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As many areas do, we here in Central VA have training tt that we do once a month (big shout out to Eric and Alice Fletcher who make it happen).  The challenge in this area is to find a course that has any sustained flats.  The best place has a fairly steady false flat on the way out and a correspondingly slight down hill on the way back.  Here’s quick Google earth shot of the course.

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The past two weekends I’ve done two crits and in both I’ve focused on "racing stupid."  To race stupid means to do lots of work, to get into every break you can, and chase down any you can’t.  It means burning every match you’ve got, lighting it up early and often.  Unfortunately, for me at least, it also means a fairly anonymous finish, having nothing left to contest the finale.

However, the point of this post is not to make excuses for poor performance, but to give a quick visual showing how one can tell if tactics not training might be a problem — in other words, are you racing stupid and not knowing it?  Below you see the cadence distribution from the Cat 3 race I did last Saturday.  Notice how little time was spent coasting (less than 4%, less than 2 minutes out of the 45 or so the race lasted).  If you see this same pattern in your race files (be sure to look at the race alone, not any warm up or cool down), you need to start thinking about how you can conserve energy better during the race.

For a more substantial discussion, see Allen and Coggan’s book Training and Racing with a Power Meter.

 I just watched the end of the second stage of Tirreno-Adriatico, won by Tom Boonen.  What struck me was the work done by the Liquigas team.  They were the only team to have a real train organized, leading it out from at least 3k out, and yet their guy, Bennati, only managed third.  But guess who was attached to Bennati’s wheel the whole time — Boonen.  So my question is whether or not pro-teams employ a "sweeper" on their train; that is a guy who sticks to the sprinter’s wheel and prevents another rider from essentially getting a lead out from the team’s effort.  It seems a fairly basic tactic, if one only rarely executed well at the amateur level.  Perhaps it’s considered amateurish and that’s why we don’t see it more often in the pro-ranks? or is it because the pro-level leadouts are so long and intense that they need every rider doing his turn on the front?

I don’t think this stage was a case of Liquigas getting it wrong leading it from too far out and exhausting the lead out men — they still had two guys with in the last kilometer, but Boonen starts his sprint before Bennati and Bennati never comes close to coming around.

Have a look a the stage here or if that link is no longer live at universalsports.com and let me know what you think.

To lift or not to lift is a question that has, well, exercised physiologists, cyclists, and coaches for quite some time.  Two recent papers have just come out (one a study, and the other a review article) with opposing conclusions as to whether or not lifting weights will benefit cyclists, and the appearance of these two articles combined with a continuing interest of mine prompted me to return to this long-neglected blog.

Let me begin with an apparent contradiction: I personally lift and suggest that some of the athletes I coach lift regularly,  but not because lifting will benefit directly their cycling performance.  There are very few situations in which pure strength (such as the effort needed to squat 2x your body weight) factors in cycling.  Some common instances would be steep, technical climbs off-road in which you are moving at a slow speed, track sprinting, and BMX starts.  (Interestingly enough, apparently some of the highest wattages ever recorded at the national level come from BMX riders training for the Olympics, but those numbers are from a dead stop and not after several hours of racing).  So, then why lift?  There are several reasons both physiological and psychological; I will cover them in what I see as decreasing order of importance below.

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I had a bike fit this week, and it’s amazing what an objective view can do.  I didn’t have any pressing issues; that is, I could ride without pain (well, without self-inflicted pain), but I could tell that my position wasn’t ideal.  My back was always curved and I often had to hyperextend my neck when riding in the drops.  I always thought my problems stemmed from tight hamstrings and a leg length discrepancy, but after a fit session with Jay Dicharry at the Center for Endurance Sports at UVA, it’s clear that those areas are not the main culprits; rather, the fact that I have almost no mobility in my lumbar spine caused by tight hip flexors and exacerbated by a weak core contributes to the problems.  Of course I do core exercises regularly, but it turns out that 1) I wasn’t doing them correctly and 2) they weren’t targeting the proper areas.

Thus the majority of the time was spent addressing my biomechanical issues.  The actual on the bike session didn’t take that long and didn’t result in a too radical position change.  My saddle was lowered by a little more than a cm and titled forward, and the wedges I had been using as shims beneath my cleats were removed to be replaced by some in-shoe wedges.  I’ve only had one ride in the new position, and so far, so good.  In fact, I don’t feel all that different as far as my pedaling action goes, but one thing that has become clear after talking with Jay and focusing on some of the issues he noted is that I need to shorten my reach.  Even with lowering my saddle, which effectively shortens the reach to the bars, I’m still a bit too stretched out, can’t get a good bend in my elbows, and put too much pressure on my shoulders.  What really interests me is how counterintuitive some of this process has been.  It looks as if I’ll be more aero with a lowered saddle and shorter reach than I was with the higher, longer position, which seems to go against most conventional wisdom (as least as I was taught) about making the on-bike position more aero.

Technorati Tags     training,bike,fit,cycling

I’ve finally gotten around to looking at my 2008 season and two things spring to mind.  1) I need to train more and more consistently and 2) it’s nice to see the numbers and the pmc correlating so well with the plan.  I won’t comment on #2 much because others have discussed its use much better than I (e.g. see these discussion by Dr. Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen or better yet read their book, Training and Racing with a Power Meter), but as you can see I set season bests for both 1′ and 5′ power while peaking for cross.  I gave up a lot of endurance because I was no longer doing any long rides or much tempo or sweet spot work (see the CTL line fall towards the middle of November) but I upped the intensity, thus the higher numbers short term numbers, and my best cross season ever.

As for # 1, this year has reinforced the truism that it is easier to "earn" tss points and thus raise ctl by riding outside (at least for me).  Notice to the left of the chart, before I got sick, how shallow the ramp rate is for ctl.  After recovering from being sick, there is a steady increase for March and April, and surprise, surprise, that corresponds to my getting outside more often for rides.  Living in Chicago, nearly everything before that was indoors.  This trend is reinforced by a similar scenario after we moved to VA. In Chicago we lived in a fairly congested area.  It was difficult, if not often impossible, to find open roads to train on.  Thus, even when the weather was perfect, I’d often get my midweek workouts in on the trainer.  In VA, the open road is at my door and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been on the trainer so far (though that will change given our current cold snap).  I find it much easier to ride at nearly all levels outdoors.  Added to that is the fact that I also find it easier to ride at a higher power level on hilly courses and that there is nary a flat road for miles ’round here, and you can see how both my volume and intensity will have risen simply by changing where I ride.

So, hopefully this increased training load will pay off as we build towards 2009.  Of course, I could still have the right volume but still get the mix of workouts wrong, but that is another topic all together.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about genetic potential, how much it determines our success in cycling, and how we even define that success.  I’ve also been preparing for Spring semester classes, and perhaps not surprisingly, the two thought processes have become a bit muddled.  So if you’ve ever wondered what happens when English poetry gets mixed up with bike racing, read on. (For a more scientific take on the issue, see this fascinating post by Dr. Ross Tucker on The Science of Sport .)

The genetic potential thought strand was initially sparked by turning 38.  I know Michele Bartoli is thinking about a comeback at that age and a certain Texan with a penchant for yellow who is nearly my age is jumping back on the bike, but the difference is that they are genetically gifted, while, having as the saying goes, chosen my parents badly (at least when it comes to endurance sports ), I most certainly am not.  My palmares makes ” Famous Jewish Sports Legends” read like War and Peace, but each weekend there I am, pinning on a number.  (more…)

Besides being a college professor and cycling coach, I am also a member of the domestic staff for two retired greyhounds (though I believe they think the last job is the most important).  Greyhounds, you may know, are the world’s fastest dog breed, capable of hitting 40 mph in short bursts, and with their double gait, are sheer beauty to watch run, as demonstrated below by Cipollini (I know we’re in a bike racing crowd when we don’t get strange stares after answering the “what’s his name” question).
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