Training Tips

here are some notes that That Cody, the UNR Cycling Team president sent me.

Noah

Mel Maloof, family-man
extraodinare, Alta Alpina Juniors Coach,
road/mtb/cross bike racer & rider, Nevada Cycling
Alumni and current member, GE Bently Engineer, Alta
Alpina race promoter, USA Cycling Coach, UNR MBA
student, and all-around nice guy talked at the meeting
about training.

He has also
developed an amazing spreadsheet to track your
training that you can check out at
http://www.altaalpina.com/juniors/ There are several
sheets that are integrated and worth observing. Mel
can be contacted at [email protected] Mel raced
when he was a student and still experiences the same
constraints as most of us do … not enough sleep and
time.

Below I have provided a list of his training tips.
They are very good, especially for people like us who
have fixed amount of time for training. I would
recommend considering these points. I have many of
the same thoughts and think they have worked well for
me. The first two points are key and everything else
flows from them. They are not exactly in order, but
they all go together.

1) Most riders don’t train hard enough.
2) Most riders don’t rest enough.
***You don’t get strong when training hard, you get
strong when you recover from training hard.
3) Developing riders should try to find and push their
limit, which is always increasing.
4) No more than 3 hard days per week, unless before a
rest week.
5) The base of a training plan should be 3 hard weeks
followed by a rest week (Scott Leland used this
approach before road nats last year with much
success).
6) Early in the season, force type intervals are the
best.
7) When cruising, try to develop micro rests by
relaxing your leg as it comes up about when the crank
arm is horizontal. This does not work when sprinting
or tting.
8) Listening to your body is key. If you are planning
on doing intervals and you feel like sh*t, don’t do
them. Go for a spin and head home. However, don’t
use one interval as a judge. The first one is never
fun.
9) Missing a work out isn’t going to matter. Months
of steady training adds up, not one day. This is
especially true if you are short on sleep.
10) As a general rule, one day of recovery for one day
of hard work. This does not mean every other day. If
you know you can’t ride for two or three hard days,
two or three days of hard work before is good.
11) Don’t do same type of hard intervals the two days
in a row.
12) There are two types of racing, races to win and
training races. Training races are for attacking
early, chasing down breaks, and working your ass off.
Races to win are about being as smart as possible and
saving your energy.
13) Almost all attacks in the first half of the race
fail. Almost all attacks that succeed go in the last
quarter of the race. If you can attack and solo the
whole race, you need to upgrade.