Presenting a Training Overview to the Local Trail Club

Dear Readers,
This week I was honored to give an overview on training for the Trail Spinners at their monthly meeting.  A few weeks back Chris Jackson asked if Nick Sears and I could do a presentation on training. 

Nick and I were originally going to tag team the presentation, but he became ill with a stomach flu on Monday and I flew solo. Please Note:  I developed the PowerPoint presentation, Nick was set to deliver the meat of the presentation, but when he fell ill, I filled in the blanks. I kept the Nick slides in because the crowd came for Nick, not me, and anything that I did attribute to him were sound principles that we have discussed at previous times. I figured I'd share a summary from the presentation...

Here was the Nick Intro Slide:

here was mine:

I talked about goals setting, time available and what you're willing to sacrifice. I used the example that I race pretty well at 170lbs. I could probably climb a bit better at 165lbs. That would mean giving up 1/2 price nacho night, and beer. I commented that at this point in the game in my life 170 works fine for me. I stressed the importance that as an athlete anyone can accomplish anything, but you have to be realistic as to what you are/ can and are /willing to put into it. Clearly, I'm not sacrificing 1/2 price nachos!

I talked about training for an event versus training for a season. I talked about peaking, and that at most folks can have 1-2 peaks a year. I talked about riders dominating a series and in most cases that's a sign of 2 things: 1, they are doped to the gills (that got a laugh) or  2. they are racing below their talent/training/ability. The latter statement not a slam on sandbagging, as there may be other reasons and frankly this can happen in masters/cat 1 classes, and I don't believe you can sandbag those classes...

Next I dove into the basic principles of training as they have been taught to me. Building fitness, structure, intervals, different types of intervals, the importance of recovery and the goals of each:

I mentioned that cycling is a social sport and the benefits of having a mentor. I listed a few, certainly not all the folks that have been critical in my development as a cyclist.

Again, on the social aspect the importance of having great people to ride with, again some of the folks I am lucky to get to ride with although clearly not everyone:

I closed out the presentation with 3 things I hoped they took away from my presentation:

And while these three things didn't really come from Nick, these are all sound principles I know that as the Head Coach of Train Smart Sports Coaching he supports.

At the end of the presentation I was a little worried that I might have overshot my audience. The presentation was about 15 minutes long, and then I answered some really great questions for another 20 minutes or so. The 20 minutes of questions was really fun, and made me feel confident that I hit the target audience.  While I was clearly bummed out to not get to present with Nick, I am grateful for the opportunity to share what other have shared with me over the years, and it was a fun night.

thanks for reading!

respect
fatmarc