TRAINING FOR RACES

one of the best training tips I was ever given was about planning and evaluating the needs of your discipline. A lot of people train by “tradition” or “culture.” The more time you spend evaluating the demands of the sport, the easier it becomes to plan your training.

For example, if you are training for an event that will last between six and eight hours, the usual thinking would be that you need to do big weeks of training or, as people say, “Put in the hours.” The reality is that, even if you put in four hours a day, every day, you will never know how your body reacts to six hours of racing. You will not know how to eat or hydrate properly for six hours. One of the first training objectives should be to progress slowly to big days that will be as long as the event to learn how Cdavid gagnonf the body handles the demands.