The Solo Racing Mindset

30/09/22 23:04 Filed in: Riding

On the track you have the Individual Pursuit and the Time Trial (the kilo). On the road there is the Individual Time Trial. In mountain biking it is the Enduro and DH disciplines. What these all have in common is not knowing how fast your opposition is travelling, regardless of whether they went before you or behind you.
A common mantra for the road and track side of things is repeatedly quizzing oneself if it is possible to pedal any harder right now. It is quite easy to slide off the pace just one increment. Over a typical 40 km ITT that can easily drop 30 seconds off your time. It is a rare event that 30 seconds is unimportant to your final placing. At nationals one year, I tied with another guy for second place – they went back to the timing system to sort out who might have been second because they hate ties, but that is close (it was me!).
One of the ultimate tests of this whole approach is the hour record. For nearly 150 years, the hour record has been a pinnacle event for the road or track cyclist looking to prove their ability. Around a velodrome for 60 minutes, distance over that period is your result. When there was a flurry of records in the 90s (after only one new record in 20 years) amongst four riders: Boardman, Obree, Rominger and Indurain (twice each except for Indurain), they were active roadies who seemed to only have ridden some practice 20-minute sessions in the lead up.
The current record holder isn’t even a “cyclist”. He is a support team member for the INEOS pro road team. In contrast to the usual, he apparently rode at least 40 full hour sessions on his record bike in order to get used to the length of the ride, the position of the ride and to achieve his speed desires. It worked well because he added a decent distance to the record.
Having had one crack at the Master’s Hour myself, I can say that perhaps I would have benefitted from having ridden a few. Although it was unpleasant and maybe after a few trials I wouldn’t have continued to have interest in the record? I was sick on the day and had to pull out after around 35 minutes of riding well off my chosen pace.
Things are even more complex on the dirt. With much of the velocity provided by gravity, speed is a function of not-braking. Thus, one must identify sections of the track where it would be OK to get off the brakes completely. The resultant speed of doing this can be quite scary. Paradoxically, the mountain bike works best off the brakes so it might be the best way through some sections to be off the brakes and going fast. Speed is your friend too, going over certain kinds of bumps – then the tyres only bounce across the top of the peaks (lacking time to fall into the holes in between them).
Every obstacle on the course presents a question about speed. I’ve ridden a long straight and relatively smooth piece of firetrail letting the bike rip – over 70 kmh was the result. That is fine. But bumps, jumps, drops and corners all require a level of control. The top racers are so close that it comes down to how well executed the plan is, and sometimes to even finer details like who selected the faster line through a section. On a five-minute course, sometimes the separation between first and second is fractions of a second.
Whenever racing against the clock, it takes a special mindset to maximise the results (whether that is first or twenty-first) because it is so easy to go slower. The best way to develop that mindset is to use it – practice! Fun races. Club races. Enter as many as you can to work on your personal going fast.

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

The Solo Racing Mindset