It’s time to set new goals for 2017! This year, I’m going to try something old and something new: higher volume and having two peaks in the season. One of the biggest things I noticed when I was racing in college was that even if I wasn’t getting a ton of intensity in or if I was sick, having the extra volume seemed to buffer my fitness and allow me to have a lot of extra gas in the tank as the year progressed. For this reason, I’m looking to shed some of the intensity I did this year in favor of volume. However, this won’t just be mindless riding, I’ll include plenty of tempo intervals with some neuromuscular efforts.
Physical Goals:
- Increase TTE to 50:00
- Raise mFTP to 300w (season high: 273)
- Raise 1min power to 700w (season high: 568)
- Gain/Maintain a weight of ~150lbs (currently: 144.6 lbs)
- Gained through strength training
- Mostly an experiment since most great cross and XCO racers carry a higher weight for raw increased power
- It’s OK if I’m a little below this as long as I’m not carrying loads of dead weight (low body fat)
- Body fat less than 10% by “A” mountain events
- I would like to use a DEXA scan, but the cost might require me to continue to use my scale
- Raise CTL to between 75-85 by “A” mountain events and rebuild that for the cyclocross season.
Misc. Goals (Nebulous):
Normaly you don’t want goals that are nebulous, but some of the skills I need are nebulous (such as comfort offroad)
Skills that Make a Better Race
- Learn to bunny hop barriers
- Need to include a few minutes of skill work during endurance rides
- Doesn’t need to be super structured
- Need to include more neuromuscular work to reduce co-activation of muscles during the pedal stroke
- High cadence intervals (120+)
- Cadence Pyramids
Do more offroad riding on my cross bike
- Dirt roads and mountain bike trails count
- Generally looking for more comfort than anything specific
Racing Goals:
- In the road/mountain events, finish in the main field
- Need goals to keep motivation high and to avoid just doing continual base
- High placing is a bonus, but these events are for fitness, motivation and skills
- Upgrade to Cat 3
- Missed this goal by a wide margin last year; I won’t make the same mistakes again
- I believe if I hit my physical goals, this will fall in line
- However, I also will try to target smaller races to follow the path of least resistance
With lofty goals set, I want to go over some equipment changes that I want to make. This year was mired with technical issues. Desipite feeling good physically, I DNF’d 60% of my races due to issues with Specialized’s tubeless tire lineup.
Equipment Change List:
- Acquire Tubular Wheelset
- Hopefully I can afford two: one for mud and one for all around
- Likely will go 35mm for increased stability since UCI rules don’t apply to me yet
- Will have to change that if I qualify for Nationals or race in the open field
- If I have to stay on tubeless, will need to experiment a lot with tires, so I don’t have the same problems of tires burping during hard cornering
- Get a bike stand
- This was supposed to be done earlier this year, but wasn’t due to finances
- Life would be easier if doing my own repairs was easier