We’ve all heard it before: Never make equipment changes before a big race, but sometimes even the most experienced riders seem to forget.

Recently, while riding down to a race, a team mate and I were discussing new shoes and adjusting cleat position.  He’d just had a very minor ( a few mm) adjustment done and now was experiencing some knee problems.  Luckily, he had another pair of shoes with the cleats in the old position and was able to wear them and race without an issue.  On another occasion a team mate had just gotten a new pair of shoes and was excited to wear them, but the first opportunity to do so was in a race.  He, unfortunately, was not as lucky: the new shoes and cleats were not completely dialed in, and he wound up missing some time to heal a bit of tendinitis in his knee.

The point of these two anecdotes?? one is that they illustrate once again why the conventional wisdom that you don’t make changes to equipment before a race is, well, wise.  The other is that even minor changes, moving a cleat a few millimeters especially with a non- or limited float system like Speedplay zero or the gray or black Look cleats, can have a major impact.

I was reminded of this issue while surfing cyclingnews.com:

Moncoutié forced out with knee injury

While David Moncoutié (Cofidis) was not among the fallers on Monday, the Frenchman was forced to abandon the race on stage two with a knee injury. He had already lost over eight minutes on stage one due to the ailment. According to La Dernière Heure, Moncoutié’s knee problem stems from his decision to change his cleats on the Thursday before the race, which led to a slight alteration in his position.

The Frenchman abandoned 60km into stage two and it remains to be seen if he will be fit for the next race on his programme, the Tour of Catalonia (21-27 March). http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/ls-haedo-abandons-paris-nice-after-police-motorbike-collision

Apparently, even the pros ignore conventional wisdom just as much as Joe Mastersracer and suffer for it as well…

Technorati Tags     coaching,blogposts

Ever wonder why you see pro cyclists swigging Coke during races?  Turns out that Coke or another soda might be a great exercise drink after all.

Dr. Gabe Mirkin has a recent post in his excellent e-zine about the way in which a drink that combines glucose with fructose results in greater amounts of sugar being transported to the working muscles. Adding caffeine to the mix further increases the amount of sugar available.  I haven’t had a chance to go back and look at the studies Dr. Mirkin cites, but I have been trying to have some caffeine with my recovery drink for some time, ever since I came across this study suggesting that a carbohydrate/ caffeine mix was more effective at promoting glycogen replacement after exercise. Of course, I don’t consume nearly as much caffeine (8mg/kg of body weight, which for me would be about three cups) in one sitting as the study suggests is necessary for it to be effective, so I’m probably not doing much more than fueling my already raging caffeine addiction.  But caffeine does have an ergogenic effect, and not necessarily in venti-sized doses. A recent statement from the International Society of Sports Nutrition suggests that even moderate doses can aid performance. ?It looks like I can continue to suck down my double espressos before races to good effect, and despite having sworn off sugary sodas years ago, I might even try a Coke in between races when racing more than once in a day.

It’s cold here in Central Virginia.  Now I know those of you living up north may scoff at our idea of cold, but it was 20 degrees last Saturday morning when we headed out for our ride.  Yes, you read that right, I actually got myself out for a ride well below my usual cutoff of 32 degrees and dry.  And yes, I did come back with all my digits and other body parts neither frozen nor frostbitten (though it was touch and go for a bit there with the toes and nose). In all seriousness,though, I was quite comfortable, especially by the end of the ride when it warmed to a balmy 25, mainly because the ride was mostly on gravel roads.

I love riding on gravel roads for several reasons — lack of traffic, often spectacular scenery?, but most importantly is that you can get a great workout at slower speeds (and therefore less windchill) than on a road bike.  Take today’s 2.5 hour ride — we only averaged 13.3 mph, but the norm power needed to maintain that nearly pedestrian pace was 204 watts, which for me is a strong endurance/ tempo effort.  At the end of the day, I had racked up something like 175 tss and yet I rarely broke 20 mph.

In places the gravel itself contributes to the mismatch between speed and effort.  Especially on a newly graveled section, the rocks can be so deep that it takes added effort just to keep the bike moving forward in a (relatively) straight line. Going downhill on a newly graveled road can be something of an adventure.  I’ve never actually crashed on a gravel descent, but I have gotten both wheels sliding through corners a number of times.  I think of these moments as an added bonus, sharpening up those handling skills.  Do enough gravel descents at speed and those technical corners in next summer’s crits will seem easy by comparison.

Of course, before you can enjoy that wild downhill ride, you need to go up, and here again gravel roads present a great training opportunity.  The hills themselves are often steeper than you find on a paved road, and the loose surface adds an extra element by forcing you often to climb seated on grades you would normally be standing. These efforts, along with the overall higher effort required to ride on gravel even on the flats , really help make a gravel ride an excellent workout.

You can tackle the gravel roads in central VA on a road bike, and I have done some rides on mine, especially when I have on some extra-wide, winter tires such as the Vittoria Open Pro Paves, but I prefer a cross bike for these days, usually with ?a semi-slick fat “city” tire on the back and a cross clincher on the front.   The fatter tires and easier gearing of the cross bike make it ideal for these rides, and the fact that mine is an older, aluminum Redline helps with my peace of mind– I’m not nearly as worried about rocks flying up and pinging the cross bike as I would be on my carbon road machine.

Beyond the appropriate bike and tires, the only other change I would make from a regular road ride is to pack more food and drink.  Some of these roads are pretty isolated. — you’re not going to come across a convenience store on most of these rides. But aside from the refueling issue, gravel roads can be a cyclist’s best friend, especially at this time of year when you need to be getting those long, base building rides in? and the weather makes four hours on a road bike a freezing proposition.

Technorati Tags

We all know that training in certain levels stimulates different physiological responses — training around thre shold is a great way to induce mitochondrial biogenesis while training in the anaerobic zone will help improve the amount of work you can perform using anaerobic energy systems.  But one adaptation that doesn’t always get discussed is hormonal responses to training, and I was surprised to find that performing certain workouts are more effective at stimulating the body to produce hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone, so if you want to boost your body’s production of these hormones without recourse to any special “preparations” (i.e. doping), read on.

It’s been know for a long time that the resistance training is one of the best ways to prompt the body’s production of testosterone.  Of course, as cyclists we all know that lifting weights is one of the vexed questions in coaching, the subject of often heated debates on various online forums. I’ve written about that subject before and won’t get into it here, but I think it’s safe even the most ardent proponent of lifting doesn’t want to spend too much time in the gym.  The good news at least as far as hormone response to lifting is that you don’t have to, but you may have to change the way you lift.

Most cyclists I know work their legs first and as it turns out that’s ideal if your goal is to increase testosterone production because studies have shown that engaging large muscle groups (e.g. squats) early in the workout boosts testosterone more so than starting with smaller or single muscles (e.g. bicep curls).  When it comes to rest intervals, weight and repetitions, however, it appears that ?some adjustments may be necessary.  First, weight and reps — most cyclists use a progression going from low weight and high reps to high weight and low reps as the training cycle moves along.  But for testosterone production that last phase, the max strength phase, does not do as much as earlier phases because it appears that what counts most in this context is total work (i.e. pounds lifted) over the entire workout?.  This is not to suggest that the optimal solution is to lift a light weight for a hundred reps.  There is some basic threshold of intensity that must be met (generally around 70% of 1 rep max), but one needn’t be piling the plates on the leg press to the point where only 4-6 reps are possible.  When it comes to rest intervals, it turns out that most of us are resting too long.  The ideal rest interval it appears when lifting to prompt testosterone production is 2 minutes or less, and the longer the rest interval, the lower the hormonal response even when load and reps are kept the same.  As the authors of a recent review on the subject ?put it, training “protocols high in volume, moderate to high in intensity, using short rest intervals, and stressing large muscle mass tend to produce the greatest acute hormonal response” (Kraemer and Ratamess 2005).?

Growth Hormone is also released in response to resistance training and is best targeted using a protocol similar to those used to stimulate testosterone production, so you can target both hormones during the same workout.  Growth hormone is also released in response to relatively high intensity endurance exercise of at least 10′ in duration.  Most studies found that intensity to be the lactate threshold though one group did report that the hormone response increases with intensity without necessarily having some threshold to pass. In general, though, the consensus seems to be that you need to be doing intervals of at least 10′ in length at or just above your threshold power.  Interestingly, it also appears that spreading the efforts throughout the day was more effective than doing multiple repeats in a single session in terms of stimulating growth hormone production. As another review on the subject summarizes, “if the aim is to optimize hGH secretion, training should occur a number of times per day with each exercise  session being of a duration greater than 10 minutes at an intensity above lactate threshold” (Godfrey et. al. 2003).

Of course, doing a single 10′ interval a couple of times a day is no way? build fitness, so designing workouts to maximize hormonal response is probably not a good idea during a build or base phase, but I could certainly see using workouts designed to target hGH secretion as part of a taper/peaking phase or even as mid-week workouts during a period of intense racing when one is not trying to build fitness but to race on what you’ve already built.

For more on the topic, see the studies linked to above.  I found the Godfrey, et. al. review to be most helpful.?

Technorati Tags     training,cycling,bike,hormone_response

Probably the best sports nutrition book I’ve read!

I suspect nearly all riders struggle with their weight at one time or another, especially now with holiday parties and decreased training time equaling a perfect recipe for gaining a few pounds.  Of course, how much (and how often) one struggles is often a function of genetics, but if you’re like me and come from a family of people who tend towards the heavier side, weight loss is a constant concern.  So it is not surprising that I tend to read lots of stuff pertaining to body weight and endurance sports, and I have to say the best book I’ve read to date is Matt Fitzgerald’s Racing Weight (VeloPress 2009).  There are several reasons I like this book so much. First, the suggestions it gives seem to be both commonsensical and practical — for example, consuming no more than 20-25% of your daily calories at any one meal.  Second, the academic in me loves that Fitzgerald supplies evidence (i.e. citations from journals) for his ideas.  Even the ideas which are fairly common in the literature, (e.g. consuming more carbs after workouts than at other times of the day) are explained in a way so that the reader can understand the physiological mechanism underlying the dietary advice.

The only (potential) “beef” I have with the book comes in the supplement section in which Fitzgerald tentatively recommends athletes prone to seasonal weight gain (i.e. yours truly)  use Conjugated Linoleic Acid during the winter months. However, the evidence for the supplement’s efficacy and more importantly, its safety is inconclusive (it may lower HDL or “good” cholesterol see this review; or this one which suggests the risk is not as great, but neither is the benefit).

Despite this quibble, Racing Weight is strong book on sports nutrition and its scientific background.  It’s the one I recommend to all my athletes who ask about diet issues and one I find myself returning to again and again as I fine tune my own nutrition.

Technorati Tags     sports_nutrition,book_review

I stumbled upon the work of some exercise physiologists in the UK who did some work on a 3′ test to determine Critical Power, which correlates closely with functional threshold power, the number upon which we base training levels.  Normally, we determine this number through some sort of time trial (e.g. the ubiquitous 20′ tt taking the average power for that duration and multiplying it by some percentage, usually 95%). Vanhatalo? et al? have argued that the average power during the last 30″ of a 3′ all out effort closely approximates that number.

So, does this mean that the days of doing a monthly time trial are over?  I’m not so sure, but it is an interesting avenue to explore.

The protocol used involved a short warm up, (13′, with the last 10″ accelerating to 110+rpm) and then the 3′ all-out test beginning immediately.  The key words in that last sentence are “all-out”; unlike any other efforts, there shouldn’t be any pacing — you go as hard as you can from the start and just hang on.  In fact, the riders participating in the study were not told the elapsed time in order to eliminate any possibility of pacing.

The potential for pacing along with the fact that the tests were done on an electronically braked ergometer (that is, against a fixed resistance) may suggest that the 3′ effort is better suited as a lab rather than a field test, and indeed, the authors’ focus is on creating a lab test.

But I was intrigued enough that I’m experimenting with the 3′, while maintaining the usual 20′ test.  In fact, one of the nice things about the 3′ effort is that it can be done in the same session because it helps exhaust the rider’s anaerobic work capacity and thus makes the 20′ test a closer estimation of threshold power.

My modified protocol involves a 20′ warm up (10′ easy spin, 3×1′ @110 rpm, but low power, with 1′ rest in between and then another 5′ spin), then the 3′ all-out.  Ideally this would be on a not-too-steep hill or false flat, with a constant grade and no turns. 10′ more of easy spinning to recover and then the 20′ test.  When you get home, download the file and compare the final 30″ average power to your 20′ average.  I’ve done this twice and both times the two numbers have been within 5 watts of each other.  I don’t think I will be abandoning the 20′ test, but I do like having another data point to compare when estimating ftp, so much so that I’ve been having the riders I coach adopt this testing routine as well.  And if anyone else does experiment with this idea, I’d love to hear about your results.

Technorati Tags     training,cycling,performance_testing

Woodchuck holes are not the cyclocrosser’s friend.

Yesterday I went over to the beautiful Shenandoah Valley to race at the inaugural Luray Caverns CX race.  I was pretty excited because not only am I on some great form, but they even had a 35+ Cat 4 race, which I figured I’d have a pretty good shot at winning.

The course had one decent hill, one set of barriers, one set of logs that you could easily hop, and more twists and turns than you could ever want.  I didn’t get a great start, having lined up in the second row of the 18 starters, and left the pavement in maybe 5th wheel.  We immediately went into a downhill zig-zag section, before bombing down a decent descent and making a 180 and climbing up the same hill we had just descended.  No problems here, I rode easy, maintained position and waited for things to start splitting up.  For most of the first lap they didn’t and I just sat in.  Towards the end of the first lap we hit the barriers for the first time and I had a great dismount, made up a spot or two, set the bike down and… realized I had been a bit too hasty and rough putting the bike down and somehow had gotten the chain off the ring and past the chain catcher.  While I stopped to fix that, the lead group rode away, but again, I wasn’t too worried because I felt so good.

I? start hustling after them, chasing for a lap and then catch one rider.  After jumping over the logs, I decide I should put in a little dig to get some distance on him, stand up to accelerate and put my front wheel right into a hole (unmarked of course) and go down.  Not badly because I hadn’t really accelerated, but enough that the rider passed me.

So I’m back up and chasing again, now sitting in 7th place.  I catch sixth place (John Murray who I believe rides for the Winchester Wheelmen) and we ride together for a bit, and as I’m bombing down a hill leading to the pits I manage to find yet another hole or divot and, bang, I’m down again.  This one hurt a bit because it was at speed (when I got the skinsuit off, I discovered a nice bruise on my thigh in the shape of a the hook of a handle bar), but I got up and, yes, chased him down yet again?.

So now it’s last lap, we’re catching 5th place, and although the podium is out of reach, I’m thinking top 5 would be pretty good.  Going into the downhill switchbacks, I have a complete brain fart and start to turn too early, nearly run into the tape, slow way down and allow him to pass me.  He gets a little gap going down the hill, but yet again, I chase him down on the hill.

And here I made a tactical error — rather than attacking immediately after getting on his wheel and trying to get a gap on the power section I sat in.  It was a mistake because clearly he was a better technical rider than I while I seemed to have a bit more power — I needed a gap because he would pull away on the technical stuff.  Anyway, he would get a little gap on every corner and I would close it a bit and so on around the course until we finally caught 5th place, he got by cleanly and I had to slow down a bit and that was all she wrote, he rode off for 5th while I had to settle for 6th despite having some of the best form of my life.

Take home lesson here: in cross (and probably in mountain biking, though I haven’t raced that discipline yet) good technique is as important as good form.

Technorati Tags     cycling,race_reports,racing,cyclocross

Having done my first cross race of the season this past weekend, I was reminded yet again how much fun you can have killing yourself for 45′  riding circuits in the dirt.

I’ve pasted a copy of my race report from the Bryan Park cross race below.  I’d love to hear from others about how their cross seasons are going.

I finally dragged the cross bike out for a race — 35+ open.  The course was at Bryan Park in Richmond — site of the weekly training crit series — and the course was very much like  a crit.  Totally flat, 2 sets of barriers, lots of twists and turns.  It really was a technical crit raced on cross bikes.  I had really good legs, but didn’t have a great start.  I was on the front row during staging, but because this is a series, they did call ups and I wound up losing a row and a chance at the hole shot.  I sat in ~10th place for the first half of the race, picking a few guys off here and there, but not really closing to the leaders.  My luck for the worse turned towards the end of the race — I stacked it trying to take a corner too sharply.  Nothing serious and I was up and moving in a few seconds, but I did lose 2 spots.  Next lap, however, the fatigue must have been setting in because as I was going over the last barrier, I banged the bike  and knocked the chain off (short legs and 40cm high barriers don’t always mix well).  Lost 3-4 spots getting it back on.  I lost some momentum after that and rode with a teammate for the last three laps, actually sitting in at times as if it were a road race.  Wound up finishing 15th/ 25ish.

So a relatively disappointing finish, but boy, was it fun.  For those of us focused on the road season, cross provides such a great mental change of pace that it always rekindles enthusiasm.  Plus it’s an easy way, psychologically at least, to get some good late season intensity in without slogging through another set of intervals.  So if you haven’t already — grab a cross or mountain bike and go play in the dirt!

How much weight do you need to be lifting?  Try checking the torque.

This is the time of the year when most riders are (or should be) gradually transitioning into some off the bike training, and although there still some (well, more than some) debate about it, one of the cross-training classics is weight lifting.  But how much weight should one lift?  Some argue that high weight/low reps is the way to go; others that low weight/high reps better mimics the demands of cycling.  Most coaches, however, recommend a progressive combination of these approaches (for example, the plans laid out in Joel Friel’s Training Bible books).

But what is often missing is a way to determine how much weight should be lifted that correlates with the actual demands of riding, rather than some percentage of the weight that can be lifted once (the one repetition max, usually abbreviated 1-rm).  If you have a power meter and some analysis software such as wko+, however, you can quite easily come up with an estimation using torque values.*

The formula is (roughly) Torque/(crank length (in cm)/2.54).   So for a rider with 175 mm cranks who puts out 1600 lb-in of torque, an equivalent weight would be ~232 lbs.  Now, no matter what your weight, that is no where near the massive weights I often see cyclists squat, certainly below the 1.8-2x body weight that I would shoot for when I transitioned from soccer to cycling — the thought being stronger legs = faster cycling. But what has become increasingly clear to me is that once you reach that max weight (or perhaps a few percentage points more) there is little to be gained by continuing to pile on the weights.  You’ll just never be producing that much torque — the rider cited above has a really strong sprint and regularly cracks out 5″ averages of ~1500 watts or ~19.5 w/kg, and even he is pushing a relatively low weight.

Once you’ve reached that max weight and can lift it comfortably for ~ 10 reps, it is time to focus on explosiveness, lifting that weight as quickly as you can safely do so or perhaps switch over and focus on plyometrics (see this link for a description of some possible exercises).  You may feel like something of a wimp with only a few plates on the bar, but in the end I think you’ll find  your time spent in the gym much more effective in reaching your main goal – going faster on the bike!

*Note that this is only an estimation as it leaves out the acceleration component of force; that is, you can estimate the force you’re putting out, but not whether you’re producing that force by either moving a heavy mass slowly or a lighter mass more quickly.  But as I suggest above, it is really the latter method that cyclists should be focusing on.

Technorati Tags

How well you do in late-season races depends on how well you ride the CTL wave.

This past weekend I ended my road season and that got me to thinking about how riders deal with those late season races.  Generally, the riders I coach as well as myself as a rider peak in early July for the Superweek races in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.  This means that they should hit peak Chronic Training Load (CTL) sometime in mid-June and begin tapering down and sharpening for a few weeks.  It also means that there really isn’t enough time to rebuild and peak again for early September races.  So what are riders to do?  Well, as with so much in cycling, a lot depends on the rider’s individual situation and season goals.  Usually these fall into two or three broad categories: riders who need a substantial break, riders who need intensity to keep sharp, and riders who are focusing on cross.

First, all  riders need some sort of break after their peak races.  However, the length of the break is highly individual.  Some riders may need just a few extra days rest to recharge physically.  Others need a more substantial break.  For example, I coach an athlete who has been pushing hard since December 09.  By August, he was ready for a break, and a big one.  I prescribed at least a week of not so much as looking at the bike.  It turned out that with his work schedule, he wound up taking 11 days straight off, but the break worked.  He raced over the Labor Day weekend, got some solid results in some big races with large fields and put up some power numbers approaching his season bests.  It was clear he needed a substantial break, physically and psychologically.

Other riders need only a short break, sometimes just a long weekend, and then do lots of short, intense workouts.  These riders will still see their ctl drop, obviously not as much as the rider taking a substantial break, but with the end of the season right around the corner and races upcoming, riders shouldn’t be doing the kind of long rides that boost ctl so well.  For these riders, some mix of V02max (e.g. 6-8×3′), Anaerobic (10-20×1′), and Sprint workouts.  These last, the sprint workouts are excellent for this time of year because they keep the legs sharp without adding too much stress, especially when combined with adequate rest.  Two-three midweek intense workouts plus a weekend race should be enough for these riders to ride their fitness through the end of the season.

Riders focusing on cross should be just completing their build up, hopefully hitting their peak ctl numbers and getting ready to taper down for their key races, and that’s a topic I’ll cover in another post.

Technorati Tags     racing,cycling,training