Tweaking Training

For the past few years I have had the privilege of working with two of Britain’s leading bike riders, Oli Beckingsale and Simon Richardson. Both riders are regular visitors to the Centre for Sports Studies as we help them with fitness testing and their training programmes. Oli and Simon have worked hard over the winter months preparing for their 2010 season. Oli ultimately is aiming to compete in the mountain bike race at the London 2012 Olympics, whilst Simon has successfully managed to switch from MTB to road racing.

The London Olympics are beginning to loom large on the horizon. The British Cycling team need to collect enough points at big races international races to qualify for the 2012 Olympics - and this process has already started. The best riders usually established their pedigree over several seasons; remember that London 2012 will be the fourth Olympic Games for Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins, (and Oli too). It’s unusual for athletes to burst into the Olympic team at the last minute.

This season we have tried a few new ideas in training. I’ve been working with colleagues here at the University of Kent, and also researchers at Liverpool John Moores and Salford universities, on using mathematical models to make sense of the vast amounts of data that can now be gathered from training and races. Simon and I spent some time gathering and analysing his training data over the winter period. He then “tweaked” his training accordingly. Winning in road and MTB racing is mostly about talent and hard work, possibly in that order too. But if you are regularly training 4 and 5 hours a day, a small tweak here or there might make a useful difference.

The 2010 season couldn’t have started better. Simon won the first of the British Premier Calendar series, whilst on the same day Oli won the first of the MTB British National Points series. Despite this, Oli took the opportunity to pop in to the University of Kent recently and review his training. He was on a 1300 mile road trip, driving from the first World Cup in North Yorkshire to the second in Houffalize, Belgium. International MTB racing is a demanding occupation. Between the long journeys are challenging races against the best in the world that typically take 4 days to recover from. This leaves little time for training tweaked or not.