Crank Cycling

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

Crank Cycling Athletes and freinds. We are planning on doing a Crank Cycling road ride on Decmber 3rd at 9am. We will be leaving from the Performance Bike Shop in Sorrento Valley. The ride will be lead by Coach Jesse Eisner.
This riding is aproprieate for all crank cycling athletes. It is an endurance paced ride. There will be no hammering on the ride. Hope to see you all out there.

Cheers Coach Jesse

Performance Bike Shop
11675 Sorrento Valley Rd., Suite A
1/4 Mile South of Carmel Mountain Road
Sorrento, CA 92121

Crank route

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/59080432

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

In the summer of 1996, I took an introduction to velodrome racing class. I had been riding my bike quite a lot that year and the year prior. Learning how to ride and race on the San Diego Velodrome just seemed like the next natural thing to do with my cycling. A velodrome is an oval track with banked turns. Velodromes can be made out of wood, asphalt, or concrete. They are built indoors and outdoors. There are only 25 velodromes currently in the United States as opposed to Japans 67 velodromes. Recently velodromes are being called hipster Nascar, as the rise of fixed-gear bike riding is currently cool. In my opinion, all things leading to more people on HPVs (human powered vehicles) is good.

Since 1995 I have ridden a bicycle. This is my 16th season racing my bicycle. I still can’t get enough of the adrenaline rush of going fast. My motto is going through corners at 30 mph is good, and going through corners at 35 mph is better. My current job is coaching cyclists. I coach all kinds of cyclists: athletic enthusiasts, adventure racers, century riders, masters racers, and a professional. This coaching started when I was asked to be an assistant coach at the San Diego Velodrome in 2008. This is my fourth season as a coach at the velodrome, so it seems I have come full circle. I learned to race on the velodrome in 1996 and now teach people to race on it.

If you want to come and learn how to ride and race on the San Diego Velodrome, click on the link below or let me know. Our six-week classes start in early March and end in late September.  The next class begins on June 22nd.

This link i below is for the 6 week Developmental class at the San Diego Velodrome. This class is appropriate for riders of all levels, from true beginners to experienced trackies. Sean and Jesse will split the class participants up into two groups. The beginner or Level 1 group, and the advanced or level 2 group. The level 1 group will learn the basics of track riding, while the level 2 group will learn more advanced training and racing techniques. The cost is $120 + a $3 online registration fee. The cost of the class includes a rental bike if you need one. Class is from 7-9 PM on Wednesday evenings. Please arrive a little early, especially before the first week of class. You will receive an email a few days before the first class with a reminder and more information.

San Diego Velodrome Adult Class  Registration and Information

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Cheers,
Cycling Coach Jesse Eisner
619-962-3176
www.eisnercoaching.com
www.crankcycling.com

What are you capable of doing? Most athletes do not know what the top of their peak performance can be. One of the hardest parts of training is objectively viewing your own performance and determining whether your efforts are adding to a progressive or regressive state. We, as finite beings, are for the most part incapable of training to our personal best without some outside perspective. Productive training consists of disciplined efforts performed on a razors edge, trying to push beyond our current limitations to achieve what may seem impossible from the outset. We most often find what we are capable of doing by pushing beyond our current limitations to the point of failure. Failure is not a bad thing. Failure shows what our weaknesses are and points us in a direction in the pursuit of improving our performance.In a recent conversation with one of my clients, he shared that he thought he might be doing too much and was probably not capable of attaining some of our midterm goals. We discussed the workouts he had completed and his overall recovery.

Here are some important questions you can ask yourself to make sure you are not over training: Am I able to do and complete my workouts correctly? Am I recovering on my rest days? Am I staying healthy (not getting sick)?   This is where a power meter can be quite useful.   If an athletes is feeling good, but the power keeps improving, we know that the athlete is not over trained.

So objectivity will help us to determine our training progression. Pushing beyond our seeming limitations reveals our true limitations, and failure is just a learning tool.

All of these elements can be more easily attained when consulting with a coach. Crank Cycling coaches will help you to do all of these things. Give us a call! Let’s sit down and discuss how we can help you to assess your capabilities.

See you on the road,
Coach Jesse

In some of the hottest weeks of the summer bicycle racers from all across America congregate in Milwaukee Wisconsin for 14 days of racing. This 2 weeks of racing is called superweek. The fields are big and the racing is fast and technical. If you want to pay your dues or earn your racing stripes you go and race superweek. One of the riders I manage on the Ranchos Development Elite Team has gone over to race for one of those two weeks. Below is an interview I did with him about half way through his race week.

Cheers
Coach Jesse

As the team manager for the Ranchos DET Team I have the opportunity to share in the challenges and successes of cyclists who ride at the top tier of amateur racing. One of the Riders I work with now is Bryan Larsen. He started out the year as a category 2 and has recently gotten his upgrade to category 1. Category 1 is the top of the amateur ranks. Bryan is a full time student and getting his upgrade has taken lots of hard work, focus, and balance. Bryan was recently invited to participate at the Sacramento Gran Prix as part of a Composite Team. Below is a race report of the Sacramento Gran Prix. The Sacramento Gran Prix was a Pro-Am event held on may 16th 2010 the same day the Tour of California finished in Sacramento.

Sacramento Grand Prix write up:

Hometown. Hometown crowds and friends. Same Course as the Tour of California circuit. And Money. What other reason do you need to be motivated, nervous, and excited all at the same time? And I think nervous was an understatement, as I was more nervous before this race than I had been since national championships back in 2008. My nervousness was only amplified by my crash last week at the Long Beach Grand Prix while still in contention for a descent place.

I’ll walk through a couple key points from the race:

50m in: Crash.
1 lap+50m in: crash.
2 laps: crash.
Etc etc etc
No joke, There was a crash at the start. And while receiving a free lap the rider(s) proceeded to take down half the 170 racer group moving at 34mph on the following lap while trying to reintegrate themselves into the pack. They ended up giving about half the pack a free lap and let them start riding prior to the front end of the groups arrival at the pit, which means I went from about 15th place to 85th place in a second.

With about 8 laps to go a two place prime was announced and I wasn’t super far from the front so I decided I might give it a go and just start late and not dig too deep. I did start late and by the time I was starting to sprint Justin Williams was basically crossing the line while I rolled in securely in 2nd. We cruised back into the pack only to see lap cards one lap later. I got real nervous when I saw this for two reasons: 1) I had just done a sprint and only had 6 laps to recover now and 2) MORE CRASHES. Everyone thought they could win the race and were doing stupid things to try and get to the front which in turn only caused more pileups. A break went up the road with about 3 laps to go with Yahoo blocking for their rider in the break. The break was caught and Yahoo decided to do a Bahati style lead out while riding the inside straight before flicking riders to swing wide right before the turns before swinging back to the inside line. Coming on two laps to go, there was MAJOR crash in the last corner. It happened relatively close to the front and I could hear it not too far behind me. The following lap we were coming into those dangerous corners, 3 and 4 and the moto decided to try and neutralize the race but Yahoo and everyone else essentially went around him. There was no way we were being neutralized with 1.25 laps to go. People were still sprawled out on the pavement in corner 4 from the previous lap’s crash. 1 lap to go. And I’m sitting about 20th. WAY TOO FAR BACK! Crash again while a group of riders were pinched through a corner. Next corner: CRASH! Everyone wanted what only one person can have and that was a win at the Sacramento Grand Prix. I found myself flying into the last corner under Justin with a little heads up on my part he didn’t pinch me and as a result I let him role by me immediately following the turn. 500M to go. I’m 7th-ish wheel and glued to Justin Williams’ wheel. Yahoo was still at the front driving as hard as they could and I was out of the saddle almost immediately and before I knew it I was pinched by a Yahoo guy and forced me into the wind to the left of the rest of the leadout train which happened to be right when Justin jumped forcing me to lose out on that valuable accelerating draft. I had to push my own wind and continued to do so. I crossed the line 4th within ¼ of a wheels length from 3rd. I’m glad I stayed upright, in fact if you had asked me 5 laps into the race how I’d finish I would have said I was going to go down. Another note: I think I heard there were 5 or so crashes in the last 3 laps!

It was a neat experience racing on the same course as Cavendish would be winning later in the day as well as standing on the same podium step looking out with your hands up. Maybe one day a few years from now . . . well, it never hurts to dream

Bryan is on the far right and Justin is looking back at him

Bryan is on the far right again

At the rate Bryan is going he will be in the professional ranks soon. Good job Bryan keep it up!

Cheer
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

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