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Evaluating Ride Data and Race Data

With the huge number of electronic gadgets attached to a bike these days, it's inevitable that cyclists will be inundated with data.  From speed, cadence and heart rate to power data (and even new technologies such as muscle oxygenation data), there's a mind-boggling collection of numbers to consider. But why even bother collecting data? Evaluating ride data is one of the biggest reasons most cyclists collect data and it can tell you a lot about your ride if you know how to look at it the right way.

In this video, I'll walk through evaluating ride data from several race performances.  I'll describe what I look for and how you can use that information to improve your training and riding.

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Skyrocket Your Fitness With These Mountain Biking Tips

After crashing out of my road racing season last spring, I've been expanding my cycling horizons a little bit.  I've taken up track cycling as my racing fix, not really looking forward to the press of a criterium peloton in the future.  I've also begun to return to my roots: mountain biking.  When I first climbed aboard a bike a number of years ago, it was a fat tire mountain bike.  I cut my teeth on the rocky, rooty, twisty trails of the Hudson Valley.  I voraciously read about mountain biking tips and practiced my skills at every chance I had.  I was hooked on riding and places like the Taconic 909, Stewart Buffer Zone and Blue Mountain Reservation were places that I knew better than my own home.

Almost.

Then I found road riding and racing.  I spent the past 5 years ignoring those fat tires, cruising around the roads of New Jersey.  I raced Battenkill, time trials, stage races, crits and road races, spending countless hours pursuing fitness on skinny tires and super light bikes.

Then I spent 3 months injured because of those road races.

After I got back in the saddle this past summer, I walked into my garage, looked up at my 10-year-old Kona Dawg Primo hanging from the wall and mused about how much fun it might be to get back on the trails.  A couple weeks later I climbed aboard a bike that once felt so familiar but now felt completely foreign to me.  Thankfully, all of the training I had done meant that only a couple of miles in the saddle would bring back all of those old memories again.

But being out on the trails isn't all fun and games.  It's also a great training tool to build strength on the roads.  Click through to read some mountain biking tips and training advice.  Learn how to use fat tires to make yourself faster in races, on group rides or on your own!

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Put Massive Power and Staggering Snap in your Sprint

In cycling, sprinting is more than just “pedal really hard a bunch of times.”  If you've ever watched a professional sprint, you may realize that there's a certain absolute beauty in the type of activity they excel at.  While they may be boring on TV, field sprints are perhaps the hardest parts of any race.   Yes, a mountaintop finish requires power to weight ratio, the ability to suffer and some amount of tactical prowess, but sprinting well is a combination of massive tactical brainpower as well as leg power.  Cycling sprint training is the bridge between getting strong and actually knowing how to execute a proper sprint out on the road.

Today, we'll talk about building leg power, neuromuscular fitness and technique and finesse that you'll need to succeed.  You'll learn that a sprinter needs more than the ability to go fast.  I'll explain how cycling sprint training should be broken down into the composite parts so that you can effectively train all parts of the system together.  If you ignore one part of the equation, you may wonder why you're not getting faster, you may wonder why others are beating you, and you might even end up with an injury.

Click through to the show notes and make your cycling sprint training more effective.  Don't forget to check out our podcast show sponsor Stages Cycling: any purchases through this link will contribute a few dollars to supporting the show.  You can also rate the podcast on iTunes, share this post and download my free Sprint Training Tune Up plan!

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Diagnose Your Climbing Weakness

I can't tell you how many times cyclists contact me and ask me to help them improve their climbing weakness, but they don't even know what climbing weakness is holding them back!  Do you climb better in the saddle or out?  Are you more efficient at a lower cadence or higher?  Do you tend to go out too hard and burn out too quickly?  Are you leaving speed on the table by being TOO conservative?  These are all questions you can answer if you're willing and able to head out, do a couple of laps of your favorite climb and sit down to take a look at your data.

Let's figure out how to find your climbing weakness and correct it!  Click through for my best tips on determining what's limiting your climbing capacity and a couple ways to correct it?

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Effective Peaking and Tapering for Cycling Performance

Peaking and tapering are essential to a high quality performance in a race or event.   They are often overlooked by your average cyclist and may be the missing piece in your successful training program.  Without a well thought out, well executed peak, your body may be too tired to perform or too flat (from lack of stimulus) to successfully execute the necessary work to succeed in your race or event.  If you ignore the importance of a proper taper, you'll find yourself struggling to build further fitness or worse, dip a toe into the frigid waters of overtraining.  In either case, you'll find yourself disappointed and struggling to piece together what went wrong.

In this episode of the Tailwind Coaching Podcast, you'll learn what peaking and tapering are, why they are an integral part of any training program and how to apply the concepts of successful peaking and tapering to your own training program.

Click through for the show notes and remember that the sponsor for this episode of the Tailwind Coaching Podcast is Stages Cycling.  Check out their power meters and help support the show, and don't forget to rate the podcast on iTunes!  You can also check out my new resources page and get a head start on reading some of my most popular articles!

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