by Sylv » Fri May 11, 2007 8:21 pm
.. and more
[quote]Criterium Skills and Sprinting
by Karen Brems
Criteriums are pretty much an exclusively American form of racing. They can be rather frightening for beginning racers because of the pack skills required. Once you get used to them though, they can be a lot of fun because there is always something going on in the race. Often you get spectators to cheer and usually some primes to sprint for during the race. Criteriums are popular with people who have limited training time because they don’t require the mileage base that road racing does. They do require a lot of high intensity training though. Criteriums are a good place to test race tactics. You can try making attacks and going for the primes without too much fear of getting dropped if you get tired. If you are comfortable in a pack, it is relatively easy to sit in and recover. Practice your sprint by going for primes. The first skill necessary for a good criterium is getting a good starting position and getting clipped in when the gun goes off. Practice clipping into your pedals without looking at them and accelerating whenever you get stopped at a red light. You don’t want to have to spend the first couple of laps trying to chase or move up.
Good cornering ability is essential for being successful in criteruims. You should never have to brake in a corner if you follow the right line. There is a flow to the pack through a corner and you should follow it. Generally, corners are not a good place to move up. You may make up at most one position, and you will probably make someone mad! The best way to learn how to corner is to follow someone who is good. This can be by doing the twilight training crits, group rides or doing races that include higher categories. When going around a corner, relax your upper body, bend your elbows, keep your hands on the drops and have your outside pedal down with your weight on it. It is actually much easier to ride near the front of a pack that at the back. At the back, you will almost certainly have to brake in the corners (because someone else did) and accelerate back out of them. This takes a lot of energy and is known as the “yo-yo effectâ€. The front of the pack goes a constant pace and the back strings out and comes back just like a yo-yo.
The last essential criterium skill is sprinting. There are 3 important things about sprinting: 1) position 2) position and 3) position. Unless the course has a very unusually long start-finish straight, if you are not in the top 3 out of the last corner, you will not win. Ever. In many races, the race actually comes down to a race for the last corner. You will not be able to improve your position by more than one or two places after the last corner, even if you are the fastest sprinter in the field. During the last few laps, do not be afraid to be out in the wind a little if it keeps you in good position. The basic rule for the last laps of a crit is to always have access to the front in case someone decides to surge.
If you have several members of a team at a race, you can lead out the best sprinter. The purpose of the leadout is to maximize the chances of the best sprinter winning the race by keeping them in a good position in the final laps without the sprinter having to expend a lot of energy. For this to happen, the leadout must be FAST! Usually a leadout will start with one or two laps to go, and it may take several leadout people to keep the speed up: for example, the first person goes as hard as they can for half a lap with 1 lap to go, then they pull off and the next person goes as hard a they can for half a lap and finally the sprinter goes at 200m. This is known as a “train†and you will see it all the time in Pro races. You can also have a “sweeper†which is a teammate who sits on the sprinter’s wheel and makes sure nobody else is on it. If the sweeper stays on the sprinter’s wheel all the way to the line, they can get 2nd or 3rd, thus maximizing the team placings. The sweeper has to be aggressive about holding their position though because everyone wants the wheel of a good sprinter.
The leadout must be fast enough to stifle any urges of other teams to attack or swarm around the leader. Often you will see teammate from team A leading out her sprinter for a lap at some relatively fast pace, only to have team B swarm up the side with half a lap to go some 2-4 mph faster. One of the best ways to learn how to sprint is to be a leadout rider. This is because it will give you a mission to get to the front at the end of a race. It is always easier to ride AT the front than NEAR the front. It will also help you build up your own speed.
Sprint workouts
Sprinting utilized a different energy delivery system than other forms of racing. Your muscles use mainly creatine phosphate when sprinting. This form of energy allows for very high power output, but it is gone in 10-15 sec. To replenish creatine phosphate stores in your muscles requires a relatively long time - 5 min. or so. This is why it is important when doing sprint workouts to recover fully in between efforts. You don’t want to train yourself to go slow. You should do your sprint workout early in the week when you are freshest. Sprinting also requires coordination and upper body strength and therefore must be practiced.
A good sprint workout consists of a thorough warm-up, maybe with a few short, small-geared jumps and then 5-8 all-out sprints of 15-20 sec. with 5 min. or so between efforts. To work on pure speed, get yourself rolling (say 18-20mph) and then sprint as hard as you can in the gear that allows you to go the fastest. To work on strength and acceleration, you can do “power sprintsâ€. This is where you start at very low speed (5 mph) in a big gear (53x13 or 53x14) and accelerate as hard as you can for 15 sec. Sprinting requires a lot of strength and a winter weight program can really benefit here. Track sprint specialists hit the weight room year around. It is good to do sprint workouts with a partner or a small group for extra motivation. You can also look at max. speed on your cycling computer for each effort to gauge progress.
Sprinting is a combination of leg speed and power. To work on leg speed and coordination, try some of your sprints on a slight downhill or with a tailwind. To work on power, do them uphill or into the wind. A few tailwind or downhill sprints are a good way to “wake up your legs†the day before a race or as part of your criterium warm-up.
[quote]CRITERIUM TRAINING
Time for an in depth close to home analysis of US criterium racing. What?! We can’t all enter races like the Tour. Some racers love criteriums, others hate it but many spectators and sponsors find it exciting. Plus its what we got so I’ll get into a few ways you can embrace criterium racing and train specifically for crits. Woohoo!
A good criterium racer needs experience. Being fast and fit is only a part of the equation. Strategy, patience, pack positioning, bike handling and luck are just a few strengths a crafty crit racer possess. But while you are working on becoming that crafty crit racer, you can tailor your training to mimic a criterium.
First, it is important to define what actually happens in a criterium in terms of power in order to replicate that power in your training. Without getting into a detailed description, power in watts is to a cyclist, as horsepower is to a Ferrari. At first glance, the graphical power output of a cyclist racing a criterium looks like a bunch of goobly-gook. A typical SRM or PowerTap file from a criterium spikes up and down several times per lap creating a complicated maze of peaks to the untrained eye. However these short sharp peaks, anywhere from 300-1000 watts or even greater, represent the cyclist sprinting out of corners, accelerating, attacking, counterattacking, and finally the big spike: the field sprint. Drops in power to zero (a.k.a. Zero Time) represent time spent coasting, setting up for a corner, cornering, or just getting sucked along in the peloton’s draft. Further analysis shows how much time was spent in certain power zones and also how much time was spent at zero power.
There are two power zones critical to successful criterium racing that are often overlooked in a traditional training plan: power above your threshold and zero time (if that is even a zone). Often times comparison of files between the winner and a pack finisher in the same crit reveals that the winner spent more time at zero! However, when it really counted such as making “the break†or the sprint finish, the winner’s power output dwarfed the pack finisher. Why? Because the winner spent more time at zero, was more rested, and metered his efforts better than the pack finisher. This also goes back to that crafty crit racer thing.
Now this may not always be the case (or possible) so in addition to increasing your zero time in a crit, you might also want to consider training at the type of power outputs you’ll need to chase and drop your competitors. For starters, entering more crits is an ideal way to train which, again, goes back to the crafty crit racing experience thing. In addition, short intervals 5-20 seconds in length at power levels WAY above your threshold mimic criteriums the best. Looking at an SRM file from a typical crit reveals anywhere from 10 - 80 spikes depending on the course, category, length, level, intensity, and terrain. Break that down into an interval workout and start with a workout of ten to thirty 5 second sprints (depending on your fitness level). Now further break up those sprints into sets of 4-6 sprints each. Once again start slowly and work your way up in intensity and number of sets. But you can do it; its just all out for five seconds followed by 15-30 seconds of rest and repeat. Break up the sets with 2-3 minutes of rest and you have yourself a great criterium specific mid-week workout. In total a typical workout may be only 2.5 minutes of intensity but its at an intensity much much greater than your power at threshold. We’re talking 300 -1000+ watts! The idea is to stimulate your body to be able to handle power outputs of this magnitude on a regular repeated basis. Just what occurs in a criterium.
As your training progresses, increase the duration of each interval eventually working your way up to twenty and thirty seconds. Similarly, increase the total intensity of the workout up to 10 or more total minutes depending on your fitness level. Decrease your work to rest ratio eventually down to a one to one 20 second on 20 second off effort, for example. Before long you’ll be that crafty crit racer coasting along, breathing easy and racking up zero time just waiting to make your move.
Now don’t forget to recover!
