Here are some thoughts from our strength and Fitness Partner, Off The Mountain, and Sarah Kaufmann of K Cycling Coaching.
These are two sections of content and thinking: the first focuses on your back (from Off the Mountain), and the second focuses more on fitness (K Cycling).
Joint 2 Joint
How to Train Your Spine for 75 Miles of Singletrack by Off the Mountain.
At Off The Mountain, we’ve coached a crazy number of Park City mountain bikers who suffer from back pain. Most of them experience the pain during or after long days of pedaling uphill. If you’re training for Point 2 Point, you’ve got a lot of that in the weeks ahead.
The last thing you want is to train all summer and then be in so much pain you can’t do the race. So, I’ll discuss why mountain bikers often have back pain and how you can prevent it.
Here’s the key: Joints that don’t move hurt, and joints that can’t move break.
When you spend hours climbing on a bike, your spine barely moves, and your hips move through one repetitive range of motion. Even if you *stretch*, you’re not training your spine or hips to move with strength and control. A spine that gets jolted by rocks and roots for 8+ hours – and can’t move – is a spine that will blow up eventually.
If you want to stop or prevent back pain, you need to be able to do five things:
- Hold tension in your trunk while you’re breathing hard.
- Segment your spine one vertebra at a time.
- Control your pelvis independently of anything else.
- Control the ball relative to the hip socket.
- Breathe from the diaphragm while riding your bike.
For each skill, I’ve linked a video with relevant exercises.
It takes about 12 weeks to either get a cyclist out of back pain or build a body that is resilient against back pain. If you want to feel the best you’ve ever felt on a bike, join us at Off The Mountain in Park City for the 100 Year Athlete program or train with us virtually. Use code Joint2Joint for 10% off your first 12 weeks of training.
Where is your fitness level right now, by K Cycling
Nearly two months out from the Park City Point 2 Point. Where are you at? What can you do right now to set yourself up for success on race day? I break the requirements for this race down into three pillars as the following; fitness, technical skill, and fueling. If you are registered for this event, you likely have a healthy respect for the scope of the race, but how can you hone the nuts and bolts?
P2P comprises some of our all-star Park City trails. It is truly a delicious day of MTB gluttony and it’s amazing. But it’s also 75 miles of nearly all singletrack and over 10K ft of vert. You will need solid endurance (ability to ride long) – it’s a long day for everyone, no way around it. More specifically, you need stamina (ability to ride long at intensity) because of the amount of climbing – steep climbing! – there are sections where you simply cannot ride at low intensity. Technical skills will make you faster, safer, and save you energy – improving your efficiency by preserving your fitness, as well as lowering the cognition requirements of constant neuromuscular processing. Fueling and hydration will support both of the previous two pillars. Without proper fueling and hydration, you will not express the fitness you have worked so hard to build and you won’t have the finesse to put your front wheel exactly where you want to in critical moments. How do you address these three pillars? Let’s break it down.
Where should you start? If you have the resources, working with a good skills coach will be a huge investment in your performance at P2P. And the sooner you do it, the better. Give yourself time to practice and hone your new skills. If working with a skills coach is not available to you, YouTube University is also a good bet. Dedicated practice is critical. Absorb new language and cues around your skills and practice those. That means going to the bike park and working one feature 10, 20, 60+ times. Sessioning trails with your current habits does not elevate your skills. Trying to simply ride faster does not elevate your skills. Dedicated practice and especially the eye of an educated observer will raise the level.
If tight, steep sections of trail and roots and rocks are challenging for you, honing these skills will specifically help you on sections like John’s trail. Maybe uphill switchbacks are your nemesis and you can avoid getting off your bike on Team Big Bear or Stiff Upper Lip. If your cornering could be better, you can shave some time on Corvair/TG. Improving your skills is free speed. Less physical energy expended, higher speeds, and less fear/cognition invested.
On the fitness side of things, you will want to start working on endurance and stamina. Shoot for 3-4 days of key workouts per week, with 3-4 days of lighter training or days off the bike. If you can do four key workout days, ideally two of them will be devoted to long rides – endurance. ‘Long’ is, of course, relative. Start with a ride that is long for you (in time, don’t worry about miles) and increase your volume by about 10% each week. If you can, line these two longer rides up on back to back days to increase the stimulus. Think about the amount of work required to stay on task and focused for the duration of the P2P day. It’s a big one. Although you don’t need to simulate that full day in training, it will be helpful to do a number of days with about half of the workload required.
For your other two days of training, target long duration intensity – stamina. This might mean doing intervals, it might mean targeting some extended climbing STRAVA segments, or just pushing it on some long climbs, with recovery interspersed. To arrange an interval set, newer riders should start with a workout like 3x 10 minutes at about a 7 out of 10 Rate of Perceived Effort or about 85-95% of your FTP, if you are training with power. (The intensity should feel like a 7 as you start the 10 mins but may creep up to an 8 or 9 by the end of the 10 mins, or deeper into the set). For more experienced riders, start with 4x 12 or 3x 15. Over 4-6 weeks of training, try to increase your time at intensity to about twice the time you started with, topping out around 60-80 mins at intensity.
To keep your motivation high during these sustained work intervals, imagine yourself on crux extended climbing sections on the course. The climb up Armstrong, for example. A huge amount of focus and discipline is required to make quick work of the PCMR aid station and willfully begin the climb up Armstrong. Harder too, is tapping out a steady rhythm on that climb as opposed to merely surviving it. Being able to do so is the result of stamina (and fueling!). Channel that focus and discipline. Don’t imagine that it will be easy. It won’t. Imagine it being incredibly difficult but imagine yourself rising to the challenge. Leaving the aid station with tired legs, body, and mind but managing the difficulty and drawing on the muscular endurance you have built in training to keep it rolling.
On the fueling side of things, let’s observe that the endurance sports world is in a bit of a carb revolution at the moment. It has elevated everyone’s performance and potential and it’s incredibly fun to play with this extra horsepower. Over the last few years, we have learned that athletes can take on, in many cases, 2-4x as many grams of carbohydrate per hour as previously understood. But it does take some time, practice, and training to understand what fueling recipe works for you. Some riders do better with gels, versus blocks, versus bars, versus liquid fuels, etc. (Be aware that if you rely on liquid fuels, you will need to moderate your fueling needs alongside your hydration needs and that can get complicated as temperatures change). It’s very individual and it requires experimentation. If you currently train with 30g CHO per hour, try 40-60g. If you currently train with 60g, try 80-100g. Titrate up your grams per hour and pay attention to how you feel and perform.
For hydration, a good place to start is 15-20 oz of fluid per hour, likely more in warmer temps and for larger riders. You will want to experiment with hydration packs and bottles. There are likely sections of the P2P course where a pack will be required to carry enough fluid between aid stations. Make sure you train with the exact pack and amount of fluid you expect to carry on race day, as different packs and weights feel different on our backs. If you do plan to use bottles, make sure you consistently drink enough and are confident you won’t drop bottles.
Sodium and other electrolyte requirements are also individual and play a role here. Try different hydration products. Usually water alone will not cut it. If you currently find that you can only get down water, try a light hydration product and see if you can make it work. It will drastically improve your ability to maintain fluid balance on the day.
Sarah Kaufmann is the owner of K Cycling Coaching. She raced elite level XC, XCM, and CX From 2008-2021. She is based in Salt Lake City, UT. See more on Instagram @kcyclingcoaching and at kcyclingcoaching.com .