Shut up legs…

My dismal performance on Saturday can only be explained by the following failings

• I’m not overtraining enough
• I’m not spending enough money

So I’m going to increase the number of threshold and VO2max sessions that I attempt to perform – remember it’s not the finishing of each session that’s important, only the intention, the pain and the humiliating climb-down.

And I’ve got spending too.  I pulled the trigger on this Cycling Tips t-shirt, which despite the fact that it’s being shipped from Australia (!), is a mere £35 or thereabouts.

As you can see, success can only be just round the corner.

(and thanks to DaveC for the accurate diagnose of my race preparation flaws so far – let’s just hope it’s not too late!)

First Race of 2010, First DNF

Well, not quite the start to the 2010 season I was after!

PaulS kindly picked me up and drove me to the venue; Hog Hill.  Not the finest day weather-wise to be honest.  After the winter we’ve had the fact it wasn’t freezing bloody cold was some consolation but it was wet and windy.

We bumped into DaveC and ReubenE in the car park and it was a pleasure to meet up, get signed in and get changed.  That was roughly where the pleasure ended.

The last, and only, time I’ve raced at Hog Hill I breezed the ride.  I didn’t score any points, but I was very comfortable indeed with the pace.  Not today.  It was hard work.

The course was heavy with standing water and I had a wet arse and feet after 10 minutes of warming up. 

The race kicked off and I was expecting a few easy laps while I considered my strategy.  That did not happen.  The pace was pretty sharp from the outset, though by about the 4th or 5th lap I found myself at the front and kicking my own arse.  I spent a lap at the front which may or may not have done for me. 

The graph below shows my power output in yellow and my heart rate in red.  The dotted yellow shows my rough (+/- 15W) FTP (threshold power).

Even though the pace had settled down I was feeling pretty fatigued.  The race was split up, with a couple of breakaways, lots of stragglers inexplicably continuing to ride even after being lapped and a small peloton.

At about 45 minutes I slowed, waved on those behind me, and made my last ascent of the hill at the end of the lap.  Funny; but quitting always feels like a psychological rather than a physiological failure.  Either way it was pretty disheartening.

Luckily ReubenS had also quit so I had some company as I watched DaveC and PaulS battle on.  Both finished the race; PaulS even putting in a really good effort with a sprint to finish 12th; not bad at all as two breakaways hoovered up the first 10 spots.

The stats from the ride were quite interesting.

I spent a third of the race in L6 (anaerobic, that is > 363W) – that is unsustainable in theory I think and in practise it turned out this way. 

My peak power, or ‘best x minutes’ are as follows

I’m not sure if these figures are good, bad or indifferent. If I’d finished the race I’d be quite pleased with them :-).

Bradley Wiggins

I can’t be the only one that, every time Bradley Wiggins opens his mouth either physically or twitterally, finds themselves liking him a little less.  He started with a good deal of kudos in the credit bank but I’m afraid he’s now comfortably into overdraft.

From this evening…

At least at the end of last year he had the excuse that he was permanently pissed.  But now the season has started we have to draw the conclusion that, without the alcoholic alibi, that he’s a complete arsehole.

Which is a great shame as he’s a decent athlete.

Shut Up Legs

I’d really, really like one of these…  The t-shirt of course, not the handsome chap.

Available here if anyone’s prepared to pay the international shipping from Australia.  Check the video of Jens Voigt too; brilliant.

Contador

Wins the Tour of the Algarve.  Great rider no doubt.

But his ‘pistol’ celebration has to stop.  It really must.

Rapha Gear Spring/Summer 2010

Rapha show off some of their new gear for this year.

Never mind the expensive clothes though; what bike are they showing off :-).

Musing on training

Whilst out with ReubenE yesterday for a very enjoyable and vigorous ride we got to talking about training and, more specifically about base building training. 

I have read almost every book I can get my hands on with regards to cycle training, and this includes Base Building for Cyclists.  This book, for me, commits the worst of sins of simply perpetuating cycling dogma.  As someone far cleverer than me has pointed out in the past – that which can be stated without evidence can be refuted without evidence.  The bold assertion, and the central and practically only premise, of this book is that in order to achieve cycling form we must first achieve a ‘fitness base’.  This fitness base can only be achieved by hour upon hour of ‘endurance riding’, generally throughout the winter months when you are least inclined to do so!

The idea is that riding around really slowly  utilises more fat than carbohydrate for fuel (which is certainly  true – every piece of cardio equipment in the gym helpfully points out the fat burning zone).  This is alleged to make the body more efficient at using fat as a fuel and therefore sparing precious carbs, even as the intensity increases.  In the early season you then ‘race yourself into fitness’.

Almost every coach and cycling will agree with the above premise.  But I wonder if it is true…  I have a few ill-thought out ideas

• I think that this notion is based on a scaling down of work works for pro cyclists.  There is not much scientific motivation in trying to find out the best possible way for a moderate athlete with a moderate amount of time to train.  Pros are a) physiological freaks and b) have all the time in the world to train.  The latter of these two points is the most salient.  If I have 30 hours a week to train there’s no way on earth that a large proportion of that time could be spent at threshold, or even tempo.  I would be obliged to slow down my training.  And, despite their physiological advantages, so are the pros.  I think what has happened is that trainers have looked at what works for the pros and scaled the training – which I think is a mistake as we simply don’t have the time to make it work for us
• If you follow the base building regime correctly you will doubtless lose power (you can choose your own time period, but I prefer to think of FTP which is sustainable power for 1 hour) over the base building period.  What this means is that for a given intensity of  cycling output,  your lower power will necessitate increased usage of carbs over fat.  Maybe it is better to use the winter months to build power by cycling at lot threshold intensity after all
• Maybe the central premise of base building is just wrong.  Take a look at Andrew Coggan’s Power Training Level’s document.  Apart from identifying how the different levels are defined, you can see his guide to the training adaptations you would expect at each level of intensity.  There’s not much going on at L2!
• What if the ‘racing yourself into fitness’ was the important bit after all – not the long hours in the saddle over the winter?
• Just because something sounds plausible doesn’t mean that it is.  Just because you are training in the fat burning zone does not necessarily imply that your body is getting better at using fat.  Furthermore there is an opportunity cost; every hour spent noodling is time you could spend kicking your arse at a higher intensity; probably doing more good
• What I think but do not know is this; find as much time as you can to ride, mix it up a bit but in general ride as hard as you can for whatever time you have.  If that means 15 minutes of Tabatta intervals or a 6 hour ride to Brighton and back so be it.
• Oh, and just enjoy it! Nobody really knows what is best for you given your age, physiology, level of fitness, goals, motivation and time.

Endurance Sports Nutrition

If you’re looking for an online provider of nutritional products you might want to give Endurance Sports Nutrition a go.

They have an excellent range of products (High5, Torq, Maximuscle, etc) that are very keenly priced and excellent service – I made an order last Friday that arrived on Saturday morning.  Highly recommended.

Periodic Table of Cycling

A rather elegant diagram of the cycling year.

(click for a larger image)

Nice Colnago!

I’m liking the look of this 2010 Colnago…

A lot.

The Ride

Long time no speak eh?  I’ve been in hibernation.  And my fingers have been, and continue to be, too cold to type.

Anyway, you might want to check out this free PDF download of the first issue of a journal called The Ride.  It’s a bit of a mixture of different cycling related articles, all beautifully produced and photographed.

What’s so great about riding a bloody bike anyway?

It’s a not-uncommon refrain to hear from cyclists – “this is why I ride”.  Best used sarcastically I think, when riding through an industrial estate in Crawley in the rain for example (though PaulS does better with “well, when you have all this on your doorstep…”). 

You also hear it said straight when there is a relatively rare confluence of factors – weather, scenery, challenge, camaraderie, etc – aligning to create a sublime situation.  However, whilst it is one of the reasons we ride – it can’t be the only one.  The hours of indoor training, riding in the cold, and wet, the dieting, the time, and expense and so on can’t be for these handful-a-season experiences.

Analysing why we ride seems to me a somewhat dangerous enterprise.  Rather like John Keat’s concern that Isaac Newton had destroyed the beauty of the rainbow by explaining it, maybe looking too closely at the reason  we ride could make the magic disappear.  What if the sum of the parts do not add up?  What if the not inconsiderable costs in terms of time, money, effort and so on outweigh the somewhat less tangible benefits?

If I was younger (much younger!) I could probably delude myself that one day I could be a pro.  Fortunately my very late start in the sport precludes that.  But not only that of course – I am, at best, a very mediocre athlete lacking in the physiological and psychological strengths necessary to make it in the toughest of sports.  So what could be the likely pinnacle of my cycling career be?  A decent ride or two in sportives?  Maybe a win or two in small local races – even then in the lower categories. These would be reasonable achievements for sure, but hardly compensation for the very considerable amount of time and effort required for such humble outcomes.

And so, if the ends do not appear to justify the means, the means must justify themselves!  So, I will try and explain why I ride.

Self-discipline

My life is almost comically characterised by an all-or-nothing approach.  This is by no means a positive trait and I envy those that are able to take a more measured approach to life. If I drink, I drink a lot.  If I take drugs, I take a lot.  If I’m not on a diet, I eat a lot! 

If I cycle, then I cycle a lot.  I get up early.  I ride hard.  I train.  I diet.  I barely drink alcohol.  I read.  I study.  I find a gym to ride every night when I go skiing.  I sweat it out at the crack of dawn on my indoor trainer.  I subscribe to every magazine.  And so on.

Whether this actually takes any willpower, and therefore self-discipline, or not is somewhat debatable. Sometimes I think this is the case.  Other times I think that there is pleasure in sacrifice – or apparent sacrifice.  Self-discipline, to me, is the ability to forego a short-term pleasure for some longer-term gain.

Either way, getting down to the sea-front in Brighton in time for breakfast feels a good deal more rewarding than waking up late with a hangover!

Progression

I’ve not been “properly” cycling for very long, but in this time I’ve been able to progress in relatively small steps – at each point I’ve been able to find an appropriate challenge.  When I first started “training” for my London to Newquay ride a couple of years ago, a 30 mile loop around the countryside was a challenge.  After I joined Bigfoot I was helped and encouraged to take on bigger challenges each one feeling like a reasonable jump in difficulty but achievable. 

The opportunities are so varied; riding in the Alps, or in Belgium, or on the roads of Kent, or hammering around the park in Crystal Palace.  All offer the potential for a terrific challenge in very different ways.

Club mates

Let’s make no mistake – without the other member’s of Bigfoot Bike Club I would not have had any of the wonderful experiences that I have had on a bike.  Without the encouragement, wisdom, advice, ideas, friendly competition and infectious enthusiasm I would still be ploughing a lonely (but level!) furrow around the lanes of Kent.  And life offers few greater pleasures than meeting up early on an autumn weekend morning and riding and chatting for a few hours with friends.

Training

In my first year of riding I could have only just been what might technically be called training, but more likely I was going out and riding my bike.  A lot, for sure, but just riding my bike.  Mainly for the pleasure of riding and with the knowledge that I was getting fitter.  Doubtless this was not the most efficient way of achieving what fitness I managed, but it was great fun.

This year has been rather different and I would say that I have been training.  What’s the difference?  Training is having a plan.  Training is knowing what you are trying to achieve before jumping on the bike and riding.  Training is riding indoors.  Training is monitoring power. Training quite often involves riding hard and that hurts.  Training is about every ride being part of an integrated strategy.  Training is fun.  Training is an intellectual as well as a physical pursuit.  And the best part – nobody really  knows what works!

Competition

It’s a cycling cliché that says if you have two men on bikes you have a race – or something like that anyway. I think that I would be perceived as a competitive person but I’m not sure that this is the case, not in the traditional sense, anyway. 

I feel 3 quite distinct levels of competition, with each new level being vastly less relevant as a motivating factor.  The first level is competition with myself – it is this that really drives me on.  As legend Chris Boardman says in his excellent book – he was not the most gifted athlete of all time (though not far off I think!), but he aspired to be the very best that he could be.  And so it is for me.

I’m my own level playing field.  When I ride ‘competitively’ it’s really me I’m competing with.  No-one else has the same genetic heritage, time, equipment, experience and so on.  And so, when I ride, really I’m trying to beat myself.  Beat my own expectations.  Or previous efforts.  If I ride faster than another guy, well maybe he has a cold today.  Or maybe his genetically determined VO2max is not as good as mine.  Maybe his bike weighs more than mine.  Or vice versa, when, more likely, I get my ass kicked instead.

The next level of competition is with my club-mates.  It is really great to have people around you that you like and respect that really understand what it is like to ride a bike hard.  Friends and family I’m sure try to listen and understand, but anyone that has not climbed Alpe D’Huez having already ridden a hundred miles and 3 serious mountains will never really be able to comprehend just how much it hurts and what that achievement feels like.  When I crossed the line having completed the Marmotte in under 7hr30 I was nearly as thrilled for AndyC who had come in just over a minute before me.  Does it feel good to ride better than a club-mate?  Maybe.  Sometimes. However, I’d far (far!) rather ride brilliantly and finish second behind a club-mate who has done a better ride than me, than ride a so-so race and finish first.

Finally there is the rest of the world.  The diversity in genetic potential, training, age, facility, motivation and so on is so great that I feel almost no will or desire to compete with anyone else. 

Health

Cycling is probably good for your health.  For sure I’ve never been fitter.  Nor have I, in my adult life at least, tried to take such good care of myself.  I drink nothing like the quantity of alcohol I used to and spend most of the year trying to reduce my weight.

However, health and longevity are subject to a number of factors and cycling alone provides no guarantees.

Health I guess is not purely physical either and I would guess that there are considerable benefits to one’s mental health too. 

Measured suffering

Cycling is a sport that allows you to reasonably precisely measure out your own suffering.  Tools like HRMs (heart-rate monitors) and Power Meters help, but even using feel as a guide it is possible to mete out serious and sustained punishment on a bike that I think most other sports do not permit. 

“Glory through Suffering” is a great expression and maybe in a way it’s as appropriate for a relatively casual cyclist such as myself as it is for Lance Armstrong.  I have so much less to gain for a start!

Cycling hurts.  Sometimes a lot (Galibier anyone?). But to overcome that pain and succeed is a wonderful feeling.

Even better, with increased fitness you can hurt yourself more!  The suffering never lessens, only the pace increases.

And so…

As usual I run out of time.  This article wants more time that it’s going to get.  Alas, in a busy life, everything must compete for the most precious resource we have; time.  And writing about thinking about cycling, well… has only so much merit.  Back to my family Christmas for me…

Parlee Z2

After a couple of terrific sessions at Bespoke Cycling with Barry Scott, I’ve decided to go for a Parlee Z2 as my new bike for next year.  I’ve been measured up and have paid a deposit.  There’s no going back now!

It will look a little like this

Understated splendour.  It will be kitted out with SRAM Red. 

Roll on the spring!

David Millar Interview

A good, long interview by NYVelocity with David Millar.  I haven’t finished the whole thing yet, but it gets off to a very promising start…

schmalz We’re here with David Millar of Team Garmin-Transitions. Now, you’re part owner of the team, right?

Millar I am a stakeholder, yes.

schmalz So, out on the road, if someone does something that you don’t like, can you just threaten to fire them?

Millar Yes, fire them, fire the motherfuckers immediately.

Easy versus Hard

A fantastic thread discussing the relative merits of high volume/low intensity (ie long, steady rides) versus lower volume/higher intensity (ie SST/Threshold) training.

It is seriously worth signing up to Google Groups Wattage forum anyway – especially if you’re interesting in training with power.

Anyway, this particular thread is here.

I’ve made no secret that, especially given my newly imposed time constraints, I’m going to opt for the latter (ie a relatively low volume/high intensity) strategy.  This is largely contrary to the advice of most coaches and not to mention a considerable tradition which suggests ‘getting the miles in’ to ‘build an endurance base’ is the way forward.

It would be nice to say that ‘we’ll see’ which is the most successful strategy but with so many confounding factors we probably won’t.

Training with Power

Anyone who’s had the dubious pleasure of riding with me will know about my tireless, and doubtless, tiresome, enthusiasm for training with power.  I started gently this year hiring a Powertap from the estimable guys at CyclePowerMeters (really nice people, occasionally sketchy service!) before committing to a reasonably serious financial investment.   At the end of the day cash is in finite supply and a power meter has to justify itself against any other number of competing potential purchases.

Since then I’ve decided to go full on, with a power meter accompany my every pedal stroke.  I have a CycleOps 300PT indoors and have bought the Powertap and got Geoffrey Burglars to build me up a set of wheels.

Why?

So why?  Well.  Accuracy and feedback.  As soon as you want to do more than just ride your bike and do some actual training, you’ll want to be able to measure the work that you are doing.  There are plenty of surrogates that have been used with great success for many years.  Bike computers and heart rate monitors have been around for ages and provide useful feedback, but both have serious flaws.  Speed is clearly affected by almost everything – wind, grade, traffic, you name it.  Heart rate is much better and until the advent of affordable power meters was the only way the amateur rider was able to gauge their efforts.  However, heart rate, whilst providing a window into what is happening inside your body, is also compromised by confounding variables and other factors which make it imperfect for gauging the effort you are making.  The heart rate response seriously lags behind effort, drifts over time and is affected by temperature, stimulants and fatigue.

Power on the other hand is a shining beacon of accuracy and consistency.  Power meters don’t care if you’re knackered, high on caffeine or riding into a beastly headwind – a power meter will provide an instant and accurate guide to the work you are doing.

So what?

Good question.  Neo-luddites will tell you that Eddy Merckx didn’t need a power meter.  And they are right.  But would he have used one if they had been available?  You betcha!

Well, for a start accuracy is important in it’s own right – being able to precisely and consistently target intervals for example has considerable merit.  However, there is a more important factor for me that considerably increases my motivation.

Someone rather cleverer than me explained this using an analogy which I’ll crudely paraphrase.  Imagine going to a gym that had no indication of the weight you were lifting.  In fact, imagine that the weights were concealed.  It’s easy to see how much more motivating it is to work out knowing how much weight you are pushing and how much easier it is to gauge one’s progress.  Or, for F1 fans – how much less exciting is qualifying now the result is a combination of performance and an unknown fuel load?

This, of course, is partly a reflection of ones personality.  I’m sure there are riders, far better men and women than I, that can do a seriously hard interval session and be happy with their perception of the quality of the  effort.  However, it is much much easier for me to motivate myself knowing that as soon as I’ve finished I can download the data into a software package that will tell me quite precisely what I’ve achieved.

What can you do with a power meter then?

My use may well not be typical but I use it to do the following

• help me guide my intervals on the indoor trainer
• provide useful stats on my indoor and outdoor training
• allow me to accurately track my progress and build a training plan

I do a fair bit of indoor training and this mostly takes the form of 2×20 and 3x20s.  By using a power meter I can control and target consistent efforts and get great stats at the end of the ride.  If having a power meter has a strength it is here.  Intervals really expose the shortcomings of heart rate measurement – the lag and drift of the heart rate response make it not quite useless, but not far off.  It’s not uncommon for my heart rate to steadily increase throughout the entire 20 minutes of an interval.  If I was doing shorter interval this failing would be even more apparent.

In addition to the instantaneous feedback of effort there are some very cool things you can do with power data.  These ideas seems to have been mostly inspired by Andrew Coggan and have been documented in his excellent book Training and Racing with a Power Meter.  He has also been heavily involved in the creation of the ‘gold standard’ power analysis software TrainingPeaks WKO+.  There are measures of the average effort that reflect the physiological cost of each ride (Normalized Power), how this compares to ones threshold power (Intensity Factor) and an overall score for each ride (Training Stress Score).

Beyond the analysis of individual rides, there are cumulative measures of the short-term impact of recent rides (Acute Training Load) and the longer-term accumulation of fitness (Chronic Training Load) that can help you understand fatigue and also allow you to plan a steady increase in training load.

I plan to do a much more technical post to explain these concepts soon.

Lastly you can perform your own testing.  Functional threshold power (FTP) is widely considered to reasonably correlate with cycling prowess and can be reliably measured with a Powertap.

Anyway,  enough rattling on.  I’m in little doubt that, for me at least, a power meter is an invaluable tool for monitoring rides in both the short and long term and for providing me precise information that I can use as a source of motivation.

High5 Zero Drink

I can seriously recommend High5 Zero Drink tablets.  They’re perfect for hydrating indoor training sessions and those early morning “no-carb” rides.  I’ve also taken to switching one of my energy drinks for longer rides with a bottle.

They’ve got all good stuff in them, electrolytes and the like, taste great and have zero carbs.

(edit : On reflection the Berry and Citrus both taste great.  I’m not so keen on the Cherry/Orange)

Selle SMP Saddles

As we head into indoor training season I’d like to share how I solved what I suspect is a common problem – numbness.

I found on a forum a recommendation to get an Selle SMP saddle and the recommendation was a good one – I’ve not had a single issue after many (many!) hours of indoor training.

New Winter Frame

In the words of Alan Partridge yet again – “Lynne, I’ve been bad”.

I couldn’t resist this little beauty on eBay

Soon to become my winter steed :-).  Now the actual decisions begin – Shimano Ultegra or Sram Rival?

Pictures of the Galibier

Having been fond of saying ‘you just don’t seem to be able to do the Galibier justice with a photograph’ I’m happy to say I’m (at least to some extent) wrong.

There’s a great set of photos on flickr (thanks to DaveM who’s been searching for pictures even though he’s *never* doing the Marmotte again :-)).