Staying Fit While Shutting Off

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Staying Fit While Shutting Off

This one is going to be a quick one, but as a coach, it is a topic that I find myself constantly thinking about this time of year. If an athlete’s race season starts in March and ends in September, we are about halfway through the season right now. We’ve probably built up for some big spring goals, and hopefully they went well, from a physical perspective a lot of things are still good. When I look at the files the numbers are good, maybe even best, but there’s just something going on lurking in the background and you can start feeling - both as an athlete and the coach - that you’re on a precarious edge. Inconsistencies start to lurk in, maybe mental mistakes add up in races to translate to results that aren’t what the athletes are capable of.

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The Workout: Capacity LT

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The Workout: Capacity LT

Jim and I always have fun arguments about the use of LT work in training prescription (by the way, Nate writing here). I laugh about it, because at the end of the day we both have a good handle on when, how, why, and how much LT work to implement into an athlete’s training. However, everyone always has their own philosophies within certain principles. I always think of Jim as a big LT guy, and Jim always thinks of me as a light LT guy. Truthfully I think a lot of this is molded more by what worked for us personally as athletes, in our banter with each other, rather than how we prescribe LT work to athletes we coach now. When it comes to training prescriptions we’re pretty much on the same wavelength!

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Dirt Climbs and Icee's p/b Stephen Bassett

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Dirt Climbs and Icee's p/b Stephen Bassett

As much as I love riding from home in Knoxville, I always enjoy making the trip to Waterville, NC to grind up and down a few mountains on the gravel bike. As I was working my way back to fitness last fall, the varying terrain makes those long solo rides so much more enjoyable. As we’ve gotten more into racing season, I occasionally use these mountains as organic intervals, just riding hard up the climbs and easy in between, which has been a stimulating way to build form without having to think too hard.

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Inside Evan Bausbacher's National Title

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Inside Evan Bausbacher's National Title

Over the weekend Evan Bausbacher represented the University of Texas at the USA Cycling Collegiate National Road Championships in Augusta, Georgia. It was a hot and challenging day out in the road race, with a very sweet finale when Evan took home the win! He worked hard all winter and spring to be ready to fight for the stars and stripes. Read about the race through his eyes, and then follow up for our analysis of his race data.

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The "Other" Altitude Training

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The "Other" Altitude Training

When athletes think about traveling to a different altitude to race, they often think about the difficulties associated with racing at a higher altitude. However, athletes who live at altitude and travel down to sea level to compete also face difficulties. While altitude can be great for improving endurance performance, it doesn’t allow an athlete to train at very high intensities (hence the idea of “live high, train low”). This lack of high intensity training is problematic since races are often won as a result of these high intensity efforts (sprint finishes, breaking away, etc.).

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Catching up With Stephen Bassett

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Catching up With Stephen Bassett

Bassett, you're a young fella but have simultaneously been at this for awhile. Give us a little bit of a run down of how you got into the sport, and what has kept you in it?

Yeah, I think I’m coming up on ten years of full time bike racing. I always rode with my dad growing up- I convinced him to let me ride 100 miles when I was 11. One of my dad’s students at the University of Tennessee invited me to a cyclocross race and he was the coolest guy I’d ever met so I had to try that out. Pretty soon I was racing road as well and was lucky enough to find some really good teams and get to some sweet races with trade teams and the national development program. I’m definitely a competitor, probably to a fault. I always have an idea of what I can achieve in the back of my mind, so it’s a gratifying process to figure out the steps I need to take to get there. I’m pretty into the technical aspect of the sport as well- I spend a lot of time getting the equipment where at needs to be and enjoy that as well. I also love all the friends I’ve made in the sport. We all love an excuse to jump in a van and run around with our buddies.

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Good Company

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Good Company

There’s a quote that I recently saw online which says, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Now I don’t know how they got to that exact number, but the people you surround yourself with does have a significant impact. The people you surround yourself with can be your support group, your motivators, and can even contribute new ideas for how you can further improve yourself.

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