Bullheaded Training

An anonomous person on the internet at bikeforums.net asked a general question:

Trainer vs. new wheelset vs. Powertap - What's most beneficial to an aspiring racer?

This person is new to the sport side of cycling and is looking to take up racing next season. Here's my take on the issue, posted in the same thread:

Trainer first. Then powertap. Then wheelset.

Ride the trainer hard and long, doing threshold intervals over the winter. Get strong. Refine your training with the powertap. Get stronger. Then refine your competitive ability with the lighter, more aero wheelset. Getting strong and getting any extra fat off your body will go a much longer ways toward making you competitive than some fancy race equipment.

I liken training to sharpening a knife blade. Right now you are simply a blank piece of metal shaped like a knife. You don't start putting the edge on by going right to the fine grit stone. No, you start with a coarse file. That's your trainer and your first foray into interval training and racing. You file on that blade until you can start getting an edge defined, but you can only get it so sharp. So you bring out the whetstone. That's your powertap. You define the blade edge more and upgrade into Cat3.

Only after you've gotten the blade well defined that you bring out the sharpening steel and really get that blade razor sharp. That's when you buy the fancy wheels and unobtainium 15lb bike and start training with a coach. This might be a several year process.

...Until you are racing at a high level, my belief is that the fancy racing equipment is just a crutch. Other racers have other beliefs, but I think most will agree that successful racing is more about the amount of sweat on your garage floor this winter than it is about a fancy wheelset.

What does this say about me.  I have a Powertap and I have a carbon race bike (which means I have some of the toys), but I believe that success in bike racing isn't proportional to the money put into the sport, but rather the time and effort to get stronger and faster.  The strongest cyclists on the team, simply put, are the ones who put the most time and effort into training.  Some have the toys.  Some don't.  Some have a coach and a highly regimented training plan.  Some make it up as they go.  But the common denominator is that they ride hard and often.  They turn themselves inside out in training so they can see red in a race.  I read books by Bob Roll, Lance Armstrong, and the new one by Joe Parkins.  Amongst the pros, they all share this common denominator.

So this is my overriding training goal this year.  Less futzing around the edges, obsessing over training plans and equipment.  More hard, long miles on the bike.  Less shying away from a training session because I am tired from work, hungry, or "just don't feel like it".  Eat a candy bar, slap myself into shape; lower the horns and plunge ahead.

Right now I am reading a book by Bob Roll, which is essentially a bunch of his journal entries throughout his career peppered with some stories from his racing days.  He tells of one ride he did when he just plotted out a course for a 6 hour ride in the mountains on a clear and cold early spring day.  He gets out and he's flying.  One of those days.  He is so high on his good form that he ignores the traditional signs (such as a gate barring the road and two foot deep snow) to turn back in the mountains.  Figures he can hike his bike over the pass, through the snow and catch the road on the other side to continue his ride.  He ends up lost in the forest, and after tromping around for hours, finally gets picked up by a couple in their car who know him as a pro.  Finally gets back to his house at 1am after something like 12 hours lost in the snow.

It's not the snow or the getting lost that struck me, but how he just got out on his bike to train.  Just a general route laid out and he put his head down and got to it weather be damned.  The bullheadedness of his training. Seems to me to be something to emulate.