Rolling Thunder 2016!

Rolling thunder CX in Missoula was this past weekend and I felt I really needed to write about it. This is for a couple reasons. One, it will go down as a significant percentage of the race time I’ve had this year, it’s always an awesome race, and the clarity and decisiveness with which I raced and remember the race can serve as an excellent example of the strategy that exists in CX.

Introducing Premium Athlete Coaching

I have been fortunate to coach some amazing athletes other the past handful of years and it has been as successful as it has been fun. In an effort to grow my business and expand my services, I am introducing a new coaching program. Along with my current offerings of Training Plans, Limited Coaching Adviser, and Full Coaching, I am happy to introduce the Premium Coached Athlete. This new level of coaching seeks to offer the most comprehensive coaching possible, expanding upon the full coaching by adding layers of new analysis, access to the latest metrics, and a lot more communication than the full coaching offers. This level of coaching means that athletes have access to whatever level of of service they need, from the most simple, to the most comprehensive through JM Coaching.

Catching up, getting back in it

A lot has happened since my last post so here is a little recap to put some context on this post.

I had very high hopes for the season. Going back to January, I started working at the local airport part time to make what coaching wasn’t covering in the budget, and although the work was physical it wasn’t affecting my training too much. The hours were a little tough which put sleeping and a social life at odds, but through the winter and spring I was able to train in the middle of the day when the sun was out. And training was going well, the number were going up, and I seemed to be breaking through to a new level, at least when it came to threshold.

But as I began to plan my season out another characteristic of my job became more of a problem, I worked weekend and getting time off was not only going to be difficult to do for all the weekend I wanted as one might expect, getting any time off was a challenge because the station is chronically shorthanded. To make a long story short, I only managed to race 2 times by the time July came around. I raced the opener and the second race of the Northwest Epic Series, a 4 race series consisting of 50+ mile MTB races. I was able to win both those races, as a result of being on great form. But The lack of consistent racing was taking a toll mentally on me.

MTB nationals came around and I made sure I was able to go, pulling all kinds of favors. And it turned into a great weekend. The result didn’t quiet measure up, but seeing Tim and Evie, and a long list of other good friends all again, the ability to ride in such an amazing place, and of course the thrilling competition reminded me of just how special racing is, and how lucky I was to be able to do what I did the last couple years. It also motivated me to no end to get back to that level and ability to travel. I felt unfinished, and I still do.

With a few more races on the calendar, I worked to make sure I was getting out as much as possible, and unfortunately the only one I was able to swing was Chequamegon. The lack of racing continued to wear on me, and it reached a bit of a breaking point. About 2 weeks after nationals I just decided I needed to take a break and re-evaluate where I was and what I was doing. About a month of time off and I began to get the itch to at least train again, and as Chequamegon grew closer, I resigned to becoming content with what I thought was an inevitable disappointing finish. But the race was too important to skip, it’s important for more than just the race, it’s family, community, and it’s tradition.

The weekend itself started off with a challenging time getting to the midwest, almost not making my flight. But I managed to make it, get a rental car and drive up. I was very relaxed and focused on spending time with family and having fun. It was amazing seeing everyone, all the people that make up the midwest MTB community. I felt like a winner before Saturday even rolled around.

But when Saturday did roll around, despite my attitude and expectation, it was a very sudden and easy shift to put all the focus on the race. I guess I’ve been racing long enough that when the race starts, the only thing I know how to do is go all in because I was focused. This was my 14^th chequamegon, and my 7^th 40.

After the anthem was finished and we put our helmets back on, the ATVs started up and we rolled down main street. This is an interesting time of the race. For the leaders it’s a mix of light hearted, calm before the storm, and an important time to focus and get ready for the effort. The race hasn’t even begun yet, but one misstep and it could be over. We make the left and then the right onto the highway and with each pedal stroke, nerves tense, and legs twitch. You can feel the speed and intensity building as the effort very slowly starts to build until the quads take off.

I was waiting for it, and I knew I could hang. You never forget how to pack surf, and that’s what I did. I’ve raced enough years now that I know when you need to be at the front, and I know how far back is too far. What I’ve gotten better and better at is doing it effortlessly. We make the small climb up a slight right and Rosie’s field is in sight. This is the first hurdle to clear. Timing your entry into the field so that you don’t get pushed back is critical. Over the years they have opened it up and it’s made it safer which we all appreciate. I nailed it this year and was sitting top 10 through the field and onto the trail on the other side.

As the front group made it onto the trail the first signs or effort start to show a couple riders fall back and the front group forms. I kept waiting for the effort to overwhelm me, but to my surprise it didn’t’ I made a few mistakes before OO, but was able to maintain position. At this point there was nothing left in my mind except the race and the effort, but I had felt like I’d already surpassed my expectations.

Eventually I got tailed off as I made a bad move through a puddle, I was able to catch on, but that was the start of the end. I caught on, lost it, caught on, tail gunned for a while and eventually was totally off up fire tower. But the fact I’d made it to fire tower in the front felt pretty cool. The rest of the race I was chasing hard with David Lombardo and Mark Lalonde, until I lost them on the Birkie Trail. I ended the day in 11^th, a very good finish regardless, but something I am proud of considering the year so far.

I learned a lot from the race, about myself, the midwest community that I miss very much, and about the race that I care deeply for. A big thing I’ve been learning about this whole year and was punctuated with Chequamegon was that my motivation to train is mostly rooted in racing. I love to ride my bike, and I can ride and train without racing, but to train at the level I do, it takes more than just enjoying the time on the bike, you have to be ambitious, motivated, and extremely hungry. Not everyday is a wonderful day on the bike, I’ve found that training take you high and low. And I feel as though I’ve been to both, but the payoff is showing up to a race and giving it your all, the payoff is in the performance when it counts. I wasn’t getting that this year and it made it tough to train and at a certain point I broke.

Another big thing I learned about myself, twice, is that even after time away from the bike I can hold onto the fitness. I was very worried that after the time I took off, I would lose a lot of the fitness and racing ability I’d spent years working on and what I came to find both at nationals and at Chequamegon was that I’ve built something that can’t be taken down easily. I often tell my clients that training is like building a brick house. Each workout, each day, each effort, they are bricks on the house and once laid they are there to stay, but I don’t always listen to myself.

Finally, I learned just how special the midwest cycling community really is, both as a community, and personally to me. Everyone is so welcoming, and at the first sight its smiles, memories, and picking right back up, even after almost a year away. It’s amazing, and I’m lucky to be a part of it, even though I’m thousands of miles away. I still feel like a Midwesterner. And I still bring the pain every time I toe the line at a race. There is a grit and determination that I learned from racing in the midwest, and I will never lose that.

The rest of my season will be somewhat low key. I’ll be moving on to Cyclocross by hitting up as many of the MFG series as I can out in Seattle. Hopefully planting some roots as part of that community as well. I’ll also be hitting rolling thunder in Missoula, an amazing and fun race in October, and I’ll be working hard to make next year go a little better and make sure I line up at a ton more races, make my way to the midwest a lot more, and take a few steps closer to knocking out some big time goals.

Warm Ups: A how to and helpful tips

Warm ups have become an essential part of any workout over the past 10 or 15 years. As a community of coaches and athletes, we’ve come to a consensus that a warmed up athlete is better than one who isn’t.  what we haven’t come to a consensus on yet is what a good warm up is, however. Well, because the internet is a place for people to put in their two cents, I’ll add in mine and hopefully it helps you have your best racing yet.

JM Coaching: Caleb and 2016

2015 was a good year for Caleb and we've already taken the time to meet him in this previous post, here I caught up with him to ask him a couple questions about 2016.


2015 was a good season for you, how do you look at it? Do you consider it a break through season for you? Or were you left feeling hungry after with unfinished business?


2015 was definitely a break through season for me. I accomplished almost every single one of my goals, went from top 30 to top 10 in the WORS pro field, and asserted myself as one the up and coming juniors in the U.S. 17-18 UCI cyclocross scene. Overall I am very happy with what I accomplished last season, I narrowly missed making the worlds team for cyclocross but accomplished every other one of my cyclocross goals and had a lot of fun.


In the 2015-16 CX season, what was the the experience like, racing with top junior names at big national event for the first time? On such a big stage?


It was definitely intimidating to line up against so many other big names at the big events. Starting in Providence, Rhode Island to L.A. to nationals in North Carolina I gained more and more confidence and realized that I could actually race with the big names and be competitive with them. This fall I hope to firmly establish myself as one of those big names in the U.S. junior cross' scene.

What are you hopes for spring and summer 2016? What about 2016-17 CX season?


This spring and summer one of my goals is to score some podiums in the Wisconsin Off Road Series(WORS) pro field and hopefully score some top fives. I also have set my sights on a mtb nationals podium in California as well as winning Ore to Shore and the Chequamegon Short and Fat. For the 2016-2017 cyclocross season I hope to travel to Europe and race, as well as make the worlds team and be on the podium at nationals. Locally I hope to win multiple Wisconsin and Chicago series P/1/2 races and nationally I hope to win my first 17-18 UCI race! It should be a very exciting season!



What has JM Coaching been like, how does having a coach effect your training?


JM coaching has been fantastic and has taken my racing to new heights in leaps and bounds. This is my third year with JM coaching and it is going to be my biggest season yet. Having a coach is very very important, as much as a rider thinks they may know about training and racing it is vital to have serious structure behind your season. Also, having someone on your side who is very knowledgeable about all aspects of being a cyclist and can provide insight to your season and racing is extremely important. Working with JM coaching has already brought me so much farther than I thought I could go and I can't wait to see what else I can.

Breaking Through

I'm sure I've said it before but 2015 was a little bit disappointing for me. I had a great summer, traveled a ton, raced a lot, and trained a lot, but I just didn't get the results I was hoping for. There was something missing, something I wasn't doing or getting. I could feel it, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I came away from the summer in debt and a little down on myself having nothing to really show from it.

After coming to terms with the situation I decided I needed to get a part time job, I got a job working at the local regional airport. The job is physical, stressful, has wacky hours, doesn't pay great, and can be extremely stressful. But in some ways it's been exactly what I needed. It has been rewarding, pushing me to work harder and not take what I have for granted. I had a challenging time getting used to the sleep schedule and making sure I was getting enough sleep, but learning to do so has helped me re find my discipline. The physicality  and the stressful nature of the work has me coming home mentally and physically tired sometimes, but it's taught me to accept the situation when you're body is just worn out, and made me stronger when it comes to full body strength and forced me to become more disciplined in stretching and recovery. It has put me in a pinch, and I'm adapting. This is something I was missing last year. I was too comfortable, I wasn't challenged. And I wasn't putting in the extra 1 or 2% that it takes to really get better on the bike.

I've also come to terms with the direction my training was going, and saw a stagnation. Something needed to get changed up. I was doing the same things and getting the same results. I thought back to when I first started training. The feeling of training as hard as you could every day. The excitement of new places, new people, new goals, and new achievements, it's really what drove me in the sport. I had lost it and if I was going to continue pursuing my dreams I was going to have to rediscover it.

This little personal quest began with setting concrete goals. I had never really sat down and planned an "end game". I had always just been chasing the dream of being pro. it was an amorphous goal, but it didn't matter because it was so far off. But as I got closer and closer to it, the lack of definition started to hold me back, I needed to set my sights on something real. I wrote a post back in the middle of January about my goals, if you're curious you can read it here.

Setting these goals helped me work backwards and map out the intermediate goals I needed to accomplish in order to get to where I wanted to go. One of the big goals was to increase my threshold up a lot so 2016 has so far been pretty focused on that. I had always rely heavily on sweet spot intervals and long tempo days to get my threshold up. This year I started things off with a big block of strength in the gym and a much slower build up. Normally, a person would build at between 4-7 TSS per day per week, I was shooting for closer to 3-4 points TSS per day per week. I also planned rides to hit both the longer side and the short side of threshold during base period. It all seemed to pay off. I was able to go from a PR 20m effort of 383w to 400w, pushing my threshold up to ~380w, nearly half of my 4 year goal.

If you'd like to check out the ride, here it is

https://www.strava.com/activities/536073407/overview



So what did I learn from all this? The biggest thing is to mix it up. You have to figure out what works and what doesn't, stick to what works, but also remember that anything and everything will change at some point and you have to adapt and move with the changes. I attribute the gain to 3 main things. First the weight lifting. This is the biggest addition to my training this year. I've never done anything in the gym anywhere near as targeted or as long. I spent almost 4 months in the gym. The next big thing was I got a fit from Brice at B&L. I'll have more on the fit process at some point. what we found was that I was compensating for muscular imbalances and flexibility issues by riding in a certain position, and that position was limiting me. The changes were extremely small, but the results speak for themselves. Most importantly, the knee pain I'd struggled with for a long time has all but dissipated. And finally I think a change up in the workouts played a big role. I went from doing a lot of sweet spots and long tempo rides to flowing through sweet spots, to FTP builders, and now onto Over Under Intervals. The sweet spots are great, but they just aren't hard enough. In the early season they do a great job of getting your body to remember it's capabilities, but to push through, you need to go harder. So the FTP builders are simply that. 10 minute intervals, maximum efforts. I started with 2x10, then moved on to 3x10. They were super effective. The rides only lasted 80 minutes, but I was dead tired after each one. Plus the slow ramp rate had me going into them well rested. I'd always follow them up with 2 days of additional volume and effort. I'm now moving on to Over Under Intervals. These are when you ride above and then below threshold alternating for 10-20 minutes. The FTP builders help build your capacity for power, and the over unders increase you fatigue resistance, allowing you do the efforts over and over.

Besides the above, there has been a clear shift in my perspective. I wouldn't say that I've recaptured that feeling from before, but I would say I've found a new motivation that gives me the same drive.
I have a clear understanding of what I was doing before, and what elements of that I can bring back, what I can't do anymore, and how to get where I want to be. I know how to write the plan, and I know that I can follow the plan with enough focus and hard work.

So what can other riders take away from this? The workouts themselves are a good place to start, but it's more important to realize that we are all different, and we change. The training has to change with us. The training has to work inside the rest of our lives whether we work full time, part time, take care of kids, go to school, whatever it is. There has to be room for us to be who we are and there has to be an environment where we are prepared to challenge ourselves every time we stomp on the pedal or hit the trails. It's also critical to remember that no matter what you do, there are always going to be diminishing returns. The training has to change over time in response to life but also you abilities. There is no simple solution for this or that. The workouts dictate the performance and the performance has to dictate the workouts. There has to be the back and forth, to make sure there is always a challenge.

JM Coaching Skills Quests: Wheelies

Ask anyone, doing wheelies is cool. But it's a lot more than just cool. Learning how to wheelie can help you become a better bike handler. The key to racing face and having fun is keeping the bike under control but the fastest riders are able to take the bike right to the limits of that control and race there. To know where those limits are you gotta find them and practicing and doing wheelies is an excellent way to understand how far you can lean back (or forward, or side to side) before you start to fall. And practicing often will help you become comfortable on the edge.

Here are my 4 steps to learn how to master wheelies:

Step 1: Weight Shifting

Wheelies at their core are just a balancing act. You're trying to learn how to balance on the rear wheel. To master your balance, you have to master your weight, your awareness of it's position relative to the wheels and cranks, and controlling it. The first step there is learning how to move your weight around while on a bike. Weight sifts are one of the most core skills to learn on a bike. Once you master simply riding, you have to learn how to separate your bike and body. The most you're able to do this, the more agile you can be and the faster you can go in just about any situation.

The best way to practice weight shifting is to practice leaning the bike side to side while standing up and leaning forwards and backwards as far as you can while keeping both wheels on the ground. A key thing to remember is to keep you weight going through the pedals as much as possible. Control the bike with you pedals as much or more than you do with the handle bars.

But knowing how to shift your weight is only half the battle. Stiff riding is a habit and a bad one. Bad habits need to be broken and the best way to break this one is to practice riding on easy trails and exaggerate you weight shifts. leaning the bike more than needed, focusing on keeping your bike and body independent. Obviously this over exaggerated leaning and shifting isn't the optimal way to ride, but teaching yourself to keep the bike moving under you by over doing it, will help break the habit of of locking everything up when the going gets rough.

Step 2: Wheel Lifts

Wheel lifts is another skill that fall under basics when is comes to racing bikes. It is less true on the road, but even there knowing how to get the wheels off the ground on occasion is helpful, but in mountain biking is critical. Once you've mastered the weight shifting with the wheels on the ground, the next step is to lift the wheels.

Start with learning to lift the front wheel. To lift your front wheel, lean back, and thrust the bike forward, and finally lift the up on the handle bars. these three motions combined with get the front wheel off the ground, and increasing the intensity of any or all will get the wheel higher off the ground. But be careful, start slow and easy, get comfortable with how much leaning or pulling gets the wheel to move and slow keep pushing the limits, higher and higher.

Once you're comfortable with the front wheel, move on the rear as well. If won't help you with your wheelie, but it can help with bunny hops. The process is much the same. Lean forward and thrust the bike back, lifting up with your feet (angle your feet toe down and push back and up if you don't have clip in pedals) to get the rear wheel up. Start slowly and once you get comfortable push the limit farther and farther until you're lifting like a pro.

Step 3: Wheelies!

Once you know how to get the front wheel up, its time to learn how to hold it there. To lift the wheel, you lean back and thrust the bike up while pulling the bars, but that will only get the wheel up, and often if you rely on the thrusting too much you're not going to be able to hold it. To wheelie, lean more, thrust less. The goal is to get your weight directly over the rear wheel so that you can balance over it. You can use the pedal to help you balance if needed. If you start from a slow speed, and pedal in an easy gear while lifting, you can pedal on and off the help keep the wheel up. Much like the wheel lifts, start slow, just try to hold the wheel a little bit, and then try to hold it longer and longer until you start develop a comfort with where the balance is. Try starting on a hill and using the pedals more. It also helps to practice without your clip in pedals so you can catch yourself if you fall. Trust me, it will save you tail bone.

Step 4: Master the balance

When you start getting comfortable with the balance point and using the pedals to help balance you, start trying to rely more on the balance and less on pedaling. Pedaling can easily become a crutch to help you balance, but the key is to only use your balance to hold the wheelie.Again, it helps to practice without clip in pedals, because you can catch yourself easier and save a fall.

So when should you practice this? When you're schedule is tight it might seem hard to justify spending time doing wheelies, but quiet the opposite is true, you gotta practice them. Recovery days, post ride cool downs, bike checks. These are all good times to practice. Even if its only 2 or 3 minutes, if you practice often you'll notice improvement.

Coaching Advisor

One of the most common issues people who train and/or race in endurance sports is they would get a  coach, but why waste the money. They already know about training science and beyond that they enjoy learning about the latest science and tracking their own training. But you can tell they don't have total confidence in what they are doing.

And how could they! Even the smartest, best coaches often have their own coach. Why? Because one of biggest benefits a coach gives you is perspective. Everyone needs someone on the outside looking in, help you make decision and giving you confidence in what the training plan says, helping you make adjustments when needed, and giving you the motivation and accountability when the training gets tough.

New Job

As some of you might have known, I started working for Alaska Airlines in late January. The airport in Pullman is pretty small, but very busy for it's size. With only one gate, and 4 flights a day it requires people working there to know how to do everything from checking in passengers to working the ground service. I won't go too much into it, but so far I'm enjoying it and it works well with my training schedule and other responsibility, but no doubt it's testing me everyday.

Tested. Trusted. True. I am PowerTap

I started out with a flight to Portland and Seattle for a week of orientation and training. The classes were fun and engaging, but did put some disruption in my training. At this moment in the season, I'm transitioning from full time in the gym to getting on the bike and building the volume. Right as I was making that transition, I had this first trip. So I had to get creative. Luckily the hotel I was in had a small gym with weights, so I was able to get the weight lifting in, but I had to move the rides around a little and substitute some runs for rides. But over all I was able to make it work. then 2 weeks of on the job training working flights. I feel comfortable with the job, and I think it will be a good fit. I do end up working funny hours, starting some shift at 4am and ending some days 1:30am. Obviously not back to back days with those two, but getting the sleep schedule to move around is tough and really can affect the training. So I'm doing everything I can to keep myself flexible while also trying to keep myself from having to work a highly variable schedule. I can do 4am, and I can 1:30am. but I can't do both without it disrupting things. After those 2 weeks, it was back to Portland for more classroom training and now I'm back home, getting back at it with 2 more weeks of on the job training. these next couple weeks will be tough with the schedule shifting from early to late, back and forth a few times. But it's not going to stop me, it's just another obstacle.

2016, a year of stuff and things.

What does 2016 hold for me? I’ve made it clear that it’s a new year with new focus and new goals. So here’s what I’ve got planned.

The big factor in 2016 is that I’ve started working. I got a job working at the local airport for Alaska Airlines. I’m sure you’ll see plenty about that to come, but what it means for racing is that I’ll probably racing less and training more. So I’ve shifted my focus away from the big long trips to shorter trips and more local racing.

Here are the races

·         NW Epic Series 5/14, 6/11, 7/16, 8/27
·         Dakota 5-0 9/4
·         Chequamegon 9/17
·         Ore 2 Shore 8/13
·         Whiskey off road 4/29-5/1
·         Grand junction off road 5/20-22
·         US Cup Sea Otter 4/16
·         WORS Cup 7/23-724
·         US Cup Missoula 6/8

JM Coaching - Caleb and 2015: Above and Beyond

Everything I’ve discussed so far doesn’t work for only Caleb, these are pretty general methods. Certainly the actual implementation would be different based on the specific needs of a rider and the specific demands of the events they plan to compete in, but for the most part, the metrics and methods of monitoring is pretty universal. My hope is that you might be able to take some of it and progress your own understanding of training. But now lets talk about what makes Caleb’s training a little bit different from what most would do. Lets talk about what makes Caleb the athlete that he is.

JM Coaching - Caleb and 2015: Intensity

Last time we looked at the role that volume played in 2015 for Caleb. We learned that a consistent and increasing build was critical to keeping Caleb strong enough to complete the workouts, as well as keep motivated, but a certain level of fatigue was necessary to improve. But volume will only build capacity for training. The real side of training that both prepares a racer for races and give them the speed is the intensity. While volume is pretty generalized for all riders, intensity is highly personalized for the individual and the demands of the events.

Setting New Goals

Part of the new approach is a little bit of a change up in the focus, the races I’ll be doing, and the trajectory over the course of the season. Being a coach, I’ve learned help all type of people set goals for the season, but I wasn’t doing this for myself so much. My goals were always vague, which is a sure fire way to miss your goals. So for 2016 I’m making an effort to really set concrete goals and stick to them, make decisions based on them, plan things more carefully and earlier.

Before I go into my goals specifically, I’d like to talk about what writing this blog post has done for me. It has forced me to write all this stuff down. I don’t think that means the only way to reach your goals means writing a lbog post, but what I think you have to do is make those goals real, concrete. Writing them down, posting them for yourself to see and reflect on often, making them public if you have to. They have to be real in your mind, then you start to chase after them. If you’re feeling a little bit lost either on the bike or off, write, talk, look at what you’re doing and make it real. Then you can make the goals, the dreams, the process real.

JM Coaching - Caleb Swartz and 2015: Volume

Even before Nationals, Caleb Swartz was having an exceptional 2015-16 CX Season. As a coach, this is what you hope for, he’s a good kid, he does the work and he’s incredibly positive and motivated. But how did he get there? It was a long time in the making for sure. I’ve been working with Caleb for a few years now, and 2015 and 2016 have been in our sights for a while now. But specifically I want to take a quick look at 2015 and what we did. There is a lot to cover so I'll be splitting this into multiple posts. Today let start with volume.

New Year, new focus, new goals

2015 saw a lot of changes. It’s only been the last few weeks that I’ve started to really understand how the changes affected my life, my training, and my goals.

The move was huge. I was expecting the move would be an instant shift, all of a sudden I’d be training full time and getting super-fast. And to a point that was true, I did see some improvement. But what I did spend a lot of time doing was looking over my old training files and organizing them, and learning from the. As a coach, this is what I do and it only made sense to do it for myself.