Various Training and Recovery Techniques Contribute to Success During Twilight Amateur Races

Over the weekend, several amateur cyclists participated in this year’s Athens Orthopedic Clinic Twilight Criterium. A number of amateur races, based on age and skill level, were held Saturday morning on the greenway race course on Willow St. to determine participants in the amateur finals.

Many of the leading qualifiers had varied training approaches, as reported in The Red & Black.

“I have a big engine,” said Matthew Warren, who won the Cat 4 men’s race Saturday morning. “Some of the guys out here aren’t training as much, and that gives me a big advantage.”

Based on a cyclist’s skill level, cats or categories go from cat 1 which is the highest level to a cat 5 which is the lowest level.

The day before Warren also took home the title at the Spartanburg Regional Criterium in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Warren said his training included races that are multiple days in a row, which he uses for practice to have the endurance for events like Twilight.

“I’m usually better on the second or third day of the stage race,” Warren said.

For Rosie Levy, the winner of the Cat 3 women’s race, she said she was going to walk around to keep her blood flowing between her morning race and the night race, but other than that she just planned to rest.

Saturday was Levy’s second Twilight and last year she received third place in the Cat 5, so her win this year was a big step up.

“You practice five days a week, and you do things like practice races, practice crits, and then you kind of do a lot of resting and a lot of tapering for the week up before,” Levy said. “Just a lot of miles.”

Warren and Levy had a different approach to their training techniques, but each had an early morning win to qualify them for an evening ride in the amateur finals.
 
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