Welcome to GFNY GRUPPO, a channel made to bring to you all the news about the GFNY world.
Bienvenidos a GFNY GRUPPO, un canal para mostrarles todo el mundo de GFNY.
Racing in windy conditions is one of the best tests of a cyclist’s ability that there is. To race strongly in the wind takes a complete cyclist. Physically, it requires a bit of everything: sustaining high power outputs for long periods, explosive efforts to close gaps or follow attacks, endurance to repeat those efforts over and over again until the finish of the race.
But wind racing isn’t just physical, it’s extraordinarily technical too. It requires knowledge of how to react depending on what direction the wind is coming from, how to ride in pacelines and echelons, and how to gain or maintain position in the peloton.
Finally, it’s a real mental challenge, too. Racing in the wind requires an athlete to be ‘switched-on’ at all times, ready for the next corner, crosswind section, or split in the peloton. One moment of relaxation can see you dropped or left with a hard effort to catch back on.
GFNY has plenty of events on the calendar where wind can make the difference in the race. Oceanside events in Cozumel and Mazatlan, races across the plains of Uruguay, and many other GFNY competitions will tax your mental and physical fortitude through hard, windy racing. To be successful at these races, it’s important to understand how to race in the wind.
Racing in the wind can take some experience, and you can’t learn it all simply from reading an article. But knowledge is the first step, so today you’re going to take a big step towards understanding how to race in the wind.
First, it’s important to understand the differences between headwinds, crosswinds, and tailwinds.
It’s also important you understand that the way wind impacts you on a solo ride isn’t the same way it will impact a peloton during a race.
Finally, we want you to understand the different drafting formations, and which are ideal to use in different scenarios.
Headwinds may be the bane of many cyclists when they’re riding solo, but in windy races, they’re actually the easiest part of the race. Headwinds mean that the riders sitting on the wheels get a huge benefit from drafting, and therefore they have the effect of canceling out attacks. If you’re in the group in a headwind, it’s not wise to attack or to try to split the group.
In a rotating paceline, each rider only touches the front of the group for a few seconds before peeling off to one side. This creates a constant flow, with one line being the advancing line and the other the retreating line. Every rider contributes to the pace, but only has to be in the wind for a short time before an extended period of recovery.
In this picture, the left side is the advancing line, while the riders on the right are going backwards before rejoining the advancing line when they arrive to the back.
The best drafting formation to use in headwinds is a rotating paceline. This is because the riders in front are doing much more work than the riders resting on the wheel. Therefore, the best use of your energy is very short, fast pulls at the front before pulling off to let the next rider through. The constantly rotating nature of the double paceline means that the only time you’re in the wind is during the 10 or so seconds you’re on the front. This lets your group conserve energy and maximize speed.
Tailwinds speed the group up, but they also cancel out some of the effect of the draft. This means tailwinds in a race situation are actually harder than headwinds. They can be a good place to attack and split the group, but it’s still fairly difficult to do so.
In a single paceline, one rider spends an extended period of time on the front before pulling off and retreating to the back. The principal advantage of a single paceline over a double is that riders can adjust the speed and length of their pulls, letting the stronger riders contribute more.
In a tailwind you can use either a single paceline or a double paceline. Since the difference in effort between those pulling and those sitting on is less than in a headwind, a single paceline can be a viable strategy. This lets stronger riders take longer pulls and keep the speed high. However, in the case of an evenly-matched group or a large one, a double paceline can still be an excellent strategy.
Ah, crosswinds! Crosswinds are to flat races what climbs are to mountainous races: the decisive points that will split the group and let the strongest show their legs. They also require a lot of technique, and if you haven’t mastered riding in echelons, you will struggle.
An echelon is a paceline, typically a double paceline, angled to one side to provide riders shelter from crosswinds. The sheltered riders ride both slightly behind and to the side of the rider in front, instead of directly behind him.
An echelon always points the direction of the wind, so in this case the echelon aims to the right to manage a crosswind coming from the right side.
In a normal drafting situation, you’re trying to hide from the wind created by the speed of the group. When the wind comes from the side, the ideal place to sit in the draft actually moves to the side of the rider in front of you, where you have some shelter from the crosswind and some shelter from the wind speed generated by your riding speed.
As you see in the picture above, the echelon is a rotating paceline which is running at an angle. The goal is to shelter from the wind, so if the wind is coming from the right, the leading portion of the echelon should be on the right, and vice versa.
An echelon should almost always be a double-paceline. Without that, the retreating riders waste too much energy. The only exception is if you’re in a very small group, or if not many riders are working. In that case, the echelon can be set up as a single paceline.
Within the category of crosswinds, we have different levels. Cross-headwinds will allow riders who echelon correctly to drop riders not in the echelon, but in the echelon itself riders will be well sheltered. In strong direct crosswinds or cross-tailwinds, things become very difficult, and even using a correct echelon formation, your legs will feel it.
The two riders in yellow and black helmets that we can just barely see are doing a good job of drafting in a crosswind, assuming the wind is coming from the rider’s left: behind but slightly to the right of the lead rider.
Even on windy days, certain features like buildings, forests and hills can provide shelter from the wind. These areas eliminate the possibility of crosswinds and even disrupt the force of head or tailwinds. During windy races, it’s key to look for these points. When you’re suffering in the wind, arriving in a sheltered area can provide the chance to move up or recover. And in a sheltered area before a windy section, it’s the literal calm before the storm: one last chance to prepare for what’s coming.
A thickly wooded section at GFNY Cozumel provides a respite from the wind. Sections like this are the perfect time to eat, drink, recover, and then get positioned for the next windy section.
Positioning is absolutely key during windy racing, especially during crosswind sections. If you get stuck behind an echelon, you’re what we call ‘in the gutter’-riding all the way at the edge of the ride, struggling to find some draft that isn’t there. Usually you’ll be dropped, if the pace stays high, and you’ll be forced to find another group to ride with. So before crosswind sections, it’s key to find a position at the front of the group. Use headwind, crosswind, and sheltered sections to find this position before making a turn or emerging from shelter into a crosswind.
In competitive situations, you won’t be the only rider who knows they need to be at the front. You might find much of the group races hard to arrive at the crosswind section at the front, so you’ll need to be on your toes.
In these situations, it’s key to time your effort correctly. If you spend all your gas to move up 5 km before the crosswind, you may find fresher riders come over the top with 500 meters to go. On the other hand, if you get caught all the way at the back, you won’t have enough time to move up last-minute. It’s a good strategy to ride about 20 riders back from the front of the peloton, and then aim to move up into the top 5 or 10 riders just before the crosswind starts.
Windy races are taxing mentally and require your brain to be working all the time. It’s key that you are always thinking of your next move: move up for the crosswind, ride efficiently in the echelon, recover and eat and drink in the headwind or sheltered section. Each section of the course offers a different set of things to focus on.
In your preparation for racing in the wind, do your best to seek out training that challenges you mentally as well as physically. Group rides or training races are key for this; it’s not a good idea to head to a windy race off of purely solo training. Even if where you live doesn’t have much wind, large group rides will challenge your bunch-riding skills and exercise you mentally in similar ways. If you don’t have crosswinds, practice moving around the peloton efficiently and learn to move up just before hills, turns, or hard sections of the ride. These same skills will work in windy races.
Finally, remember that you’ll want to stress your body in training in similar ways to the race. That means plenty of workouts at a high cadence, and long stretches in an aerodynamic position. Group rides are great for this, as are long intervals on flat roads (or on the trainer if you lack extended flat roads where you live). Bump your cadence up 5-10 rpm as this is what you’ll probably feel most comfortable with in the high speeds of the peloton on race day.
We’re back with more from the GFNY Training Center Podcast!
This week, we’ve got a new series of two episodes, each broken up into several parts.
First up, we compiled reader questions and answered them. We covered a few topics, including using Erg mode on the trainer, fasted training, and staying cool training indoors:
-Listen to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
The second episode for the week was all about hydration! We’ve covered in-race nutrition in depth before, but focused on getting in calories. This episode we talked about hydration, and helped pair that with previous episodes to help you make a full nutrition plan for race day.
And remember that you can find the GFNY Training Center Podcast, and all editions of GFNY Daily Coffee Podcast, in a variety of locations.
Welcome to GFNY GRUPPO, a channel made to bring to you all the news about the GFNY world.
Bienvenidos a GFNY GRUPPO, un canal para mostrarles todo el mundo de GFNY.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The GFNY Training Center Podcast is back, with two more episodes for you to check out.
First, we continue our focus on nutrition, this time digging into optimal post-ride nutrition. This once gets into science and numbers, but it’s worthwhile if you want to maximize recovery and train hard day after day.
Our second episode for the week is a fun one, as we discuss cheap speed tips. We all love a new bike or a new set of wheels, but often the secrets to getting faster lie in different, and cheaper, areas.
All the Training Center Podcast episodes are available across a variety of platforms, so check the links below to find your preferred place to listen.
NEW YORK CITY, January 13, 2021 – GFNY Oaxaca will become the 4th GFNY in Mexico. Located in the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains, Oaxaca Valley is steeped in in history, tradition and archaeological wonders that will wow visitors to Mexico’s southern region.
Climbing legs will be required as the course will travel through beautiful mountain valleys of Oaxaca and the Mezcal region, famous for the world’s best Mezcal.
The race starts and finishes at the newly built convention center in downtown Oaxaca on the colonial, colorful streets. The flat start and old-world city views will allow for a scenic warm up before heading out onto the Pan-American highway that will take riders to the Mezcal region.
On arriving at the Mezcal zone, the route will pass the magical town of Mitla. Filled with beautiful backdrop of the Sierra Madre Sur mountains and Tiacolula valleys, this will be the return point for the non-competitive 92.2k medium distance route back to the finish.
Long distance 145.6k racers will now need their climbing legs ready as they head up Carretera Antigua Spirito Santo. The 4.8km incline averages 4.5%. Once atop the climb, views of the entire Mezcal valley will reveal themselves.
On the return, before heading back into Oaxaca, a detour by the famous Benito Juarez monument will lead the way to the final and toughest climb of the day. 15km long with maximum grades of 19% this is potentially where the race will be won and lost.
“Mexico has truly embraced the GFNY experience and we couldn’t be happier and prouder to announce GFNY Oaxaca as our fourth race in Mexico,” said Lidia Fluhme, GFNY’s co-founder. “Oaxaca offers something for everyone, and we feel that athletes will be equally as impressed as we are by the beauty and warmth of this special place.”
Find out more at www.oaxaca.gfny.com
About GFNY
GFNY is the global endurance sports brand with events held in NYC, Bali-Indonesia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Florida-USA, Italy, Jerusalem-Israel, Indonesia, Cozumel-Mexico, Monterrey-Mexico, Mazatlan-Mexico, Oaxaca-Mexico, Panama, Peru, Portugal, República Dominicana, Santa Fe-USA and Uruguay.
Riders get to BE A PRO FOR A DAY ® by competing against others, themselves and the clock in a personal endurance challenge.
Top 10% (20% at regional championships) of finishers in each age group qualify for the Racer Corral at every GFNY World event.
GFNY World Championship NYC
The 10th annual GFNY World Championship New York will be held on May 16, 2021. The race features the world’s most international peloton with riders from over 90 countries. Athletes take on a challenging 100-mile route from NYC to Bear Mountain to Fort Lee to compete against each other, the clock and themselves in a personal endurance challenge.
The official GFNY website is: www.gfny.com.
GFNY World calendar
Further Material for Media Use
GFNY Oaxaca video: here
Previous GFNY press releases: here
Media Contact
Gran Fondo New York Inc.
Emma Bishop,
Uli Fluhme,
Welcome to GFNY GRUPPO, a channel made to bring to you all the news about the GFNY world.
Bienvenidos a GFNY GRUPPO, un canal para mostrarles todo el mundo de GFNY.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Training Center Podcast is back this week! Every week you can listen to GFNY Coaching’s Christian Parrett and co-host Chris Geiser break down new topics, and this week we have several episodes for you.
Our Favorite Workouts-First up, we have a fun episode. Christian and Chris discuss their favorite workouts, and Christian explains their benefits and how you might incorporate them into your training. Listen Here.
De-Mystifying Thresholds and Zones-Our second episode of the week is a big one! Don’t understand why FTP matters, or even what it is? Want to know why training zones exist, what they are based on, and how they’re created? This is the episode to listen to! It’s a big one, so we’ve split it into multiple parts. Listen to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
This episode will also give you an understanding of the training zones we’ll refer to in many other episodes, so it’s recommended listening!
If the Training Center podcast leaves you wanting to know more, head on over to GFNY Coaching or get in touch with our coaching staff to find out how GFNY Coaching can help you have your best race in 2021.
