Passing the tests

[Ti Designs]

This training thing is nothing new for me, been doing it for years. Each new season starts with some time off the bike after the last season - I joke about getting slow and fat. Then it's time to get back on the bike and ease into it. This is the tough time because so many other riders are racing cross, so they're out doing intervals, I'm going slow. October is a very slow month for me, which is the first test. With slow and fat checked off my list it's time for some base mileage. By November the fixed gear has replaced the road bike, that way the bike is also slow and fat. Finding a group that understands what base mileage is ain't easy! So many newer riders think going faster now means going faster in season. It's November, right? They may be able to hold fitness 'til April, but burning out by June sucks. So the base mileage rides begin, I meet the team in Harvard square, ride with them for 2 hours, then do my own extra mileage for another 90 minutes of so - nothing fast, but 4 hours in a 44x19 fixed will drain your batteries pretty well. Three weeks later I'm not so fat any more - back down below 150. This morning was the first long group ride on my schedule. There were times I knew that zone 3 would go out the window, and it did. The real test wasn't how hard it was going to be keeping up going down hill on my fixed gear (damn near killed me a few times), it was the uphills. Going up Nagog Hill road and Harvard hill I found I had an easy time of it, just following wheels and staying calm. it was the one real test of where I am at this point in the season, and I passed with such ease.

It's only the first stage of my training for next season. Far harder tests are to come, and hill training days with some of the best climbers in the area which I fear. But getting home knowing I've passed that first test is a really good feeling.

So, how's your season going?

[paczki]

We just got back from that ride. It was absolutely glorious. We went slow just like you did, except at the town line sprints.

But -- I'm glad I didn't have to spin a fixed gear down Oak Hill Road.

[Peter P.]

Today was a seasonably warm 50+ degrees. I had some errands to run which would net me 35-40 miles so I took out my commuter, strapped on my packages, and off I went. I wasn't looking for a hard workout or speed or intervals or anything, just riding.

I expected that with the roller riding I was doing during the week that I would be faster or have more power but in reality, it didn't seem so.

So then I had to analyze/justify/make excuses. I donated blood last week. I had 8 lbs. of stuff on my rack. I had tights and three layers on upstairs. I had a hard roller workout last night. Did I miss anything?

At some point I just said hey; it's the off season and I don't have to run every ride like it's training. In fact, even the buddy I met up with said he likes this time of year because there's no pressure to go hard. I realized it was base mileage season and time visit other places than the house of pain.

When I felt the stomach start to churn I knew my bod was asking me to stoke the furnace, which burns more calories in the cooler temps, so I stopped for a bag of Fritos and a Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bar. I sat down on the curb and enjoyed them both.

Ah; time to savor the base mileage season.

[TAW]

I took some time off at the end of the season, gained some weight and now have to start in again. I'm not as hardy as some, so I don't ride outside when it gets below 30. Started back running a few weeks ago, since I can run when it gets cold, and am now banished to the basement rollers for cycling. My rollers don't have resistance, so it's basically easy, boring stuff. That will be the regimen for the next few months.

[Dekonick]

I am still recovering from my ankle dislocation and fracture. Most of my cardio has been limited to running, treadmill exercises, and PT. I sure hope to get more time on the bike soon... and also enjoy the slow pace of winter.

I have to say that while I used to HATE running, I now enjoy it (kinda...) as I cherish any time I can actually bear weight without pain. Sometimes slow is the way to go... it sure beats the alternative...

[avalonracing]

So many newer riders think going faster now means going faster in season. It's November, right? They may be able to hold fitness 'til April, but burning out by June sucks.


We always called them Christmas Stars or Winter Olympians... Take your pick.

[zap]

Rebuilding phase.

Pretty much took the year off. I did ride but rarely during the week and short rides on weekends. We did have one cycling week in Vermont (first cycling vacation ever) that was pretty cool.

Mental break more than anything and new biz has been keeping me busy.

I'm riding easy now in order to get the joints/muscles prepared for an assualt early next year. Focus is on higher cadence.

I really dislike structured cycling so doubt it's going to last long but hopefully long enough for me to get back some fitness before trying to go all out.

Big test for me in the coming months is mental. Do I really like cycling enough to go through the pain and race some or am I going to resign myself to becoming an occasional cyclist and take up another sport.

Rugby anyone :banana:

[Geoff]

fat and slow... check!

I just started adding more base miles this week, building base till January then start gradually adding intervals. Most of my racing will be done by May, a break in May, build again over summer for a second peak in aug - oct.

[Ozz]

fat and slow... check!
...
+1

Haven't been on the bike in 3 weeks.....check!

Annual cold / bronchitis that will linger for another 3-4 weeks....check!

:crap:

[Ti Designs]

January update: Base mileage early in New England works. Last year I struggled in bad weather and fell short of my targets for time on the bike. This year I'm ahead with the only setback coming last Monday when I hit some black ice. I've seen two weight increases at the gym, and I'm down to spinning a 42x20 on the fixed gear - strength and leg speed to spare. January adds hills to the training, both on Prospect hill and on the trainer.

Perhaps the biggest change in my training this year has been my diet. In the fall I went on a 3 week zero carb diet. By the third week I felt like I was bonking from the first pedal stroke of any ride. And when I did bonk it was like a light switch being turned off. Then I reintroduced carbs as needed on rides. I could feel the change in my blood sugar after every hit of the water bottle (tea with sugar). Given enough time experimenting I found a balance where I could fuel for the next hour of the ride. While my daily carb intake was still very low, I can now do 5 hour fixed gear rides, get home, shower and go to work for 8 hours without falling asleep too many times. Finding just the right food for the rides was tricky. Clif Builder bars work OK for post gym workout snacks, but didn't seem to sustain my energy on the bike. I tried to find a balance between simple sugars (Mmmmm, frosting...) and complex carbs with how often and how much I would eat. There are no simple rules to this game, any long distance cyclist owes it to themselves to do the same thing and really figure out what you need to keep going. In the end, the Sun Belt bars won for a few reasons. Their honey & oat bars are the perfect combo of a quick hit and sustained power, they cost around $.30 per bar, and I can open them with lobster gloves on, while riding a fixed gear. They also make a chocolate dipped bar, which is my emergency bar on longer rides. As much as I like the Clif nectar bars, there's no way of getting into that packaging while wearing winter gloves. And then there's Justin's peanut butter squeese pack. It sounded like such a good idea, but out on the road it failed so badly. At 20 degrees peanut butter is best used to pry a tire off the rim should you get a flat.

I'm still going to claim that I'm fat and out of shape 'cause I haven't done an interval in 4 months, and zone 5 sounds like a small section of the airport where they keep suspected terrorists. What I really am is 149 pounds (got a haircut) and ready for the next step. If my updates light a fire under just one other person here to do something along the same lines (instead of waiting for next spring and finding out just how fat and out of shape one can get) it'll be worth the time I've wasted...

[sbornia]

If my updates light a fire under just one other person here to do something along the same lines (instead of waiting for next spring and finding out just how fat and out of shape one can get) it'll be worth the time I've wasted...

I enjoy reading these reports, Ed. Can you describe the terrain you typically cover on your longer fixed rides? Around here, we are fortunate to have great hills (say, 70 feet per mile on average), but very few flats...unless you can tolerate urban streets with traffic and lights every half-mile. I'd like to try to replicate some of your fixed workouts, but am not sure how to do it given the local landscape. What would you recommend?

Thanks!

[T.J.]

Keep the reports coming. I'm incorporating power cranks into my base mileage training this winter. Should be a interesting experiment.

[Ray]

Interesting Ti. I don't train like you do over the winter - just enough roller time and sneaking some outside rides so that I don't go all the way to seed and its not QUITE as far to get back in the spring. But I don't have the training goals for the season that you do either.

But I've also gone to very very low carb eating since about last February, so going on a year now. When I started putting some miles on in March, I found some of the same things you did, but instead of introducing more carbs during rides, I just went even easier for the first few weeks. In time, my body adjusted and I could go hard for about two or two and a half hours without any added carbs or go easy for about 50+ miles. I'd tend to take a banana on most rides, but that's pretty much within my normal diet anyway. Even in late season form I found that I started craving sugars on longer rides, anything around a metric or more, so I'd grab something sweet near the end of a ride. But generally I kept my rides below that distance and very rarely had to take on carbs while riding. I know you ride harder and longer but you might want to fight through the bonks for a few weeks and see how or if you adjust. You get REALLY efficient at burning fat when you're not taking in extra carbs.

FWIW, I found all of my weight loss came from the diet part. Riding more or riding less didn't make any difference. I came down from 185-190 last February to 160-165 and stayed in the same area all summer and all fall. I might have put on a couple of pounds over the holidays, but I expect them to come back off pretty quickly now that I'm back to low low carbs.

-Ray

[Ti Designs]

Keep the reports coming. I'm incorporating power cranks into my base mileage training this winter. Should be a interesting experiment.


I have this love/hate relationship with Power Cranks. Used the right way they can incorperate my pedal stroke program into your normal rides. Done wrong and you'll be injured and off the bike for a while. One of the riders I coach uses them well, another set has been going from bike to bike, leaving injured riders in it's wake. The thing to understand going in is that hip flexors are NOT strong muscles, nor do they have strong attachement points or connective tissue. If you do the one leg pedal stroke drill for 10 minutes on your first try, you're not walking up stairs the next morning. Your first few weeks on Power Cranks are on the trainer, starting with 5 minutes in an easy gear - I'm not kidding. As you work your way up to 30 minutes you can think of taking the bike off the trainer, but I wouldn't call that first ride outside base mileage. You're taking a muscle group that's been responsible for lifting your foot off the ground and asking it to add power to the pedal stroke. To be honest, I think the best Power Cranks can hope to do is help your efficientcy on the bike, but there's a lot to be said for that. In strength testing of different muscle groups, I've never seen any big gains with the hip flexors - that includes the riders using Power Cranks.


As for terrain on my fixed gear rides, I've been trying to keep it as flat as I can, but a hill or two are welcome excuses to get out of the saddle once in a while. For the most part it's the same thing I'm doing on the trainer during indoor base mileage. My pedal stroke program is all about shifting the emphasis on which muscle groups get used when. For hills when more torque is needed I use glutes and leverage my upper body weight on the pedals (watch Eddy Merckx climb something steep), on flat roads I spin circles, using more quads to drive the pedal speed. In base mileage on the trainer I go up gears and down gears until I start to change how I pedal the bike without having to think about it. My fixed gear rides are the same, as soon as I get into a hill my body position changes and how I pedal the bike follows. On the down side I sit up and flail that tiny gear of mine.



Ray,

Given the amount of time I'm on the bike now, the full time low carb diet didn't work. I found my body could rebuild it's reserves overnight, but only enough for 2 hours on the bike. This fall I took a ride with two of my riders and bonked so quickly and so badly that I had one of them get their car to pick me up. Within the time it takes to travel a mile I went from sitting on to pedals not turning. Besides, learning how to fuel for more than just what you showed up with is a key element in training. I'm always amazed at how many people show up at the shop the day before the PMC and ask what they should be eating - uh, the same thing that worked for you in training???

[CNY rider]

Interesting Ti. I don't train like you do over the winter - just enough roller time and sneaking some outside rides so that I don't go all the way to seed and its not QUITE as far to get back in the spring. But I don't have the training goals for the season that you do either.

-Ray


Ed, it's not in your post. What exactly are you training for?

[Ti Designs]

Ed, it's not in your post. What exactly are you training for?

I'm coaching top racers who are half my age, so I guess you could call it training out of fear. To be honest, there are two reasons for my own training program. First, I have to coach in person. I've seen so many riders with internet coaches doing so many things wrong, I have to do better. Second, my pushing myself to train smart helps to push my riders to do the same. As much as I don't want to get my legs ripped off by them, they know what the old guy can do so it works both ways.

[toaster]

The big question on Power Cranks is after you do your training and adaptation with them and maybe they've added 1% or less to efficiency, then in a couple weeks off them it's all gone and what was the point?

[T.J.]

Ti~ that little bit of extra efficency is what I am hoping to get. I had some discussions at length with some pro's who use them. They have warned me about the possible down side to improper use. They have also raved about them when used correctly in your training plans.
Being a climber I think that little bit of efficency can pay off when it comes to multi day races. As my coach always says, you only have so many matches. I would mind having one left in reserve.

[T.J.]

The big question on Power Cranks is after you do your training and adaptation with them and maybe they've added 1% or less to efficiency, then in a couple weeks off them it's all gone and what was the point?



You have tried the cranks? What was your take on them?

[Ti Designs]

The big question on Power Cranks is after you do your training and adaptation with them and maybe they've added 1% or less to efficiency, then in a couple weeks off them it's all gone and what was the point?

In addition to the training effect of Power Cranks (or a good pedal stroke program) there is one other element gained - the awareness of a good pedal stroke. As in most things like this, those who are aware will go on and on about it while those who aren't downplay it.

The real key to using power cranks, or the whole first step of my pedal stroke program or any good fitting for that matter is being within your range of motion as the pedal comes over the top of the stroke. Power cranks eliminate the ability to push one crank over with the other, so the hip flexors have to take up the work. Unweighting the pedals probably doesn't represent a huge power gain - still probably more than 1%, but it does help to eliminate the problems of pushing one crank over with the other side. Watch a rider who's used power cranks, their hips remain solid in the saddle as they pedal at speed, and this tends to continue long after they switch back to regular cranks. Riders who haven't put in the time working on getting the pedal over the top will have weight on the pedal as it's coming up. At lower RPMs you don't see much of a difference, but as the cadence builds you see their hips start to rock. This is caused by downward pressure on the pedal coming up which lifts the hip. The SI joint compensates for that, twists the spine in the process and the body's reaction is to fire the muscles of the lower back to stabalize. Over a few hours the difference in fatigue of the lower back make up far more than 1% in performance.

[Ti Designs]

Mid January, the hill climbing has started. There are two things I've noted about this time of year. First, it's damn hard to stick to the program you started on back in the fall. It's one thing to say you're going to do all this base mileage when it's cold and dark, it's a whole other thing to get out of bed when the alarm clock tells you to. And then there are the people who don't think you need to do any of this - we live in a society of fat, lazy people, all this training is unamerican! On Friday my boss wanted me at work early. I looked at my schedule an it said what it always says for Friday morning - 3 hours on the fixed gear. I started my workout at 4:00am. Nobody is messing up my training program this year, if that means being brain dead at work sometimes, so be it... The second thing I've noted is that there are no sustained climbs in the Boston area. People learn how to hammer over hills, but they never learn how to climb that way. I have one simple rule when it comes to early season hill training - climb it like it never ends.

[zap]

What are you training for?

[Ti Designs]

What are you training for?

Life.

[Ti Designs]

Mid Feb, Saturday morning ride, only my second ride on the road bike. I've been putting in 4-5 hour fixed gear rides at least three times a week for months plus 2-3 times at the gym doing my killer 50 minute leg press pyramids. There's power, there's leg speed, but in the past the transition back to bigger gears has been a three week strugglefest. Not this year. I've added some serious leg extension work at the gym, I'm no longer seeing the same kind of fatigue in the quads.

There were 10 riders out this morning including a couple of very strong guys on the Harvard team, a new rider on the team and two very good women, and John Allis on his fixed gear - retired, unshaven and still damn fast. There was a bit of fun on the way out to Concord, a break formed with myself and the two strong team riders. We worked well together, it was the first segment of real speed this season and it felt good. After Concord the rules changed. I was to play teammate for our new racer, the other two strong riders were to shelter the women, and there was going to be some intensity. It's amazing what you can get out of a rider if they trust you...

Base mileage pays off. After 70 miles I could still turn a big gear. The speed wasn't there yet, but speedwork is still at least two weeks away. This ride let me know I'm exactly where I need to be at this point in the season. On Monday hill work begins.