Amateur criterium racing is not dead, it’s just moved from weekends to weeknights. Based on the activities and feedback we’re seeing from CTS Athletes, the after-work criterium scene may be stronger than it’s been in a decade or more! And it’s no wonder. There are three new elite-level criterium series – the American Criterium …
Back-to-back long rides can be massively beneficial for all cyclists, and especially Time-Crunched Cyclists. However, they must be executed correctly. Too many riders ruin their back-to-back rides by going too hard, under-fueling, and making other silly mistakes. Everything you do before, during, and after a long ride today affects performance tomorrow. And these mistakes amplify …
Balancing a career, home life, and training can be difficult. Adding children to the mix further increases the degree of difficulty (and joy). For Time-Crunched Cyclist Parents, creativity and flexibility are essential for success – defined as the ability to continue achieving your competitive or non-competitive sporting goals. CTS has coached Time-Crunched Cyclist Parents …
How many miles do you need to ride in training to be ready for your event? We get asked some variation of that question all the time from cyclists getting ready for their first century, or for a gran fondo, gravel race, or endurance mountain bike event. Do you need to ride 60 or 75 …
With Western States about six weeks away, athletes are finalizing their preparation and should be making their training more and more race-specific. If necessary, there is still time to make changes and corrections to training and nutrition strategies and see results in time for Western States. Some of the 9 steps to success in this …
Cyclists who ride year-round sometimes get lulled into a routine that long ago stopped being challenging enough or engaging enough to improve performance. It’s not that you’re out of shape or that you’re not training, it’s that you haven’t changed anything is so long that there’s no reason for your body to adapt and improve …
We’ve all been there before. You are in the last two weeks leading up to a race and just thinking about the race makes your palms sweat. Suddenly, all the weeks and months of training – countless hours on the trail – are all but forgotten. All you can see are the remaining 14 days …
When Alison Jackson decided to make the 2023 Paris-Roubaix Femmes her “A race” for the spring, I was all for it. The Olympian who rides for EF-Education-TIBCO-SVB is well suited to the “Hell of the North”. She has a big aerobic engine and great tactical savvy from 8 years racing as a professional, plus a …
As sports fans we are accustomed to witnessing extraordinary performances, like CTS Athlete Alison Jackson’s victory in last weekend’s Paris-Roubaix Femmes. (Stay tuned for Coach Adam Pulford’s analysis of her training and race data on Tuesday!) Huge wins are inspirational. Many cyclists go out after watching an amazing cycling race like Paris-Roubaix and have storming …
Creating interval workouts with the appropriate amount of time-at-intensity and recovery between efforts is an essential skill for any athlete or coach designing training plans. Individual workouts are the small building blocks that build upon one another to create training stress that leads to physiological adaptations and improved performance. Workouts don’t have to be complicated …