Older Riders; Finishing Rides
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John Hughes
May 22, 2011, 10:14:28 AM5/22/11
to randon
I've added two new pages to my website:
Training Older Riders - How I coached Pete Lekisch, the first 60-year-old to finish solo RAAM. The training principles apply to all of us who are 50 and older.
Finishing Endurance Rides - For a successful ride you don't just show up and do it. It takes thorough preparation the last few weeks and then carefully managing the ride itself.
Check them out:
http://www.coach-hughes.com/resources/resources.html
--
Cheers,
John Hughes
www.coach-hughes.com
PO Box 18028
Boulder, CO 80308-1028
Training Older Riders - How I coached Pete Lekisch, the first 60-year-old to finish solo RAAM. The training principles apply to all of us who are 50 and older.
Finishing Endurance Rides - For a successful ride you don't just show up and do it. It takes thorough preparation the last few weeks and then carefully managing the ride itself.
Check them out:
http://www.coach-hughes.com/resources/resources.html
--
Cheers,
John Hughes
www.coach-hughes.com
PO Box 18028
Boulder, CO 80308-1028
Chris Heg
May 25, 2011, 12:05:30 AM5/25/11
to randon
"Work on Your Limiters: Older athletes are generally also very busy;
we don’t have time to waste in training. We need to spend our limited
time working on our specific weaknesses.
During Team RAAM Peter had some trouble with the sustained climbs in
the Rockies. When he moved to Texas, he bought an hypobaric chamber so
that he could sleep at 9,000 feet! The result was a slow increase in
his hematocrit. Then in May he spent 10 days in Colorado, learning to
pace himself on long climbs."
"Peter was fortunate: he could retire and devote most of his time and
energy to preparing for RAAM “just like it was my job.” If we want to
train effectively for ultra events, we need to manage all that aspects
of our lives that can potentially add up to a severe overload."
Nice work if you can get it.
we don’t have time to waste in training. We need to spend our limited
time working on our specific weaknesses.
During Team RAAM Peter had some trouble with the sustained climbs in
the Rockies. When he moved to Texas, he bought an hypobaric chamber so
that he could sleep at 9,000 feet! The result was a slow increase in
his hematocrit. Then in May he spent 10 days in Colorado, learning to
pace himself on long climbs."
"Peter was fortunate: he could retire and devote most of his time and
energy to preparing for RAAM “just like it was my job.” If we want to
train effectively for ultra events, we need to manage all that aspects
of our lives that can potentially add up to a severe overload."
Nice work if you can get it.
Message has been deleted
Erik Nilsson
May 25, 2011, 2:17:40 AM5/25/11
to randon
I recently finished Daniel Pink's book _Drive_ and am now reading
Christopher McDougall's _Born to Run_ (Both borrowed from my wife.)
The two books make similar points in very different contexts: getting
really good at a difficult thing almost always requires a lot of time.
It's very hard to use all that time productively unless you love what
you're doing. McDougall makes the point that at the same time Kenya
came on the scene as a marathon powerhouse, American marathoners
actually got slower. Literally, slower. The difference according to
McDougall? Sponsorship. For Americans, marathoning stopped being the
crazy thing that helped you forget your jerk boss and *became* your
jerk boss.
Joe Friel reminds me of Bill Bowerman in his commitment to controlled
experiment, and I find that valuable. What I don't like so much about
Joe is, he makes the training world sound so joyless. I think in real
life he's less extreme, but I think Bill's runners had more fun, and
when Bill coached a runner named Pre, he learned something about how
important joy and desire were. Bill's eulogy for Pre in 1975 says it
all:
"All my life, man and boy, I've operated under the assumption that the
main idea in running was to win the race. Naturally, when I became a
coach I tried to teach people how to do that. Tried to teach Pre how
to do that. Tried like hell to teach Pre to do that. And Pre taught
me. Taught me I was wrong. Pre, you see, was troubled by knowing that
a mediocre effort can win a race and a magnificent effort can lose
one. Winning a race wouldn't necessarily demand that he give it
everything he had from start to finish. He never ran any other way. I
couldn't get him to, and God knows I tried . . . but . . . Pre was
stubborn. He insisted on holding himself to a higher standard than
victory. 'A race is a work of art' is what he said and what he
believed and he was out to make it one every step of the way.
Of course he wanted to win. Those who saw Pre compete or who competed
against him were never in doubt how much he wanted to win. But HOW he
won mattered to him more. Pre thought I was a hard case. But he
finally got it through my head that the real purpose of running isn't
to win a race. It's to test to the limits of the human heart. That he
did . . . No one did it more often. No one did it better."
As randonneurs, we are not out to defeat each other, so much as defeat
our inner demons or pursue whyever it is we ride. I don't think my
rides are works of art, but crafts at least. I can look back on my
mental GPS path, moments shared and moments alone, and be satisfied.
On May 24, 9:23 pm, Jan Heine <hein...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "amateurs" in the best sense of the word - normal people with real
> jobs, real families, and real interests beyond cycling.
>
> When I was racing, it was interesting that the higher I got in the
> racing ranks, the less interesting I found the people with whom I
> spent my weekends. That was the main reason why I "retired."
>
> Among randonneurs, there never is a lack for interesting conversation.
>
> None of us can train "optimally." Making the best of the limited time
> most of us have is one of the (positive) challenges of our sport,
> just like navigating with a cue sheet and planning one's food for a
> long, unsupported ride.
>
> To me, those things are the main differences to RAAM and similar
> events, where it's all about athletic performance, and an entire
> support crew is there to take care of all the other elements -
> elements that I enjoy in a randonneur brevet.
>
> Jan Heine
> Editor
> Bicycle Quarterlyhttp://www.bikequarterly.com
>
> Follow our blog athttp://janheine.wordpress.com/
> --
Christopher McDougall's _Born to Run_ (Both borrowed from my wife.)
The two books make similar points in very different contexts: getting
really good at a difficult thing almost always requires a lot of time.
It's very hard to use all that time productively unless you love what
you're doing. McDougall makes the point that at the same time Kenya
came on the scene as a marathon powerhouse, American marathoners
actually got slower. Literally, slower. The difference according to
McDougall? Sponsorship. For Americans, marathoning stopped being the
crazy thing that helped you forget your jerk boss and *became* your
jerk boss.
Joe Friel reminds me of Bill Bowerman in his commitment to controlled
experiment, and I find that valuable. What I don't like so much about
Joe is, he makes the training world sound so joyless. I think in real
life he's less extreme, but I think Bill's runners had more fun, and
when Bill coached a runner named Pre, he learned something about how
important joy and desire were. Bill's eulogy for Pre in 1975 says it
all:
"All my life, man and boy, I've operated under the assumption that the
main idea in running was to win the race. Naturally, when I became a
coach I tried to teach people how to do that. Tried to teach Pre how
to do that. Tried like hell to teach Pre to do that. And Pre taught
me. Taught me I was wrong. Pre, you see, was troubled by knowing that
a mediocre effort can win a race and a magnificent effort can lose
one. Winning a race wouldn't necessarily demand that he give it
everything he had from start to finish. He never ran any other way. I
couldn't get him to, and God knows I tried . . . but . . . Pre was
stubborn. He insisted on holding himself to a higher standard than
victory. 'A race is a work of art' is what he said and what he
believed and he was out to make it one every step of the way.
Of course he wanted to win. Those who saw Pre compete or who competed
against him were never in doubt how much he wanted to win. But HOW he
won mattered to him more. Pre thought I was a hard case. But he
finally got it through my head that the real purpose of running isn't
to win a race. It's to test to the limits of the human heart. That he
did . . . No one did it more often. No one did it better."
As randonneurs, we are not out to defeat each other, so much as defeat
our inner demons or pursue whyever it is we ride. I don't think my
rides are works of art, but crafts at least. I can look back on my
mental GPS path, moments shared and moments alone, and be satisfied.
On May 24, 9:23 pm, Jan Heine <hein...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> At 9:05 PM -0700 5/24/11, Chris Heg wrote:
>
> >"Peter was fortunate: he could retire and devote most of his time and
> >energy to preparing for RAAM "just like it was my job." If we want to
> >train effectively for ultra events, we need to manage all that aspects
> >of our lives that can potentially add up to a severe overload."
>
> >Nice work if you can get it.
>
> I find that one of the nice part of randonneuring is that we all are
>
> >"Peter was fortunate: he could retire and devote most of his time and
> >energy to preparing for RAAM "just like it was my job." If we want to
> >train effectively for ultra events, we need to manage all that aspects
> >of our lives that can potentially add up to a severe overload."
>
> >Nice work if you can get it.
>
> "amateurs" in the best sense of the word - normal people with real
> jobs, real families, and real interests beyond cycling.
>
> When I was racing, it was interesting that the higher I got in the
> racing ranks, the less interesting I found the people with whom I
> spent my weekends. That was the main reason why I "retired."
>
> Among randonneurs, there never is a lack for interesting conversation.
>
> None of us can train "optimally." Making the best of the limited time
> most of us have is one of the (positive) challenges of our sport,
> just like navigating with a cue sheet and planning one's food for a
> long, unsupported ride.
>
> To me, those things are the main differences to RAAM and similar
> events, where it's all about athletic performance, and an entire
> support crew is there to take care of all the other elements -
> elements that I enjoy in a randonneur brevet.
>
> Jan Heine
> Editor
> Bicycle Quarterlyhttp://www.bikequarterly.com
>
> Follow our blog athttp://janheine.wordpress.com/
> --
Charles Coldwell
May 25, 2011, 8:35:15 AM5/25/11
to Chris Heg, randon
On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 12:05 AM, Chris Heg <che...@comcast.net> wrote:
> "Work on Your Limiters: Older athletes are generally also very busy;
> we don’t have time to waste in training. We need to spend our limited
> time working on our specific weaknesses.
> During Team RAAM Peter had some trouble with the sustained climbs in
> the Rockies. When he moved to Texas, he bought an hypobaric chamber so
> that he could sleep at 9,000 feet!
> "Work on Your Limiters: Older athletes are generally also very busy;
> we don’t have time to waste in training. We need to spend our limited
> time working on our specific weaknesses.
> During Team RAAM Peter had some trouble with the sustained climbs in
> the Rockies. When he moved to Texas, he bought an hypobaric chamber so
> that he could sleep at 9,000 feet!
EPO would have been cheaper.
--
Charles M. Coldwell, W1CMC
"Turn on, log in, tune out"
Belmont, Massachusetts, New England (FN42jj)
GPG ID: 852E052F
GPG FPR: 77E5 2B51 4907 F08A 7E92 DE80 AFA9 9A8F 852E 052F
Message has been deleted
Bruce...@gdc4s.com
May 25, 2011, 2:35:14 PM5/25/11
to ran...@googlegroups.com
Topic: Older Riders; Finishing Rides
> The two books make similar points in very different contexts:
> getting really good at a difficult thing almost always requires
> a lot of time.
I've heard the point made that it takes about 10,000 hours of an
activity to make the neural connections required to perform the activity
at an elite level -- not necessarily as fast as possible, but as skilled
as possible.
For cycling, you can evaluate where you are relative to this level based
on your lifetime mileage and a guess at your overall average speed.
Randonneuring generally requires a lot of time, so I expect many of us
are already there.
- Bruce
Old5ten
May 25, 2011, 10:43:47 PM5/25/11
to Bruce...@gdc4s.com, ran...@googlegroups.com
there's a lot more to acquiring skill/proficiency than time. it is easily possible to practice motor patterns incorrectly and more time just reinforces poor skill. i would rank coaching and frequent feedback (especially visual) significantly higher in terms of becoming as skilled as possible.
elmar
elmar
--
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