Tour Of Bright – This Week’s Preparation

November 29, 2010

Photos courtesy of James Broadway
One of my favorite races on the Australian race calendar is upon us - the Tour of Bright (ToB). The reason I love this race is because it's tough. Riders can sit in for only so long before the hills naturally sort things out into two groups: those who have done their homework, and those who haven't.

The ToB starts this Saturday and all your training should be done by now. This isn't the week you want to be trying to cram in fitness at the last moment. The biggest mistake I see most often is people trying to make up for lost ground in a panic during the week before a race. This week is about recovery and sharpening of your strengths. Going into a race underdone is far better than going in tired.

If you're racing in the ToB (or any other event for that matter) the two best things you can do this week are getting a massage and doing a proper taper.

Massage

One of the most significant things you can do for your recovery this week is to treat yourself to a massage.  No, I’m not talking about dim lights, the smell of incense, selection of scented oils, etc.  I’m talking about a deep tissue massage that will be more excruciatingly painful than 3 Mt. Hotham’s in a row. If you live in the SE Suburbs of Melbourne, Andy Naylor or Charlie Botero are a couple therapists who specialise in cyclists I’d highly recommend. If you live north of the river in Melbourne, Scooter at Impact Massage is another excellent option.

Four days before an event is good to get a deep tissue massage. This gives ample time to get over the legginess (heavy legs after a massage) that is typically experienced after a deep tissue treatment. A deep tissue massage is akin to having a hard workout. You never want to have a deep tissue massage any closer than 3 days before an event. You’ll be sore, your legs will feel like lead, and you’ll most likely ride horribly the next day. This is good. It means it worked.

Tomorrow, 3 days before the race, you’ll want to go for a light pedal with a few race pace efforts (3 x 90 sec with 3 mins recovery in-between) just to blow out the legginess.  Nothing too strenuous, but you want to give the legs a reminder of what’s to come.  If you’ve done everything right you’ll feel like you’re floating on Saturday.

Tapering

Up until now you should have been doing a fair amount of work in the hills.  When I say “hill work” this should have included sessions with two or three climbs that last 15-20 minutes each, ideally twice a week.  This will give you the necessary strength endurance base you’ll need for the big hills of the ToB.

That hill-work in conjunction with your other training should have been causing fatigue on the body. If you are fatigued from training then you have stressed the body enough to create the potential for fitness.

In the week preceding the ToB you should begin to taper. This involves reducing fatigue and training load. The temptation is to keep the training load high just to cram a bit more fitness in, but in actual fact you have to reduce fitness in order to shed fatigue. The trick is to control how much fitness is lost during the tapering phase.

What you want to do when tapering is emphasize rest and do just enough intensity to keep the fitness sharp. The tapering phase is not the time to be doing long sessions.  Do 3-4 workouts in the final week before the ToB with short intervals at expected race intensity (only 90 seconds each with 3 min recoveries).

Five days before the race (Monday) do 5 x 90sec intervals. Four days before, do 4 x 90 second intervals, three days before do 3 x 90 second intervals. These intervals should be done at race intensity.

Your easiest day should be two days before the race (Thursday).  Either take the day off or go for an easy cafe ride.  The day before the race (Friday) should include some very brief race-pace intensity. If you’re up in Bright early on Friday do this ride on the TT course. Here is my favorite race tune-up the day before an event.  Many people think that the best thing to do is rest the day before a race.  I personally disagree.

Hopefully up until this point you’ve been training your weaknesses.  In the taper phase you should be emphasizing your strengths and putting them into action.  This is what you’ve been waiting for!

A number of excellent articles on peaking and tapering can be found on Joe Friel’s blog (the training/coaching guru where most of my training knowledge comes from).




SIMILAR ENTRIES

Showing 5 entries
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  • http://twitter.com/MrDanielStrauss Daniel Strauss

    The weather is looking epic…

  • http://twitter.com/james_foran James Foran

    Very exciting. Cant wait for the Weekend!

  • daveb

    it’s going to get ugly. nervous already.

  • http://www.facebook.com/deryck.walker Deryck Walker

    I am one of these “underdone” riders you talk of, and this post couldnt be timed any
    better (with me having no clue how to taper properly).

    Ive got my deep tissue painfest lined up for this afternoon (not looking forward to elbows
    down quaddies).

    Can you quantify “race pace” efforts for me, are you talking all-out sprinting Z5 efforts? Or more like sustained in-saddle Z4 stuff?

  • Cam

    I’ve had to pull out thanks to the flu. A (very) small part of me is relieved (those hotham photos help!), but will be a bit lost on the weekend. I’ll just have to be content taking photos of you all – don’t forget to turn it on for the photographers on the course (without crashing).

  • Mr Bailey

    “Possible thunderstorms” Nooooooooo! :(

    I’ve just got back from the Forrest 24 Hour and the weather there was bad too. Let’s hope it clears up for Saturday.

  • http://www.cyclingTipsBlog.com cyclingTips

    Sorry, should have been more clear. The ‘race efforts’ should be zone 4 intensity.

  • http://topsy.com/www.cyclingtipsblog.com/2010/11/tour-of-bright-this-weeks-preparation/?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention Tour of Bright Tapering and Massage — Topsy.com

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  • Jii

    Dog ate my homework.

  • daveb

    dog ate my powerbar and gels

  • daveb

    dog ate my powerbar and gels

  • daveb

    dog ate my powerbar and gels

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=636550395 Robert Merkel

    Oh, dear…

    If it is wet, thank Jeebus they’ve taken the Towonga Gap descent out of the course.

    What’s the Rosewhite Gap descent like?

  • http://www.facebook.com/deryck.walker Deryck Walker

    + the tawonga decent has recently been resurfaced with that loose compacted gravelly rubbish. So even if dry, it wouldve been significantly more dangerous than normal, so despite me being gravity challenged, i think its the safer option to not include it this year.

    It’ll be interesting on tawonga. No-where to park, and 300+ cyclists, + support, + race org, + spectators.

    Rosewhite is flowy, av gradient prolly -4% – 5%. Everything normally comes together on the descent (as long as there isnt a big break away prior).

  • lekoshe

    I remember Rosewhite Gap as a fast and flowing descent.

    I remember Tawonga Gap because it tore chunks out of my knee and I’ll have the scars forever…

  • Tim

    Fast.

    I would rather have the descent in there to be honest.

    I’m tapering with a brand new bike and using SRAM for the first time. Whoopsies.

    Dom @ Osteo Thurs, physio thurs, Chiro Wed, and deep tissue tonight @myo with sweet FA riding all week.

    My hill training has consisted of riding up Chapel St in Windsor, ha ha. When you say underdone, do you mean: seriously, ludricrously, done-no-hill-climbing-whatsoever underdone?! I am hopeful you’ll say yes!

    Good luck!

  • http://www.facebook.com/deryck.walker Deryck Walker

    @lekoshe, dislike stacking.

    @ tim, I hear yuo on the descent. When I cross the KOM last year, I was 4 mintues down on a mate, but the time i got to the finish, i’d whittled that down to 1 minute. So I will dearly miss that descent.

    & when saying underdone, im like that steak you get thats not only bloody, but its still kicking, and might even bite you back when you try to eat it.

  • Anonymous

    Taper started very early due to the very crap weather, my inability to just HTFU and a wife like the little red guy on Homer’s shoulder:

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bRLteZbACNM/TIDsJ54hVII/AAAAAAAAAGo/ZSV_viZTXXs/s1600/homer_simpson_angels_and_demons-11209.jpg

    “honey, it’s wet. You could injure yourself. You don’t want to mess your bike up. Stay in bed with me. You’ve done plenty of training.” etc etc etc

    ;-)

    Oh well, just about healed up from last time I trained in the hills in the wet – came off on the hair pin corner on The Wall descent.

  • Billy Buster

    ToB Start list http://www.vic.cycling.org.au/?Page=40246

    Yo, CT what’s with the Masters 2 entry?

  • http://www.cyclingTipsBlog.com cyclingTips

    I haven’t done enough homework to race A-grade this year!

    ;-)

  • http://www.cyclingTipsBlog.com cyclingTips

    I haven’t done enough homework to race A-grade this year!

    ;-)

  • gm

    elbows on the quads are nothing compared to cupping on the quads/hams/calves. try that and you will be begging for elbows

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  • Mat

    look out for Cameron Peterson – wicked climber.

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    Nothing like a good massage to get you ready for the big day. Try a company like massageonthegousa.com for this. You’ll see that a good masseuse will heal your body.

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