Cyclocross Training

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Permalink Reply by Thed Jenken on August 7, 2010 at 11:15am

I haven't but I will be now, thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Paul on August 11, 2010 at 9:20am

Looks like the article describes a pretty typical "base period" plan. Hope you were riding earlier than 3 weeks ago. I found building a base takes 2-3 months. I use road racing to build my base.

The big race series in this neck of the woods starts in early October, so I'm starting on the build period. Focusing on threshold and V02. Got to work in some microintervals later on (I haven't done many of these, so please comment if you have some good interval suggestions for these).

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy on August 11, 2010 at 9:51am

Paul - I've been racing road since February but ran into some pretty good burnout around May after a few crashes, academic overload, wintery Oregon weather in early-summer, and generally losing my excitement to race. I took some time off training and then resumed in July in excitement for cross.

As far as microintervals, my favorite is the 10x10. They hurt tons, and make you question your place in cycling, but they're effective for continuously accelerating and putting down the power even under a severe lack of recovery. The protocol is 10 seconds all out, 10 seconds rest, repeated 10 times. 2-3 sets total with full recovery between sets. Tabata intervals are something else to look into. I won't be at that stage until Sept. or Oct. myself though.

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Permalink Reply by Paul on August 12, 2010 at 9:16am

Yes, the "spring" in PDX really sucked this year. Thanks for the info on the microintervals. I thought they were something like that - brutal. I assume it would help those accelerations out of the corners.

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