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Jonathan is a talented up-and-coming road racer hailing from Albuquerque, NM. With this being his last year in the junior ranks, this 18 year old student is on the verge of an important season for his development to the Espoir ranks. Look for updates from Jonathan over the course of the 2012 season as well as his insights for what drives him to get to the top for events like Tour of the Gila, Junior Nationals, and USA Cycling selection camps for important North American as well as European events.

Sad as it may sound, I have spent my entire off-season wishing that I could be riding my bike more. Does anyone else feel like that too?

How did 2011 go so quickly? As a seventeen-year-old racer, no matter how many days out of the year I race, I’m always dying to get back on the bike and race more. I am always proud, but never satisfied by the previous race, or racing season, or anything in the past. I think that this is the athlete’s responsibility, to always be looking to the future as something that he or she can own, can shape into the magical racing experience that they have always dreamed of, and to achieve it through the work that no one else is willing to put in. However, life and circumstance make the perfect season impossible. In light of this, I am looking at my 2012 racing season as exactly what it will be: a chase towards impossible perfection.

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It’s that time of the year…not just the holidays, but the off-season! Some may embrace it with open arms, others may shudder at the thought of having to take time off. I like to approach it with the mindset that you do not have to sit around and do nothing (hopefully we all do this stuff because we enjoy it, right?) but moreso, you can do just enough daily exercise to make you ‘feel good’. I call it a ‘healthy, sane dose’… not like the regular excessiveness that we often need to do for our given events throughout the year.

Everyone will have different goals during this time of year. Some of you may focus on running, some may truly enjoy more days off than days training, which is fine too…but I think that it is important to take a little time to reflect on your year and think about what is ahead. I know for me, the 2011 season started with a bang. A few big wins and some key results that really kicked it off right. It progressed to a huge race in May at Ironman Texas, some well-earned downtime and a few more solid 70.3 races through August. I then raced Ironman Hawaii, finishing a respectful 13th (but of course not good enough in my book) and decided to take the fitness to Ironman Arizona to cap off the season. Similar to Kona, it was a solid performance, but not the stellar finish that I was seeking. We are always our own biggest critic…that is what drives us to do better, what keeps us coming back for more…but one thing I have learned is, no matter how the season finishes, it is important to embrace the down-time and let your body, mind, and emotions recover from all that you have asked from them all year long.

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Elite amateur and well established Ironman athletes can benefit greatly by shifting the focus of their bike volume from distance or time based to kilojoules (Kj) expenditure. By calculating the total work demand of the event you can much more precisely plan the overload and the progression you’ll need to achieve for success. This will ensure that you have accomplished the actual physiological demand and a subsequent overload vs. just doing the distance or time that might appear on the surface as an overload but in reality falls short

This has several advantages for the coach and athlete. For elite/pro athletes my observations and separate calculations suggest that to be competitive as a professional male you are going to need to average between about 3.8-4.2w/kg (watts/kilogram), a professional female will need an average of about 3.3-3.7w/kg to be a realistic competitor. (There are certainly your uber-cyclist outliers and those have some success here and there but rarely have the run to stay out front very long…or even finish the race).

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Pro Triathlete Jess Jacobs just wrapped up what’s quite possibly been the most roller coaster 365 days of her life, certainly of her triathlon career and she did it in stellar fashion. Defending her IMFL crown from 2010 with a course record 8:55, this, coming off of a strong win at Ironman Wisconsin only 9 weeks prior.

The win at Ironman Wisconsin was not only a huge victory for Jess but it was also a significant emotional triumph, Wisconsin is her home state and it’d always been a dream of hers to win there. Doing such this year had an extra special importance after Jess lost her father earlier in the year, her husband Jake was deployed to Iraq and Jess being retired military was doing this race on 9/11.

Earlier in the year Jess pulled out of Ironman Texas, the result of emotional overload going into the race, unrealistic pressure and misguided motives for racing. She was disappointed – I was disappointed – but I told her a week later at a lunch that Texas would be the best thing to happen to her. It forced her to realign her reasons for racing and for staying true to herself when she towed the line, no one else.  So, to say there were a few things on Jess’s mind going into Wisconsin might be an understatement, but she did what champions do and channeled those emotions towards a positive outcome.

The training leading into Wisconsin was exceptional. Jess knew that she had fitness like never before and it was time to put it to use. It was now a matter of execution. It took nearly all of the run to erase a large lead by Ironwoman Meredith Kessler but Jess was able to string together a best run of the day to pull off the emotional victory… but something was missing, something that we’ve had on our goal list for quite some time and something we both knew was achievable, the sub 3h marathon! Read More

It is hard to believe sometimes that my husband Derick and I have been coaching athletes for 6-8 years now. I believe that the ability to ‘learn to coach’ is not dissimilar to anything else in life. You may have the appropriate tools (a physiology-based education, experience as an athlete) yet it is the accumulation of years of working with people, learning how to interact, learning that every person is different, and figuring out how various people respond to training that allow you to offer the best possible guidance for each individual who comes your way.

I have also learned a lot through the years about ‘expectations’. Some people come to us with very specific goals in mind and likewise, they expect that they should reach these goals (understandably so). Others may approach a coach simply looking to improve their current fitness and in the back of their mind, they have goals that they would like to address in a year or two. No certain approach is necessarily better than the other, as it all comes down to your personal ideals. One thing however is certain. Everyone who comes to a coach is looking to be successful, in his or her own way. Maybe that means winning their age group at a key event, or maybe it means improving a time, or eventually qualifying for a certain event. Maybe success is simply finishing their first marathon. I have found that some people think this success can happen in a certain time frame; as if it is an equation. What I am here to tell you is, there is no given time frame for success, and the road to it is not a stair-step climb.

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It’s about that time for many of us. The end of the season is here or is right around the corner. In Austin, the end of the season never seems “finite” as it is not marked by the start of ski season as it was in Colorado.

Many of you who read this column likely have coaches; and if not currently, you have probably had a coach at some point in the past. We all know that there are numerous advantages to having a coach. You consult with them, they create your plan, and you follow along. It takes some of the guess work out of the hands of the athlete and puts it on the shoulders of the coach.

When communication is at its best and both parties are on the same page, it is a fairly simple process. If communication breaks down then problems can arise, and while it is the coaches’ job to troubleshoot along the way, there is also a responsibility upon the athlete to monitor oneself along the journey.

So what is meant by ‘self-monitoring athlete’?

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USA’s newly-crowned 2011 Elite National Criterium Champion, David Wenger, will be at Cycle Sales Co in Boardman OH on July 5th to chat with local riders and give a brief Q&A presentation on his race winning performance. David will be visiting his hometown bike shop that helped him get started as a child and share some race winning tactics with other racers as they get ready to kick off Tour of the Valley in Ohio.

Details as follows:

Place: Cycle Sales
Date: Tuesday July 5th
Time: 5:30- 6:45pm