With the road race season slowly coming to a close, a few of the SCErs decided to get a jump start on cyclocross season by attending Fulcrum Coaching & JBV Coaching Cyclocross Clinic on August 28th in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.  The cross clinic was hosted by Chris Mayhew of JBV Coaching and Dan Tille of Fulcrum Coaching,along with assistance from Jeremy Powers, a professional cyclist who races with Jelly Belly Pro Cycling Team (road) and Cannondale/Cyclocrossworld.com (cross).  Mayhew, Tille, and Powers put on the clinic last year but this was the first year that any members from SCE were able to make the trip to Maryland for an all-day crash course in cyclocross racing.  SCE teammates who attended were Greg Flood, Stacie Truzskowski, Rachel Weaver, and Kate Bennett.

For those new to the sport, cyclocross is a form of bike racing which consists of riders racing a certain number of short laps for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.  Sounds easy you say?  I haven’t described the rest.  The race course usually by picking up your bike and jumping over said obstacles) and remounting the bike. Cyclocross is also usually raced in the fall so you have to factor in mud, lots of mud!  It can be a dirty and cold sport but that only makes it fun!

On Friday, September 27, to kick off the clinic, the Bike Doctor in Waldorf, Maryland hosted Cross Talk Meet & Greet with Jeremy Powers. A very cool venue in which to discuss all aspects of cyclocross. A variety of issues and questions were addressed at the meet and greet.  It also got everyone pumped up for Saturday’s all-day clinic.

The day of the clinic turned out to be very hot, sunny, and extremely humid.  After a short talk and demonstration, attendees were broken up into three groups: expert, intermediate, and beginners.  Flood joined the expert group, Weaver went off to practice with the intermediate group while Stacie and I made our way to the beginners group.  I’m not sure what I was expecting but we jumped right into the lessons.  Lesson one, remounting the bike.  We spent a good hour learning how to remount the bike.  And everybody quickly realized how sore they were going to be by the end of the day.

Up next?  Dismounting off the bike.  Mind you, this is dismounting off the bike while it is still moving.  Cyclocross requires a fluid, continuous form during the race. Unless you crash, you are always moving. The beginners group was great because we were able to learn different handle positions while dismounting.  Stacie and I are both short so our instructors, Fatmarc Vanderbacon and Rusty Williford, taught us how to move our right hand from the handlebar to the down tube.   It was an invaluable piece of information because once we finished the dismount portion of the clinic, we quickly moved onto carrying and shouldering the bike over obstacles.  Stacie and I were able to make use of the lessons from earlier.  We carried and shouldered our bikes using the down tube.  In doing so, we had a higher clearance while running over the barriers. Finishing with that, we sat down to tasty Chipotle lunch and spent more time on a Q&A session.

The afternoon portion off the clinic was spent learning how to read and navigate a cross course.  Groups of two to three individuals took turns riding through the course while the instructors positioned themselves around the course offering advice such as how to take a 180 degree turn or when to pass another racer on the course. After that, we spent time on the all important Cyclo-Cross Start.  How you perform during the cross start is usually crucial to your overall performance during the race.  We learned about positioning at the start line, quickly clipping in, and finding the correct gear.  After a couple of those sprint starts, we were all itching to combine all the techniques learned at the clinic and test our skills on a couple of laps.  The laps were a great way to end an exceptionally well-run clinic.

A huge thank you to Dan Tille for housing Rachel, Stacie, and me. It was greatly appreciated. We also enjoyed the company. Another thank you to Chris Mayhew for letting us know about the clinic.

Photos by Ben Stephens

Build Yourself a Kick Ass Off-Season Plan

The last article I wrote discussed the principal of progressive overload and the three ways you can go about changing your training routine to create progressive overload.

• Frequency

• Intensity

• Time (or Duration)

Most people during the winter training months keep the intensity variable the same and change mostly the time variable…working up to progressively longer rides, especially on the weekends. Depending on your fitness levels, your weekend ride schedule may by a 2 hr ride on Sat and Sunday, a 3 hr ride Sat and a 2 hr ride on Sunday, a 4 hr ride Sat and a 3 hr ride on Sunday etc.   Riding time during the week is typically restricted due to work and daylight, so most people are on the trainer or doing some other ‘cross’ training during the week .

This is a fairly ‘traditional’ approach to what is otherwise known as Base Training but it is only one approach.   In this email I want to talk about what is actually happening during base training rides.

Coaches talk about spending the winter months building your “aerobic engine.”  Aerobic means “with oxygen,” and is the metabolic pathway that is most efficient in terms of how fuel is used in your body.  Oxygen and fat can burn completely to create ATP (energy) with waste products of carbon dioxide and water, a “clean” burn with no leftover products to recycle.

Creating ATP in this manner is somewhat slow, but it’s a very efficient fuel source and there is a nearly unlimited supply of fuel (fat).  Even the thinnest people you can think of have days to weeks worth of fat based fuel stored in their body.

When you start to exercise at an intensity where the supplied ATP from fat oxidation can no longer keep up with your muscles need for energy, your body starts to use glucose (sugar) or fuel. Glucose is stored in the muscle cells and the liver in a limited supply of about 2000 calories or so.

When you run out of glucose, you “bonk” and your body has to rely on only fat oxidation for energy, which slows you way down.

In reality, your body is constantly burning both fat and sugar for fuel at all times, but the ratio of primarily fat burning to primarily carb burning changes with the intensity of your exericise.  More intensity burns relatively more carbohydrates and less fat.  Exercise hard enough, and for long enough and you’ll eventually run out of steam.

Hopefully you can see from a practical viewpoint, that the longer you can delay your use of carbohydrates for fuel, the longer you’ll last in a race or a ride.

But here’s the key… you can ride at 10 mph and last all day.  What you really want to be able to do is ride at 20, 22, 24 mph or faster and STILL have carbs left to burn for breaks, chases, surges, lead-outs and sprints.  Or if you’re in a triathlon, be able to run after your bike leg.

So lets bring this back to winter base training, or “building your aerobic engine”.

What are the physiologic changes that need to take place in order to build your aerobic engine?

Factors Improving Delivery of Oxygen to the Working Muscles:

• Increased Stroke Volume (amount of blood pumped per heartbeat)
• Density of capillaries in the muscle bed
• Increase in hemoglobin (amount of oxygen carried per unit of blood)

Factors Improving the Utilization of Oxygen When it Arrives at the Muscle:

• Training of Type 2 Fibers to act more like Type 1
• Increased Cross sectional area of slow twitch (type 1) muscle fibers
• Increased Number of mitochondria in individual muscle cells
• Oxidative enzymes that are at work in the mitochondria

Million Dollar Question:  If these are the changes that need to happen, what kind of work should we be doing during the base training season (and beyond) to induce these changes?

Million Dollar Answer:  Training in ALL aerobic zones with an emphasis towards higher intensity.  Aerobic Training Zones include the classic “endurance” zone, but also intensities up to and including threshold and VO2 max.

Traditional base training utilizes the “Endurance” training zone almost exclusively.  While there are benefits to riding in the endurance zone (it’s enjoyable, you can have a conversation, look at the scenery and do it over and over everyday), there are drawbacks as well (It can be boring especially if you are stuck indoors, and it takes a long time to see benefits from it. You also need to be able to put in the time and the miles.)

This is called ‘over-distance’ training or training well over the distances that you are racing at an easy pace. It has been well known for a long time that this type of training creates many of the changes I listed above… increases the size of slow twitch muscles, tricks type 2 fibers into working like type 1 fibers, increases the stroke volume of the heart, etc.

However, in the past decade or more, there have been innumerable studies that show training at higher intensities, including tempo, sweet spot, threshold and Vo 2 max all induce those aerobic adaptations, only faster!  This means that you can train for less time, and still see the same benefits of LSD type training.   The drawbacks?  It’s harder, it’s less fun, you can’t chit chat during workouts and there is a (slight) risk of injury and a (real) risk of overtraining if you overdo it.

So why don’t more people do this? Why do coaches still prescribe a long cold winter of doing nothing but “Zone 2” training?   A few basic reasons I think.  First, their ideas are rooted in tradition.  Long easy base training is a practice that was first documented in the Soviet Union by a social scientist studying the Russian Track and Field team. His observations were published, translated into English, and carried on by  great coaches like Tudor Bompa who was a mentor to Joe Friel, the author of the “Training Bible” series.

Since the “Training Bible” is probably the biggest selling self-coaching guide for cyclists and triathletes, the majority of cyclists are familiar with this approach. Magazine authors perpetuate these training ideas as do successful athletes who have followed them and go on to coach others (triathlete’s Mark Allen, Gordo Byrn, etc).  Those coach/athletes then go on to write their own books and the information is passed on and on and on.

However, there is a huge, huge flaw in the majority of these popular press books.  Many of these coaches and athletes believe that training at higher intensities will harm you, harm your muscles, harm your metabolic system, ruin your capillaries, result in injury, overtraining and burnout.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  If you arm yourself with sound knowledge and implement it in your training in a progressive periodized fashion, you have the potential to be light years ahead of your competition come the first spring training races, AND you will have built a strong aerobic foundation on which to start working on those high end efforts…sprints, hill climbs, chases, breaks and whatever other pain you want to throw at your competition.

By adding some of this higher intensity work to your winter training rides, you’ll also enjoy your long easy rides more.  You’ll be fitter, stronger and more comfortable enabling you to stay within your limits while keeping up with your training buddies (unless their also following a kick ass plan).

More coming soon!!!

Hey Team,

This post is an introduction to the concept of training stress, which incorporates both duration and intensity of not only a single training session, but also of multiple training sessions over a period of time (frequency).  I’m not even going to apologize for not being brief as I realize that’s impossible for me.  You may, however, want to print this out and read it while at (or pretending to) work (wink).

First some basics. Fitness is gained in both a stepwise and periodic fashion, sometimes in quantum leaps and sometimes you’ll experience stagnation and fatigue.   In order to gain fitness you must provide a progressive overload to your system, and then allow time to recover. Progressive overload means that you gradually expose your body to more work and effort than it was previously exposed to.  The initial outcome is fatigue and tissue breakdown. But with proper nutrition and recovery, the body responds by building stronger muscles, connective tissue and bone, and ready to handle that same workload again. By alternating periods of work and then recovery on  a day to day, week to week , month to month and even year to year cycle, you will see gradual improvements in your fitness.

This raises 2 questions in my mind:
1)  How do you measure fitness?
2)  How do you create progressive overload?

The first question I addressed in last week’s post regarding testing. As Aaron pointed out, there are a number of additional tests that can be done if you have a power meter. If and when you aquire one I’d be happy to discuss all this with you.

A far more interesting question is…how do you create progressive overload? I’m just going to go over some really basic points here, that may be review for you especially if you’ve read Friel’s or Carmichael’s books. But I want to be sure we’re all on the same page. The next part in the series will be the fun part, and is where my philosophy on structured training differs from what you read in the Training Bible. I’ll explain the concepts of base, what “junk miles” are or aren’t, and further explore the concept of training stress and how to apply it to your own training.

(In the examples below, I’ve used running, but the same principals apply to cycling, although the 10% rule applies mostly to running).

To understand training stress, you first need to understand the three basic components of training that you can manipulate to create progressive overload. The mnemonic you can use is F.I.T.

Frequency
Intensity
Time (or Duration)

Frequency refers to how often you exercise … 3 days a week? 4 days? 6 days? Two a days?

Intensity is typically measured in training zones that are defined by heart rate, pace or power. Most schemes divide intensity into zones that fall above and below a “threshold” effort, or the maximum effort that you can sustain for a long period of time (yep, the definition is frequently that general). There are 3,5 and 7 zone intensity scales, as well as Perceived effort rating scales that can go from 1-5, 1-10 or 6-20. Regardless of which zone system or rating scale you use, just be certain that you use it consistently and that you understand (roughly) how your scale fits with scales that other athletes or authors may use so that you can perform workouts at a similar effort as prescribed.

Time refers to the length of the training session usually measured in total hours and minutes, as an alternative, some people choose to measure time/duration in miles, but I find time to be a better metric to use, since the distance covered will vary with the intensity, but the time spent exercising won’t vary.  That is, you can do 30 minutes at race pace or 30 minutes at endurance pace…it’s still 30 miutes but the distance covered varies with the intensity.
Any one of these three variables can be changed singly, or in combination in order to increase the overload on an athlete’s system from week to week. For example say an athlete is running 3 miles, 3 times a week at an easy “conversational” pace.  (i.e. the athlete is not breathing hard at all).  In order to create a week of trianing with progressive overload the athlete could change any one of those three parameters:
Frequency:  Increase the number of days running from 3 to 4 days a week.

Intensity:  Increase one of the runs from an easy “conversational” pace to a “tempo” pace where speaking is still
possible, but sentances are a few words at a time

Time: Increase the time  (or distance) spent running for one of those training sessions.

Here are three examples of how Suzy the Runner can take her 3 miles/3 days a week/conversational pace workout week and slightly increase the overload:

1)   Increase Frequency:  Run 4 days this week instead of 3.  Make the 4th running day very short and easy so as not to increase the total by more than about 10%.

Monday: 3 miles easy
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: 3 miles easy
Thursday: 1 mile easy
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 3 miles easy
Sunday: Rest

2)   Increase the intensity of one of the runs slightly

Monday: 3 miles easy Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: 3 miles as follows (1 mile easy, 1 mile moderate, so that breath is short but not labored, 1 mile easy)
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 3 miles Easy
Sunday: Rest

3)   Increase the time (distance) of one of the runs

Monday: 3 miles easy Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: 4 miles easy
Thursday Rest:
Friday:  Rest
Saturday: 3 miles easy
Sunday: Rest

Notice that in each example, the increase is very slight, but because it is more than the athlete is used to, she will be forced to adapt to that new workload.  Also notice in each case that there is an extra day of rest following the increased workload (ie, 2 days rest after running 2 days in row, 2 days rest after increasing the intensity of the midweek run, or 2 days rest after increasing the length of the midweek run.

There are a few rules of thumb to follow in order to avoid injury. Notably for running since there is so much impact and stress on the body is to avoid increasing the total distance or duration by more than 10% per week.  That’s why the extra run in example 1 is only 1 mile long. It may not seem like much, but for our sample athlete, 1 mile represents slightly more than 10% of her current weekly mileage (9 miles per week/mpw).

When increasing intensity, however, it becomes much more difficult to measure how much of an increased stress the athlete undergoes. The time (duration/distance) of the workout has stayed the same, but the intensity has increased.  How much to increase intensity from week to week is difficult to account for and it obviously depends on how intense the added work was.  In this case, 10% of the athlete’s weekly mileage is being done at a slightly harder intensity. While 10% of high intensity work per week is high for someone doing a lot of mileage, in our 9 mpw Suzie Runner example, she has to start somewhere. If she finds that she is noticeable fatigued the next day, or if during the effort she feels far more tired than she expected, she can simply make the effort ½ mile (5 minutes) instead of a mile. The following week, she can try that same effort level again, or
incrase it by 5 -10 minutes and see how she feels.

In this way, building fitness requires that the athlete monitors her progress and how she feels from day to day and from workout to workout…making a training long vital.

Chew on that information for awhile and let me know if you have questions. Like I said, this may be basic review for some people, but new to others..  Stay tuned.

Coach Suzanne

Hey Team,

The local fall rites of passage – the Dirty Dozen and the Punk Bike Enduro – represent a definite END to nearly everyone’s 2009 training season, and the beginning of the fantastic year to come.  There are only 360 days until next year’s Dirty Dozen, But more importantly, only  four full months until the first Mingo race, so let’s get started training now!

If you have not recently done a field threshold test, plan to do one in the next 1-2 weeks.

Testing  is important for 2 major  reasons.

Reason #1:  To establish your training zones. Training intensity is one of the 3 components of training that you can manipulate to improve your overall fitness (the other two are frequency and duration).  Just as you wouldn’t  haphazardly start out on a ride not have a plan for how long you’ll ride that day, you don’t want to haphazardly guess at what intensity level you are training at. You should have a progressive plan that specifies how hard (how intense, what HR or power zones) your training rides will be, whether steady efforts or intervals.

Field testing is the best way to establish your CURRENT training zones.  This is especially important for those of you with power meters. Your fitness has likely changed since the last time you did a field threshold test.

Reason #2:  To monitor progress. Suppose you train all winter long then go out and do a field test in the spring to see if you are “ready” for spring training races… should you be pleased or disappointed with your results? You won’t know unless you have a baseline or series of tests to compare to.

Test yourself NOW at the beginning of your 2010 season, so that you have a measure of progress as the season goes along.

How often should you test?

I recommend testing a minimum of 4 weeks apart and a maximum of 8 weeks apart to monitor both items above.  Write down your planned testing weeks in your training log (do you have a training log???)  It’s OK if you are off by a week on either side, the important part is to just git ‘r done!

How do I do the test?

Here is a link on my website describing the testing protocol whether training by HR or by Power.   Remember that it’s vital that you not only capture the HR and power data for the test portion, but also the distance traveled for the test.  For HR monitor users, the only way you will know if you are making progress is to compare the distance covered under similar circumstances (wheather, wind, rested state, hydration, etc).

I will post the spreadsheet I use for calculating both HR and Power zones on the google groups site.

Email me with any questions!

Suzanne

Coach Suzanne

“Fortunate, indeed, is the man who takes exactly the right measure of himself…”

- Perter Mere Latham

Hey Team,

I hope you found the information I shared on strength training helpful. Please give me feedback, otherwise I won’t know what sort of information will help you best with your training!

Evaluate this past year of training and racing

This email is about taking stock of your past year of cycling in order to plan the upcoming season.  Without a firm idea of your strengths and weaknesses, it is impossible to plan a training schedule that will help you improve. And without knowing what your goals are, you will never know if you are on the right track or how to get there.

Most of the times you’ll read that you need to identify your strengths and weaknesses. This can be really hard. A sneaky way to identify those things is instead to ask yourself,

• What did I enjoy most about the season?
• What did I like  about the season?
• Do these things match up with my strengths and weaknesses?

Finally look at areas where you felt you improved.  Can you correlate that with the type of training you were doing surrounding that time?  (Do you keep a training log so that you can review this stuff???)

Think about where you want to go next season

Once you’ve done that, you need to think about what you want to accomplish next season.  Think about this as specifically as you can. Specific races, specific course goals, specific times, specific turns on specific courses.  Try not to frame this in terms of someone else’s performance.

An example of combining all these questions may be:

• What did I dislike? The twisty course at that one criterium where Susie from Philadelphia rode away from me and I never caught her again.
• What did I like? Every sprint that I was in…because I usually win or place in the field sprint!

How do these match up with stregths and weaknesses? In this case, it sounds like cornering is a weakness and sprinting is a strength. Creating season goals for next year is pretty easy once you’ve identified these things.

Create goals that are specific, measurable and achievable

For example, a great goal would be, “I want to improve my cornering ability on the XYZ criterium so that I can stay at the front of the pack and compete in the sprint finish instead of wasting energy getting dropped and reaccelerating on each turn.”  Now get even more specific.  How much do you want to improve your corning? What speeds were you taking the turns at? What gears were you coming out of the turn in?  how much faster do you think you can go? Is there a place nearby that can simulate this set of corners?

Here’s how to implement this specific goal. Go out to a parking lot or park with little to no traffic. Set up a course that mimics the race…turns with the proper radius, a long straightaway to build up speed into the turn, etc.   Have someone time you through the set of turns, or on a representative “lap” of a simulate course. As you practice your cornering skills and accelerations out of the turn, keep timing yourself on that same set of turns. TIme yourself at the beginning and end of the practice session as well as at the begiinning and end of a 4 week block of a cornering focused training block.

If you can’t measure your progress you can’t manage it!  By setting a very specific goal, “I want to take the turns at XYZ without slowing down before the turn and accelerate out of it in my 53/18 gear at a cadence of 90″.  Notice how specific this is, rather than just saying, “I want to finish top 3 at XYZ race”.  With the latter as your “goal” (I want to podium), you have no focus on how to train and how to improve. By identifying specific features and working on them, you are guaranteed to see improvement.

This obviously applies to fitness based goals and not just skills based goals, but both are vital for success and enjoyment of your racing season.

Your Homework:

Take an exact measure of yourself.  Ask yourself these questions:

• What did I enjoy most about last season?
• What did I enjoy least?
• Does this correlate to my strengths and weaknesses?

Now brainstorm a list of goals for next year. Make this list as specific as possible, and focused only on what YOU can control and achieve, not based on someone else’s performance.

Examples:

• I want to improve my 10 mile TT by 2 mph by the beginning of June.
• I want to improve my 20 minute lactate threshold field test by 3 minutes compared to last years test at the same time.
• I want to improve my threshold wattage by 10% compared to last year by the first Mingo Race.
• I want to not get dropped on the last hill of Mingo during the last lap of the race.  (Look at your HRM log or powerfile log for last year’s race, identify the laps, identify the watts and/or speed for each lap. Create some training simulations to mimic that effort and progressively work towards the goal).

Everybody now put your brian to work! You cant plan a season’s training, even with 7 months till Mingo, until you know what your goals are, what your weaknesses are, how to address them and create a plan to do so.

Please feel free to email me if you want to discuss these things in private or over email. I want to help everyone this season have their best season yet.

-Coach

Some of us are deep into our “off-season” and wondering what the best type of physical activity is for this time of year.  In general, if your main objective is to be a faster cyclist next season, you’ll definitely want to stay on your bike throughout most of the winter months.  (We will cover this in a future topic.)

What I want to address with this post is the topic of cross-training in the form of strength training. Strength training for cyclists is a topic that has been studied and debated quite extensively. If you want to understand WHY strength training does or does not help your cycling, it’s important to understand the energy systems involved in both disciplines.  If you could care less “why” and just want to know “what”, then just pay attention to this email.  (Because I said so)

Strength Training does NOT:
-Make you a faster cyclist
-Make you a faster runner
-Make you a faster swimmer

Period.  (But there are always exceptions, including  plyometrics which I’ll discuss in a future training post.)

Numerous scientific studies have been done on this topic and the majority of studies show no benefit to cycling, running and swimming ability and speed as a result of strength training. In the studies that DO show a benefit, that benefit is seen in relatively untrained individuals.  The theory behind that benefit is that in untrained individuals, ANY type of training is going to improve their performance in just about anything type of athletic effort.

Strength training DOES:
-improve bone density
-provide joint support when surrounding muscles are exercised
-possibly prevent injury
-aid in rehab from injury
-recruit motor units that may help translate into aerobic performace (**)

(**) My conjecture based on personal experience…more below

Most importantly at the top of the list is BONE DENSITY.  Bone density in cyclists is an extremely important health topic for both men and women alike.  I think most of us would agree that part of the reason we cycle is because it is a healthy way to spend leisure time.  What many cyclists don’t appreciate is that cycling as a primary form of exercise may actually promote osteopenia and osteoporosis (low bone density) in both men and  women.  A recent study suggested that even young men in their 20s who are competitive cyclists suffered from low bone density.

During puberty especially, bone growth occurs due to stimulus from the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen.  Testosterone is a much more powerful stiumulant than estrogen and is one of the reason men generally do not have problems with bone mass. As you get older, and especially after menopause, your body’s ability to create new bone slows down significantly, fractures become more common and healing time is prolonged.   If cycling is your primary means of exercise than you are accelerating this particular component of aging.  Can you imagine a healthy 25 year old man having the bones of a 60 year old woman?  In cycling it can happen.

If for no other reason than improving bone mass, strength training is an excellent off-season activity for cyclists.  Just  know that while you are strength training, you are probably NOT making yourself faster…but you are working on all the other benefits provided by strength training.  Other ways of stimulating bone growth include running and even jumping rope.

I highly recommend that all team members engage in one of these forms of bone mass improvement and maintanence during the off season: Strength Training, Running/Jogging, Jumping Rope.  I’m sure other things like kickboxing, aerobics, zumba, etc also have similar benefits for bones.

So what do I recommend in terms of strength training?
First of all, if you  like it, do it.  It won’t hurt your cycling unless it takes time away from that which you could be spending on your bike.
Second, I recommend using dumbbells and body weight over machine type exercises.  Machines lock you into a rigid range of motion and even the best designed machines cannot accomidate people of all sizes (like me with short arms & legs)

For the upper body I do:
-pullups
-pushups
-dips
-shoulder exercises (rows, raises, shoulder press)

For the lower body:
-squats (single & double leg)
-lunges (tons of variations of these)
-plyometrics
-deadlifts (single & double leg)

All of these exercises have numerous variations that can be performed with minimal equipment, including chairs, door sills and edges, towels even paper plates for sliding pushups!

A few dumbells may also help add a bit of resistance and variety, but you certainly don’t need an entire gym.  Ladies may want 5-10 lb dumbells and the men may want 15-20 lb dumbells.  (I have a whole set from 1 lb to 25 lbs in my fitness room upstairs)

Feel free to email me with any questions about this topic, as well as other topics you’d like to hear more about!

-Suzanne

PS  A quick note from personal experiences.

Everyone will have areas of strength and weakness in their body based on body type, skeletal structure, postural habits and side effects from what we spend most of our time doing (sitting at a computer vs. lifting concrete blocks all day vs. standing on your feet serving lunch to kids).  My body tends to “release” my posterior chain muscles from active use unless I am actively working on them…my gluts and hamstrings are relatively weak compared to other muscle groups. When I spend time strength training, I focus primarily on exercises that work these muscle groups…lunges, deadlifts, plyometrics, etc.  I tend to avoid doing these because they are hard and it hurts! But every time I’ve gone through a cycle of 2-3 weeks of doing these 1-2 week, I have noticed a huge surge in my power output and a sensation of reduced effort on the bike.

I’m not going to say that MY body is the one that defies scientific evidence and that the strength training made me a faster cyclist…however I may fit into the category of those particular muscle groups being relatively untrained…even when I’m on my bike regularly, if I neglect focus on this area, my body forgets how to engage these muscles maximally. It could be that by doing the exercises I’m simply strengthing those motor/neuron connections between my gluts and my brain and teaching them how to fire.

So you may have a similar area of personal weakness to be explored and I encourage you to use this time to do so.

Check out a good article about the positive, stress-reducing effects of cycling from bikeradar.com.

Health: Cycle away from stress

Hey team,  a quick note about how to repeat your former success in cycling performance.

On one hand, there were a handful of people this weekend who felt dull, flat, tired, fatigued, etc during their racing.  On the other hand I have a few athletes who have said to me, “I felt great for X weekend and I want to do that again for Y race in 2 weeks.”

So how can you figure out why you felt flat for one race or weekend, yet felt great on another?   Check your training diary!

You are keeping a training diary, aren’t you?  By reviewing the workouts and recovery you had prior to an amazing performance, you can look for common elements that helped you feel great on that day. Perhaps it was a combination of workouts you did 2-3 weeks before that you felt were particularly helpful, or perhaps it was your total training volume or maybe you had a great massage 3 days before the event, etc, etc.

Perhaps you feel like you peaked too early in the season…and by looking back you can see that the 4 hour rides you were doing on January 1st led to some mental burnout that you never recovered from… If you have a training diary that is kept up to date, you have all of this valuable information at your fingertips so that you can attempt to repeat great builds and tapers and “off -seasons” that lead to great performances.
It may be close to the end of road racing season, but cross season and mountain biking races are yet to come.  It’s not too late to start keeping a training log. Your log can be as simple or as complex as you like.

My first training log was a weekly Nike planner that had motivational sayings all through it.  Then I progressed to an online training log at the website beginnertriathlete.com I logged every single workout that I did from my 2nd year in residency up until last fall (I admit, I finally got tired of it…but I also wasn’t training for anything in particular when I stopped updating it).

But I can look back on my training and see exactly what I did to prepare for my swim from Alcatraz (I felt great!), my best ever 5k run time, and most recently, my 25% improvement across all power levels when I put myself on my own training plan this past May.

If you are not already keeping a training diary, please start today!  It can be paper or electronic: an excel spreadsheet, a word document, a blogger or wordpress blog … all of those are free. Other free options are an account at beginnertriathlete.com. The great thing about their training logs is that it is pre-setup for mutliple workout activities, swim and bike of course, but also many others…strength training, etc.
You can also check out workoutlog.com, trainingpeaks.com and addaero.com for other commercial training log options (Training peaks does have a free option).
Of all of them, my favorite by far is the one at beginnertriathlete.com.
If you make an account there, I post on the forums by the name AdventureBear.  And if you ever have questions or want me to review your training, it’s easy for me to add you to my buddies list and take a look at your logs and workouts.

What kind of information should you log?
The basics are:

• Date
• Activity (run,bike,swim, strength, yoga, etc)
• Workout (specific intervals, hills, duration of intervals, # sets, type of riding)
• Duration of workout in TIME, then in Miles if you choose.  Why Time first?  It’s a vital element of future planning…how much time do you have available to workout?  How much time did you spend training in the past? Was it effective or not? Do you need to improve the quality of your workouts so you can decrease the duration and still benefit? etc…)

Notes about the workout…keep it short and simple.”I felt great”, “Did all the intervals”, “sore from yesterday’s run, but finished and felt better as the ride went on,” etc.
Now go forth and document!!

-Coach

Well the vast majority of you didn’t want to take time off and instead wanted some killer workouts for July & August.  First I review the threshold testing and HR Zones so that we are speaking the same language. Then I list a few good workouts to add into your mix once or twice a week.

If you don’t have a good idea of your current threshold, you may want to take an opportunity to retest with a 20 minute all out test, following a good warmup.

What’s a good warmup?  Here’s an example. Experiment and use the same warmup each time.
10 minutes easy pedaling
30 seconds fast pedal (easy gearing, pedal as fast as you can until you begin to bounce in the saddle, then back off of bit)
2 minutes easy recovery
30 seconds fast pedal
2 minutes recovery

Then start your  20 minute threshold test and record the distance covered as well as  your avg heart rate for the 20 minute test. Your threshold heart rate (LTR) is roughly 95% of your 20 minute avg. HR.

Calculate your zones as follows:
Zone 1 (Recovery) 0-68% of THR
Zone 2 (Endurance) 69-83% THR
Zone 3 (Tempo) 84-94% THR
Zone 4 (Threshold) 95-105% THR
Zone 5 (VO2) 106% THR up to sustainable effort of 5 minutes

Here are the July workouts to consider adding to the mix.  I would choose one of these to do once a week, separated by at least a day from your racing days.

Criss-Cross Workouts, also known as “Over Unders”
There are a variety of ways to do these workouts as far as the duration of time you spend over and under your threshold. The idea is th do sustained work at or above thresold to traing yoru body to recover from suprathreshold workouts (like bridges or attacks) as well as learning to ride at your threshold for longer periods of time.
Do 2 x 20 minute efforts…minimum HR during these efforts is 91% of THR
every 2 minutes pop up to 105% of THR or your VO2 effort.  It will take 30 seconds for your HR to reach the VO2 level, so don’t overshoot. These are not sprints, just harder efforts above threshold. Recover back to 91-95% of THR, but nothing lower than 91%.
Rest 5 minutes between efforts
Finish with 2 VO2 efforts of 5 minutes each (106% THR) with 5 minutes rest inbetwen
Cool down well, 10 minutes easy spinning minimum.

Anaerobic Capacity Workouts
Warmup: 15 minutes
Main Set:  6 x 2 min at 106-110% THR all out with 1 min rest
5 min easy
6 x 1 minute close to all out efforts, 2 min rest
5 min easy
finish 6 x 30 sec all out w/ 1 min rest
Cooldown 15 min easy spinning

The 2 minute efforts will be slightly less than the all out effort you can sustain for 2 minutes. The idea is to tap into your anaerobic energy stores without totally blowing yourself out so that you can complete all 6 intervals. 1 minute efforts are slightly harder than that…again, not quite your all out effort for the duration but close. The 30 second efforts are all out.

Sweet Spot
Sweet spot is training at high Tempo low threshold zones. This zone gives you the biggest bang for your buck in terms of increasing your threshold.  You get solid aerobic training without requiring as much recovery as threshold efforts of the same duration would require.
Warmup 15 minutes
2-3 x 20 min at 91-95% THR, right in sweet spot. Rest for 5 min btwn each
Finish with 20-45 min of solid tempo (Zone 3) but not hard.
CD: 15 min.

Enjoy, let me know how they go!

-Coach

I recently attended a coaching webinar by Hunter Allen, the guy who literally “wrote the book” on training with Power. He also coaches several olympic athletes and a handful of tour riders. We talked about taking a mid summer break from racing/training & biking if it is appropriate.

How do you know if you should take a break?   If any of the following apply to you, consider taking 2 weeks off the bike and doing cross training activities instead:

• -You are inexplicably fatigued
• You dread getting on your bike
• Your legs feel dead all the time
• You are stagnant in showing any improvement on the bike
• You are getting sick easily, or healing slowly from minor  scratches or injuries

If any of the above apply….get off the bike!  Don’t just take a week off of racing, but take a week or two totally off the bike.  Don’t worry about  losing fitness during that time…if you are hating working out, stagnant in  your progress or just feel bad all the time, then you are far better off stepping back for a bit.

This doesn’t mean not working out at all.  Consider these options:
-running, hashing, kayaking, swimming, tennis, basketball, yoga, martial arts, weight lifting…and the list goes on…

We talked a few weeks ago about bone mass and calcium loss in cyclists, even healthly men in  their 20s.   A 2 week break is the perfect time to shake things up and stimulate bone growth by doing weight bearing activities.

One of the cool ways you can use this 2 week break to kick start your cycling when you return is to do a 2 week weight room routine for the purpose of stimulating anabolic growth in your muscles (as well as your bones).  Even though this weight lifting is not specific to cycling activity, stimulating muscle growth in general can help wake up your body to respond well when you return to training.  When you come back to cycle training after the 2 week break, Hitting it hard with Anerobic and Power workouts can take advantage of this muscle growth and transition you back into cycling without feeling like you’ve lost much time.  Yet you should feel fresher and stronger when you come back.

Let me know what your thoughts are about that.

I can send you more info about what stuff to do in the weight room (or body weight based strenght training), what type of workouts to hit when you return.

If you don’t feel that you need a break off the bike…i.e. you are feeling strong, showing continued improvement, feeling great on the bike, feeling energetic off the bike…then I’ve got more info for you guys as well…some late Summer workouts to kick things up a notch.

-Coach Suzanne