It may come to surprise some of you but I used to play football, mostly left back. Yes, yes I can hear the sniggering now. I once even scored a beaut with my left foot by trying to clear the ball mid volley, it skimmed the outside of my foot and beautifully floated over the top of my own Goalkeeper, Doh.
Anyway I digress.
The purpose of this article is to explain the process of coaching and the long game which King Kelly constantly emphasises. The long game I am on about though is a bit different and it is your Big Season Goals, your A events and looking beyond that to what you want to achieve a few years down the line.
For example Billy Jarish, Lincolnshire’s finest TT export and I have been working together since Aug 2016. We did a yearly review not long ago, due to the C19 Pandemic, Billy decided to put time into building his Campervan instead of racing for 2020 so we looked at previous seasons comparisons. You can follow his Van life on InstaG. As we looked back at previous years we could see the effect that training had on his performances, by comparing each years power duration curve and overlaying them we could see that each year his Sprint got worse but his TT power got better, luckily for Billy we were concentrating on his TT performances and not his ability to win on the Champs-Elysées.
Analysing the data and comparing the chart above for 2017 and 2019, his power at 17 mins has increased approx. 15-20w or 5-7%. You’re probably thinking why 17 mins? Well Billy main Goals have been riding 10 mile TT distances such as the Lincolnshire Champs and the National 10 mile TT Champs and generally he does them sub 20 mins, depending on course and conditions, so I use a 17 min metric to gauge his power comparisons whilst on the TT bike. Thankfully WKO5 software allows me to dig into these metrics a lot easier. We have also raced the UCI World Amateur TT Champs as well but they are generally shortish Time Trial events (30-45 mins) but of a more technical nature than the typical out and back on the UK scene. So using charts like this, it is a lot easier explaining the effects of progression year upon year and shows what can be done with progressive training in a consistent manner over a long multi season time period.
Another good way of checking your progression is by looking at when you hit your peak figures in your year and if they coincided with when you wanted them to.
Analysis of the data shows that Billy hit his best performances in Aug/Sept 2019 whilst peaking for the National 10 TT Champs, the Amateur Worlds in Poznan 3 days prior and the Lincolnshire 25mTT Champs. His CTL wasn’t high for the entire season as you can see, as training time is at a premium so trying to build in some quality when the time was right was the key as we have found that going for a higher CTL has it’s cost with Billy as he also tries to manage his Crohn’s disease and the fatigue issues that it can bring.
For 2021 Billy has targeted some beasts for his A Goal events, (more info about these in the future, so stay tuned, he’s ordering a bigger chainring than his current 60 tooth for them) ones which he and I are excited about – and therein lies the most important thing to consider when looking to the future, a Goal that is on the edge of your finger tips, you’re trying to grasp it whilst you stretch and push and it’s just out of reach and your thinking just a little bit more and it will be in my grasp. Those are the Goals that will keep your consistency going, those are the Goals that will keep you pedalling when the tiredness and motivation starts to wane, as it’s near impossible to be always fully motivated for an event all of the time, especially with Endurance sports as fitness is a long term project. That is why I admire athletes that have such a long span at the top, resilience and a passion for the sport, Ole Einar Bjørndalen–must have it in spades.
So in short we have set Billy’s A goals for 2021, we have done a fair bit of research on the demands of the events although some events details have yet to be published. We have looked at what his current fitness is like, his time to train and what we think he can achieve if all goes to plan and set training targets to help benchmark along the way.
So we are looking forward to seeing more of this in 2021 on a road near you.
