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36 posts in Race prep
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Your first century: 100 miles, and how to arrive with legs left
Build the long ride to about 120 km, ride the first two hours slower than feels necessary, eat from the first hour and sit in the group. A race-prep guide to 161 km that finishes well rather than merely finishes.
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The triathlon bike leg: pacing so you can still run
The bike is the only leg where holding back makes you faster. How to pick a power target for your distance, why draft-legal racing changes everything, and what the run will tell you.
Pre-race nerves: a routine that works in the last hour
You cannot switch the nerves off, but you can point them somewhere. A last-hour routine built on reappraisal, slow breathing, a proper warm-up and two sentences of self-talk.
After the crash: what to check, when to ride again
Head first, then neck, then everything else. What the concussion consensus, the UCI protocol and the fracture literature say about getting back on the bike, and why a doctor decides.
The first 48 hours after a big event: recovery that speeds up the next one
Eat promptly, eat again, drink more than you lost, sleep twice. What the evidence supports in the two days after a gran fondo, and the ice bath, beer and Monday ride that undo it.
Climbing in a bunch: where to sit before the road goes up
The climb rarely loses the race; the two kilometres before it do. Why drafting fades as the road steepens, what the surge at the base costs in W′, and where to be when it starts.
Cornering under pressure: the racing lines nobody practises
A bad corner costs you twice: once in it, again on the exit. The physics of lean and grip, where to look, how to countersteer on purpose, and the race-day corners you can only learn by doing.
Riding the Étape or the Marmotte: what the profile doesn't show
Both profiles are accurate and both hide the things that end riders' days: altitude on the Galibier, three climates, a 47 km descent, cut-offs, tunnels and feed queues. Official figures throughout.
The pre-event mechanical checklist, by when to do it
Mechanical problems ruin more amateur events than fitness does, and nearly all of them were visible days earlier. Organised by timing, because most of these checks are useless on race morning — not because they do not matter, but because by then you cannot act on them.
The week before: everything that is not training
The physiology of the taper is a solved problem. This is the other half — admin, travel, packing and the sequence of small decisions that decides whether you reach the start line calm or already tired.
Racing abroad: six things that are not like home
The riding is the familiar part. Licences, race manuals, bunch culture, terrain you cannot rehearse, heat and altitude — and the alpine descent that riders underestimate far more often than the climb.
Hill climb events: eight minutes of honesty
One road, one clock, nowhere to hide — and the one event where power-to-weight genuinely dominates. Pacing by duration, what is worth stripping off the bike and what absolutely is not, and the warm-up mistake half the field makes.
Racing in the heat: pace it differently or pay for it
Riders rebuild a training plan over a 3% change in threshold, then ride a 34°C event on their April pacing plan. What heat does to your engine, which cooling tricks are worth doing, and the signs that mean stop immediately.
Pacing a gran fondo with power: the first climb is the trap
The purest pacing test in amateur cycling. Target bands by event length, the four rules that decide the day, and why the number that ruins fondos is almost never the average.
Your first criterium: position, corners and the accordion effect
A crit's average power is often below your FTP, which tells you nothing. What actually decides your first one is where you sit in the bunch — and why the rider at the back is doing a completely different race at the same speed.
How to taper for a big ride: the last two weeks
The event is booked and the training is done — the last two weeks are where riders either bank their fitness or quietly throw it away. Drop the volume, keep the intensity, and follow a day-by-day fortnight that arrives at the start line fresh instead of flat.
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