Anna Kiesenhofer, Olympic Champion in the women's road race at Tokyo 2021, is a self-coached athlete and mathematician. She shares her unique training methods and the challenging balance between cycling and her math career. Anna discusses overcoming burnout, Olympic race strategies, and innovative heat training techniques. She dives into her self-coaching journey, explaining the shift to a more intuitive, enjoyable approach. Additionally, she offers valuable tips for amateur cyclists, emphasizing personalization in training and the significance of mental preparation.
Anna Kiesenhofer's transition from a successful mathematician to Olympic Champion highlights the importance of self-coaching and personalized training methods.
Anna's innovative training protocols, including intense block training, demonstrate the critical balance of volume and recovery in optimizing performance.
Her daring strategy during the Olympic race, characterized by early attacks and adaptability, underscores the significance of mental resilience in competitive cycling.
Deep dives
Anna Kiesenhofer's Unique Background
Anna Kiesenhofer, Olympic gold medalist in women's road cycling, transitioned from a mathematician to an accomplished cyclist. She began her athletic journey simply as a hobby while pursuing her studies and gradually became competitive, participating in triathlons and cycling events. Her rise in the cycling world was rapid, marked by significant milestones like winning her first UCI race in 2016 after joining a small cycling team. This unexpected success led to a professional contract, yet a subsequent burnout compelled her to pause competitive cycling, reflecting a complex interplay between academic pressures and sports.
Self-Coaching Methodology
With no professional team support, Anna self-coached, designing her training based on past experiences and her understanding of cycling dynamics. This independence entailed experimenting with unique training methods, including intense block training to optimize her performance. She approached preparation for the Tokyo Olympics with a tailored strategy, ensuring that her training regimen was in harmony with her personal strengths and capabilities. Anna's self-coaching not only forged resilience but also underscored the significance of personalized training strategies in achieving her Olympic success.
Challenges of the Olympic Race
The Olympic road race presented distinct challenges that differed from standard UCI events, primarily as riders competed for their country without the support of race radios for real-time communication. Anna strategized for a hilly 140-kilometer course that required adaptability to adversity, including hot and humid conditions. She executed her plan by attacking early, a gamble that surprisingly resulted in solo victory rather than being caught by competitors. This daring strategy reflected her insights from previous experiences as well as her mental fortitude throughout the demanding race.
Training Insights and Evolution
Anna's training encompassed extensive work on building her aerobic capacity and managing high-intensity efforts, indicative of a well-mapped roadmap to her success. She balanced her training volume with an intrinsic understanding of when to push and when to recover, refining her methods through both trial and error. By focusing on progressive block-training styles, she harnessed her body's ability to adapt and improve while mitigating burnout. Anna emphasized not only the importance of physiological training but also the psychological aspects of maintaining motivation and joy within the sport.
Philosophy of Continuous Improvement
Reflecting on her journey, Anna articulated a philosophy of continual learning and adaptation in both training and competition. She recognized the value of her training logs and past experiences as invaluable resources for gauging her progress and adjusting future workouts. This analytical yet intuitive approach resulted in a training structure that was both flexible and realistic, encouraging athletes to find what works best for them. As she prepares for future competitions, Anna remains committed to understanding recovery, optimizing her training environments, and sharing her knowledge with aspiring athletes.
Anna Kiesenhofer is the Olympic Champion from Tokyo 2021 in the cycling road race. She is a 9-time National Champion, and a mathematician. In this episode, Anna talks about her training in general, the specific training she did leading into her Olympic gold in Tokyo, being mostly a self-coached athlete for the last decade or so, and much more.
HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY TOPICS:
Anna's entry into the professional cycling world, and the burnout that followed
Training going into the Tokyo Olympics
Anna's extremely hard block training protocols
Combining training for the Olympics with full-time work as a mathematician
Race planning and executing her plan on race day in Tokyo
Anna's self-coaching process
Thoughts on intensity, volume, training on the road vs. TT bike, testing and more...
Tips for amateur cyclists, and cycling specific advice for amateur triathletes
DETAILED EPISODE SHOWNOTES:
We have detailed shownotes for all of our episodes. The shownotes are basically the podcast episode in written form, that you can read in 5-10 minutes. They are not transcriptions, but they are also not just surface-level overviews. They provide detailed insights and timestamps for each episode, and are great especially for later review, after you've already listened to an episode. Naturally, as great as they are, they do not cover absolutely everything in as great detail as we can do in a 45-90 minute podcast episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, I think you'll love the following episodes:
Training Talk with Kolie Moore | EP#271(Anna mentioned Kolie's threshold blocks-training as something that she implemented in her training leading into the Olympics that had great results)
Training talk and Tokyo 2020 with Nate Wilson | EP#303 (Nate is a coach at EF Pro Cycling, the coach of Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2024 Champion Katarzyna Niewiadoma, and coach of the triathlon Olympic Champion from Tokyo 2021 Flora Duffy)
You can find our full episode archives here, where you can filter for categories such as Training, Racing, Science & Physiology, Swimming, Cycling, Running etc.
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