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…

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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.

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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.?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So what explains the disappointing day?  Well the most obvious (and probably sufficient) answer is that I lined up in the back row, and on a course as tight and twisty at the one at IX, with that starting position, unless you’re a real stud, you won’t be seeing the front. But because I try to treat each race as a learning experience, I cast around for a further explanation, and it occurred to me that I may not have been breathing as hard as I usually am because the course didn’t really contain enough straights for me to reach VO2max.  What it did have was constant sharp turns and short steep hills, the kind of course that puts a real strain on your neuromuscular power.  My body’s response bears this out — I may not have been panting as I am after a race or a hard interval, but my legs were tired, the kind of tired I associate with a hard sprint workout (or when I lifted more regularly, a hard session in the squat rack).

During my V02 block, I’ve essentially neglected neuromuscular power, beyond what’s required to get over the hills that abound here in Virginia.  This neglect is borne out by the numbers — my 5″ power over the past month is nearly 10% lower than my season peak.  Just to double check this decline, I did a few sprints today as part of my race prep routine and 5″ power was down even more, nearly 20% from my season peak in May.

Cyclocross requires quite a bit of neuromuscular power because of the constant slowing down and accelerating after dismounts and tight turns.  The course at IX was just a more extreme example of this principle and really emphasized the truism that the three most important words in training for cycling are specificity, specificity, and specificity.  So, while it’s probably too late for training I do now to have an impact on any but the last few cross races, I will certainly be including some nm workouts from now on, and if I decide to focus on cross again next season, I’ll be sure to make sure I start them earlier because Sunday’s experience confirmed once again that you need to maintain that “burstiness” that comes with a well-developed neuromuscular system to succeed at cross.

Oh, and being sure that you weasel your way to front on the start line…

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If a rider is not racing cross all that seriously, I generally recommend one cross workout midweek, with a warm-up of 20′ or so, focusing  on skills, then 20′-40′ (depending on the length of the races he or she does) of race simulation on a shortened course.  One of my favorite workouts is to set up a course that takes approximately 4 minutes to ride, with at least 1 dismount, 1 run-up,and if at all possible, a short section of single track to work on handling, and then alternate hard and easy laps for the recommended time.  Following this scheme gives the rider specificity both on the “on” and the “off” section of an interval.  This midweek workout, combined with a weekend race, is generally enough for riders to maintain enough race fitness to last through the cross season.  The other days of the week, I recommend all other rides be endurance rides, with the occasional sweet-spot ride through in every 10 days or so.

For most of the riders I work with, and in most years, for myself, this stripped down approach is the one I recommend.  This season, however, my move at the end of July put paid to the last 3 months of my road season, so I determined to focus more fully on cross.  I will only be doing a few cross races, but in the past, I’ve always been happy to finish in the top half of the field because I was just out there for the heck of it.  This year, I hope to move up a bit by focusing my training more specifically on cross.

What this means in practice…

In practical terms, this focus means the only time I spend in Zone 1/2 is warm ups, cool downs or recovery intervals.  Occasionally, if feeling tired, I’ll do a cross skills ride that keeps me about z2 intensity.  But wait, you  might say, won’t you lose your hard earned endurance without any endurance rides?  Well, yes, to an extent, but since the Cat 3/4 races I’ll be doing only last 45′ and I rarely do more than 1 cross race per day (as opposed to multiple crits of about the same duration), I don’t need quite the endurance.  Plus, I won’t be abandoning the aerobic side of the power curve entirely.  Every training block will have a Threshold session and a tempo ride.  Further, the focus for the next week will be that all important area (and one of my limiters) VO2max.  I do one of these per block and alternate between doing them on the road as hill repeats and on a short cross course for more specific training (as described above).  That’s the general plan for the next few weeks.  My first cross race is 10/25, so we’ll see what adjustments need to be made after that.