schmalz It’s now winter training season, what is your approach to the off-season? Do you just take some time off and then get back to what you always do? Do you go on a long bender of fried food and malt liquor?

 

Creed Yeah, I take 3 or 4 weeks to be a normal “joe the plumber” rolololo ahahhahaha (sigh). But I do something everyday towards getting better, either yoga, gym, core work or whatever. But I don’t stress out about it, or I try not to. I try keep the malt liquor to a minimum. 

 

schmalz Firstly, I would recommend you institute a malt liquor program right away. How much gym work do you do? Do you just do it in the off-season?

 

Creed Now, I do every other day, but I’m going to start backing it off to twice a week, then when I start training harder once a week. I lift during the season as well. If there is a break of 2 to 3 weeks of training, I’ll go the gym. Leg press, squats, lunges, dead lifts, shit like that. Oh and abs, the girls like abs. But if you want to make it seem like your not being vain, you say “core work”. So yeah, lots of “core work”.

 

schmalz Do the meatheads at the gym make fun of you, do they say “Hey look-it’s Kevin Bacon. When did he get a tapeworm?”, because, you know I would probably say something like that…

 

Creed Yeah, I get some looks when I’m throwing on all “dem plates” But I get more stares when I’m out riding my bike in skintight clothes, so, I’m getting used to being considered gay. You think I look like Kevin Bacon?

 

schmalz How heavy do you lift? Do you go for all out one rep grunters or do you go light weight, many reps? You look like Kevin Bacon’s younger brother after a 10 minute roast in a toaster oven. You could definitely con people overseas into thinking you were the third Bacon Brother, and maybe get yourself a record deal.

 

Creed I get to the point where the 10th rep is pretty much all out. And I do 3 sets, I know I should try heaver one rep stuff, but I don’t know enough about lifting to know when in your training phase to do it. Kevin Bacon has a brother?

 

schmalz Not only does Kevin Bacon have a brother, they have been in a band together for years now. What do you think are the benefits of weight lifting for you—besides providing the opportunity to hang out in sweaty gyms?

 

Creed Muscle imbalances, and overall power on the bike are the main reason. I think there is a neromuscular effect to. But you’ll find lots of different views on this, ask 10 people and get 10 answers, so it’s all up to you. I know David Millar lifts during the season, and I often find myself thinking “wwdmd”.

 

schmalz So how much can you squat? Or leg press? I can totally leg press 720.

 

Creed I go up to my body weight, so 155 now. On leg presses I do them one legged, to work on the imbalances.

 

schmalz 155, ha! I am totally going to take your lunch money next time I see you. How much imbalance do you see in your muscles? Is it a big difference from one leg to another, for example?

 

Creed I don’t know man, I’m scrappy. You’re going to need to knock me out to stop me. I like to guarantee a certain amount of destruction.You may win the fight, but I’m going to break your nose. So, if you ok with a broken nose, then we can see who has the marbles.

 

My right leg is a bit weaker than my left. Maybe 10%. How much do you lift? I can’t imagine lifting much more. Damn, I guess I am weak. 

 

schmalz Last year I lifted less weight. This year I will doing some sort of Tabata (it’s Japanese) thing, hoping for explosion and endurance. It’s 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off for 8 reps for fours minutes straight. I like that it might increase anaerobic capacity and VO2 max – plus it gets all my sets over really quick. Anything that seems lazy like that is a big plus for me. And it will help keeps things new and exciting in the gym, and since I’m self-trained, that’s all I’m after.

 

Now you don’t have a coach, correct? How can you be a pro and not have a coach, I thought they were required by law.

 

Creed That sounds interesting. I’m going to the gym today maybe I’ll try it. I’m open to anything, I’m not very stuck in my ways. I have James Herrera at www.pushyourlimit.com he motorpaces me quite a bit and puts up with me dropping off the face off the earth for times on end. The thing is I’ve had back problems and whatnot, so my training is inconsistent, and I feel like I’m wasting his time. So I don’t want to do that. I’ve managed to get by on being a hard headed jerk at the right times.

 

schmalz Wow – it’s that easy to get you to try something? I need to tell you now that the Tabata stuff is best done without any sort of clothing on below the waist.

 

Have you ever done any lactate testing? Do you know your threshold and such?

 

Creed Em, I have, but it was a long time ago. How do you know all this stuff and I don’t? Isn’t there a super secret coach on your website?

 

schmalz You’re self-coached and you don’t remember your lactate threshold? Coach L would have a heart attack! OK, I’m going to have to go ahead and revoke your pro-ness. You can come to my team next year and lead me out for $5 prime sprints.

 

Is this the time of year when you try to lose weight? Do you starve yourself? Or does your weight self select once you start training? Do you have bike-induced manorexia?

 

Creed I don’t try and lose weight, I just try and not gain too much. I’ll try and lose weight slowly all year. Salads and stuff like that. Do I go to bed hungry? Sure. Do I starve myself? No. I used to be really crazy about my weight, starve myself and not eat past 6, but I was miserable and didn’t race any better. So I gave it up. In the end, if you ride enough and stay active you’ll be fine. For me, if I stop eating sugars and super fatty foods the weight will come over pretty quick. Are you going manorexic?

 

I wouldn’t have me lead me out for any sprints if I was you. I’d disappoint you greatly.

 

schmalz I would never go manorexic, being able to eat large amounts is my right as a cyclist; it’s why I wear tight outfits in public. It seems like you are pretty level-headed about weight, do a lot of guys go overboard about what they eat?

 

Creed I think everyone goes through phases. It’s easy to go overboard with food because it’s the one thing in racing and even training that you can control. You can’t control how fast the other guys race, you can’t even control how your legs feel from day to day, but at the end of the day you can control what goes into our mouth. I find myself obsessing about food when everything else is shit. For that reason alone you see a lot neo-pros who are a bit out of depth (with racing) obsess about it. 

 

schmalz Interesting, I’ve heard that as an explanation for some mental disorders – the need for control. I can only surmise then that bike racers are, in fact, crazy.

 

Creed I would agree with that. I let my legs decide. If I’m feeling good, I’ll push it on a climb, But otherwise nothing structured. I think you’re training harder than I am right now. What are 20/40’s or 40/20’s?

 

schmalz 20/10s? They are basically like Tabata intervals on the bike: 20 seconds all out then 10 seconds off, 8 times in a row. Very tiring and over very quickly – which I like. I’ve found that as I get older, I can’t afford to completely slack off or I risk turning to a pile of slow. Plus, I find long slow training rides kinda boring, so I’ve convinced myself that 20/10s are a good option. Like many things, they may be a gimmick, but they get me out on my bike, so I figure they can’t be a bad thing.

 

It’s funny, the more pros I talk to, the more I find that you guys just know yourselves well enough to know when to train hard. Do most pros train this way?

 

Creed Yeah, I mean, unless your Lance or only have to race 30 days a year, you race so much that training is pretty simple. Climbing race coming up, go climbing; TT coming up, ride your TT bike; crit coming up, drink beer; track race, don’t train at all.

 

I don’t like speaking for others, but yes, I think everyone thinks like I do.

 

schmalz And yet I would say that you probably train with an SRM (just guessing). Do you use the data afterwards to gauge how well you are feeling? Do you train to hit a certain wattage during an effort? Are you staring obsessively at the screen while you ride?

 

Creed When I’m climbing, I look at it quit a bit and when I’m doing intervals, of course. I download it every day to keep track of total kilojoules and average power of intervals and climbs. You have to be careful though, I’ve done some really good intervals before a race and bombed the race. And done shit intervals and rocked the race. So while they’re nice to gauge fitness they’re not life and death. I have a local climb and if I can average over 390 for the 14 min and do that 3 times, I’m doing ok. Mind you, power at elevation is about 10% less than at sea level. So, that would be close to 430 at sea level.

 

schmalz What would you consider to be the best training advice you could give to someone?

 

Creed The best training advice I could give would be to find what works best for you and believe in it. Always listen and learn and experiment. But it’s important to take everything at face value. Most workouts are made to get people on their bikes and riding. So again, take everything with a grain of salt.

However, with that being said, if you want to be great, or as great as you can be—it’s going to take really fucking hard work, there is no way around that.