|
 |
Intermediate Bike Training News |  |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greetings, It has been a while since I put out a normal newsletter. Things have really been busy with the Nike 10//2 training, CompuTrainer assessments, and Road Ride assessments. It seems everyone got excited about cycling after the Elephant Rock and are worried about being ready for the Triple Bypass or Ride the Rockies. Ideally, you would start worrying about these events at the start of our training season (Oct 1st) or with your New Year's Resolution. However, there is still time to prepare depending upon how you plan to ride the courses. You just need to get out and ride consistently each week. Most of us don't have unlimited bank accounts. So we try to learn as many things on our own as we can. Each year I take a couple of golf lessons with a pro. No matter how many times I've done this I'm still amazed at how many things I miss when trying to train myself and how many of those things a pro corrects in an hour. I've seen this with the cyclists I train and when my training partner trains me. So consider trying a CompuTrainer or Road Ride session with me once or twice a year to break through your performance plateaus.  Rick Russon
We are smack-dab in the middle of the cycling season. Our training program follows the same phases of endurance foundation, cardio development, lactate threshold, power, and speed training. Your results will just depend upon whether you try to do this over six months or six days. I still see cyclists, who are starting after ski season, trying to keep up with those of us who train year-round. No matter what your mind or ego wants to do your body has a specific way of adapting to exercise stress. The key to performance for the way we ride is to focus on endurance training at the FA/CHO crossover point (take the physiology seminar). Even if you have been riding but take a few weeks off due to work or other distractions you need to go back to the basics for a week or two before you start hammering out speed intervals and power climbs. Those stubborn mitochondria have no sense of urgency and develop at their own pace (approx 2 weeks - take the physiology seminar). These are the little guys/gals in your muscle cells that turn glucose into ATP to run the muscle fibers. So focus on endurance - the speed will come.
For you newbies, Nike is providing free training to the public to prepare them for the LIVESTRONG Challenge on August 20th to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. This training is free to the public whether you intend to do the actual event or not. The training will last for nine more weeks. The starting location is out of the southeast corner of Sloan's Lake Park (17th & Meade). Tuesday evening rides start at 6:30pm and last about 1 - 1 1/2 hours. Saturday morning rides start at 9:00am. The weekend rides are designed to move your endurance from 20 miles out to 60 miles. There is a trainer who rides in the middle of the group and a sweep at the end to make sure nobody gets dropped. I ride back and forth in the main pack to provide coaching pointers. The past three rides have been fun and the pack is running around 12-18 people. Please come out to support Nike and LAF so they will do this program again next year.
It is going to be a hot season. Hard to believe it is not officially summer yet and we are hitting 90 degree days. STAY HYDRATED!!! It is very hard to recover once you get behind. You should be trying to drink 1 1/2 - 2 bottles per hour in this heat. We normally carry one sport drink bottle and one plain water bottle. DO NOT go for a hard ride then chug a bunch of plain water when you get back. That can lead to a potentially fatal condition called hyponatremia where you dilute your blood electrolytes down too much. Always recover with a sports drink. Also, for those of you who get a lot of gunk caking on your skin you might want to add a 1/4 tsp of salt to your sport drink for an extra 500 mg of sodium. Or eat salty foods at rest stops.
I know I sound like a broken record but no new papers added to the site. Is anyone out there a good editor. I have a lot of raw information, another person who can research topics, but no time to write and organize the papers. E-mail me if you could help a little.
For the newbies - we are not trying to compete with REI or Performance Bike. These are some special items that I feel offer excellent value/performance for the price. Checkout the glucosamine if you are over 40 and want to keep your knees in good shape. This is a pharmaceutical liquid that is more effective than the pills you find in the grocery store.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
