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Training Weaknesses, Racing Strengths
Defining your skills, and deciding what to train

  Written by Adam Hodges Myerson
  Cycle-Smart President
  May 15, 2003

It’s mid-May now, and most riders are done with their base training for the first part of the season, or very close to it, and have anywhere from 1-3 months of racing under their belt. If you’ve had a successful build-up to the summer racing season, you should have a strong foundation of aerobic fitness, allowing you to ride with a high power at threshold for up to 60 minutes, enough endurance to finish your longest races, and the ability to recover quickly from your hard training and racing days.

This is also the point where you should have enough experience to sense what you’re doing well and what you’re doing poorly. Have you been climbing well? Sprinting well? Or just the opposite: are you finding that you’re OK on climbs of a minute or less, but are getting dropped on anything longer than that? With feedback from your racing performances, this late-spring period is the perfect time to try to address any chinks in your armor. At the same time, it’s important to recognize what you’ve been successful at, and take that into consideration when you make tactical choices in your races, or what races you choose to enter. With those aspects in mind, I want to address the concept of training weaknesses, but racing to strengths. Additionally, I want to take it a step further and talk about the idea of training and racing to strengths as well.

Your first order of business is to attempt to define your skills, both in terms of energy systems and modes of riding or racing. I’ve discussed energy systems many times before in my articles, so I don’t want to spend too much time on it here. Generally, you want to consider the following areas in which you may be strong or weak, remembering that they’re all interconnected to some degree:

1. Max Power
   a. Average over 8-15 seconds
   b. Maximum or Peak
2. Anaerobic Power over a 1 minute period
3. VO2 Power over a 3-5 minute period
4. Threshold Power over a 20 minute period
5. Tempo over a 30-60 minute period
6. Endurance over a number of hours

Additionally, you want to consider the way you exercise in these zones, or for these durations. How do you actually apply the power? So, consider the following modes or skills you may want to isolate:

1. Climbing
2. Sprinting
3. Time Trialing
4. Variable Power/Criteriums
5. Other (Stage Racing, MTB, ‘Cross, etc.)

Cycle-Smart Training Articles A Case For Base    by Adam Hodges Myerson    February 2, 2007 Power, Stability, and Confidence    by Adam Hodges Myerson    September 20, 2006 Training While You Work    by Adam Hodges Myerson    April 25, 2006 Surviving The Trainer    by Adam Hodges Myerson    March 2, 2006 You Gotta Have A Plan    by Adam Hodges Myerson    January 8, 2006 Peaking For Cyclo-Cross Nationals    by Adam Hodges Myerson    November 29, 2005 How To Improve Your Starts For Cyclo-cross    by Adam Hodges Myerson    October 18, 2005 Interval Training for Cyclo-Cross    by Adam Hodges Myerson    September 9, 2005 Hang On To That Form!    by Adam Hodges Myerson    August 9, 2005 Resting Your Way To Fitness    by Adam Hodges Myerson    June 22, 2005 How Long, How Hard, and How Often?    by Adam Hodges Myerson    May 25, 2005 Warming Up    by Adam Hodges Myerson    April 11, 2005 "Training" in Training Races    by Adam Hodges Myerson    March 13, 2005 Preparing for a Cyclo-Cross Race    by Johs Huseby    November 16, 2004 Choosing Between a Club or a Team    by Kirk Albers    October 6, 2004 Running for Cyclo-Cross    by Adam Hodges Myerson    September 22, 2004 My Aching Back (and legs, shoulders, hips, feet, neck)    by Christine White    August 4, 2004 Key Workouts for Early Season Mountain Bike Racers    by Kurt Perham    July 14, 2004 The Philly File    by Adam Hodges Myerson    June 12, 2003 Training Weaknesses, Racing Strengths    by Adam Hodges Myerson    May 15, 2003 The Lanterne Rouge - The fine art of driving the bus in a stage race    by Adam Hodges Myerson    April 18, 2003 Choosing a Coach    by Adam Hodges Myerson    March 13, 2003

How then, with these parameters, to determine your skills, and specifically your strengths and weaknesses? The first parameter, certainly, should be race results. Sometimes results don’t tell the whole story of course. They only put a number next to your name, with no room for an explanation. It doesn’t say “6th place, but…” However, results are the synthesis of all the training and tactics you employ, and if you a have a large enough pool of results, patterns certainly emerge. If you have the benefit of also looking at data files from races, then you can see even more closely what you’re doing well or poorly when you combine that with the outcome of the race. That’s leads us to testing as a way to gain some insight into your skills. Tests that allow you to measure efficiency, power output at lactate threshold, VO2max, and maximal power can give you a profile of your abilities and allow you to compare yourself to other athletes. Training itself is also testing, like racing, particularly if you’re using a power meter. Seeing the power you can generate over a 20 minute interval, and tracking that progress from week to week, for instance, will let you know how well you’re improving, and if that’s a card you have to play in the races or a weak spot you have to conceal. Two other important keys to determining your strengths and weaknesses are simply time, and your own mentality. The longer you’ve been at it, the more you’ll get a sense of your skills. At the same time the mindset you bring to the races will often determine what you’re capable of. It doesn’t matter if you have great max watts if you don’t have the head for a field sprint.

The natural approach to becoming a better rider is to train those weaknesses. The reasons are fairly straightforward, and they make sense. If you can improve your general level overall, you’re going to be at the finish more often, and have more gas left at the end to use the specific strengths you might have that will allow you to win the race. You may have some personal racing goals that will drive you to patch the holes in your form. If you’re a strong rider who really likes crits but lacks that final burst, you may decide to focus on improving your max watts. Conversely, if you’re a fast rider who wants to win road nationals, you know you’re going to have to improve your climbing well enough to get over the hills or make the break in order to use that final sprint. Your local racing schedule may push you to work on weaknesses as well. If you’re not a great climber but all you find on your local calendar in the early part of the season are hilly road races, well, you’ve got a clear choice in front of you if you want to race.

For many of those same reasons, though, you shouldn’t be afraid to buck the norm and opt to train your strengths. Perhaps you’re not a good climber, and you simply don’t enjoy doing that kind of training, or suffering through hilly road races to try to improve, at the risk of being dropped. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with attempting to achieve your max potential in one specific area, specializing to the point where perhaps you only enter crits or even turn to the track. Conversely, you may love to climb and really want to specialize in that, focusing on races like Mt. Washington or Mt. Evans, or road and stage races that put climbing at a premium. Most of us are doing this because it’s fun, so why not focus on the training that's enjoyable to you?

Even if you’ve identified your weaknesses and chosen to work on and improve them, you still have to go into each race knowing what your best skills are and how to utilize them for a good result. Your tactical approach has to revolve around your strongest suit. That may mean banking on a field sprint and doing absolutely nothing until the last 5 laps of a crit. It may mean letting all the early attacking and counter-attacking go on without you, saving it for your big attack on the final climb. It may mean making the early break and counting on your endurance to survive a race of attrition. Whatever it is, make sure you’re clear on your best scenario for winning, and trying to play the race in that direction. Choosing your races in the first place is another aspect of this, as I explained in the approach you might take in training your strengths. If you’re a skinny guy who can’t turn, you might decide to save your energy for the races you enjoy and can have an impact in. If you’re a pure sprinter who can’t climb with your peers regardless of how much you’ve worked on it, skip those hilly road races if getting results is your first priority and you don’t need to use them for training. Setting reasonable expectations based on your skills is an important part of staying sane in this sport.

Training your weaknesses but racing to your strengths is a very straightforward and simple approach that will lead to noticeable improvements in most riders. At the same time, it can be more easily said than done. It’s tricky business trying to isolate what your weaknesses are, and often riders mistake weakness in one area for another. If you’re getting dropped on the climbs, you might assume that you need more VO2max power to hammer up those 5-minute hills. Whereas in reality, you may be struggling because your threshold power is too low compared to your peers, and you’re anaerobic much sooner on a climb than you should be. Along the same lines, you may be getting popped on the last lap of a criterium and think your weakness is max watts or anaerobic power, when again, the issue is low threshold power leading you to early anaerobia, and an early exit from the sprint. Threshold power really is the foundation from which you can build all your other skills. Strengthen that area first, make sure it’s solid, and then begin to think about fine-tuning the other areas for overall good form and successful results.


To learn more about Adam, or for more articles by Cycle-Smart coaches, visit www.cycle-smart.com.

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