate as choosing multiple specific climbs over 3 to 5 days while maintaining specific power or heart rate output.
Crank Cycling just completed a spring climbing camp in some of the most challenging and beautiful terrain in Southern California. For three days riders enjoyed a FULLY-SUPPORTED experience including a follow-vehicle, food, drinks, spare clothing, mechanical support, expert coaching, and evaluation. Riders climbed over 21,000 feet, sped down winding descents, and pushed themselves to new levels—all developing their riding skills and pushing their physical limits.

“It felt like I was on a 3 day vacation, except I was never more than an hour away from home. I got to push my body over some of the most beautiful climbs San Diego has to offer, while feeling very “pro” the entire time. There is nothing more relaxing than knowing you have a support vehicle near you at all times. A raise of your hand gets you anything you need, water , food, a jacket, a wheel change, sometimes just a word of support, or the directions to your next turn. I will be the first to sign up to Crank Cycling’s next climbing camp!” ~Jose Cepeda~

Summer Climbing camp

Jose and Coach Jesse

Coached athlete Justin Farrar

If you want to take your training to the next level, let the coaches at Crank Cycling know. We can help meet whatever training goals you have!

See you on the road,
Coach Jesse Eisner

Coach Jesse is heading up a climbing camp next week.    Here are the deets:

Time to get your climbing legs on! If you are training for a long hard ride like the Death Ride, or just love to climb, this camp is for you. You will get in 3 days of 3+ hour rides with 4K feet of climbing or more each day. Each day features some of the best climbing and riding in the San Diego Area. You can train like the pros with full sag vehicle support, including spare wheels, food, drinks, and more. Day 1 Begins in Escondido, and gains 4K of of climbing a on the Way to the idyllic mountain town of Julian. Day 2 Follows the fabled Kitchen Creek up to the top of Mount Lagunaa and climbs for a total of over 5500 feet. Day 3 is definitely the “queen stage” of this camp and you”l climbs from Escondido up to the lake Cuyamaca and back, amassing over 7K feet of climbing along the way. Cost for the camp is $100 per day or or $275 for the whole camp. Athletes on a monthly coaching plan get a 25% discount. Contact Coach Eisner for more information: jesse@sandiegocrank.com   or register HERE.

In order to hone your cycling skills it is important to practice them in a controlled environment. This means you should practice riding fast, cornering, and riding in groups. Creating a controlled environment is the hardest part of practicing these skills. To do so you need a safe place to ride and at least one experienced rider who has mastered all of the skills being practiced. Crank Cycling Coaches can help you do this.

Do you want to cruise through the field of riders and find the sweet spot in the peloton? Do you want to slide into the draft and reap the benefits of others’ hard work? Would you like to glide through corners at high speeds, not hitting your brakes and not having to over-analyze the word Apex on google search for hours? Do you want to make it over, through, and around obstacles and hazards without worry?

Would you like to keep up on the local club ride without being afraid of riders coming too close to you, or the constant thought of being dropped and not able to catch up at the regroup spot?

All of these things can be accomplished and your mind can be set at ease with some classroom instruction and on-the-bike practice. Come to Crank Cycling’s bike-handling and group riding skills clinic on April 16th, presented by Crank Cycling Coach Jesse Eisner. Jesse is a USA Cycling Certified coach and veteran racer with 2 decades worth of riding and racing experience.

See you out on the road,
Coach Jesse

Link to sign up

http://clients.mindbodyonline.com/ws.asp?studioid=7102&stype=-102

June and July are the peak months for most racing seasons throughout the US. Most championship races are held in these months, including Junior, under 23, elite senior, and masters nationals. Some state championships also take place at this time of year. This means peaking, tapering, and speed leading into these months are key. All of these are accomplished by lessening time and duration in your workouts, while increasing intensity and effort.

These changes in your workout can be as simple as removing a long ride and adding more sprints, or by pacing with a motor and incrementally increasing the speed until your peak. An important component to these efforts is having rest days so your legs recover, as well as phasing in new exercises gradually so as not to incur injury.

One common workout to do to help build this speed is 30 second speed intervals. These 30-second bursts are followed by a 2-5 minute rest and repeated. Efforts in races at the height of the season are usually more intense and more frequent. By this time in the season, many riders are fit from training and racing and want to show off that fitness by attacking over and over again.

Riding in this aggressive manner splits the race fields in half, thins out the weaker riders, and helps us drop our friends on the Saturday club ride.

If you need help designing a training program that can increase your speed, we at Crank Cycling can help you. Shoot us an email. Let’s see what we can accomplish together.

Cheers,

Coach Jesse

June and July are the peak months for most racing seasons throughout the US. Most championship races are held in these months, including Junior, under 23, elite senior, and masters nationals. Some state championships also take place at this time of year. This means peaking, tapering, and speed leading into these months are key. All of these are accomplished by lessening time and duration in your workouts, while increasing intensity and effort.

These changes in your workout can be as simple as removing a long ride and adding more sprints, or by pacing with a motor and incrementally increasing the speed until your peak. An important component to these efforts is having rest days so your legs recover, as well as phasing in new exercises gradually so as not to incur injury.

One common workout to do to help build this speed is 30 second speed intervals. These 30-second bursts are followed by a 2-5 minute rest and repeated. Efforts in races at the height of the season are usually more intense and more frequent. By this time in the season, many riders are fit from training and racing and want to show off that fitness by attacking over and over again.

Riding in this aggressive manner splits the race fields in half, thins out the weaker riders, and helps us drop our friends on the Saturday club ride.

If you need help designing a training program that can increase your speed, we at Crank Cycling can help you. Shoot us an email. Let’s see what we can accomplish together.

Cheers,

Coach Jesse

In our life and culture there seems to be a lack of etiquette lately. People have forgotten how to flip on there turn signals, they want to sit in your lap while you pay at the cash register, and don’t understand it is unsafe to tailgate because someone might stop abruptly.

One of the main reasons I love the velodrome is that racing is fast, fun, and etiquette is required. There are many disciplines of cycling where there are unspoken rules. But at your local velodrome the rules are set, and the athletes you compete with sit across from you on the infield. This means you always have instant feed back.

One of the rules of velodrome racing is no one gets to have brakes. This means no one can slam on the brakes and cause a pileup. This also means that riding safely is paramount to staying upright. To stay upright, you never overlap wheels and you use the banking of the track to control your speed. If someone slows down, you move up track to slow down. If someone falls down, you move up track because they will slide down track.

Another important rule is to look before you move and to make your movements smooth or subtle. If you look right, and know one is there (or coming up behind), you can move right. When you are looking right, it also signals to other riders behind you that you are planning to move.

The rules on a velodrome apply at all times. If you want to workout at the same time as another group at the velodrome, you can be assured that the other riders will understand the rules and they should not do something unexpected or dangerous. We enter and exit the track the same way every time. We ride fast on certain parts of the track and slower on others. We have one word commands that are recognized at other velodromes to communicate with each other while on the track.

If you ever want to learn more about the San Diego Velodrome, let us know. All the coaches at Crank Cycling ride, race, teach, and coach riders at the San Diego Velodrome.

Cheers

Coach Jesse

www.eisnercoaching.com

www.sdvelodrome.com

San Diego Velodrome category C's June 1998

Coach Jesse attacking the Field!

This past weekend was a solid weekend of racing with lots of wins.

First off was Justin Farrar in Maryland. He entered his 2nd category 4/5 road race of the year. There were 75 riders in his field. The race was on an 8 mile circuit on slightly rolling terrain with 2 steep power climbs. After lap 3 a 5-man break got away for 2 laps. Justin’s teammate Iain reeled the break back in on the final lap, with one mile to go. With about 300 meters to go, Justin was boxed in 12th position looking for an opening. He had to push his way through other riders in the field. By the time he hit the front , he was only chasing one other rider to the line and he took 2nd.

Good job Justin.

Justin killin it!

The UCSD Cycling Team managed to pull off two wins, three 2nd places, one 3nd place, and a smattering of top 10 finishes. The first race was the Golden Acorn Road Race on Saturday. Colin Ng (AKA Quadzilla) took 3rd followed by Ben Ostrander taking 4th in the men’s C’s.

The second day of racing had the mens C’s and D’s combined. UCSD fielded a 12-man team and was aggressive from the gun. They sent riders off the front every lap until a break of 3 finally stuck. Colin (Quadzilla) was in the break.

The break put 40 seconds into the field and if the race had another 15 minutes, they would have lapped the field. Coming out of the last corner, Colin turned on the gas and destroyed his opponents. After the race, Colin Marveled, “ I thought it was some sort of new tactic they were doing, going slow to the finish line.” Nope, Colin was just faster!

Matt McKinzie easily won the field sprint taking 4th overall and 1st in the D’s followed by Jeffrey Skacel in 2nd overall.

The athletes coached by Crank Cycling dominated this past weekend. Good job guys and gals!

Coach Jesse

Qaudzilla in the Break

Matt sprinting away from the Field