Alessandro Petacchi says he always does his sprint workouts uphill. I liked that...mostly because I have trouble going hard (on the road bike) anywhere other than uphill. I hear what I want to hear and I do almost all intervals of any kind uphill.

resistance + leg speed...

makes a ton of sense...

esp when you put the low gear into play...

but

Petacchi also has leg speed - most people who are trying to learn or practice sprinting can always use more leg speed...

i'd say get leg speed first, then add the uphill for resistance... together a good combo...

Hemenway's.

My cousin Chris was the manager there before they moved him back to the Capital Grille (same owners). They really make an effort there to keep the quality up.

Guess who the parent company is?

not having much of a clue about training/coaching issues, I'll defer to your expertise on this issue: little ring for optimal sprint workout. However...the training ride you described to me this morning ("Basically you sprint starting at one pole and racing to the next pole. Take two telephone poles off and repeat to the end of the road. Turn around and do the same thing. Sprints should be done in rapid succession with little rest. In that way they simulate racing more than sprinting and getting a full recovery."--in the little ring) sounds about as much fun as banging my head into a wall for an hour. I'm much happier sacrificing training benefit (since I'm getting dropped at Battenkill anyway you slice it, and nothing I do between now and then is going to change that) for a ride that is actually fun. And for me, the fun way to practice sprinting is to do fewer sprints with more emphasis on tactics and whatnot.

Until you are strong enough to finish in the lead group, your sprint is not important.

-NC

tactics won't do you much good if you don't spend the time training...

just ask me how I know

LOL

cause i don't spend enough time banging my head against the wall

ie bob roll's quote - if you go through enough pain you'll want revenge...

ooh solobreak said sort of what I said, but better

yes, well...maybe I ride a bike to have fun. There was a thread a while back on our listserv where Mark announced that he was doing a long (70+) hilly ride, just before Jamestown. Someone (don't remember who) responded with a question to the effect of "but jamestown is only 40 miles, what's the training benefit of such a ride"...to which the response was essentially: who the fuck cares about Jamestown? I'm going on that long ride because I enjoy going on long rides. Because I enjoy racing, I'm doing Jamestown, but until I have a paid contract I'm not going to worry about the "value" of what I do on weekends. I enjoy sprinting, and the bike tactics. As y'all correctly point out, I'm not likely to be in the finale of a bike race anytime soon (though I was well placed at Blue Hills last year...), so for me, "sprint practice" is a fun time to see what it might be like to be in a sprint finish. And to show some other riders like me, hopefully, that were we all in a sprint finish, I'd stand a good chance of beating them.

(hilljunkie frequently talks about "rides of dubious training value"...I think I look at things from the opposite perspective. I occasionally race, 1., because I enjoy the challenge and usually have fun at the races, and 2., it keeps me at a fitness level that makes the "training" rides I do more enjoyable.)

hey - no need to get all winded in defense, you been into the vino tonight or something?? ;)

i'm fastidious enough that if you are going to say you are wanting to do sprint practice, that it would entail the technique for successful sprinting, not just fucking around chasing each other's tail ;-)

no i haven't been into the wine tonight - don't worry

specificity... often folks want to go for a ride under the guise of something "training for jamestown, battenkill, whothehellknows" why bother putting it under the guise that will get you caught defending a position of just wanting to have fun. then say it... sprint practice vs going out and doing some sprints on a circuit are different....

this i guess is one of the few posts where i have more words in the comments than the main entry (not number of posts... nevermind)

I occasionally race outside of cross season and sometimes when I do, well I like to make the rides I do count.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing, beating my head against the wall on the bike is, hands down, fun. Kinda like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, sometimes you are just looking for the feeling you get when you stop hitting.

maybe i'm not making anysense...

maybe *i* need a beer/wine/bottle of scotch...

I have been drinking vino tonight. good catch. you do know how the internets work right? If it's worth saying, it's worth turning into an all-out rant? anyway, yeah, I agree on some level. I'll be sure to correct myself when I repost the sprint ride. ("Any one who wants to dick around and pretend we're bad-ass by grinding our big rings a few times..." or something like that.) But, see, I need some of the perks associated with "sprint practice" but doing it the "right way" is so mind-numbingly boring, doing something like my initial plan is probably the only way it would happen. Many of the rides I love to do (the east side hill loop, for example) would be considered torture by most. I consider that one fun. But, maybe because I'm a wee fellow, the idea of riding back and forth on a flat stretch of road sounds much worse than riding up and down Mount Tom to me.

If it's worth saying, it's worth turning into an all-out rant?

Conversely, if it's not worth saying, you should tweet it.

My wife got sick on a plate of muscles at Hemenways year's ago. Many great meals before that but we haven't been back since.

rest on downhills? how about steady wattage throughout. it's much easier to maintain 320 watts for 20 minutes if you keep your actual watts as close to 320 the entire time. Wattage spikes and dips kill the legs, at least for this reader.

rest might be a misnomer. not so much rest but save energy for the incline...

wind speed is the thing - running the same wattage down hill as up hill is counter productive as a slight increase up hill give you a a faster time.

one you are spending more time going up hill because you are going slower, and two more power returns more speed than the equal increase going downhill.

go back and re-read that metlife link in the first paragraph, there's a lot to it.

Or go play with analytical cycling to see the difference in same power with a +% grade and a -% grade.

Going down hill you already have gravity helping, why not let gravity give your legs a break. That's why my silly training attacks on the downhill hurt and are counter productive often in races. Being out front drilling it give anyone in a draft a free ride and kills those in the wind far more than the hills can.