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36 posts in Race prep
Everesting indoors: how to climb 8,848 m without leaving your pain cave
One climb, repeated until you've ascended the height of Everest — indoors, where there's no weather, no traffic, and absolutely nowhere to hide. The gradient maths, the pacing (it's an eating contest with pedalling attached), the two-fan setup, and the fitness you honestly need before you try.
How to preview a race course indoors before you ride it
The best way to know a course is to have ridden it. Here's how to preview a race course indoors — corner by corner, climb by climb — from its GPX file, in 3D, on your smart trainer, weeks before the start line.
The warm-up, matched to the ride you're about to do
The shorter and harder the effort, the longer the warm-up — and vice versa. Four protocols, from a 10-minute roll-out to a full pre-race routine, plus what to stop doing beforehand.
How to build a sprint that actually wins things
Almost every race finishes in a scramble, and the sprint is the least-trained quality in amateur cycling. The four phases, five sessions, and the recovery mistake that ruins most of them.
How to train for your first gran fondo (a 12-week plan you can actually follow)
A gran fondo is a long day in the saddle — but it's very doable with the right build. Here's a realistic 12-week plan, the key workouts, and how to pace and fuel the big day.
From zero to your first 100 km: a beginner's roadmap
A hundred kilometres feels huge until you have a plan. Here's a friendly, week-by-week roadmap that takes a new rider from short spins to a confident first century.
Your first cyclocross race: 60 minutes of the hardest fun in cycling
An hour of starting, surging and running with your bike on your shoulder, in the mud, in November. What the power profile of a lap actually looks like, the three skills that beat fitness, and how little kit you really need for race one.
Race day nutrition plan: hour by hour
Breakfast, the hour before, the start, and every hour after that. A concrete fuelling timeline for a two-hour race and a six-hour one, with the carbohydrate and fluid numbers the research supports.
How to pace a time trial with power
The first two minutes decide most time trials, and usually badly. How to pick a target, why even pacing wins on flat courses but not hilly ones, and how to spend your energy above threshold deliberately.
Your first road race: what actually happens, and how to not get dropped
A road race is not a hard group ride — it's several hundred surges with recoveries you don't control. What the power profile of a bunch race looks like, why the first ten minutes hurt most, and how to prepare for it.
How to peak twice in one season
A taper buys you a window of a couple of weeks, not a summer. How long a peak really holds, what the mid-season rebuild between two targets looks like, and the minimum spacing that makes two peaks realistic.
How to ride a hilly sportive you're underprepared for
Four weeks out and short of training? The fitness is what it is — but pacing, gearing and fuelling are all still in play, and together they matter more on the day than the training you didn't do.
Pre-race openers: the day-before session that wakes your legs up
Complete rest the day before an event often leaves you feeling flat. What an opener session does, what it should look like, and how long before the start it's worth doing.
Gravel racing: how it's different, and what to train for
Longer, lonelier and far more variable than a road race, with no feed zones and no team car. Why durability beats a sprint, how to fuel when nobody is handing you anything, and the tyre decision that ends more races than fitness does.
Race weight: how to get lean without losing power
Watts per kilo has a numerator as well as a denominator, and cutting weight during a build block usually damages the numerator. Safe rates of loss, when in the season to do it, and the warning signs to stop.
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