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Intermediate Bike Training News |  |
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Greetings, We are rapidly entering the middle of the cycling season. For those of you who have waited until the ski resorts closed you have a little catching up to do. That doesn't mean to go out and ride twice as hard as everyone else for twice as long. As I've mentioned before, the Midlife Cycling philosophy is to do the best you can with the time that you personally have for working out and riding. If you don't agree with that and have a major competitive streak then you need to give up skiing and plan to put 10,000 - 15,000 miles per year on the bike because that is what it will take to keep up with the elite riders in RMCC. Also, plan on doing the Brevet series of 200-600K (124-372 mile) rides to build endurance. That is why the top riders can blow through 100 miles at 25 mph. Hopefully, that last paragraph has convinced you to just relax on these rides and train. We are looking for steady improvement every year. It is not worth tearing your body down and risking injury by riding outside your fitness envelope.  Rick Russon
A great ride this weekend up through Golden Gate Canyon out of Golden. For those of you trying to choose between the short or long route, my opinion is that the short route is harder than the long route because you come back over the massive rollers you just climbed. Ride Schedule: the ride schedule that this newsletter links to is my personal schedule. It is a subset of the RMCC schedule. First change is that I don't go to the E243 and E255 rides unless they are a special event because I live in Littleton. Some of you who live north do a similar thing by not going to the Castle Rock/Larkspur rides. So I have included my alternate routes. I cannot make the Sunday rides due to my morning Church attendance. If you can ride the club rides then hook up with my training partner Dan Shields and he will help you through the ride. The RMCC schedule was designed for a specific Denver to Aspen event. It leans more towards the long ultra-cycling endurance riding. It is also designed for people who have been riding several years and put in a lot of volume during the year. For those people new to this training group it is better to do the big Saturday ride followed by a shorter, flatter, recovery ride. Also do some shorter after-work rides during the week. I don't recommend the constant climbing every weekend if this is your first year. At some point you need to ride on flatter ground at a faster tempo to train your nervous system to fire your legs faster. Finally, I am looking for a set group of people to ride with me on Sunday. I want a core group of 4-8 people who are committed to riding every Sunday at whatever time we decide on. Others will be free to ride along if they wish but it will be at whatever route and pace the core group is doing. These will be recovery rides but not beginner rides. We will basically be a team and spend most of our time in a Paceline. You will have to accept that the group will only be as fast as its slowest rider. However, I will be selecting riders who are similar. If there are enough people but slower or faster then you are welcome to start other groups and I will provide you with the training plan for that day.
I try to keep promotion of products and advocacy to a minimum and keep the focus on helping you become better cyclists. But, on occasion, there are topics that I believe serve a higher good and are worth mentioning. Brent's Place provides housing for children who have undergone Bone Marrow transplantation at the Children's Hospital. It is a cause I have promoted for several years. The Executive Director, Adele Gelfand, is an avid cyclists and a member of this training group along with her husband. At this moment they are in the middle of a cycling tour through the Kingdom of Bhutan which is just below Tibet. Brent's Place is holding a fundraiser called the Roadless Ride downtown at the Athletic Club at Denver Place. Basically, you pay $40 or $75 for a one-hour outdoor stationary cycling class. You get a goodie bag and the proceeds go to help cover the expenses of families who have children with cancer staying in Denver for treatment. You can pick most any hour throughout the day. I will be riding at 10 am. Go to the link for more information.
To summarize where we are at right now: - worry about portion size and not type of food (within reason) - eat 2 hours before a ride, one bottle of sport drink during the hour before the ride, and shoot a gel when you get to the parking lot. - at a minimum bring one bottle of sport drink and one bottle of plain water. Bring extra sport drink mix, pre-measured in baggies, to refill your bottle at stops. - start drinking 15 min into the ride and sip every 10- 15 minutes thereafter. We are trying to replace 300- 500 calories per hour. - as you get more experienced you can adjust your nutrition specifically for your body. - some of us change drinks depending upon type of ride. Cytomax - short and fast, Sustained Energy - longer but still quick, Perpetuem - endurance cycling over four hours at under 75% of max heart rate. - to dial in better than this you need to take my Physiology Seminar, to understand how your body uses food, and then the Nutrition Seminar. Schedule is TBD but e-mail if you have interest.
I'm busy and haven't added any new papers but newbies will benefit by reading about how to build an endurance base. Without a great base (best built over several years) you won't get the maximum benefit out of higher intensity training.
I'm happy to see people are using the store to join RMCC, download the free papers, and purchase a few items. But there may be some confusion about how this works. The problem is that I'm trying to integrate several services together and they aren't quite seamless. The store is a different program than the website than the newsletter service. If you are reading this newsletter you have mastered part one. Next, go to the store and create a profile. RMCC members get 20% off the sunglasses. There is a slight delay before you see this discount. When you create your profile I have to verify against the RMCC roster that you are a current member. Then I set your profile to the RMCC group. Because I do IT work during the day this may take several hours.
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