EJ is organizing a team ride this Sunday out of North Park, Stone Field Parking Lot, 11AM. Come join in for a 3+ hour spin! Time to take the road bike off the trainer, layer up, and hit the roads!

Predicted High: 40 degrees F

This just in: It’s that time of year!  Time for the 2nd Annual Pro Bikes Winter BLOWOUT SALE!!!

For 5 DAYS, ALL LOCATIONS, Pro Bikes will be rollin’ out the best deals on great bikes AND great gear!!! Great bikes and gear from Specialized ,Cannondale, Giant, Bianchi, Haro, Blue, Masi, Mavic, Sram, and Shimano.  You name it, they’ve got it!!

Up to 40% off all remaining in-stock 2008 model bikes!

Up to 25% off all remaining in-stock 2009 model bikes!

35% off ALL in-stock clothing!

25% off all in-stock parts and accessories!

We even have deals for 2010 models!!  Check it out!!

Buy an in-stock 2010 model bike up to $500 and get $75 in FREE GEAR!

Buy an in-stock 2010 model bike $501-1000 and get $125 in FREE GEAR!

Buy an in-stock 2010 model bike $1001-2000 and get $200 in FREE GEAR!

Buy an in-stock 2010 model bike $2001-3500 and get $300 in FREE GEAR!

Buy an in-stock 2010 model bike over $3501 and get $500 in FREE GEAR!

Need clothing helmets, parts, accessories?  Buy your new 2010 ride and get it for FREE!!

25% off All Professional bicycle fittings!

10% off ALL special orders!

Don’t Pass this up!  Get yourself ready for the warm weather comin’ our way!  Spring is here, be ready!!  Pro Bikes does not run this kind of sale that often, so take advantage of the savings!!

Need to see if they have what you need in stock?  Feel free to call any of our 3 convenient locations and check before you come in.  Our friendly and knowledgeable staff will be on hand to answer all your questions!

Thank you, and hope to see you soon at Pro Bikes!

http://www.probikesllc.com

412-586-5497- Squirrel Hill Location

412-851-1109- South Hills Location

412-229-8473- Monroeville Location

Such plans have included finalizing the recruitment of exciting new sponsors to add to our list of fantastic loyal supporters, pooling our team creativity into the design of a new team jersey to be unveiled this season, and planning camps and races for the upcoming season.

In a new twist to pre-season training this year, the women’s teams has been planning a training camp weekend in Mathias, WV.  The women are finalizing plans to head to Lost River Barn for a long weekend of riding, bicycle immersion, and a fun time! You can read about Raw Talent Ranch at the Lost River Barn at this GamJams article.

The race calendar is shaping up, details start to be filled in, one thing we all know is that 2010 will be a fabulously fun season! Happy riding, folks!

After a ride on a sunny day in January!

We welcome our 2010 Sponsors:

Steel City Endurance, LTD

Tuscano Agency

Pro Bikes

Padgett

Square Cafe

Feldstein, Grinberg, Stein & McKee

Bruce Construction LLC

Turner’s Dairy

Allegro Hearth Bakery

Gluuteny

53×11 Coffee

Coach Suzanne Atkinson is going to be speaking at two local bike shops THIS WEEK! Come listen as she brings you training information you can use and put into practice to help you become a better, faster, more powerful athlete.

Summaries of her upcoming talks:

February 3rd, Trek of Pittsburgh, 7pm

Topic: Practical Applications of Threshold and VO2 max training
Description: In this follow lecture I will recap the fuel that makes your muscles work, and how to maximize your performance by training your body the right way. I will discuss practical interval workouts including “tempo”, “threshold”, and “Vo2″ training, why it works and when to do them.

February 5th, ProBikes, 7pm

Topic: Take it to the Next Level: 5 Ways to Become a Better Cyclist

Description: Whether you consider yourself a novice cyclist, a commuter, an novice triathlete or an experienced racer, I will discuss a variety of ways you can become a better cyclist. There will be something for everyone in this talk.

Hope to see you there!

January 22, 2010

Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe

Steel City teammates enjoyed a fun Friday night at Black and Gold Sprints. First off, thanks to our friends at Iron City Bikes and Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe for hosting a really fun event on Friday, January 22. Black and Gold Sprints, where roadies and hipsters meet, and everyone races, mano a mano, on stationary bikes on rollers. People drink beer, race bikes, place raffle bets on the red bike rider vs the blue bike rider, as riders whittle their way down through the bracket. What fun!

Bikes, beers, and friends – what could be a better combination?

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!!!

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

Women’s Team

• Anne-Marie Alderson
• Suzanne Atkinson (coach)
• Kate Bennett
• Carol Franko
• Patricia George
• Barbara Grabowski
• Lauren Knezovich
• Pam Milavec
• Stacie Truszkowski
• Rachel Weaver

Men’s Team

• Aaron Bennett
• Greg Flood
• EJ Hubstenberger III
• Jim Mock
• Mike Quigley
• Doug Reigner
• Evan Soupie Robinson
• Aaron Shelmire
• Benjamin Stephens
• Dustin Wehler

Now that the racing season is over, and we are officially in off-season mode, Steel City team members are looking forward to 2010. And with the new season, we welcome several new members to our team!  Welcome Aaron, Soupie, Greg, and Mike! We look forward to riding and racing with you this next year!

Carp boots (before the first bike race)

When you think of Rachel Weaver, you think bike racer, bold sprinter, one of the fastest women on two wheels around Pittsburgh, but if you know Rachel, you also think of cyclocross!!! Last year, at the end of her first road racing season, Rachel got a cyclocross bike, and was one of the first SCE women to race cross, with Coach Suzanne. She raced 3 races that year, enough to whet her appetite and make her hunger for more. So this season, Rachel was an absolute madwoman about cyclocross, and it showed. She excelled technically, and raced at least 3 times as many cyclocross races this season as the last. She and Coach Suzanne were also ‘cross missionaries, bringing many of the team into the fold, and teaching some of the rest of us how to choose the lines, shoulder carry a bike up stairs, and just have fun in the Fall on the bike in the mud! It is only fitting that the last cyclocross race report comes from Rachel, wearer of the carp boots, SCE queen of cyclocross.

Check out Rachel’s race report, and take a look at the cold and snowy course! Racing in December!

Capital ‘Cross Classic

Reston, VA

December 6, 2009

by Rachel Weaver

The Capital ‘Cross Classic in Reston, VA on December 6 was my last ‘cross race of the season.  I had done the race last year so I was looking forward to trying it again to see if I could do better.

I headed down on Saturday with Chris Mayhew (JBV Coaching), Steevo Cummings (IRMC) and Eric Lundgren (Iron City Bikes).

The drive down brought us through some rough weather.  Snow and some icy roads made for a long drive but we arrived in one piece.  I had only been paying attention to the race-day weather and didn’t know that there was going to be about 4 inches of snow to greet us on Sunday morning.

We arrived at the race venue about 8:00 am and there was snow and ice everywhere.  Race organizers were dropping sand on a stretch of pavement that ran over Lake Fairfax to try to provide some traction for the first race at 9:00.

Chris and I walked a bit of the course to try and see where any tricky spots were and the best lines to take.  It was still below freezing so none of the snow had melted so we knew that conditions were going to be dramatically different once the temperature got above freezing.

I did not want to pre-ride the course as there were rivers of water from the melting snow and ice pouring onto the course.  There was a combination of thick mud and watery mud on the course.

My race started at 1:30 and the referee started us at the same time as the Cat 1,2,3 women.  I got a decent start but went down unexpectedly on an off-camber section about 2-3 minutes into the race.  I got up quickly, but several women were able to get by me.  I kept a steady pace as best I could.  There was so much mud, it was difficult to remain upright at times.  There was a muddy, hilly section that I had hoped to ride but I was not able to get too far up the hill until I had to dismount.  I stumbled a bit with the dismount and a few other ladies were able to get around me.  I was able to maintain an effort that I felt was “just hard enough”.  Another girl and I battled back and forth for the entire race.  She was able to beat me on the run-ups but she was a little more cautious on some of the more technical sections and I was able to pass her.  It was only her and I together so I wanted to stay close.  By the third and final lap, she had fallen a few times and I was able to stay in front of her for good.

I didn’t expect too much for this race as I pretty much stopped riding my bike since daylight savings time ended.  I noticed my fitness had dropped dramatically so I just wanted to do my best and have fun.

I had a great time as usual and I can’t wait for next season!