Carnival Training Tips From Penghulu Kiara

Training starts about 3 months before Carnival race. Not neccessarily ride more but the rides are more focused, it's particularly important that one ride a week is long and continuous at a steady pace. A long ride will be about 3 hours at 70% to 80% full effort.

At 2 months to go, 1 session of hill intervals a week, building the intensity week by week. This is the one that hurts but it's neccessary for maximum race performance. This is the workout that teaches the body about lactic acid and what to do with it. In a race, you'll build up alot of lactic acid, you've gotto let your body get used to it. The long ride is also getting more intense. It's important to get good recoveries from each of these harder rides. Otherwise you'll lose the strength you built.

About 3 weeks before the race start making regular laps around the Carnival course to get a feel for it. Try to max it out on interval laps. The weekly long ride will be the climb to Genting or some similar masochistic pain fest. The interval session will be extremely stressful, perhaps something like 5 reps of 5 minutes at 95% of maximum, with a 5 minute break between. Thoughts of vomit abound.

With 2 weeks to go, no more big rides. This is called tapering. Hit the Carnival course hard at least 2 or 3 times that week, and work towards a string of 4 back to back laps at maximum effort as a race preview. Anything that needs to be done to the bike should be done by this point so that it is eliminated as a variable.

In the last week don't ride anywhere near maximum effort. Talk walks up the big climb and spin the rest in the lowest gear. Take a couple laps every other day, just to maintain a feel for the course conditions as it's seeing a lot of traffic at this time. Experiment with alternate lines, but the number one thought is not to mess up by crashing or something equally silly. The bike will get a final check over to be sure everything is still fine. No changes unless absolutely neccessary.

p/s: This is the edited version. Click here for the original version.