Words and Photography Chris Mehlman.
What’s the best way to prepare for a season? How do pros do it? Frankly, these are unanswerable questions.
“Preparing” takes so many shapes: physical training on the bike and in the gym, mental preparation, nutrition, logistics, equipment, life organization, and so much more. When a student or successful business person asks me this question about cycling, I often want to ask them, “how do you prepare for an exam or a work presentation?” On the surface, the end goal is the same, but the way of approaching the tasks at hand is something completely personal and honed over years of trial and error.
Here’s how I do it, as an American predominantly racing in the US:
Season Planning
It all starts in the fall with season planning. Here’s my process:
The list. I start with a big wishlist like the one below. This is, at its core, my long-term bucket list. At some point, I want to check off all the races I have not done.
What do I want to do? My next step is narrowing them down based on what I really want to do. I prefer to do a mix of large events and smaller ones closer to home. I typically have 2-3 target events per season, and I prefer these to be large events that suit me well. Once I choose these, I fill in events around them, focusing on longer races and ones that have a good atmosphere, like Rattlesnake Gravel and Oregon Trail Gravel.
Will they fit? Now, it’s about logistics. What will fit together in terms of time? If I can string together a block of races in one area, that means less travel per hour of race time.
Is it in the budget? What will fit within my budget, and how can I get the best bang for my buck? Sometimes, I literally approach this from an empirical metric: dollars per racing mile. The problem with this is it does not capture the travel element or the experiential piece. For example, Oregon Trail Gravel might be expensive, but it’s all-inclusive and 5 days of adult summer camp fun. I also think about maximizing the racing I am getting for the travel I am doing. I don’t want to fly 4000 miles for 90 minutes of racing.
The result. What I end up with is a list of races that will suit my characteristics, be fun, and leave space to both hang onto the pack sometimes and race at the front of the group at other times.
Think of it like a big puzzle with numerous factors, but there is no single right answer. What is right for someone else might not be good for you. As hard as this may be, you have to ignore what others are doing and focus on yourself. What interests you? What will fit in your schedule and budget? What can your body handle?
Physical Training on the Bike
This is the easy part, right? You are told to do something by your coach, and you do it. What about knowing when you should back off instead of pushing through? How about managing training with your other responsibilities and with the weather? Not all pros spend their winters in Tucson or Girona. Many, like me, have to fit in big weeks around challenging weather conditions and around jobs outside of cycling. Sound familiar? While I am very lucky to have a job that works with my sport, training for pros, while it might look like the dream on Instagram, is not too different from what most people do. Maybe we do more, but the principles are the same.
Training for a season for me is like checking boxes. I want to come into the season knowing I’ve done everything as well as I can and hit my marks. While there are a lot of new fads going around, I’ve worked with the same coach for almost 7 years, and we stick to tried and true methods. Consistency is the name of the game, and not overdoing it is equally as important. This means daily core and activation exercises before I ride, stretching after, and a key focus on hitting my marks. I typically train on my bike for 20-25 hours per week in the off-season. I hate riding the trainer, so that often means cold, sometimes snowy, or wet rides on my preferred training bike, a Pivot Les SL hardtail with a rigid fork and 40t chainring (you can take this thing anywhere!).
Physical Training in the Gym
I hate the gym. I hate gym culture, the feeling of being inside a gym, and about everything else involved in strength training. What I love about it is how it makes me feel. More than anything, my gym training is about injury prevention. I will never be a strong person in terms of what I can lift. I almost guarantee you squat more than me. Aside from “heavy” (for me) squats and deadlifts, the rest of my gym routine is built around maintaining a solid core and a well-balanced body, with a key focus on my posterior chain since cycling and sitting at a desk do not bode well for the back half of your body. Gym work doesn’t have to be complex. Like training on the bike, it’s about doing the right things at the right time. I train in the gym throughout the year, but my volume in the off-season is much higher. I typically do my gym workouts on my “hard” ride days, and while I prefer to do them after my ride with a few hours between, I sometimes have to reverse the two for scheduling conflicts or weather reasons.
Nutrition
Nutrition is something I’ve messed up on a lot in the past. On the bike, I might be dialed, but off it, I’ve under-fueled or fueled the wrong way before. Quite honestly, hiring a good dietician like Chris Lowe was one of the best investments I’ve made in my racing since hiring a coach. It takes the guesswork out, and the great thing about Chris is that his primary goal is to educate his clients so they don’t need him after working with him for 6-12 months.
What does working with a dietician entail?
For me, it involves following a meal plan and weighing out my food to hit my macros for the day and for each meal specifically. It involves optimizing body composition in a slow, steady, and smart way. Rather than seeing tracking calories as a negative that is entirely about body composition, with Chris, it is more about confidence. If I track everything precisely, I will know with certainty that I am properly fueled for my training and racing. Just as hitting my numbers in training provides me confidence in my races that I’ve done everything I can to be ready, having the knowledge that I am well-fueled is equally as beneficial. Given I do many long events and stage races, fueling is quite complex, and this does not just mean in the days before the events and during them. This means fueling well for the months leading into the event to maximize the benefits of training. Working with a dietician is not cheap, but Chris also offers an online course, which is a great place to start.
Mental preparation
The final piece of the training “triad” is the mental side. As someone recently diagnosed with ASD and with a history of anxiety, the reality is this might be the most important aspect of my season preparation. I get overwhelmed easily, and the daunting nature of planning out a year’s worth of racing, traveling, and general logistics is honestly my least favorite part of the season. I constantly question if I have chosen the right schedule, if I’ve booked the right flights, how I will get from the airport to where I am staying, and how I will find housing for X race. The reality is that there is no “right” schedule, and just as chipping away at training and nutrition provides confidence, so does slowly chipping away at the tasks involved with season preparation. This season, I started working with Enso Mental Performance. Sometimes, we focus on strategies to improve my performance, and other times, we discuss current challenges I am facing and how to manage changes in routine, anxiety levels, and stress. All of these factors play into how I feel on the bike, how I enjoy my craft, and how I perform empirically. Nothing with your mind can be “fixed” overnight, and that’s because there is nothing to “fix,” even as someone with what would be categorized as a neurological difference. Instead, it’s about managing the way your mind works to have the best experience possible and perform to your maximum. This is where Dr. Sarah Mitchell from Enso comes in. In the months leading up to the season, I find it’s a great time to step back, consider my racing goals, and build mental steps to focus on as a way to help achieve those competitive objectives.
Equipment
Mental preparation takes a long time. Equipment, on the other hand, can be relatively quick, and maybe that’s why it can be the most dangerous part. It’s far too easy to leave this off to the last minute. I am lucky to have a fleet of bikes from Pivot Cycles: my Mach 4 SL full suspension race mountain bike, my Vault gravel bike, and my Les SL rigid hardtail that I mainly use for training. Because the roads where I live in Colorado Springs can often be wet or slushy in the winter, the Les SL helps me save my race bikes for the race season. That can often mean I put off setup or tweaks to those bikes until the last minute. Whether it’s changing tires to altering your fit setup and swapping chainring sizes, it doesn’t take long to adjust your bike, but only if you have the parts. As I’ve become more familiar with the gravel races I do, I’ve also become better at predicting what tires I need. I typically run the 2.4 Vittoria Mezcal or the 2.4 Vittoria Peyote for mountain biking. For gravel, it completely depends on the course. My bike can fit up to 2” in the rear and even bigger up front, so I take into account how rough the surface is, how long the race is, how technical the course is, and whether it’s dry or muddy. I’ve generally landed on a 45c-50c Terreno Zero or Dry as my go-to for most races. I run these with Vittoria Air Liner inserts. The most important piece is having my wheels prepared far enough in advance of my first race, but not too far that the sealant has dried out or I need to make more changes to my setup. During my off-season, I pack what generally becomes my standard “car kit. This includes spare tires for my MTB and gravel bike in various sizes and treads, a tool kit to replace most parts, some additional spare parts such as key bolts, spare chains, an air compressor, my pump, my medical kit, my bike washing supplies, and my stand. One reason I like to drive to races is because I can bring everything I need. I’d always rather be over prepared than underprepared.
Work Preparedness
The final factor in preparing for my season is work. How can I ensure that when the long drives and races begin, I am in a good place at work and can perform to my maximum in this realm? This involves figuring out how to get the most out of my travel days. As I’ve learned, races (aside from stage races) are not the hard part when it comes to my work life; it’s the travel days around them. If I can move a travel day to a holiday or weekend, I will. Once I optimize this aspect as much as I can, I work with my boss to make sure that I’m not missing any important meetings. Because I work remotely and much of my job revolves around projects, the most important part outside of meetings is making sure I get my work done on time and to the best of my ability. This usually means working on weekends and outside of normal work hours; I am more than happy to do that to maintain the freedom to train and race. One change I made this season (thanks, Alex Wild, for the tip, and Dad, for the Christmas present) was to get a portable monitor so that I can work more efficiently when on the road. Making sure I have my full work kit–laptop, headphones, and good WiFi–where I am staying helps relieve stress when traveling to a new place. If I can get ahead on tasks before a race, I will.
Conclusion
There are so many other factors to get into. Is my car ready for the long drives ahead? Do I have my packing system dialed? The reality is that being a professional bike racer is as much a game of logistics as it is fitness. What you see are the moments on the course. Those are the fun parts. What you don’t see are all of the logistics that go into a race season, which are really no different to the amateur racer, but just on a bigger scale.
Preparing for a season is not just about training. It’s often the boring, mundane parts of the process that pay off the most come Summer. Have questions? Reach out to me on Instagram at cmehlman34! I value being accessible! I’ve also left some resources below.
Resources:
Race Planning: My race planning template
Nutrition: Fuel the Ride Academy
Training: MTB Burton Coaching
Sports Psychology: Enso Mental Performance
Equipment: equipment/packing list template
Nice
Great insight! Will definitely use some of this in prep for my season!