In this week’s Training Guide, GFNY Coach Christian checks in on your training for GFNY NYC to help you track your progress and stay on track for May.

GFNY NYC is the Crown Jewel of GFNY: the championship race of the series, the first GFNY, and the most coveted finisher’s medal for GFNY competitors.

This month, we’re starting a countdown to GFNY NYC with a 5-part series titled “The Road to the GFNY World Championship.” This series will be a monthly guide to where you should be in your preparation for race day, no matter if you’re looking to finish, better your time from a previous edition, or get on the podium in your age category.

Much of the advice in this series will be taken from Training Guides and Podcasts that are already available, but here we will synthesize that information and break down month-by-month how you should be using that advice.

Consider this series a check-in for you, a way to see if you’re on track and get ideas on how you can continue to dial in your preparation.

Endurance

GFNY is a test of endurance: 100 miles of hard, hilly racing with little chance for respite. Any serious preparation should be focused on building your endurance to handle the distance.

Depending on your level and goals, this prep might differ. All our riders should be doing frequent training sessions at an endurance pace (Zone 2 power, below 75% of max HR). In addition to several endurance training sessions per week, at least one ride should be a long ride. However, how long that weekly test is depends on your level and goals, which we cover below:

Finishers (Those looking to get to the finish): Riders who are hoping to finish strong should be slowly building their endurance during a weekly long ride. We suggest you build up to rides of at least half the distance of GFNY NYC by the end of January or beginning of February (so 50 miles/80 km). Keep in mind this is a rough estimation, if you’re riding on terrain far hillier or flatter than the GFNY NYC course, you may need to adjust this mileage slightly.

#Breaking6 (Those looking for a strong finish time, roughly 6 hours or less): If you’re hoping to finish under the 6 hour limit, you need to have a strong base in order to push the final 2 hours, when many riders fall apart.

You should be looking at working up to rides of around 70 miles/115 km by early February.

#Breaking5 (Those looking to go under 5 hours): If you’re a rider at the level of hoping to break 5 hours, endurance in itself is less of a concern for you. That means we’re confident you can ride 100 miles, instead, we’re looking to preserve your strength and speed into the latter ⅓ of the race.

Therefore, we have a bit more flexibility with your weekly long ride. Endurance is still key, but you can take a few different tactics here. One might be a weekly long ride of around 5 hours, the same length of time you plan to race. Another might be to stack back-to-back long rides on the weekend, shooting for 8 hours or more of training in 2 days.

Conquering the 100 miles of GFNY NYC takes a serious dedication to endurance training.

Strength

As we’ve discussed before in the Training Center, winter is a good time to focus on strength, as well as low-cadence work on the bike (which isn’t the same thing, but we’re grouping them together here).

Where you are in your strength work doesn’t depend on your level as a rider, but more where you are in your season. If you started strength and low-cadence work back in November, now you should be preparing to taper off. That could mean one day a week of strength work as maintenance, and transitioning from low-cadence work into higher intensity intervals.

If you got started later, you should be at the peak of your strength work right now: perhaps spending two days a week on strength work, and one day a week doing low-cadence work.

Intensity

As we covered above: if you’re transitioning out of strength work because you started early, you can start to incorporate higher-intensity intervals one day a week.

If you started your strength and base work late, you’ll do the same in another few weeks.

For intensity work, we don’t recommend short, high-intensity efforts. Instead, focus on longer efforts at or just above your threshold power (or around 85-90% of max HR for those training with HR).

Example sessions might be 2×10 minutes/3 minutes rest to begin, gradually working out to 4×10 minutes or 3×15 minutes. Ideally, your power output or speed will go up a tick each week, and you’ll slowly add time to your sessions too.

Strength and intensity work will prepare you to fly up the hills of GFNY NYC.

Equipment

This time of year you may not want to be using your race-day equipment, if you live in a cold climate the weather and dirty roads can wreak havoc on race-day equipment.

However, changing position while training hard can be a great way to get hurt. We suggest you use the bike you’ll race on for the majority of your training, even if you have it outfitted with training wheels and tires.

If you are spending time on a winter bike that you won’t use on race day, do your best to make sure the bike’s position is set up identically to your race bike.

Wrapping Up

That concludes our first installment of this series. We’ll be back next month to check-in on your training, give you more suggestions for where you should be in your preparation, and share tips and tricks to help get ready for race day.

In the meantime, be sure to check out all the Training Guides on GFNY Coaching, as well as the Training Center Podcast.

In this week’s Training Guide, GFNY Coach Christian suggests a few great New Year’s resolutions to incorporate into your training.

We’ve gotten through the holiday season, it’s January, and cyclists are starting to think about race season. Some of us may be kicking off our race season in just a couple of months, while others may have goals lined up for later in the spring or summer. All of us, though, are looking to shake off those December cobwebs and start to build our fitness.

And although it’s a few days after the New Year’s Day, there’s still plenty of time to set new habits for 2021. Here are 5 New Year’s Resolutions that can help you become a stronger, better version of yourself in 2021.

1. Practice better intensity discipline

Your first resolution for this season should be to practice better ‘intensity discipline.’ That means leaving the house or jumping on the trainer with a plan, and sticking to that plan. It means ignoring your friends who are attacking up every hill when you’re on an endurance ride. It means digging as deep as you can on the days you’ve marked for intense interval training. And it means recovering properly on your recovery days.

Too many cyclists fall into the pattern of making every ride mildly intense. This means you’re always a bit fatigued, and can’t perform well on your high-intensity workouts. It also may get in the way of building a proper base: if you feel it’s impossible for you to stick to 60-65% of your max heart rate while riding at a good pace, this is definitely you!

2. Find the time to train a bit more 

Cliches like “Quality over quantity” have convinced a lot of athletes to limit their training time. But the truth is that quality and quantity go hand-in-hand, and putting in more hours on the bike will always contribute to your long-term development as a cyclist. Plus, all GFNY races have a serious endurance component to them. By increasing volume steadily and in small amounts, training quality won’t suffer either.

So, this year, aim to bump up your yearly hours by 10%. This is a great goal that will increase fitness with minimal risk of overtraining. Even time limited athletes can find this time in their schedule: it could be adding an extra 15 minutes to your trainer workouts, it could be taking less rest days or rest weeks, or it could be squeezing in an extra hour each weekend.

Don’t use this as an excuse to go wild and overtrain; and practice the intensity discipline mentioned above: these new hours should be endurance training at a reasonable pace.

3. Sleep 8 hours a night

Too many athletes make recovery complicated: worrying about foam rolling, massage, compression, ice baths, or other things that make a small difference in your recovery. The truth is, sleep and nutrition are far and away the most important aspects of proper recovery.
Try to get as much sleep as your schedule allows, targeting at least 8 hours a night. This may be difficult, but it will pay big dividends.

Focus on sleep quality too, not just what time you go to bed. Try to avoid screen time right before bed, and wind down with reading, meditation, or something else relaxing. Create a good environment for sleeping in your bedroom: quiet, dark, and a comfortable temperature.

4. Eat during and immediately after nearly every training ride

We’ve covered in-ride and post-ride nutrition extensively in the Training Center, but the fact remains that many athletes haven’t made this part of their daily routine.

Aim to take in carbohydrates during every ride aside from short and easy rides, and make sure you’re getting a recovery meal after any hard training ride. Work on making this a habit: a post-training meal should be just as much a part of your routine as putting your bike away, showering, and changing clothes.

If you’re worried about weight, don’t be. Eating more while training and immediately after will keep you feeling satiated and less likely to attack the nutella jar in your pantry in a fit of post-ride hunger. And in fact, proper nutrition is a big key to losing weight while still maintaining quality of training sessions.

5. Stop Tracking Miles (or kilometers) and start tracking hours

Tracking mileage is a borderline useless stat: it’s fun, sure, but it means very little. Flat rides accrue more distance than hilly ones, and if you throw in gravel riding, mountain biking, or indoor training, things get thrown off even more. Same goes for aerobic cross-training activities like XC skiing.

So, to truly track how much you train in a week, month, or year, use training duration and not distance. Tracking duration year-to-year is a great snapshot of how much you trained and it’ll always be relevant, even if you move to an area with different terrain or you switch-up your winter training modalities.

Tracking miles or kilometers can still be fun, and we all like to see how far we went in a year. But for serious training purposes, track hours.

GFNY Coach Christian talks about caffeine in this week’s Training Guide.

Cycling and coffee go together hand-in-hand: a pre-ride espresso or a mid-ride coffee stop are almost religious for some cyclists. Caffeine is also a proven ergogenic aid, with dozens, if not hundreds of studies showing it’s benefits. It’s no surprise, then, that caffeine is extremely popular among endurance athletes.

Still, though, misunderstandings and myths exist about caffeine. Today we’re going to dig into the basics of caffeine, talk about it’s benefits, and debunk a few myths.

Caffeine: Overwhelmingly Proven as Beneficial

Caffeine is one of the most proven benefits to performance there is, perhaps the most proven. So many studies have shown benefits of caffeine for athletes that aren’t going to take the time to link to any in this section.

The basics are that caffeine has been shown to have a noticeable impact on performance in many different forms of exercise, including cycling.

While myths around huge quantities of caffeine exist, research shows even moderate doses (the equivalent of 2-3 cups of coffee) have performance benefits.

This means a daily routine of coffee drinking in the morning can have a benefit to your workouts, especially if you train in the morning.

Does Coffee Dehydrate?

One of the downsides of caffeine has been that it’s been credited as a diuretic, and therefore has the potential to dehydrate athletes.

However, recent evidence indicates these worries are probably overblown. This study concluded that there was “no evidence of dehydration with moderate daily coffee intake,” in subjects drinking 3-6 cups of coffee per day.

What About Caffeine During Exercise?

For short events, it’s enough to take in caffeine before the event. However, during longer events, the benefits of pre-race caffeine probably peak early on, fading later in the event.

However, it’s proven (as in this study) that taking caffeine during exercise can provide a boost to performance.

For long events like GFNY, taking caffeine midway through or perhaps in the last ⅓ of the event can be beneficial. Consider using gels or other nutrition products that use caffeine for a nice late-race boost.

Do I need to detox from caffeine to get the best effect?

Some athletes believe that habitual coffee drinking will deaden the effects of caffeine, and that they should stop using caffeine before a race, only to load up on race-day.

This is probably not true, as shown in the linked study. Athletes can benefit from caffeine even if they use it every day.

A word of caution on sleep

Caffeine can impact your sleep in high enough quantities or ingested late in the day.

For that reason, despite the benefits of caffeine, we don’t recommend high doses before afternoon workouts. Athletes who train late in the day should drink coffee as normal in the morning, and consider a small dose of caffeine in the afternoon if they find it doesn’t impact their sleep.

Final Practical Notes

Caffeine is a proven ergogenic aid, and there’s very few downsides to using it both as part of your daily routine and on race day.

We recommend moderate caffeine consumption (usually via coffee) before competition, with further moderate intake during the race (via caffeinated energy gels).

If you are a habitual coffee drinker, a race day routine that mimics your typical morning routine and then adds in caffeine during competition is probably best.

If you don’t habitually use caffeine, be sure to experiment with it in training to find a dose your body is comfortable with.