tom danielson

Former World Tour professional cyclist. Cycling coach. Founder of CINCH Cycling.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

@tomhappel @cj_ohio Usually riders get better when they have children. I would guess he trains less torts volume than most of the peloton. Just more specific focus on the hard stuff that moves the needle.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

A tiny Category 4 climb just revealed some telling information about Tadej Pogačar's level heading into this summer's Tour de France.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

@tdarling1 thank you

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

@cj_ohio I completely disagree. Training methods are advancing so fast and riders are constantly learning new things. It’s all in the details and then using them to advance parts of your fitness that allow you to build out abilities that push limits.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

@cj_ohio So how does he improve each year? And why does he do these periods without racing and then improve after them? Sure seems like he goes and trains a specific way and then shows up with specific new abilities which keep evolving in reaction to his competition.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

Tadej clearly has continued to build his repeatable explosive ability (what we call the potency factor in CINCH). But what's different is that he's improved this significantly after spending substantial time in his threshold zones. It's important that he was able to execute this effort after over 40 minutes in the Threshold Zone (we call this the Threshold Factor) and over 1 hour in the high Zone 2 (we call this the Fall to Factor).

I think Tadej is continuing to build and evolve his engine in areas others don't focus on. He's training each component to exceed the best performances his rivals can produce.
Today's final climb shows just how hungry he is to actually be the best, not just chase rankings and results.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

After spending hours riding the flats at 330w and the climbs over 400w, Tadej threw in a massive effort up a short 1-kilometer climb near the finish, climbing it at 2,428 VAM for 3 minutes and 16 seconds.

For those of you not familiar with VAM, it is an accurate way to measure and compare climbing speed on similar climbs between different riders.

Why is this VAM significant? To start, this climb is similar to the Mur de Huy in distance and gradient. When you compare Tadej's VAM today to Seixas' VAM on the Mur, Tadej climbed it at a slightly faster climbing speed.
What's wild is that he did this after attacking, riding away on a moderate climb, and soloing for massive time gains on everyone.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

@CyclingWerewolf @usacycling Yes def been working hard on some new concepts I am launching soon in my business. But I will work in some time here.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

4. Get Aero!
Jonas used the higher speeds and his aero position to increase the gap over a much less aero Gall. This is super hard to do at the end of a hard climbing effort as you want to be more upright to breathe, but Jonas does a very good job opening his gap all the way to the finish line.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

I really loved this winning attack from Jonas Vingegaard to distance Felix Gall and win stage 9 at the Giro d'Italia.
There are some key concepts worth sharing that you can add to your training to improve your race craft.

1. Follow Your Rival and Let Them Show You What They Have
Jonas did a good job following Gall's attack and not showing anything until he felt like he saw what Gall had in the tank.
This is hard to do. When someone attacks you like that, you can get emotional and want to immediately attack over the top to "show them" how strong you are. It's better to sit tight and let them put as much out there so you can really see where their level is.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

3. High Cadence for Higher Power
Look at the high cadence shown by both riders here. This allows them to reach higher power numbers by amplifying the torque they're pushing. I see too often riders try to attack at a lower cadence and while they are giving more effort, the speed is not what it needs to be.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

@lucasaganronald Thanks my bad

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

What an epic first big mtn stage at the Giro. This is what I saw:

1. I wouldn’t get too exited seeing Gal so close to Jonas. Visma raced the first mountain stage extremely aggressively with an undertrained Jonas. I don’t think his threshold and VO2 zones are super sharp and defined and likely the savage Visma climbing pace took more glycogen out of his legs than expected. You could see Jonas was slowly extending his gap with a high cadence until suddenly in the last k’s his cadence slowed dramatically showing the signs of depletion. His riding style changed too going from steady high power to fluctuations of short burts of high power and low power. They actually showed Jonas’s power and he was jumping between 330w and 400w in the final. Meanwhile Gal paced the climb perfectly staying within his zones, using a high cadence, and ended up close in the end. But I think Jonas will race into sharpness in these zones and start to increase the gaps to others as we go.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

4. Race leader Afonso Eulalio climbed well and really went all in to defend his jersey which he did. I think it was difficult for him on the bottom parts of the climb when he was guttered in the crosswind with no teammates. He kinda has Martinez vibes no?! I can see him climbing better in the next days.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

3. The Redbull duo of Pellizzari and Hindley looked good to me. Sure Pellizzari kinda blew after trying to follow Jonas, but I think he regrouped well and finished losing about the time we all predicted him to. Hindley rode very well and likely will ride into form during the race. Being a past Giro winner will serve him well as I think the Redbulls can set up to be a potential “joker card” down the road when the Giro does its thing.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

Figured I’d make a little different post as I did some racing myself last week! I’m coming down off an incredible week @tourofthegila where I raced in the cat 1 field. I won a stage (yes crazy!), finished 5th overall (also crazy), and won the masters cat 1 40+ overall over Italian legend Fortunato Ferrara. Now after having sometime to reflect I want to share some of the thoughts I had from the race.

1. Family made the racing experience so special for me. I’ve done a lot of bike races, but this one was so good having much of the family together for it. @kourtneydanielson was there keeping me on track, @stevedanielson237 was there grinding in his race at the same time, @alpha_zulu_6 was in “no-fail mission mode” running the race logistics, and Sarah was there inspiring us to dig deep. We just need @stelladdanielson for the next one with the little ones and watch out world!

2. To win you have to be ready to lose. I’ll be honest, racing has so much trauma around it for me I have a long ways to go to really enjoy it, but I am getting there. But what I did “re-experience” was how if you are worried about winning you will often paralyze yourself and not be able to give what it takes. I did have moments where I completely locked into “racing” and just enjoyed going for it.

3. You don’t have to feel well to do well. As a coach I preach this one all the time but man, I really felt it this week. I got that gnarly sinus virus going around and wow, does it bite hard. I really struggled each day on the bike and off the bike I spent wayyyyy too much time worrying about what was going to happen in the bike. Kourtney came to the rescue to keep sending me back out there despite me trying to negotiate with her to sit it out. Wow, I was so glad I did listen to her!

4. The future is bright. Let me tell you, there is some big talent out there coming. I got to race with a lot of the young pros and I also got to hear about the talent coming from my son’s field. There were 5 riders I saw in my race that were all u23 and absolutely could make it to the World Tour. This race always brings talent out, but I would say there is more than in the past this year. I hope these riders keep working hard and team up with someone who actually knows how to get to the world tour. There’s so much to build and the right progression is everything.

5. I’m not done yet. This week was just the beginning of a new chapter for me. Back to work!

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

Remco used an “all in to be as explosive as possible” approach to take the win in Amstel Gold.

While this might sound obvious, I feel it is far from it from a typical Remco strategy which is go hard, go ofter, and go long. Instead, he strategically looked at his explosive ability in comparison to the others and bet on using it for only the key moments and the sprint.

In the video I detail the five key parts to this winning strategy.

[tom danielson @tomdanielson]

Not sure how many of you watched the Sea Otter Gravel race but man, it was some wicked racing that ended with a Supercross-move in the finish. I did a race break down as there was some interesting things I saw out there.