Riding time

Bike riding time this morning.

As I mentioned yesterday, over the next couple of weeks I am keen to settle back into some sort of routine with regard to work, training and coaching. Coaching the bike session this morning was a nice step in that direction.

The session this morning was all about challenging people's comfort zones. it was a complicated session, with descending times (getting shorter) while the intensity and cadence increased throughout. The session started with 12 minutes done in the upper tempo zone and by the end people were riding about as hard as they could at around 100rpm. Outside the comfort zone indeed.

We find these sessions are great threshold work, two of the efforts were done just under or just above threshold after all. However, more than that we find these sessions are great for challenging people's limits. All our athletes have an idea of their comfort zone, the intensity and cadence which is comfortable and efficient for them. Generally we don't want to mess with this comfort zone to often, it is usually where they are most efficient after all, but we find it is good to give it a bit of a nudge from time to time. Help people explore whether perhaps 5 rpm more is in fact more efficient for them. Help them realise that maybe they have grown as athletes and what they thought was their threshold actually isn't anymore and they instead have some capacity to push harder. These are the little nudges that can help athletes progress and grow.

Loads of fun.