Sport Specificity: The Power of Cyclo-cross
Sport Specificity- "the principle of training that states that sports training should be relevant and appropriate to the sport for which the individual is training in order to produce a training effect." When this is applied to CX, it's important to remember that simply using the equipment, or just "riding around" on gravel or grass is not synonymous to CX, but more to road riding.

I've looked through numerous references for the metabolic demands of cyclocross on and off for years from numerous sources like Bing, Google and scholarly articles. Each time I'm met with disappointment. It just seems that there has been absolutely no peer reviewed research published on the subject. This leads me to believe one of two things. 1) The simply is no research done on the demands of CX. Or 2) There have been no published studies on the matter. For the sake of knowledge, I am optimistic that the second is the case. However, I must admit that it is equally likely that option 1 may be the truth due to CX not being an Olympic sport (note the publish date). So how do you train for CX?

My quest begins when I worked for a previous employer (as an intern who went on to become a Senior Level Coach) and had the thought that, "CX must be different than other disciplines when considering preparation." So I did what anyone else in my position would do. I asked the "higher ups." The answer was disappointing, at best. I was told to, "train them like they're doing a time trial and everything else is gravy." Gravy? Seriously? Not only was the answer just plain wrong, but it led me to believe that there wasn't really any sort of method to training for CX. Below are two pictures. One of a Time Trial, one of a CX race. Both have heart and power graphed. Which one is which? Just guess...... give it a try.......