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training & skills

• Cyclocross Pre-Race Bike Inspection: Save Your Race

  10 November 11 • 0 comment

  

  Before you can go out and preview a course at any given race, you should be “previewing” your bike for the weekend, making sure everything is as it should be. Mechanic Jeremy Chinn tells us how. by Jeremy Chinn

• Video: Barriers, Remounts and Dismounts with the Keough Brothers

  13 October 11 • 0 comment

  

  by Molly Hurford If you’re part of the New England cyclocross scene, you’ve probably come across a Keough or two while racing. As the managers and racers for Keough Cyclocross presented by Champion Systems, the crew is hard to miss, especially with their new Keough Cyclocross van, row of Stevens bikes and of course, the [...]

• Newbie News: Cyclocross Preparedness Will Out-Fox Your Competitors

  13 October 11 • 0 comment

  

  In the just-released Issue 14, our regular contributors all chipped in with advice for a piece on 25 Things to Do on Raceday (and Robbie Carver threw in his own, more lighthearted, race essentials list, which included such things as pre-vomiting). Now Rhonda Morin, Cat 1 ’crosser, Masters Nationals bronze medalist and coach with Wenzel [...]

• Cyclocross On The Cheap: Home-Baked Energy Bars; A Canonical Overview

  2 September 11 • 0 comment

  

  This week: cheap eats. When reading up for this article, I came across two schools of thought: those who ride to eat and those who eat to ride. I can’t pretend to be too partisan, I have sympathy for both camps.

• New Altitude Simulator May Boost Performance

  1 September 11 • 0 comment

  

  The Wall Street Journal reported that a new altitude simulator called the CVAC Pod, may boost athletic performance. The pod works by suctioning out air from the pod to simulate being at a high altitude…

• In The Saddle With Simon Burney: Cyclocross Author, Coach and Manager

  30 August 11 • 3 comments

  

  Today, we caught up with Simon Burney, the author of the seminal how to book on cyclocross, Cyclocross Training and Technique, now in its 3rd edition. He is a former professional cyclocross racer and has spent more than twenty years managing professional cyclocross and mountain bike teams, working with some of the top cyclocross racers in the world. Simon served as the Performance Manager for mountain bike at British Cycling and has raced, wrenched, or managed the national team at the Cyclocross World Championships for 28 years. He’s spoken with us before, but since the season is about to stat, we wanted to pick his brain for some tips for our new-to-cyclocross readers and get an idea of what he’s been up to lately.

• Newbie News: Remounting (Video)

  29 August 11 • 2 comments

  

  Here at Cyclocross Magazine, we’re excited to launch our first of many how-to videos. In this series, we’ll be asking elite riders to show us how they perfected skills like remounts, dismounts, cornering, barriers, sand and quite a few other tricks.

• Training Tuesdays: Matt Fitzgerald, Sports Nutrition Extraordinaire

  16 August 11 • 0 comment

  

  Because no one has written much on nutrition for cyclocross racers, we at Cyclocross Magazine decided to ask Fitzgerald for some cyclocross-specific advice. As ’crossers, we have interesting nutritional needs: we race in all types of temperatures and climates, we go hard for 45 minutes two days a week and then recover to do it all again and of course, we do love the beer tent. We’re a nutritional enigma, trying to eat healthy surrounded by waffle carts and chocolate-covered bacon and trying to stay svelte for a long season that often isn’t a racer’s main season is a challenge in and of itself. It gets even harder when racers’ schedules demand a lot of recovery and travel time, and little by way of long hours on the bike. Luckily, Fitzgerald had some tips for us.

• Training Tuesdays: An Ounce Of Prevention, Cyclocross-Style

  2 August 11 • 1 comment

  

  You already know that cyclocross is good for you — you are informed reader of Cyclocross Magazine, after all — and you certainly know ‘cross is good for your body. It strengthens your legs, and it strengthens your arms and core. It’s good for the heart, and for the lungs, and for the waistline. It’s good for pretty much everything — except the skin of your calves and ankles that your pedals always tear up.

• Sneak Peak: Geoff Proctor’s USAC Cyclocross Development Camp

  1 August 11 • 0 comment

  

  We started each day with early morning strength conditioning—running bleachers, doing plyometric stations with power skips, lateral hops, ab work. Late morning entailed specific cyclocross training on a cyclocross circuit and, in the afternoon, we did some big training rides in the mountains.

• Women’s Wednesdays: The Gender Gap, Scientifically Explored

  20 July 11 • 3 comments

  For as long as there’s been cyclocross, there has been a separation of the men’s and women’s fields. And while women’s payouts may not rival those of the men in most races, it is doubtful that women would ever complain about not being mixed into the men’s races. There are obvious performance differences between the sexes, and today’s column looks at some of the most recent research on those differences.

• Collegiate Chronicles: The Science Of Collegiate Athletics

  12 July 11 • 0 comment

  

  Collegiate athletics is an interesting arena: there are both ups and downs to being extremely athletic in college, though anyone reading this is sure to point out that the good surely outweighs the bad. However, sometimes collegiate athletic programs can cause high levels of stress in students, and sometimes the demands can hurt the students more than helping them. On the flip side, according to one study, students tend to have “perceived barriers” when it comes to physical activity, that is to say, they find excuses for not getting involved in sports. Today, we’re taking a look at three different studies about collegiate athletes, and how they can relate to various collegiate cycling programs.

• Training Tuesdays: Stretching for Mounts and Dismounts

  5 July 11 • 4 comments

  It’s that time of year when cyclocross racers are pulling their bikes out of basements and garages, getting ready to do some drills. However, before you jump into the season and hit your saddle the wrong way, you might want to consider starting a stretching regimen before practicing remounts and dismounts. Contributing author David Perez has got some easy stretches to make sure you don’t suffer any setbacks before the racing has even begun. (This article was originally published in our premier Issue 1.)

• Newbie News: Cyclocross Transitions and the Time-Space Continuum

  27 June 11 • 1 comment

  

  One of the best cyclocross skills to learn as a new racer is learning how to take “transitions.” (Not just barriers: transitions can mean a lot of different obstacles.) In this article, Erik Tonkin of Sellwood Cycles writes about how to practice dismounts so by the time race season starts, you’re a pro at dismounting [...]

• Training Tuesdays: Heat Training for Dramatic Improvements in Hot and Cold Weather Performance

  21 June 11 • 7 comments

  

  It takes about a week to get Santiago Lorenzo on the phone, and when I do he doesn’t want to extrapolate about heat training. Lorenzo is a research scientist who, until recently, studied at the University of Oregon before picking up his PhD and moving to sunnier climes. He’s also an NCAA champion and 2004 Olympian in the decathlon, which means he’s a serious athlete (do you know the 10 events in the decathlon? I didn’t and went to look them up — anyone who can excel at all of them, and over two days, knows a thing or two about getting the most out of one’s body). He’s also published a study about heat training that may change the way we prepare for hot and cold events.