The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Episode 213: The Time-Crunched Cyclist's Guide to Cyclocross, with Chris Merriam

• CTS • Season 4 • Episode 213

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OVERVIEW
Overview: 'Cross is coming! Coach Adam Pulford talks with Chris Merriam, Team Manager of CXD Trek Bikes, about all things cyclocross, from mistakes 'crossers make to equipment recommendations, key workouts, and race day strategies.

TOPICS COVERED

  • Common pre-season training mistakes 
  • Skill and technique mistakes in training
  • What to look for in a cyclocross training group
  • Work/life balance with cyclocross racing
  • Mistakes in equipment selection
  • Race day strategies
  • Cyclocross-specific interval training

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LINKS
Social media:
CXD IG: https://www.instagram.com/cxdtrekbikes/
CXHairs IG = https://www.instagram.com/cxhairs/

Resources:
CXHairs Bulletin on Substack: https://cxhairs.substack.com/
DCCX: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057314694024 

HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Speaker 1:

From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now onto our show. Welcome back.

Speaker 1:

Time Crunch fans Cross is coming, and that means many athletes are gearing up for some barriers cowbells, sand pits and mud wrestling on a bicycle, otherwise known as cyclocross. I'm here with team director and manager of the CXD Trek Bikes Cyclocross team, chris Marion, and Chris is a local legend here on the East Coast, having his hand in team directing and wearing pretty much every hat possible in the sport for many years now. His involvement with the development of young athletes and guiding seasoned athletes is present at all levels of the sport and beyond just Cyclocross alone. I brought him on the podcast to share some really unique lessons he's learned over the years to help you have a smoother cross season, if that's your goal, and if not, I think that you'll find that his sage advice could apply to any discipline where racing a bike is the game. So, chris, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Hey, thanks so much, Adam. Glad to be here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, a quick preface here is. I know Chris well, and all too often our five-minute chats turn into 50 minutes, or sometimes 50 hours, it seems like. So I'll remind you, chris, that this is the Time Crunch Cyclistist podcast and we need to keep it tight, but still interesting. So with that framework, chris, please give us a brief history on how this not so little cx devo trek bike racing team became not so little yeah, so thanks a lot.

Speaker 2:

We it's kind of a multi-part story. We started out Bill Shiken, also known as CXHairs or the Crossfather, well known in media circles for his coverage of the US and international scene. He and I were local racers in the dad circuit in the Mid-Atlantic Bike Racing Association and I was also part of the board and he took over the role of being the director of our local series and we spent a lot of time brainstorming about how to bring new people into the sport. There are a lot of people my era embarrassingly enough, the Greg LeMond era, but out there racing bikes and we wanted to get some newer people in and thought Cross was a super good tool to do that. So, working together between the board of the Bike Racing Association and Bill and the Mid-Atlantic Super Series, we worked really hard to grow that out. So that was kind of step one.

Speaker 2:

Part two was my wife, libby Sheldon, convinced her to switch over from playing soccer.

Speaker 2:

When we met in college she was doing that at a pretty high level and got her riding bikes and she got pretty good at it and so she was winning some of these races here with the local elites and kind of competing at the national level, kind of competing at the national level.

Speaker 2:

But one day 2016, 2017, she noticed that there were a couple of the kids Catherine Sarkisoff, ella Brenneman were nipping at her heels and they were 13 and 14 at the time, but they were riding so fast and having so much fun doing it, and so we just ended up chatting with their folks.

Speaker 2:

And the kids had been racing since they were eight or nine, you know, just coming out doing those races, but sometimes that meant they were doing the same race twice on a weekend and year after year, and the folks were kind of wondering, hey, what's next? So we started talking about it a little bit more and brainstormed a little bit and you know, I think between libby and bill and I sitting around one day, we said, well, why don't we figure out how we take the kids to the regional level, get them ready for national competition and maybe, a couple of years down the road, we could do some looking at the international stuff if things go right. And that's really where we got started back all the way back now, in 2018 was the first year Four people on the team Libby, the two Brennemans, owen and Ella and Catherine. So, yeah, it has grown from there.

Speaker 1:

That's super cool and I think, too, just being involved on the kind of the peripheral end of that and working with some of the riders that you do and brainstorming with some of the others, it's really a small community and brainstorming with some of the others, it's it's really a, you know, a small community and takes takes a village to keep everybody moving.

Speaker 1:

And so I think, with with your whole history, as well as the heavy lifts lately of of running this team, I mean it's, it's invaluable. And I think to these riders and they they probably won't realize it until they're, you know, our age, hopefully sooner, but yeah, it's making a huge impact, especially, like I said, here on the east coast. But then we'll go, uh, bike racing in your own land too, so for our audience, I think, uh, what you should really realize here is we've got, we've got an expert today, and because mr merriam has spent so much time around the sport and has poured so much blood, sweat, sweat, tears and everything else into it, I wanted to pick his brain on some common mistakes that he sees in this sport, not only at the developmental level, but at the master's level, the elite level and everything else, so that we can look at those common mistakes and try not to do those same mistakes as you head into your cross season. So, chris, shall we talk about that?

Speaker 2:

yeah, absolutely. Now there's nobody who's collected a a bigger bag of mistakes than uh, than I have, um, and so can't always get the young riders to listen, but they do, you know, I'm they're ready to commiserate when, when things get sideways, uh, which they do in cyclocross. It's actually a benefit to the sport that there's so many variables and so much craziness happens that it's really good opportunity to open yourself up to learning.

Speaker 1:

That's it. Circus on a bicycle, so, uh, so let's. Let's start with common mistakes that you see riders making in their training prep coming into a cyclocross season.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, the biggest issue is making an affirmative decision about how you want to treat the cyclocross season. And what happens if you don't do that is you come in. Maybe you've been racing mountain bikes all summer, You've been racing your road bike all summer, You've just been riding a lot because the weather is suitable, and you just come in and start going to every race every weekend and come in hot and then you're on this long I won't even call it a taper, but a long glide path down into running out of fitness and burning out on racing. So the biggest mistake, when we're sitting here at the beginning of September looking at DCCX next weekend, first race on the calendar is coming into the season without a plan. How am I going to handle this? What am I using this for? What are my goals and aspirations for the season? And that can both be results or events. But also, how am I using cyclocross to develop skills or improve on things that I know I need work on? So it's not a mistake, but just sit down and make a plan.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean the plan is key. Let's sit down and make a plan. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the plan is is key. I think every time I make a good plan it gets thrown out the window several times over. But you use that original plan to like just scrub it, adjust it and go from there. But the plan keeps you accountable to the, the bigger picture yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, adam, I know, like you and I have this conversation regularly, and I do with all the athletes and their coaches we will literally build, build in here the first three weekends. You know you're coming off your season, I want you rested. We're not going to rush into racing. We want to hit, hit these ones. Is the equipment ready? Is the mind fully engaged? But we're going to do three races and then we're going to have this talk again and see where it's going. Is everything working right? You know we're still looking at nationals or we're still looking for traveling to Europe, but did you, you know, crash out of two races and you're way behind on chasing points? Or, you know, are things going better than expected and we should modify the plan? So, building that in and anyone can do that is just do a careful assessment of where you are after each race. Was I hitting? Was I hitting my technical goals? Was I hitting my competition goals with the people I know I'm racing with? Did I have fun at this race and what can I improve?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and I think for the self-coached athletes out there, when you start with the plan and you write down the kind of those like major goals of what you want to improve on, a lot of this is like technique and tactical and maybe there's some placement, that kind of stuff. But getting through, you know the first, you know month or a couple months, however many times you're racing, and then checking in with yourself and just opening that up and be like running through, am I achieving these things? That that's how you do it. I mean just kind of like old school pen and paper, uh, evaluation after each race, put those comments and training peaks and keep on checking in with yourself yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

And also remembering there's the, the kind of hot take right after you finished oh, oh, this was the worst ever, because I, you know, I slid out on this corner, um, and then maybe give it a day or two, think about it like well, actually the race went really well and I was in it so deep and so competitive in the last lap that I overcooked a corner, um, but so do wout and matthew and tom pigcock and fem and book and all of them. When they're racing at a super high level, mistakes happen. You're riding cross-eyed, you know you're, you can't think straight, um, and so that can often be a sign that the things are actually going pretty well or they're going to plan um. So, you know, get that hot take, get those notes down right, write the detailed things that you're going to forget later on, but then also give yourself a minute to to reflect on it and how that fits in in the bigger picture. I'd say for sure.

Speaker 2:

And back to that earlier point, cyclocross is such a good place for that, because all the curveballs that cyclocross throws at you give you the opportunity to have lots of points of reflection for how it went. Am I doing well on the tricky corners. Am I handling the, you know, trying to pass people on the couple places that are available for passing, or perhaps not letting them pass me so that I can get to the corners where I do better? You know what sorts of tactical and technical decisions, uh, am I focused on every lap and and how did I implement those? And and those are the kinds of things beyond just like oh, that went great, that went terrible. Um, you know I I don't have the fitness for this. Um, but what are the things that went right? And what are, what are the things that you can bring to the next race and and work on?

Speaker 1:

I tell this one to my athletes quite a bit, but I say, those who fail to plan, plan to fail. And so the reversal of that is, you know, if we start with a good plan, at least we're heading down the right path, and then kind of zig and zag with it. So for that common mistake of not having a plan and our advice of having a pretty good plan mistake of not having a plan and our advice of having a pretty good plan um, let's say, we get the plan in place this season but we're still making some mistakes, like what other kind of mistakes do you see in the actual like training process and things? I mean talk about either intensity or maybe running or the um, the amount of skill work like that.

Speaker 2:

It is more of a balancing act than perhaps other things. If you were just going to, you know, move to the UK and do 25 mile time trials, right, you have a very specific set of things. Or you know, compete on a trainer, that the number of variables is very much more restricted, and so again, it's kind of breaking down the types of races you're going to go to. So in the Mid-Atlantic Bike Racing Association around here you can race every weekend a lot of times. Twice the conditions are going to be similar. We don't have a lot of really muddy races. We don't have races where you have to run a long time. You may have to get off and go over the planks or there's some hills. But you know we want to think about it not just as oh, am I running? But am I running in a way that prepares me for the demands of the sport? And I'm going to say, like thinking about the kind of sprinting with a bicycle off camber, all that sort of thing. My IT bands ache, just you know, imagining that, right, but that's the sort of thing you can build in. What are the specific demands and the balance of intensity? And actually maintaining that base level fitness is a tough one If you go race twice a week and then you have a job during the week.

Speaker 2:

And cyclocross, you know it's a shorter event, it requires less total volume perhaps, but you are on that long glide path down to giving up all that summer fitness. So, hey, build in some weeks to go ride in the beautiful uh fall weather, you know, get out on your mountain bike and enjoy the leaves, right. And if you can go knock out four hours instead of maybe spending a lot of time in the car and racing one weekend, that'll do a lot to sort of recoup that. Build that in, and you know, and then think about getting those short, sharp workouts during the week. Those can include the skills.

Speaker 2:

You can build those two together, but don't overdo that. You're not just like oh well, there are three different cyclocross training groups, plus there are people still doing the wednesday worlds, and so I, you know that's the type of racing I need to do and so I'm going to do it every day. Um, it it's. It's that balancing act. You can get away with just some regular riding, some really focused recovery and maybe one really cross specific workout during the week, and then, if you supplement that with some good, you know, maintenance and and enjoy bike riding and that sort of thing on an occasional weekend. Uh, you'll. You'll put yourself in a much better position to get through December or whatever your final race is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, and I think for people who are really targeting cross um East Coast in particular, just because we can get to so many races, you can race eight weekends in a row if you want to, and so some of the strategy that I have for my athletes is let's scratch that race weekend. And I was going to say we usually ride the mountain bike for about four hours on Saturday, three hours on Sunday. If you have that time it's good to do At the same time for time crunched athletes. If, even if, like two hours is your long ride, that's still pretty much half or twice as long as what you're racing at in cyclocross. And so you get some of those.

Speaker 1:

Um. The benefits of aerobic development again. And I think that, like you said, your CTLL, your aerobic fitness is kind of like landing. You know it's coming down as you're just like racing and doing a bunch of anaerobic stuff. And so every once in a while, maybe every three or four weeks, give yourself a volume weekend with lower intensity and that's going to help boot that aerobic system back up. So it's there when you need it later on in the season.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and training peaks isn't sophisticated enough to capture this. You've got to put it in the notes. But, man, it feels good to just go ride out in a beautiful fall day and, you know, knock out a long ride without worrying about it. I mean, just yet, don't, don't measure the Watts, just go for a paddle, don't look at the data until you're done, keep track of it. But it's really good for the soul. And also there's that oh, I can go race all these times. That's fantastic. But you've got to remember you're spending time in the car, You're spending time with prep.

Speaker 2:

One of the fantastic things about cyclocross one of the reasons that we really wanted to develop it around here as a way to get new people in is it's great family event. Um, you know that the kids want to race the, the hey, maybe, maybe your significant other gives it a try, um, and all your friends are there and it's great to hang out. So that's super. But it can also add that extra stress, the extra time in the car, the extra prep time and things like that. And so that little step away. It doesn't necessarily show up in your CTL, but it's definitely a nice part to build in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a good point and we've made a nod to some of these. I call them the physiological demand of cyclocross racing and we talked about high intensity, shorter duration, some anaerobic versus aerobic, the balancing act of everything, and we talked about some skill technique. I'd say cross is overly dependent upon that. And you mentioned a weekly cyclocross like training race or a group ride. I know they're really prevalent around here, but typically, what should our listeners be looking for if they're scoping out a weekly cross training ride?

Speaker 2:

a weekly cross training ride In a perfect world. You got somebody who's got some skills and experience and is giving out good advice without making it, too, you know, onerous to go to it. It's really nice to be able to go out and you know work on things you don't typically do for the rest of the year. So flat turns on grass or maybe gravel is not a thing that we're usually doing. You can build those into your daily commute. There are other ways you could look for that sort of thing, but it's not when we're getting out on a road bike, something that we see a lot.

Speaker 2:

So if there's a group practice there, see if they're doing that sort of thing. Are we warming up to doing practices? Are we practicing dismounts and remounts to get over the plank smoothly? How's that going? Can somebody not only observe you doing it but give you useful feedback so that you can modify that and get smoother? Um and and then you know, ideally throwing in some hot laps cause you get that intensity, but you also doing skills at speed is really the key to to improving them, and so being able to uh, flub it, adjust it and still get your workout in is going to serve you really well when you actually get to the race environment. So hopefully there's something like that going on.

Speaker 2:

It's also something we can construct on our own. You know, find the edge of the park where the dogs aren't running and it's not kids soccer practice Maybe. Just ride on the dirt next to the bike path. Figure out your places to do that, even in dc. There the urban environment gives us so much to work with, um that if you just adjust the way you ride your bike to to work or to school, uh, you can, you can always get that in there and I'd say for any of my athletes who race cyclocross, I have them doing a group, a midweek group cyclocross specific skill training session.

Speaker 1:

They are out there. So you know, ask a training buddy, ask a friend where the good one is, and if there is nothing existing in your neck of the woods, like Chris said, get creative and start watching some YouTube and start creating your own skill work. But because skill work and skill demands are so important in this sport, you have to have at least one day a week of practice working on that intentionally, cause if you're just racing and then you go back and even if you make good notes of what to work on and you're not working on it midweek and then you just go back into the race, chances are you're just going to keep on making those mistakes over and over. Now, chris, what are some common mistakes that you see riders making during the season? Like we're smacked up in the middle. We got national championships for, I guess, the US in December and we're somewhere in October, november. What kind of stuff are you seeing there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we talked about the kind of like general general fade and that's a really good time to be taking stock of how things are going. That's the big picture, but also how's it going on race day? So I was talked to the young athletes about taking a step back. Um, how is my stress level coming in from the week, um, and how good a job do I do?

Speaker 2:

Putting that aside, picked up on the lessons that I've been working on with um, you know, just doing doing those practices or what I was working on at the last race, and apply that, and then some real like nitty gritty details, things you get the chance to practice every time is how's my pre-race routine? Am I building enough time to get there to get my number to hit the portage on to? You know, remember that I didn't unpin my number from the last race to my skin suit. Get that all squared away and get a warm up. And do you have your options? You know, if you know the venue, maybe it's better to go warm up on the road and you have a little bit of control. Or do you have a trainer there on the road and you have a little bit of control, or do you have a trainer there.

Speaker 2:

Super important in an event that's this intense to be ready to smash it right from the get-go, and that sometimes includes smashing it after you've been sitting for a couple minutes in the cold wind getting ready to go and even stepping back a little bit more. Do you have your pre-race nutrition dialed? Are you eating something that's going to give you enough calories to get through the race, because you're burning calories even though it's only 40 minutes, without coming back to visit you in the middle of the race at a very high intensity? These are all things that you want to practice during the season over and over again, with that goal for nationals where I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to be in Louisville, kentucky, and I don't have my usual shopping routine and I'm staying in an Airbnb, but I know that my oatmeal and yogurt and bananas 2.5 hours ahead of time is going to get me through and you can deal with that. You control that variable ahead of time is going to get me through and you can deal with that. You control that variable. So you know those are the kinds of things that you're.

Speaker 1:

You're working on the season, but you're refining as you go along and just think of every race weekend or every race event as an opportunity to practice those things and avoid, you know, having that be a bit a problem when you, when you get to your big event yeah, and so really, those are habits, right, you, you want to make sure that you've got really good habits, really strong habits, in that, um, you also have, like, the list of things that you need the trainer, the water, the bottles, the, the skin suit, everything is just so that it's in your lizard brain, so that it's not the Everything is just so that it's in your lizard brain, so that it's not the front part of your brain that's taking up more energy, right, and that's where just becoming as an athlete anyway, some of those routines help in our efficiencies. So, making sure that you're not, you know, having all these new habits you're writing down, you're taking stock of what works, what doesn't changing, what doesn't, keeping what does.

Speaker 2:

That's really what you're talking about in the way of habits, absolutely, and it's not only developing habits that are relevant for cyclocross. This is stuff that you carry across to whatever you're doing in the cyclocross off season, right, your other racing, completely different types of events, and you know this is another thing with the team We've got. I'm going to brag for a minute. We had six athletes from our team on the world championship team last year. That was pretty freaking cool for a guy. You know that six years ago we had three little kids and my wife, right and but.

Speaker 2:

But we're there in in Tabor and Czech Republic with kids from across the country all the way up to you know, like a top performer for multiple years in the US.

Speaker 2:

And then we're looking at all these famous people, uh, riding their bikes around and they're all warming up the same.

Speaker 2:

So those habits get them there, the racing gets them there, but it's not even necessarily the case that that's this is their main sport or that this is going to be their focus when, as soon as they get to february and march and start doing the road or mountain bikes.

Speaker 2:

But all those habits carry over. You know you're going to need to warm up for a mountain bike race to be ready to smash it and the conditions will be a little bit different, but you got to be ready to go, or a time trial race at a big event, or you know, some of the kids are out there doing these Junior Nations Cup road races and those start the same way because they're going for a couple hours and everybody's just like right out the gate hitting it as hard as they can. So you're preparing yourself for those Now. Maybe you're doing local criteriums or mountain bike races, or you've been doing big gravel race. It's still going to sort itself out in the early parts. So all that build up, everything you do before you get to the line, is critical, and even if cross isn't your main thing, it's a really good way to get those habits dialed in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and these are habits for performance. I think that, whether it is, as you said, road, mountain bike, what other hobby that you have? Or been to high-powered job where you got to perform your other side game, as a lawyer, for example, chris, you have to have these habits shored up so that it's not just wasting time, causing more stress. That's why we're cracked down as coaches, as team directors, on getting those habits dialed for the smaller races so that they're not you know, they're not problems for the bigger ones, that's for sure. Periods at work you know the work life balance getting in the way of a race season can wreak havoc. Uh, for you know the, the average race or the time crunch cyclist that's trying to race every single weekend and still perform at their job. How do, how do you, how do we balance that, chris?

Speaker 2:

it was a super good reminder for me, being around all these high performance athletes and you go to a different place and you eat food that's not exactly the way you would at home and you're sleeping in a bed that's maybe not comfortable and stuff like that. Um, I actually I haven't been doing trials as much as I had. I got sent to another city on behalf of my employer. I was in trial for three and a half weeks and every morning when I get up and the judge wanted us back in court at 7.30 am, I think you know what. This is exactly what those kids are doing every day before they're participating in a World Cup or a local race or whatever it is, and it's all about having that good habit. So I actually drew a lot from them.

Speaker 2:

I will say a lesson that I have seen and I know you have to work with this a lot as well is getting that balance. So we have athletes who are in college or junior year of high school. It's a big deal, right? Everybody's waiting on you to get those SATs done and think about what's next, and the AP exams don't really care about when your national championships are. So you have to balance those things.

Speaker 2:

A thing that I've noticed and that can be very helpful for folks who do control their own schedules is if you can schedule the important crunch time work event shortly before your main cycling event, that's when you probably should be tapering anyway. We don't want you out there trying to pack in all your miles and intensity. You know five days before your race If you've got a big presentation at work or you know you need to do something else. You get a massive boost from having that done, and I have seen people come off finals weeks, hop on a plane, fly to Europe and best races of the season, and so again having that plan, thinking about when you're scheduling things. You can't put off all your work until the season's over, but actually maybe take into consideration that the boost you get from relieving a big stress from work or from the rest of life and it may not conflict with what you need to be doing on the bike to prepare yourself.

Speaker 1:

Get some clear of the space in between the ears, and it'll go a long way. Now, everybody's probably favorite question when it comes to cyclocross is common mistakes in equipment selection. To you, Chris, who you've also called yourself basically a wheel manager All the bikes, all the wheels, all the cassettes Talk to us about what's actually important when it comes to racing your bike in cyclocross.

Speaker 2:

That's an awesome question. Nobody is going to accuse me of not liking fancy bike gear and obsessing about you know which gears are right for which courses. My living room currently is filled with about 30 sets of tubulars that we're replacing tires for and getting ready, and I do think those things can make a difference at the very highest levels. We spend a lot of time with the kids, getting them invested in setting their own tire pressures and comparing things for different parts of the course, thinking about where the challenges are for different bits of equipment. But and this is serious you don't need all of that to come out and have a fantastic experience racing cyclocross, but also to get all that experience benefit. So the habits, the routines, the practice, the race day preparation you can do that if you're out there riding your 26-inch wheeled mountain bike that has been collecting dust for a while and you may not be as far up. But another fantastic thing about cyclocross from my perspective I love it as a manager because I see the racers coming by over and over and over. I can go. I'll ask them ahead of time where's the part that you're going to have the hardest time with, where's your challenge going to be? And we'll go there and watch them, not yelling directions or anything but watching them. But you as the athlete can say what is it I'm going to accomplish here, given the equipment I have, and go make it happen. So a nice bike is wonderful, modern, shifting, even in muddy conditions, is magic, and it needs to have four or five different tread options for different conditions to think about.

Speaker 2:

But there are a lot of people who do really well going out there and racing on their Griffo's, their old aero tread patterns. You know they're Griffo's for life, they're a hashtag, right, and people will do really well on that, because we're talking about margins way at the very sharp end and there's so much to be done before you get there. You are out there racing the course and you're out yourself as much as you are, if you can put aside the fact that the results are going to get published on the Internet in half an hour. In this modern world we live in, that's great. But while you're in the event, you're like am I accelerating up the hill? Am I hitting these turns better this time than I did last time? Is that a smooth dismount over the planks and back on? And you know, all those things are just a great part of the sport because you get opportunity after opportunity to adjust, to correct, to improve each time you're out there racing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'd say, no matter how fancy of stuff that you got or unfancy of stuff that you got, don't overlook the pre-ride, because whether it's a 26-inch mountain bike wheel or the latest and greatest, you got to know how it feels on on course. And that's where setting the tire pressure, uh, setting the specifics, maybe if you do have a spare set of wheels, maybe you swap it out, because that that tire that you have on your spare set, that's actually going to feel really good on this money course, whatever it is. And so common mistake would be not pre-riding, because you can learn so much more. You don't want to be the person who skips the pre-ride and just warms up on the trainer. Or, let's say, you go back to the habits of you're just always late.

Speaker 1:

Maybe change that, because it's going to give you a lot more capacity in your brain to pre-ride. Be calm, all that kind of stuff. You don't want to blast into a course you've never seen before. Take that first lap hot, of course you've never seen before. Take that first lap hot because there's a lot of bad things that can happen, including just going through the tape, crashing and causing crashes and all that kind of stuff. So pre-ride folks, but that's also going to help in the dialing in of this fancy equipment or whatever equipment that you do have. It plays a huge role in deciding how you're going to race.

Speaker 2:

So two things there. The one thing whatever bike you're on, the one thing you do have some control over is your tire pressure. And if you're running tubulars you could probably go a little bit lower than even a nice tubeless clincher setup. You run it too low, you're likely to burp. It's a little counterintuitive for folks coming from the road. Mountain bikers will be like yep, I get it, but a little bit lower pressure gives you a bigger footprint, gets you around those turns with a little more speed and you're accelerating out the backside a little bit more comfortably. You're not skidding your wheel across, but a lot of our courses here you might run across some roots or things like that. It's not just a smooth, muddy Belgian field where you know don't have rocks and surprises. So are we taking the pre-ride in order to figure out what's going to be the highest risk place of getting a flat That'll mess up your race and then probably build from there? Don't say I run 26 PSI, so that's what I do every race. It build in the time to think about it a little bit During your weekly practice, fiddle with the pressure and see you know if you're, if you're, on those clinchers, where do I start burping tires? Bring your pump. You, if you're on those clinchers, where do I start? Burping tires? Bring your pump. You know that sort of thing, but you can learn a lot from doing that and as you actually develop a feel for it, that's another tool in your kit. That's super useful. And then, adam, you were touching on the pre-ride.

Speaker 2:

So we've talked in general terms kind of about the balance between intensity and endurance. This is fundamentally. This is a threshold sport. You're just going above and below that line an awful lot. It's not standing up and sprinting every time. It's kind of that controlled effort all the time, without putting yourself so deep in the hole that you can't recover.

Speaker 2:

Your pre-ride is the chance to think about that. Where's the place where I have to go hard, because you know my competition goes uphill faster than I do, so I need to get in front of them, make them come around me, and so then I'm still attached to the top. But also where's the place where I'm going to soft pedal for a few? I'm going to think about being in the right gear so I don't have to muscle my way back up the hill. But I'm just going to collect my thoughts and get a deep breath and that's a really important part of that race prep. And that strategizing Again carries over to all sorts of racing that you do, but maybe it's not just as in razor sharp focus as it is in cyclocross.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, those are really good points, really good points. And so kind of to start taking this thing home here, I'd say, overall training advice is you know, no matter how good or maybe not so good your summer training was, if you got a lot of fitness coming into the cyclocross season, that's great. Just know that you're going to make a good plan for that, because the aerobic fitness usually decays a little bit. So taking a break from racing and booting up the aerobic system, that's going to be a solid choice. Like we talked about, if your road season or summer season maybe it wasn't super robust, maybe you don't have a lot of hay in the barn coming into cross season, well that's, that's still great because you can manage yourself again with that good plan.

Speaker 1:

Um, keep on racing, but you're still going to need some of those aerobic weekends. So I would say the the advice still pertains there in the way of the balancing act between racing and training, especially on the weekends where you're a little bit more time rich. Midweek, as Chris said, that skill or group training session is crucial and then, depending on your, your overall plan, there's probably going to be one other day of intensity in there that you scoot in and you want to make sure that it, that it hits the mark with what you need, depending on how your summer season rolled into cyclocross. So, from a, what would you add to that, chris, in the way of just overall training advice?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you know we talk about intervals as sort of a generic category that goes from 10-second sprints out to you know, maybe you're doing 20-minute or hour-long sort of threshold segments. Some that are I found are pretty helpful for the cyclocross style are um, perhaps you're doing map out two minutes or two and a half minutes and you just smash the first 30 seconds and then you try and settle into just above threshold for this the remainder and you hold on, um, maybe throwing a little bit of a sprint at the end, um, but that's, that's going to mimic how the races start. I mean, you, you're all in, you get to that first corner, but then you're not just settling in, you need to go out fast, pick it up through the middle and bring it home strong, right. And my cross-country coach used to say the uh, you know, and that builds up that resilience, um, in that, you know it's it's not a full on five minute kind of training.

Speaker 2:

You know that we think of like a classic road interval, um, but it's very specific to the man's. You can flip that around, uh, roll into a nice steady um section and then, and then smash the last 30 seconds section and then smash the last 30 seconds. If you've got a course that you're working on, you can just roll into a turn, make a nice clean turn, but make sure you're in the right gear and stand up and accelerate 10 seconds out and do that. And it doesn't seem that hard at first and about 5 to 10 in you're cross-eyed and you're getting that true cross experience. But again you're building up that resilience for what's going on.

Speaker 2:

So those are a couple of things those repeat little spikes and then a threshold with you know, harder than you want to go, 10, 15, 20 seconds, tagged on to it, adam, I'm sure you've got other ones that you know, you than you want to go. 10, 15, 20 seconds, uh, tagged onto it. Um, adam, I'm sure you've got other ones that that you know you've come across. Uh, that that sort of mimic, that. But again, think about the demands of, of of the races you're going to do and build that intensity training into, into your weekly plan.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, i's. There's so many ways that you can uh slice that cake. When it comes to the specificity of cyclocross, uh circus, if you will, and spoiler alert, I will be having uh coach cts coach, jim layman on the show, coming up here. Fingers crossed, he's just getting back from the paralympics, um, but he's going to talk all about some cross specific um training sessions and intervals that he uses with his athletes as well as running for cyclocross. So for those who are just like nipping at the bud to uh to get more specific on on some of those intervals, I mean what chris just described is perfect because it's mimicking, um, what happens in the sport. And so when you can mimic that, especially the squiggly stuff that happens in a cyclocross race, that is very good preparation for what is to come. And I think too, if you don't do the squiggly training, like Chris said, if you're just smashing and going steady, you're going to miss a lot of the acceleratory aspects of the race, and so you're going to get blown out the back, you're going to miss a lot of the acceleratory aspects of the race, and so you're going to get blown out the back, you're going to cramp, you're not going to be there when the moment happens, when something goes up the road. So, even though steady training works really good at developing aerobic capacity, once we start to hit kind of the midpoint of cross, you got to get more squiggly, especially if you if you haven't already a lot of people start squiggly. So I'll leave it in general terms there for now.

Speaker 1:

But I guess the final thing that chris said, which was brilliant, um, is, as you're coming into like a peak, you know, national championships or whatever. Is your national championship the important part of your sport in timing, if you can control the stresses of life, at that point, do it. So. If you can move the stresses of life, at that point, do it. So if you can move the high stress before the national championships come, do it. If you can push it to after, great.

Speaker 1:

Just know that the stress that's going on between your ears is just as important, maybe even more so, than the stress that's going on in your body. So, as much as you can. We talk a lot about training, we talk about resting and all this kind of stuff. It's that life stress that, again, doesn't show up on training peaks, but it is there, it's like, it's like dark matter. We can't see it. We know it's there, who can feel it, and so managing that is is just as important and just as artful as being an athlete, as some of these other things that we talked about.

Speaker 2:

And this kind of brings it all the way back to the start. I mean, one of the very first things that we're thinking about when we're seeing these super talented rippers in the area trying to figure out what the next step is. It's not that they can't handle the racing. They're going to do great at that. We'll get them to the start line. It's all those other things that we have to build out.

Speaker 2:

Do you have your school week balanced so that you can leave early, so that you can get there? How do you do sleeping in an unfamiliar location when you're worried about race stress? How do you do with all those sorts of things? None of these things matter when you're 13, 14, 15, except that they are learning to deal with that, or learning what you need to work on more. And so a big part of it was not oh, we have to get you out to these races because they're the most important races. These are the races you're going to be doing when you're a UCI category racer later on. But how do you do with the travel? How do you do with that sort of stuff? And can we build up and into that? How do we control for those stresses? So that's exactly the point and really it underpins all this and and the idea. You know we have a limited amount of time to train, so how do we give ourselves the best opportunity to make the most of that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, that's it.

Speaker 1:

We should probably just call this episode, uh, life coaching by, uh, chris Marion, because it's it's a lot of how you perform at sport.

Speaker 1:

So, you know, overall, there's a lot of common mistakes that we athletes make, you know, every season, year to year, and hopefully what Chris has talked about helps everybody uh, maybe not fall into those same pitfalls or at least think about them differently, so that if you identify that you're oh yeah, I am doing that you can kind of pull yourself up because it's giving you awareness of what could be happening. So, um, chris, you know you're super busy because we, we like, scratched the surface of, like you, being a lawyer, but also, hey, you're running this, this team. You're, um, you know, a mentor to all these athletes that are, you know, trying to chip away at your time. So, thank you very much for your time here. Um, gosh, we didn't even really talk about, uh, cx. So if people are interested in following the team or learning more about cyclocross or just being in the loop, how can they connect with you, how can they connect with the team and everything else that you're involved with?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the full name of the team is CXD Trek Bikes. Trek has been a fantastic supporter really of the United States cross scene. They're the main sponsor of the United States Cyclocross Series that's starting up at GoCross in two weeks. They have, you know, many of you who've watched international racing will know the Valois Trek Lions. They're all in. They're making one of the few big manufacturers that's still making a cyclocross-specific bike. The Boone, it's amazing. The Crockett is also amazing, the aluminum version. But they've been really great for the sport and really good at nurturing us as we kind of bump up and bump up and gallop and ask for a little more help as we go. As we kind of bump up and bump up and call up and ask for a little more help as we go.

Speaker 2:

We're on Instagram, cxd Trek Bikes and we'll be ramping up that media machine pretty soon as we get into the season. So follow us along. Also, bill Shiken, who I mentioned early on. Back in the early days he used to have a tail camera on his men's cap bead. You know Masters races and they got a lot of hits locally and that has grown into a media empire. So CXR's media. He's got podcasts covering all the adventures in cross racing. He's got an Instagram account that views the world and he's out there shooting video and stills for a lot of the big players out there, so we follow him along and we'll put those links in there if you're interested in following along um, and I'll just I'll throw out a quick um, uh, spoiler or not spoiler, but a quick thing.

Speaker 1:

I I've subscribed to his stuff on substack, the I think it's cx airs bulletin. Um, it's amazing quick reads of keeping it loose.

Speaker 2:

That's been neat this year because Bill also follows along in the mountain bike scene, so we got some very detailed analysis of the points chase for Olympic spots and you know all the things that happened there and get get under the hood of what's going on both domestically and in Europe. He just published the preseason interviews from all the top racers in the US and what they're looking forward to and anticipating this year. So lots of good information out there for fans of the sport, also anybody who's new out there or you know, interested enough to listen to this. Okay, you can tell I'm excited about this and adam has got some really fantastic athletes who are benefit a lot from doing cyclocross. Just come out and give one a try.

Speaker 2:

I mean, let's keep the sport in the us um going. It's a heck of a lot of fun. Bring your family if you got little kids. I did this for a lot of years until my wife took over all the family training time um, but they're usually at parks. It's a lot of fun, or they can do like the little kids race um, it, it. It's a great time and also a fantastic workout opportunity to work on the skills and all those other things we've been talking about, but it's not all like where does this fit in the training plan? It's just amazing. Uh, fun bike racing that's it.

Speaker 1:

And I think if, if you know, you're not a cyclocross racer, uh, you like bikes and maybe maybe race a little bit on the road, try it. It's like to me it's the funnest season of them all. Um, I've very, very marginally raced a cycross and oftentimes it's like in a relay with some other friends. It's just a blast. So it's a very like low key. Get out there and, as in my intro, it's a party out there. So if you've never even experienced it, you don't even have to race it, just go show up, bring the cowbell, go crazy. I mean whiskey handups, bacon handups, I can't even mention. Well, maybe I can. I did a relay race at the DCCX. I had a hand-up of something. I grabbed it, I put it in my jorts, pulled it out later.

Speaker 2:

It was a joint, you just never know what's going to happen. So, yep, coming up this weekend so be there at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in DC. So the one time you can get on that campus a year, come race bikes or visit the food trucks and our beer sponsors, but it's a really good time. And yeah, who knows, who knows what hand-ups you're going to get, but not from our team, because we're all on the you know UCI list.

Speaker 1:

Well, Chris. Thank you again. This has been super fun. I'm sure I'll be talking to you probably in the next 20 minutes or so about something else, but really enjoyed chatting with you today.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely Really enjoyed it. Thanks so much, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.

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Adam Pulford

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