In his words:
"For some time, I’d been considering hiring a cycling coach but one of the things putting me off was my ability to commit. My growing workload, young kids and the constant snotty noses and colds they bring home from nursey means that there’s days where I might not have the time, energy or form to attempt a workout. However, since starting with Rob Watson, I’ve found the opposite to be true. Rob has really helped me to adjust my training to accommodate the varying demands of life. When work requires some extra hours, he’s helped me to prioritise which workouts to do and when. When I’ve been ill, he’s told me to ease off (advice I’ve been ignoring from my wife till now!). Of course, you can’t keep missing workouts and expect to progress and so Rob’s helped me find more time in my day by moving my training to the mornings and adding the flexibility to do intervals inside or out. It’s this kind of receptiveness to my needs and a readiness to adjust the plan which I’ve come to realise is what makes having a great coach so valuable! Racing is about to start and I’m hoping for some points. But even if they don’t come immediately, I’ve finally been able to train without the stress of failing to stick to a rigid plan, and that’s made training really enjoyable."
In my words:
Will is a typical cyclist, time crunched but committed to improvement. We needed to make his training as time efficient as possible, with the introduction of ‘key’ sessions that would not be missed. Given his stressful work and young family things were obviously going to take priority over training but to ensure progress towards achieving his goals we needed to ensure these more intense key sessions were completed. Strength sessions were a big part of the 3 month base period before moving to a maintenance phase. To achieve this, we set some basic outcome and process goals for Will to work towards.
Outcome Goals:
Dec-Feb - Improved aerobic conditioning
Feb-May - Race specific fitness for success in Category 4 races
May onwards - Increase threshold power
Process Goals:
Complete 3 ‘key’ bike sessions per week
Complete x2 30minute strength sessions per week in the base phase
Fuel and hydrate each session adequately, pre, during and post training.
Intensity Discipline - Stick to the plan, easy sessions are easy, hard sessions are hard.
The impact of illness
Unfortunately Will got ill for a week in late January that, I believe, set him back 4-6 weeks due to loss of fitness and significant fatigue following the illness. This was evident in a significantly increased heart rate response to workouts in the 2-3 weeks following illness. The following example of a 3 x20m session show this increased heart rate response for the same power output 3 weeks following the illness.
4th January - Pre-illness
20th February - 3 weeks post illness
One of Will's goals for the year was to gain enough points to move up a category, and the original plan was to be in the best shape possible for racing in early May. We continued with this timeline but, if I’m honest, following the illness I would have preferred an extra 8 weeks to regain and push up threshold power before trying to get into building race fitness. However, time waits for nobody, so we began the race specific work. 5-6 weeks before the York races we eased off on the threshold work in favour of aerobic capacity (VO2max) and anaerobic power work to improve Will’s top-end power. Inevitably this has the effect of reducing threshold power a little in favour of developing a more explosive rider, but we’d reached the point we needed to develop that top-end power to ensure Will had the sprint to get some results. This worked well, coming 3rd and then 1st in his second and third races of the year.
While fitness was important, so was attitude, skill and tactical awareness. We discussed in-depth the approach to the race, the finale and where we felt he could have the most impact on the race. These ideas were executed to near perfection in both races, a testament to Wills mental approach to racing and training. The next phase will move back to developing critical power to increase Will's ability to perform in higher level racing.
In summary, the illness in January was a key determinant of Will's early season. I took a slight risk moving into race specific training slightly early, but this paid off with the results. It’s now time to reset and refocus his goals for the second half of the year.
Race Results:
2021
11 races - A mix of Category 4 and 3/4.
x1 top 10 (7th)
2022
4 Races
York Cat 4 - 3rd
York Cat 4 - 1st
York Series - 2nd Overall
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Cycle Coaching - https://www.rwperformance.net/cyclingcoaching