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Intermediate Bike Training News |  |
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Greetings, Congratulations to all of the participants who rode the LIVESTRONG Challenge. Let's thank those who took the time to raise money for, and those who donated to, the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Many members of the Nike 10//2 group completed the 100 mile course, that had almost 9000 feet of climbing, with only 10 weeks of training. Some had only done one or two training rides with us. They told me that what they learned from the newsletter and one ride was enough to get them through the event without going into "survival mode." Serious cycling is more than just hopping on the bike and riding. Yet it doesn't have to become another job. Well meaning friends and magazine articles will talk about interval training, tempo riding, and other techniques. However, these little tidbits of information may be useless, or even harmful, because they don't take into account the "Big Picture." The Midlife Cycling program is not just about riding a bike. It is about using cycling as a tool to build a healthy and active lifestyle so that you can enjoy other sports, tasty cuisine, adventurous vacations, and just have more energy for everyday life. When I make a recommendation I take into account your fitness level, athletic experience, medical conditions, motivation, time available to train, and much more. One size of training does not fit all... Mastery of any subject requires intense study and practice of the fundamentals. For cycling, that is building an endurance foundation and managing nutrition and hydration. The typical recreational cyclist needs to "master" putting in 150-200 miles of riding per week during the middle of our season. Without this base, intervals will be of limited benefit to most because you can't do them very intensely and will struggle to recover between each one. I have cyclists who keep searching for training shortcuts. They will sign up or buy materials from Chris Carmichael's company. But I point out that it was Chris who pioneered the concept of building a solid aerobic foundation. That's why Lance and the other pro riders will have 20,000 miles of base riding in before they even hit training camp. So forget the shortcuts - there aren't any. Your immediate goal is to get more riding in. As for finding the time I'll leave you with a great quote I ran across a while back: "In the first half of life people spend their health to get money. In the second half of life they spend their money to get their health back." A sobering reality is that in the last five years of life many people will spend on medical care all of the wealth they have spent a lifetime accumulating. Live hard and work hard but also learn to play hard. Have a great week.  Rick Russon
The following is my personal ride schedule for the remainder of the season:
Aug 27 - Northglenn-Prospect Valley Century (106 mi
flat) After this we will start pulling our mileage back. ACTIVE RECOVERY: a day after the LIVESTRONG Challenge ride I told my athletes that their ride was not over yet. The actual physical act of pedaling is only part of the "ride." You should start preparing a couple days before an event by hydrating constantly, eating good meals, and getting caught up on your sleep. After the event, it is tempting to just sit around on the couch the next day but that is the worse thing you can do. When you wake up the day after a hard ride you will experience the Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness (DOMS). Lactic Acid was once thought to be the cause but further study has shown it to be due to the muscles adding new fibrils to repair the micro- tear damage. This process causes the muscle cells to swell which puts pressure on the nerves thus causing the pain. It usually subsides within 72 hours. You are probably thinking "Nice theory but who gives a crap. How do I stop the excruciating pain and learn to walk again?" Step 1: when in doubt hydrate. Your body uses a lot of water and most of us are in a perpetual state of dehydration. Step 2: don't skip meals. Normal meals should give us enough protein but we have found that going to 50% protein seems to speed tissue repair. Yet another study I have to do. Vitamin E is supposed to help but I haven't noticed any difference. Step 3: get out and ride. If you have access to an indoor bike then pedal with minimal resistance. Just turn your legs over at a comfortable pace. If on the road then find the flattest area possible and ride comfortably. You only need 30-45 minutes out there to loosen up the legs. Step 4: start training again after 3-4 days. Start ramping up ride time and intensity slowly.
After talking with numerous people I have decided not to do the core fitness clinics this year. Many of our members ski on the weekend. And, we have a growing list of cyclists from out of state following the program. So I need a long-term solution that works for everyone. The progression from Core Fitness & Stretching, to Advanced Core Fitness, to Calisthenics & Plyometrics works. The clinics were one-time sessions designed to teach you how to do the exercises properly in your home, health club, or when traveling. The October 1 start date was established specifically for Colorado to transition people into skiing. The solution will be that I'll produce four DVDs in the next few months. The fourth will be on Indoor Cycling to show you the proper way to do these classes if you are a real cyclist. I will also start maintaining a list of public fitness classes that are "cycling friendly."
As I've mentioned before, the type of cycling we do makes this a biochemical sport. Nutrition is the limiting factor in riding for most of us. Had a few people suffering on the Deer Creek Canyon climb during the LIVESTRONG Challenge. For just the segment up Deer Creek Canyon and then up High Grade I went through two 24 oz bottles of sport drink and four gels. I periodize my nutrition, not only over the training season, but even within a ride. If the segment is fast and flat I'll rely mainly on my sport drink. If the segment is a sustained climb or it is reaching 3 hours into the ride I'll switch over to a drink that contains protein like Perpetuem or eat a real food at a rest stop that contains protein. If the segment is a long, hard climb then I'll go back to Cytomax and shoot a gel every 30 minutes. As a general rule, what works for me is that I need something light and easy on my stomach if I'm going hard and/or fast. If I'm riding easy then I can take richer drinks and foods that have a higher caloric density. Everyone is different and nutrition changes depending upon terrain, temperature, etc. This week I'll be experimenting with Gu2O as the Cyctomax seems too sweet to me now.
The Midlife Cycling concept is really about Fitness, Food, and Travel. Most of us are not fanatical cyclists. We use cycling because it is the best, and most convenient, way to build and maintain a fitness base for skiing, golfing, traveling, or other activities. We also like cycling because we'd rather burn excess calories than diet. Most of our initial members share my interest in food and wine. Great news is that someone responded to my plea for an Event Planner. We'll be meeting over lunch (of course) today to determine what events would be of interest to our members. Stay tuned for some developments in this area. Final piece of the Midlife Cycling puzzle coming up: anyone know how to work through the various cycling vacation services? Most of them will put together a trip exclusively for our members if we do all the front-end work of signing up their minimum number of people, training everyone for the trip, getting bikes shipped over, and working with a travel agency to get our people over. This would be something nice to do for next spring/summer. Cycling and eating our way through the beautiful Italian or French countryside for a week or two is the ultimate Midlife Cycling goal.
I've had the pleasure of meeting and hearing Capt Al Haynes speak on several occasions. Capt Haynes was the pilot of the doomed United Airlines flight that crashed on landing in Soiux City, Iowa. His talk is on crew resource management. The failure of three hydraulic systems on the aircraft is something that was thought to be impossible. There was no emergency procedure for this scenario. However, Capt Haynes said that the first thing the cockpit crew did was to go through the emergency checklist anyway. There was a reason for this and it is also the reason why I would like you to order the "Getting Started" CD. Capt Haynes said that the reason they went through the checklist was so that the three pilots and flight engineer would be working from a common starting point. You see, each pilot has a different way that they fly airplanes. As cyclists, each of us have different experiences, backgrounds, and training environment that we are coming from. The purpose of the "Getting Started" CD is not to insult your intelligence with basic information. Rather it is to reinforce those fundamental riding concepts that the rest of the program is based on and give us all a common starting point to work from. For example, I see members both new and old who still have a bike that doesn't fit properly or is poorly maintained. Problems on the road are easily avoidable by going through our standard pre-ride check every time you ride - but you have to know what that is. I had an experience recently where one of our riders came to me with a bike problem. I isolated it to one of the pedals. She took it to the bike shop and it turned out to be a lose crank. If I had performed the standard pre-ride check on her bike I would have found the problem immediately. So even I get bit by a temporary lapse in discipline.
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