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.

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

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

I‘ve written before about the value of a coach having a coach him or herself (here), but I want to expand on that a bit today by thinking about the advantages (and potential disadvantages) about being able to race with your coach.

Last Tuesday, my coach (Gary Hoffman) and I drove down to the weekly Bryan Park training crit in Richmond, VA.  Since I moved up to the “A” category (Pro, 1,2,3), this has always been a tough race for me.  In fact, for a long time I considered just finishing with the bunch as a strong result.  Because this is a training race, I often race it “stupid” and jump after early breaks, try to bridge up to breaks made, and generally burn my entire matchbook by midway through the race.  This week the goal was simple – don’t get dropped and if at all possible mix it up in the sprint.

To that end, I sat in the entire time, even as the winning break developed right in front of me (that sort of rankled, but if I’d jumped after it, there was no guarantee I would have survived).  I was in the 2nd group on the road on the last lap, sitting 3rd wheel.  A teammate jumped past me on the downhill and someone behind us shouted “go with him”; without thinking, I did.  He did a monster turn on the backside and pulled off and there I was on the front with a little less than half a lap to go.  I took a short pull, pulled off, hoping to jump on a wheel for the sprint, and then as absolutely swamped by the onrushing pack.

From my perspective, I thought I was on the front too early and needed a wheel to follow, but because my coach was in the same race, we were able to dissect the finish and figure out what went wrong for each of us.  In Gary’s case it was pretty straightforward — he miscounted the laps and sprinted with 1 to go.  In my case it was a tactical mistake — what I didn’t realize was that the race was strung out behind us and if I had jumped all out when my team mate pulled off, I would have had a much better shot — I probably wouldn’t have won the bunch sprint, but would have had a respectable finish.

It’s that chance to conduct a post mortem on a race, especially the opportunity to see the race unfold from another perspective that makes racing with a coach valuable, especially one with Gary’s experience.  But even if you don’t have a coach, conducting that kind of post mortem is valuable; just some team mates getting together and talking can provide valuable insight (of course, each rider’s individual goals may make conducting the discussion objectively more difficult).

The ability to be objective is another advantage to racing with your coach, but there are some potential disadvantages.  From the athlete side, you might feel as if you’re under constant scrutiny.  For some that might actually be a benefit — a sort of constant reminder of accountability.  For others it may lead to additional pressure that can compromise performance.  From the coach’s perspective, racing with an athlete requires some juggling of roles or wearing different hats as you’re concerned both with your own success as well as that of your athlete(s).

But as a coach and as a rider, I find the experience quite helpful and that I invariably learn something both when I’m the athlete and when I’m the coach.

Technorati Tags     coaching,cycling,training

The race started out well — I jumped across to what I thought was a dangerous break (with 2 NCVC guys in it.  NCVC had something like 1/4 the 80 person field), and I was up the road when the crash happened.  I was surprised at the effort it took to get across.  I guess these MABRA races are harder.  We were caught and I was recovering deep in the field when the surprise bell lap happened and was nowhere in position to sprint, so I rolled in.

But it gets better.  When Jake had been taken care of, there was an announcement that we’d restart and that the person who won the sprint  in the previous “race” was awarded only a prime.  We were given 10 laps and sent on our way.  Again, what I thought would be a dangerous break went and I killed it jumping across.  But although we kept a gap for a few laps, there was no real cooperation and once again we were caught.  My biggest mistake was letting myself drift too far back while recovering and not checking the lap card when we went back into the field.  The result was that the bell came as a surprise to me (again), and I was woefully out of position.  I managed to move up a bit, but could only manage 19th out of 80ish.

But I wasn’t too upset — all my thoughts were with young Jake. Here’s hoping he recovers quickly.

Perhaps the most unusual feature was the pile of woodchips used as an obstacle.  I was so surprised at coming upon it during warmups that I actually stopped and asked where the course went.  Grinning at my confusion, the volunteers pointed straight over the pile.  And over it I went.  One aspect of the race I really regret, however, was not seeing if I could ride the pile.  Several riders could, but by the time it occurred to me to try it, warmup was over, and I wasn’t willing to experiment once the race started.  Consequently, I dismounted and clambered, stumbled, and even sunk a few times as I crossed it.  Riding it would have saved a few seconds every lap, seconds that I really could have used as I finished 9th and 7th and 8th place were still within sight.

Technorati Tags     racing,cyclocross