The Making of a Pro - Part II: Matteo Jorgenson

A few years ago I worked with a rider, Will Barta, that graduated from the U23 to the World Tour ranks. That was a first for me as a coach, and quite exciting. But at the same time I also thought, “man I better take something out of what we did so that I can at least use what I learned.” Together we wrote an article documenting four years of progress and four years of our process. It was really fun to do, and gave us a version of the work we did together that we’ll always have to refer back to. It was incomplete, imperfect, and while the result was successful it does not necessitate that the process to getting there was perfect. All that said, I really enjoyed it and learned from it. That article is here:

https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/the-making-of-a-pro-tour-rider/

The following year (2019), I was working with another rider, Matteo Jorgenson, that ultimately graduated to the World Tour ranks. I asked myself the same questions, “What did we learn here?”, and “What actionable information has come out of this?”. So together, Matteo and I, decided we wanted to write an article reviewing our processes and the outcomes. It actually started out as document passing between ourselves after his biggest race of the year, that we were using to make notes about the race to learn from. At some point we had so many notes on the page I realized it might actually make an interesting read, when paired with Matteo’s narrative of the race to give the data some context. So we came together to make it into an article, instead of just a list of bullet points for our use. I guess it was not the top priority for either of us, because we just got it published this month, when we initially compiled it in 2019. Either way, I’m really glad we did it and same as with the article I wrote with Will, when I read it back I already see many flaws in my thinking and want to do things differently. That is what I get out of writing these articles the most, being forced to actually write down what I was thinking. When I do that I notice quickly what I don’t like and would want to do differently the next time around. My training ideologies are constantly evolving, and hopefully evolving forward! The article that Matteo and I wrote is here:

https://trainingpeaks.com/blog/the-making-of-a-pro-tour-rider-ii-matteo-jorgenson

If you read everything I wrote here as well as the articles I’ve linked to, then you’ve read a lot. So I’ll keep the conclusion quite concise. Thanks for reading!