Cross-country cross training?
Hello Joe and Dirk,
I am in the Base 1 period currently and will heading into the Base2 period in two weeks. I live in the cold wintry mountains at 8000 feet.I utilize back-country and cross-country skiing as a cross training piecefor the Base 1 period. Unfortunately, the roads and cold prohibit muchoutside bike time.

My question is, can cross-country ski time be considered a viable option,along with rollers, as I head through Base 2?
Jon

Jon,
Cross-country skiing is a wonderful activity for cyclists during thebase periods. You will certainly have your aerobic work taken care of comespring. There are plenty of cyclists that win bike races after having skiedhundreds of miles during the winter. The downfall though to skiing (orany other X-training activity) is when it is a large portion of your traininghours as the season approaches. The closer you are to your next race, themore important cycling becomes.
 
Try to incorporate more bike time as the weather improves and the seasonapproaches. You may want to adapt a mountain bike to handle cold and wetconditions. Adding fenders and snow tires can give you the opportunityto ride more outdoors. Mountain biking on trails and dirt roads will alsobe an easy way to get in your muscular endurance and force work. If youcan't get outside consider adding more time indoors on the trainer.
 
Consider adding a fluid trainer or Computrainer to your list of optionsas well. Rollers are great for your spin and skills work, but it can bedifficult to do low cadence force efforts on rollers.
 
Hope some of this helps and great job keeping the endurance work up.Your hard work will pay off.
 Joe and Dirk Friel
 
 
Too much fun?
Joe and Dirk,
First off, I want to thank you for the excellent book and insightsyou have given both on-line and in print! After a successful 2004 seasonI decided I wanted to step it up a notch.The request for my Semi-Pro license was approved, I ordered up a copyof “TheMountain Bikers Training Bible” and have been following it closelywith three others in my area. I live in Southern Minnesota, and want tobe a more competitive mountain biker both in the State Series where I wasa distant third overall last year and in the National Arena. We will startout the season with the first NCS in Phoenix mid-March. We started theprep in early November and just finished the recovery week after Base 1.Our hope is to be well prepared for Phoenix and nearing top shape by BigBear in mid-May. The group we have is great (three guys and a girl), themotivation is always there to ride and there has only one day when we hadto ride the trainer (-10 F with 30 mile per hour winds).First thing I’m worried about is that we go out and have so much funthat we find ourselves working too hard or not following the structuredintervals. Like the other day we were riding a hilly route and I foundmyself hovering above 190 during hard efforts (my averaeg HR for that two-hourride was 170). Basically we are racing each other up the hills taking alittle breather and push on at a good tempo till the next hill. I’m wonderingwhat your opinions are on the Fun versus Structure, and also what negativeswill come of our inter-group competition. Could these unpredicted non-structuredefforts cause us to over-train?The bottom line is, I’m looking forward to this coming season, I havenever been more motivated or dedicated to biking before, so I’d reallylike to maximize my training. The group we have rocks! The riding is morefun than I have ever had on a bike. It’s fast and hard and never the same.We are all so closely matched that its always a gamble going off the frontto sprint for the city limit sign or to the top of the hill. I hope thisintensity isn’t harmful this early in the year. I am tempted to ride morealone so that I can follow the schedule better, but at the same time Idon’t want to lose this great motivator I have now. Besides, these peopleand I have fun! Any help or suggestions on our group’s current training“plan” would be appreciated.
Thanks
Paul HPaul,
This is great that you have such a good group to ride with during thelong winter months in Minnesota. This can certainly be a great resourcefor you and your personal training needs. Hopefully you can make the mostof the group dynamics at the right times.
 
First off you are right. It is early and you are only now in Base 2.Base 2 is still devoted towards ramping up volume and continuing to transferforce built within the prep phase to bike specific muscular endurance,and bit by bit add in threshold/Zone 4 time.Skills (especially for mountain bikers) and economy workouts are stillpresent as well. The majority of your ride time time will still be withinheart rate zones 1 and 2, but your time spent within zones 2 and 3 shouldbe ramped up as compared to the Base 1 period. If your group is well-disciplined,try doing your long endurance rides where each rider takes 5-minute pullson the front in HR Zone 3 (riding two abreast is great for this if thelaws of the road allow).This allows the other group members to sit on andrecover in Zones 1/2. Any members whose strength and fitness is quite atthe same level as the others may simply sit on more than the rest of thegroup. Riders’ individual intensity zones should be their guidelines.
 
When it comes to doing structured Zone 3 and 4 intervals on hills tryto stagger the start so each member can ride at their specific pace tomaintain the objective of the workout. This works quite well within endurancerides where you just start at one-minute intervals to stay separated. Ifyour group is really disciplined and egos are not much of an issue (veryhard to find this type of group) you can all start the interval at thesame time and then naturally spread out as individual paces dictate. Youmight also entertain the idea of having one or two members conduct intervalsin a sort of team time trial fashion where they rotate and take turns onthe front. You might have two members doing a lengthy interval set, whilethe other members are sitting on drafting and riding with high cadence(those sitting on get a motorpacing session).
 
Your group competitiveness can be very good for race simulation dayswithin late Base 3, and build periods. This is the time to unleash theegos and rip it up. But don't do this yet, except on short power/sprintworkouts. Be careful that you are not "selling yourself short". This meansdon't let the intensity within the early Base training creep up into lotsof time spent within zones 4 and 5. This will slowly cause a fitness plateauto begin (earlier than you'd like) and cut your endurance and muscularendurance development short. Another issue to be aware of is your diet.Nutrition has a direct affect when it comes to recovery. Recovery willsuffer greatly if you are consistently depleting your muscle glycogen stores(by way of training and/or diet) and not properly replacing them, alongwith, sufficient protein and the "good" fats. A less than optimal dietwill directly affect the quality of your workouts, the quality of yourrecovery, may lead to sickness (upper respiratory ailments, colds, etc)and loss of muscle.
 
The old saying that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” isn’tactually correct. No, not at all. What doesn't kill you today may havea long term affect and kill you later in the season, or next year. Alwaysend intervals knowing you could have done more. Consistent and moderateimprovement is the key.
 
In the end, I sense your group will have a great season based on thefact that you have very high motivation and you usually start trainingin April. Again just keep things in check for a while and analyze how muchintensity has really occurred to date.
Good luck this season,
Joe and Dirk Friel