The Wheels On The Bike Go Round and Round

Cleaning Your Drive Train

2007-05-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

Adapted from a Blue Collar Mountain Biking article.

This is a summary of the above linked article. The bells and whistles of narrative have been stripped off and personal additions have been made.

The point here is to clean your bicycle's drive train to get a long and efficient life from it. On top of saving you money performance will be maximized. We consider anything that moves the bike forward a drive train component, specifically the chain, cassette, cranks, chain rings, derailleurs, and pedals.

Gunk Fighting Tools

You can do a lot of this without taking any parts off the bike though I think every now and again you should at least remove the rear wheel and really clean as much slop off as you can. Riding in New Jersey in the spring can sometimes be a muddy affair. So it's a good idea to pay more attention to this stuff now so your parts don't wear prematurely. The summer dry riding allows more leeway for you to be lazy with cleaning your bike.

You can use a bike stand or lean it against a wall or tree or just flip it upside down. Really the idea is to get it clean not how many style points you score with how you do it. I lean it up against the shed or flip it upside down depending on what I'm trying to do.

"An array of stiff bristled brushes, in a variety of shapes to get into tight places is necessary. Take into consideration the finish of your bicycle when choosing brushes. Make sure that they are stiff enough to withstand some abuse, but not so stiff as to scratch the finish on your bicycle. You will also want to collect some soft, tough rags made out of a thinner material. Old t-shirts work great, terry cloth towels, not so great. An old bucket to store everything in can double as a wash bucket. Finally, you may want to include an old sponge."

That paragraph is perfect so I'll leave it as such. Personally I have a Park tool brush and some tooth brushes I use. I'm always looking for more.

The So-Called Secret Sauce

This is the worst section of the original link since it gives you basically no hard guidance on what to use. A lot of people use a citrus based cleaner which is what I use. I don't know the name of the brand and it probably doesn't matter anyway. It seems to work and that's the bottom line. They claim this is better for the environment but I have my doubts that anything which can cut the thick black oil-shit from my drive train is ecologically friendly. The author also suggests that what you're cleaning off makes a difference but all I ever seem to have is run-of-the-mill dirt and mud or the thick black gunk that covers the drive train.

Apply the Elbow Grease

When it comes down to it most of the "secret" of keeping your drive train clean is doing it frequently and attention to detail. The article calls it Elbow Grease but it's not terribly laborious work. Personally I find it rewarding to discover such shiny metal still under there. Of course, it all reeks of futility as well since it will look nice for 1 ride.

Initially you want to chip away as much of the gunk as you can. Start with the big obvious crap and get finer as you go along. I find the derailleur plates and the front derailleur to be the biggest aggregation points of big stuff. Once past that work on the chain links and cogs. I then tend to go over stuff again because I get more meticulous as I go.

After the big stuff you can get into whatever finer brushes you have or use a rag loaded with degreaser. The chain, cassette, chain rings, and pulleys are the big tasks here. You obviously want to get the grit off the cassette and chain rings but beyond that you don't need to try and make it look like new. That usually requires taking the bike apart anyway. If that's your thing, I say go for it.

For the chain I usually use a chain cleaning contraption which is difficult at first because things tend to be slopped up when I start. After a while it gets better and I pass the chain through the rag instead, constantly using a new section to get more slop off. If you want to go crazy you can even get between the links, one at a time.

At this point I dry off as best I can then relube. I will usually relube again lightly before my next ride just to make sure it's all good. But don't put too much on because too much lube just makes the black gunk come back faster.

Doing More

If you're looking for a more complete cleaning then you need to pull some items off the bike. The 2 obvious ones are the rear wheel and the chain. Unless you're the luckiest rider in the world and never get a flat, you know how to pull the rear wheel off. Then you can pull off the chain as we'll. if you happen to have a quick link or whatever it's called then this step is easy. If not break the chain from the outside in towards you so that putting it back on is easier. You can also remove the rear derailleur if you feel so inclined which is really a benign venture so long as you're just unmounting it from the frame. Doing this allows you a much more comprehensive cleaning experience.

After you get the chain off put it in an old water bottle and fill it a third of the way with degreaser then shake it for 3-5 minutes. Fish it out with an old coat hanger then whip it a few times against some old cardboard box to really blast the gunk out. Take the rear wheel and a rag and clean in between the cassette cogs like you're flossing the gear-teeth. Probably not a necessity most of the time but it's good to do now and again. If you're really crazy about it you can pull the cassette apart and make each cog nice and sparkling clean. It won't last long so don't pull out this trick unless you have copious amounts of time on your hands. Same sort of flossing or removing deal pertains to the front rings. As for the derailleurs, I can't recommend taking them apart unless you're really OK with the Pandora's Box you might open.

Do We Have To Do It Again?

This section basically left as is:

"The frequency of cleaning is really going to be different for different riders. Type of conditions ridden in will also determine when you might want to clean the drive train. It is safe to say that if you ride a lot, like, all the time, then you'll need to do this at least monthly. Maybe more if it's raining, snowing, or if you venture off-road. A regular inspection of your bicycle will also help you determine when to clean things up. If a cleaning regimen is followed, you will be rewarded with a sense of accomplishment, ownership, and a long lived drive train."

Speed Tips

2007-05-01T11:29:00.001-07:00

* Try this next time you want a surge in speed: Shift to an easier gear and increase your pedal cadence. Just before you spin out (pedal as fast as you can), shift to a harder gear. Repeat this until you're at top speed. This isn't the ideal method. (You probably won’t need to shift to the easier gear once you get the feel. And if you're super-strong, you can forget this and just jam.) But it's an easy and clear way for novices to learn the relation between spinning and speeding.

* At high speed, smaller obstacles mean almost nothing. You don't want to steer too much because you'll slow down and risk losing control of the bike. Just ride over most stuff, floating on top of the bike. Remember: The bike wants to keep going. Be a good cat and let it.

* Remember: The faster you go, the smaller your movements need to be to affect the bike’s line. In other words, it’s harder to bunny-hop from a standstill than at 50 mph. It's smarter, too, but that's a whole other subject.

* When you get comfortable riding at high speed, you’ll become super-confident at 90 percent of that speed.

* A faster bike is a more stable bike.

* Inertia is as much a cycling tool as balance or fitness. It'll get you through a lot of things. If there's a section you're having trouble with, maybe you're going too slow. Grit your teeth and try going just one or two miles per hour faster. Momentum does other cool stuff too, like turning marginal bunny-hops into cloud-banging flights.

* We all have a pace we maintain most of the time an average speed. (It's possible to go faster, but this is where we mostly ride.) Any tiny gain in average speed takes tons of practice and dedication. So it could take years to go from a ~O-mph rider to a 12.5-mph rider. But at some point you hit the Magic Speed Barrier (which is slightly different for everyone). If you get past this, amazing speed increases are possible. The Barrier is where loads of finesse and finagling are replaced by sheer speed and momentum. You don't need to miss stuff because you ride right over it.

* Go out and watch birds. When they fly slow they make big, sweeping movements with their wings to change direction. But when they swoop or dive, they accomplish the same amount of directional change just by twitching a single feather. Be a bird. As your speed increases, your bike and body adjustments should become smaller. It's easy to get pumped and overreact in even a simple turn, or yank the bike way the heck up in the air when that's not at all a good thing. When speeding, be spare and graceful. Demolition-derby drivers flail. Formula One racers caress.

* You need to develop a kick whether it's to win a race at the line or zip over a short but steep hill. One way is simply to honk on the pedals and get your power up. This works, but it can blow your legs. Spinning faster is more efficient than putting more force into your pedal strokes.

Descending Tips

2007-05-01T10:20:00.001-07:00

* Although speed on a descent can be frightening, it can also be a wonderful ally. Speed translates into momentum and momentum can get you through obstacles that you'd otherwise need to dismount for. Consequently, don't be surprised when you find yourself tiptoeing a delicate line between enough speed to get you through and too much for safety. A classic example is on the Poison Spider Trail near Moab, Utah. Those who come closest to cleaning it are usually carrying more speed. Those who dab the most are the ones who try to finesse their way down and lack enough momentum to roll over rocks. But the consequences of failing are severe enough to deter all but the most-aggressive riders.

* Find a hill. Find the point halfway down it. Start at the top, ride to that mark, then try to come to a stop as quick as you can without locking up or skidding. This will help you learn downhill braking control and balance. Just don't kill yourself.

* Find a really, really steep hill with a lot of loose stuff. Now, try to go down it as slowly as possible. You might skid, but try not to. You might fall, but try not to. The goal is slow-speed control. The bailout is releasing the brakes and rocketing down.

* "On a downhill, just try to take every section as efficiently and smoothly as possible, and get your wheels to follow the terrain." ~ Myles Rockwell

* The chest-on-saddle method of descending has fallen from popular favour because you can't do it and look fast. But give it a try: drop your butt off the back of the saddle, extend your arms and legs (but don't lock them), and flatten yourself over the saddle. In this position you absolutely cannot endo, and your bike can absorb drops as deep as a foot without feeling slightly out of control. The position feels weird, but with a little practice you can descend scary things.

* "It's important to stay relaxed. If I find myself tensing up, it's time to back off and return to my level of safety. Listen to yourself because when you push too hard and crash, next time you have a fear barrier to get through. Sometimes, though, it's safer to go a little faster. When you go too slow, the bumps seem bigger, you can't bunny-hop things and you're just riding the brakes, which can cause a skid that could take you out."-Ruthie Mattles

* "Keep your arms, legs and hands flexed and relaxed during high-speed descents. Your body can bust trail shocks as well as any suspension. -Dave Cullinan

* "Use a way-back position to improve control on high-speed descents. Pressure on the pedals and the strength of your lower back muscles will keep you properly aligned. Keeping your butt low and back slightly arched will improve your control. Eyes up. -Ned Overend

* Most riders don't get far enough behind the saddle when they're descending severe drops although they think they're way off the back, their butts are still hovering over the seat. You can safely get completely behind the saddle, so your butt hangs over the wheel and your chest is directly over the saddle. This feels extreme ~ your arms and legs will be stretched ~ but it gives you much more control than a mere rearward but-still-over-the-saddle stance.

Cornering Tips

2007-04-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

* I like to put my weight to the inside and pedal through comers. It's like applying the gas in a car as you go around a curve it helps maintain traction." - Silvia Furst

* You may not have the skill or experience to risk putting a foot down at 45 mph, but at slower speeds an outrigged limb can help you through a sharp turn. Almost as much as the foot, it's the low and wide stance that will keep you upright and on course."-Missy Giove

* "I put the emphasis on getting my weight on the outside pedal A lot of people put their outside pedal down, but they really don't push on it. I put a lot of weight on it and carve the turn."-Jason McRoy

* The expert - or showboat - way to ride a down-hill switchback is to nose wheelie through it. Here are five steps for flashy switchbacking:

1. Enter the turn wide, on the high side of the frail. Coast at a walking pace. Test your brakes. Make sure they're working predictably before you drop into the steep part.

2. You're going to pivot on the front tire, so make room for the rear to swing around by steering into the apex of the corner. Your weight should be slightly (just slightly) rearward. Keep the inside pedal (the downhill one) bark for leverage.

3. As your front tire reaches the apex of the corner, dig the inside grip down and back and move your torso forward, Pinch the front brake lever firmly and give a little hop with your feet. At this point, your rear wheel should leave the ground (EGAD!). You'll soon know if you've hopped or squeezed too hard. If so, get up and fry again.

4. In midflip, push the inside grip ahead. This twists the rear wheel around the corner. It also tilts the bike away from the abyss, which keeps you from overbalancing and falling to the outside when you land.

5. Because of your considerable lateral momentum, you need to land the back wheel far enough around the corner that you don't get "high sided" over the edge. This is one of the trickiest parts of the turn. Once you "stick" the landing, the rest is cake. Just pedal away with a big stupid grin on your face.

* Stop pedaling as you enter a turn and keep your cranks horizontal, Unless you think you'd enjoy catching a pedal on a bank, rock or log. On smooth surfaces, however, you can keep the outside pedal down to improve traction. Brake before the turn. Locking the levers in a turn makes you more likely to skid. Even if we don't cuddle the dirt blanket, your rhythm and swoop are disrupted. It's more efficient and, for some reason, quicker to brake before entering a curve. For instance, a rider who surfs an entire turn at a smooth 15 almost always gets through quicker than one who enters at 17 and brakes. (Advanced riders brake later in turns. How the hell do they do that?)

* If possible, try to plan your path to approach wide, cut inside across the turn, and exit wide. This reduces the sharpness of the curve and minimises the amount of lean you'll need. It also lets you ride a more direct line (you go almost straight through the curve instead of turning), which helps traction on loose surfaces. Of course, you won't always have this luxury - sometimes your line is determined by the width or conditions of the trail.

* Lean into turns. Press down on the grip that's on the inside, and angle the bike over. At slow speeds, or for tighter corners, you'll need to steer slightly inward, too. Don't worry about being tentative and not getting much lean. As you gain confidence in your traction, you'll slant more. The key is to slowly build speed and lean. Too much of a jump in either, and you'll skid.

* If you're arcing wide in a turn, cut tight with elbow and knee swings. Your instinct might be to crank the handlebar inward. Sometimes this works, but sometimes it turns the front tire in a direction your momentum doesn’t want to go. Things get messy. Instead, pop your limbs toward the inside corner. It's swoop time.

* When you're leaning in a turn, you can stick your bike to the ground with body weight for additional traction. Used correctly, your weight can drive the treads into the surface and counteract the sideways forces that want to push your bike out from under you. One method is to push down against the outside pedal. Some riders stay seated and transfer their weight straight down through the seatpost. Others move the bike underneath them until it's on the inside track and their body rests outside. Even the opposite bike outside, body inside - and be effective. What's the best method? Depends on your speed, your tires, your juju, the turn, the terrain....

* 180 around a 6-inch cone is the hardest turn in the world. Practice that and you can do anything. Put the cone down in the middle of a field, then ride toward it at 20 mph. Brake 10 feet from it and see if you make the turn. If you do, brake at 8 feet, and keep reducing the distance until you overshoot it." - John Henderson

* Because off-camber turns slope down on the outside of the curve, inertia and other things conspire to throw you off the trail and down the hill. Going slow isn't a sure cure. Your bike will still dive out and down. Try riding an inside line, and also leaning the bike out while your body stays in. Good riders can turn their front wheel 90 degrees, then hop the rear of the bike around - jumping the turn instead of steering through it.

* Switchbacks are like hairpins Trailbuilders blaze them when the slope is too steep to go straight up or down. Here are three hints to get you through the next one:

1. Steer wide, so the pitch is less severe.

2. At the apex (where the turn is most pronounced), cut inside.

3. On way-tight switchbacks, some riders counter-steer. As you approach the turn, lean and steer in the opposite direction you want to. When you enter the turn, quickly lean and steer inside. Do it right and your rear wheel will turn tighter than your front wheel.

* Round your turns in a smooth arc to maintain momentum. Don’t zigzag. Lean your body more than your bike to speed your way through abrupt changes in direction."-Juli Furtado

* In corners, pick a line that can handle your speed. If you're going fast, the outer side usually holds you better."-Toby Henderson

* If I don't come out of a turn on the very outside I didn't go through it fast enough."-Tony Henderson

* Accelerate out of corners. Jam on your pedals sometime after passing the apex but while you're still in the arc. Do it right, and you'll feel as if the turn is flinging you out onto the trail. You can learn to recognise the right moment by practising on a smooth (and preferably soft) turn. Try to begin pedaling closer and closer to the turn's midpoint. Don't feel flung? You're waiting too long. If you stick a pedal in the ground, or find speed but lose it before exiting, you're not waiting long enough.

* In banked turns, don’t hug the inside edge. It's usually off-camber. Instead, ride up on the outside edge of the trail don’t be afraid of that bank. The outside edges help you turn, so the handlebar stays straighter while you lean.

* If your turns suck, you're probably making one of these three common mistakes:

1. Too little lean or weighting to maintain traction. Trust physics and your bike. Lean and press. Lean and press.

2. Too little confidence. The bike makes adjustments on its own. To the uninitiated, these feel like wipeouts - in waiting. So they hail. Ride it out. You'll be surprised.

3. Too much speed. If you feel like you're doing everything right but you still can't stick the turns like the rest of the group, then don't. You're a novice. Enjoy it while you can. Someday you'll be expected to ice every move.

* The apex of a turn is the point where the turn is most pronounced its peak. How you ride through the apex affects the whole freaking turn. Here's a look:

1. Early-apex turns are the most popular kind. This is a mistake, but it's easy to understand why. Most riders start to turn as soon as they see the turn. This leads to "over-turning," where you've turned so much so early that you’re forced to move inside, brake, and end up slowing down too much.

2. A mid-apex turn is the fastest kind of turn-where the apex of your travel coincides with the physical apex of a turn. You ride to the widest point and change your direction of travel there. It is a kind, gentle turn that sweeps you through a curve.

3. Late-apex turns are excellent when you want to pass somebody in a corner or scare the bejesus out of one of your riding buddies. You brake late in this turn-this slows you down-but you usually come out ahead of the next guy. These turns are great on banked surfaces, which help you exit at speed.

Climbing Tips

2007-04-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

* To learn how to balance on the edge between power and loss of traction on a climb, find a relatively steep hill with a moderately loose surface. This should be a climb you could handle quite easily if not for the lack of traction. Shift into your lowest gear and aggressively attack it. Get out of the saddle and force the rear wheel to begin breaking free. Do this a few times, then try it while sitting. Learn how much pedaling force you can apply before losing traction.

Now change tactics. Ride into the hill as slowly as you can in your lowest gear. Creep up so you're constantly on the verge of stalling. Pretend you're in an airplane, the stall warning buzzer keeps going off and you have to make the minimum adjustment to shut it up. Try this standing, then sitting.

Now pick the smallest cog you can ride up the slope in. Repeat the previous exercises. Pay attention to your stalling point. Work on sensing the loss of traction before it happens. Do it in and out of the saddle. Play with it. Have fun balancing on the point of power.

* Ride in the climber's position. Just as there is a standard stance for descending (pedals level, weight slightly off the saddle, and elbows and knees loose to absorb shock), a certain climbing position is most effective for most situations. Flex your elbows and bend forward at the hips, keeping your back straight. You should be leaning toward the handlebar and your butt should be pushed back on the saddle a bit. This posture lowers your centre of gravity, distributes your weight to the front and rear, and allows you to easily make the weight shifts and movements you'll need to maintain traction and power.

* Most inexperienced climbers don't bend toward the bar enough, believing that if they sit upright over the rear wheel they'll prevent spinout. Just the opposite. The wayback position unweights the front wheel which either causes the riders to stop, or makes them lose rear traction anyway when they suddenly scoot forward to keep the front down. If you want to go up, you have to get down Lean

* Maintain traction when climbing by modifying your stock position. As the pitch steepens, lean more toward the bar (drop your nose closer). This puts more of your weight over the front and, at the same time, pushes your butt back to keep weight over the rear tire.

Tune yourself until you find the lean angle that keeps both wheels rooted. (Front wheel loose: too little lean. Back wheel loose: too much.) You'll eventually learn what lean matches what pitch.

* On a steep incline simply leaning toward the handlebar won't maintain traction. You need to keep the front wheel down by leaning waaay over - sometimes your nose will be past the handlebar and as little as four inches above it - and by sliding forward onto the tip of the saddle. (This is one reason pros like narrow saddles with long noses.)

But with all your weight forward, what about the back wheel? You can keep it grooved by pulling back on the handlebar. This single move often provides a climbing breakthrough for new riders. It makes the rear wheel dig in.

* When you rise out of the saddle you use about 12 percent more oxygen and raise your heart rate about 11 percent. Or so the lab rats say Regardless, standing is harder on your body. It requires more effort because your legs provide locomotion and support you.

* If you don't stand at least occasionally you're climbing without one of your most valuable skills. Among other things standing lets you deliver more power to the pedals. It can delay fatigue because it uses your muscles differently. And it lets you during extended climbs.

* Here are three tips for making the transition from seated climbing to standing without losing speed, control or traction.

1. As your foot comes around to begin a downstroke, shift to a harder gear (if you don't, you waste energy with choppy pedal strokes), then rise out of the saddle It you have bar-ends, move your hands out to them. You should be as upright as the pitch will allow, with your chest out over the handlebar. Your lower back should be straight.

2. Sway the bike from side to side (but no more than a toot each way). This establishes a rhythm and wakes your downstrokes more direct and powerful. Some riders like to pull up on the bar to do this Pushing is nice because you can do it without clenching your hands.

3. You've nailed the technique when you realise why it's sometimes described as 'running on the pedals.' If you feel jerky and out of control, you're either not pushing a big enough gear or you're completely straightening your leg on the downstroke. Go for a 95 percent bend and concentrate on pushing and pulling through a complete circle. This will eliminate the dead spot.

* As with most things mountain bike, there are no rules dictating how often and how long you should stand during a climb. Just plenty of generalisations. Here arc the helpful ones. Try not to sit back down when the grade is steep. You'll stall. If possible, wait till you have a break in the climbing. And remember to shift back to an easy gear as you return to the saddle. Most heavy riders do better when they climb seated more than they stand. The opposite applies to light riders. Most novices don't stand often enough, and when they do they stand too long.

* Don't try to motor up hills in one speedy gulp. Find your own pace. You can pedal at amazingly slow cadences and stay upright. To make it to the top of a big climb with some oomph left, go a little slower than you might be tempted. Staying just below your pain threshold will give you better endurance.

* Get bonus traction on technical climbs by standing and lifting your front wheel over large rocks and ledges, then jerking the back wheel onto them and using these harder surfaces for more traction.

* On really long climbs stopping to rest is acceptable. During those stops, you might be tempted to turn around or walk. Don't. Recharge your batteries for five minutes, psyche yourself up and pedal to the next rest point.

* Rather than anticipating the top, anticipate the next bend - the one you can't see. Make that a goal. When you reach that one, immediately focus on the following bend

* Because climbing is a repetitive act, it helps to think repetitive things. Really. Try repeating a phase over and over again. Something simple like "I'll make it." Or, "Make mine a double." It gives you rhythm and helps occupy your pain.

* Cross-country pro Sarah Ellis is a hot-shot ascender. Here are four of her secrets for stupendous climbing. Don't tell anyone else.

- "On a long climb I like to get into a rhythm, a pace and pedaling cadence that I relate to. Some riders have inconsistent rhythms-their speeds go straight or straight down. On long, sustained climbs I like to find one rhythm-but I start out easy and ride harder into the rhythm."

- "Anyone can attack a hill fast, but it takes self-discipline to control your pace and climb calmly. It's one of the hardest things to do."

- "A lot of people say how great it is to have someone in front of you on a climb so you can chase instead of being hunted. I like seeing people ahead of me, too, but only it I'm near the front. I think the worst thing is to be so far back you have to work around a lot of people. That can get tiring. I'll get on a wheel on a climb and realise that she's going too strong for me, I don't give up. I hold the pace as long as I can, and then even after she pulls away I concentrate on keeping her in sight as long as I can. You go taster than if you give up right away."

* Ride shallow, On an uphill curve, don't ride too close to the inside. It's shorter but the incline can be much steeper. Take the more gradual outside line.

* "Climbing can be very, very painful. I always think that once I'm over the climb there's usually a fun downhill, so I can really suffer up a climb because I'm anticipating a really awesome downhill. Even though going downhill is strenuous it's really fun, so I concentrate on getting to the top of climb where I know I'll have fun. You can't say that races are won on the uphill, but if you can't suffer on the climb, you won't do well."-Jammy Jacques

* Common steep-climbing mistake: Moving your hips too far forward when you bend forward or scootch up to maintain traction. Keep your hips back, more or less centred over the bike, or else your rear wheel gets skittish.

Braking Tips

2007-04-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

* Use your front brake more. Using too much rear causes it to lock and skid, which rips up the lovely trail and reduces your control. (On the right surface, experienced riders can skid in control. Then it's called a technique. For you, it's a mistake.)

* Once your rubber skids you can't brake any harder. It's more efficient if you can keep applying braking force to a spinning wheel - this is why so many new car owners want anti-lock braking systems. You don't have that fancy system on your mountain bike but you can emulate it by using a series of quick, tiny micro-braking actions. It's called feathering or stuttering.

* "When I hear that a solid, hard feel on the brake lever equals stopping power, I want to scream. Walk into Joe's Bike Shop and squeeze the brake levers on a showroom bike. Hard as a rock, right? If it hurts your hand, it must be powerful, right? Not!. Looking for maximum resistance at the lever is like climbing hills in your highest gear. More resistance is not better. Leverage is what it's all about. To get more leverage you must set up your brakes to have more travel at the lever, which turns into greater leverage at the rim. That's where it really needs to happen. And if you want to know why it seems easier to lock your wheel with a firmer-feeling lever, that's because the power comes on more abruptly. But sudden power application with no modulation or control of traction isn't good braking! "-Wayne Lumpkin, creator of Avid brakes and Fevers

* A major cause of poor brake performance is pad residue on your rims. Clean with steel wool.

* About 70 percent of your braking power comes from the front brake. That leaves 30 percent on the back. But these figures change radically as conditions do. Muddy stuff decreases your rear stopping power more than it wipes out your front. And you can change how much braking power you get at either wheel by shifting your weight forward or backward.

* Find a favourite hand position. Most riders put their index and middle finger on the brake levers, and wrap the others around the handlebar. Some riders brake with only their index fingers. There are other configurations, but find the one that feels secure and doesn’t fatigue your fingers.

* The number of fingers on the brake lever should change depending on the terrain. It has to do with how much handlebar control you need balanced with how much force your braking might require. A handy rule to remember is 'Brake hard where the ground is hard, and soft where the ground is soft."

* Brake with your entire bike. Your levers and cantilevers are only the most obvious parts of your stopping system. Do this: To increase control and power, it can help to grip the seat with your quads or move your weight back as you brake. Try scrubbing off speed by running up banks or curving turns. Just as good mountain bikers use all of their bikes and bodies to steer, they go beyond fingers when it comes to stopping, too. Watch them and experiment.

* Don't use your brakes only when you want to slow. Good braking is about control, and sometimes it can even help you build speed. Just try alternating squeezes and releases on your next long descent. Lay off the brakes sooner than usual coming out of a corner. Notice the control it gives you? The surges of speed? This is the hidden power of brakes. They do more than stop you. They help you master your movement.

* High-performance braking comes at the maximum braking point. Right before you start to skid-not too soon before, and definitely not after. Why shouldn’t you brake earlier? Because you scrub off too much speed. Why not later? Because locking up the brakes is inefficient and mean to tender trails.

* Think of braking as a process. It begins not with a lever squeeze, but with a weight shift. You rise off the saddle and extend your arms. Keep your elbows bent. This keeps weight off the front wheel. Result? A more controlled bike.

* The trail is your brake lever. Try peeling off speed by running up on berms, banking turns, bumping over rocks. You'll get a feel for what slows you without actually braking - good for creating a flowy rhythm on a ride. You'll also learn what not to do when you're trying to hit max speed.

* Let your front wheel roll freely after you go over a log or drop-off on a downhill. Applying the front brake can lead to an endo in extreme situations, but more often it merely destroys your stability. That's why so many people ride a tough downhill section then blow it right afterward.

* "If you skid, you failed. Find the maximum braking point just before the tire starts skidding. As you get better, squeeze the front brake harder and the rear brake less. Motorcycle riders can brake so well that the rear wheel begins to leave the ground."-Tom Hillard

Balance Tips

2007-04-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

* Some singletrack trails are really exposed, with huge, deadly drop-offs to one side. Others run through the woods and feature narrow passages through trees. Trying to ride this stuff is fun. Dying isn't. So if you feel uncomfortable, step off and walk or if you feel like people will snicker at you, step off and run while shouting: 'I used to race cyclocross!"

* Beginners ride as if they're riveted to the centre of the bike. The actual relationship is more like when the bad guy in a western walks on top of a train. While it rolls along, he can move to the front of the car, or the back, or just stay in the centre. Of course, his movements won t affect the train. He doesn't weigh enough to alter its motion. But put that same size body on a bike and see what happens.

* When you're trying to balance at a standstill the instinct is to saw the handlebar back and forth. This is bad. It results in something called oscillatory steering instability. Instead, control the bike by moving your head and shoulders sideways. This results in something called coolness.

* The best way to improve your on-bike balance is to learn to do a trackstand which means you just balance in place looking all cool. Here are six steps for mastering this important skill.

1. Relax and ride loose (light grip on the handlebar, elbows and knees bent) as you coast to a stop or lightly apply the front brake, whichever feels more comfortable. A slight incline is the best learning surface.

2. The pedals should he horizontal (in the 3 and 9 o'clock position) with your "good foot" forward. This is the foot you favour. It's usually on the same side as the hand you favour, but not always. If you’re unsure, think about which foot you automatically put forward when you're coasting with the crankarms levelled. That's your good foot. Apply slight pressure to the pedal with this foot first enough to inch the bike forward.

3. At the same time, squeeze the front brake hard enough to prevent forward motion.

4. Also at the same time, turn the front wheel in the direction of your good foot. You'll probably over-steer at first. You just need enough angle to bring the bike into a stable position. You'll feel it when you're in the right spot.

5. Maintain equilibrium between these forces. You want to keep yourself in a kind of suspended state between rolling and tailing. It's like an isometric exercise where muscle groups push against each other but don't move.

6. It you begin to fall in the direction of your good foot, turn the wheel straighter and ease of the brake and pedal. This rolls your weight (and sometimes the bike) back slightly and returns your balance. If you begin to fall in the other direction, put more pressure on the pedal and lock up the brake. This shifts your torso foward.

(When you get better you can move to the flats, and you'll learn how to point your knees to maintain balance. None of this is difficult to understand once you're on the bike, but don't expect much hang time in your first 20-30 attempts.)

L6 Ramblings

2006-11-27T06:38:00.000-08:00

Here are some L6 ramblings. This is gleaned from various message board postings and whatnot. YMMV.

L6 as it pertains to L5....L5 is still mostly aerobic. Even though you can't maintain L5 very long (what, 3-8 minutes?) it's still something in the realm of 90% aerobic. Yeah, it feels worse but it's not. Having said that, it's still a very high stress level. It is, or probably should be, part of your plan over the course of the year, or years, or lifetime, etc etc. Many people think that mixing in L5 year round makes sense, and I agree with that, to a point. If you're just starting out there's probably not much of a need to bother with L5 just yet. Other people take off L5 in the offseason, or build season. That's your call. Point being, as it pertains to L6 which I realize I have not mentioned yet, is that it's part of your standard workout menu.

Ok, as for L6. You suck at it, I suck at it, most of us suck at it. The adage goes that sprinters are born, not made. And L6, being in that 30 sec to 3 min range is a sprint. This comes from Coggan, who also says that 6 weeks of focused L6 work (aka AWC or Anaerobic Work Capacity) is about all you need to (mostly) reach your genetic potential. That's good and bad. Good because you don't need to hammer at it for long. Bad because you really aren't going to raise it much since it's hard to train. You're not going to see big gains in the area year after year because it's less trainable than the energy systems up through L5.

Moving beyond that, if you do insist on more L6 work you're doing so at the risk of compromising aerobic endurance. The reality is that the L6 ceiling isn't as limited as it's made out to be. But in order for you to raise it, you need to dedicate plenty of time on it which necessitates losing time elsewhere. I'm basically suggesting you shouldn't bother with L6 when it isn't needed. It racks up loads of fatigue, isn't terribly trainable, is hard to maintain, and cuts into all your other training time.

There's more. It's not just a matter of L6 taking time away from more endurance-oriented training, either. Some of the adaptations your muscles make to L6 training are directly opposed to endurance ability! So, L6 is a powerful, but dangerous medicine for a primarily endurance-oriented athlete. There's little reason to work on it unless you've already put together as much endurance fitness as you can for your goal event, and are planning on spending it relatively soon. This is the classic periodization model where you build your base, up the intensity a little, then hammer out some intensity as you roll into your event.

The problem with that approach is the psychological difficulty of suddenly shifting into AWC-training mode 6 weeks out from your goal. Some people feel uncomfortable with new workout schemes until they've gotten the hang of them. You can "train to train" with L6 by introducing the L6 workouts before the 6 week boundary. Or you can, every once in a while, blow out a 1-minute or 2-minute maximal test just to keep it "in there" so to speak.

So I guess at the end of the day, don't sweat the L6 stuff too much unless that's what your target event is all about.

2007 Goals

2006-10-30T08:03:00.000-08:00

Well, here goes. These goal pages are always tough, because you draw a line in the sand when you basically have no idea how the year will go. Last year I didn't have any goals. They just popped up when we had a baby and I needed to ride more efficiently. Now I have 1 hobby, and I try to make the most of it. Having a single hobby makes it easier to focus on any goal setting, since that's all you think about. Anyway, here's what 2007 (to be exact, late 2006 and most of 2007 since the biking season ends in October) looks like:

Lose Weight. Always, an eternal struggle. It's not like I'm overweight anymore. I could certainly stand to lose a few pounds, but I'm not a fat hog like I used to be. My "playing weight" ranged from 202-204 in the summer to around 197 at the end of the season. This season, I'm looking to get down to the 180-185 range. That's 15 pounds less to lug up those hills!
Ride in one H2H Race. I'm not a fast XC racer by trade. But it would be neat to do. I plan on using this as a training ride one week. This isn't so much a goal because it involves nothing more than my ponying up the money and entering.
All 12 hours of 12 O'Muchy. That's it. No bailing, ride the whole 12. I have no aims for placing anywhere, so we'll see what happens.
10+ laps of Allamuchy 24. This will mean more efficiency, quicker pit stops, and night riding, none of which I practiced this year. With the proper training this really should not be a major obstacle, barring unforeseen mechanicals. Hopefully this does not take all of 24 hours!
Sub 4:23 in All-A-Muchy 50k. By the end of next season, I really should know this park well. This is a moving target since the course changes. But it's still a goal. This is probably the most aggressive of the goals. This year's time was 5:23. This will include a shift in training from long & efficient rides under threshold to being comfortable above threshold. Lots of L5/6 training.
Hillier Than Thou. This is a road century with 10,000 feet of vertical climbing. This is usually between the 24 race and the 50k. To qualify as having finished, you need to complete it in 8 hours. This should be doable. Goal is only to finish in that 8 hours.
Dark Horse 40. This is just a race to do. I'm not sure it has any real meaning other than something to do. It's a good training ride and probably serves to get me more accustomed to racing.
Running of the Dogs. I guess the idea is just to do it. Maybe the goal is to do 8 laps in 4 hours? That would be aggressive.

That about sums it up. I considered adding a generic 12 hour race, of which there are 4 others within a reasonable driving distance (Lodi or one of the 3 MaSuperSeries races). I also considered adding one of the Michaux races, which I really want to do. Then there's the Wilderness 101 and Shenandoah 100. But I don't know how much biking-time capitol I have to spare at this point. I need to pick & choose my events sparingly next year. Maybe in 2008 I can add a few more of this or that but for now this will have to do. Anything else is gravy.
Wish me luck.

All-A-Muchy Calories per Hour

2006-10-29T16:05:00.000-08:00

Again, for future reference...

8:30-9:30, 300 cal, 300 tot, 300 avg
9:30-10:30, 300, 600, 300
10:30-11:00, 0, 600, 240
@11:00, 550, 1150, 460
11:00-12:00, 200, 1350, 385
12:00-1:00, 300, 1650, 365
1:00-2:00, 200, 1850, 335

Observations:

Higher calorie intake than the 24 hour race per hour
Was low on water intake at half. 48 in and averaged 30/hour by end
Rest stop and second half was huge liquid intake, maybe 90 total ounces
Probably need to look towards 400 cal/hour and 32 oz/hour
Initial hour is biggest in terms of water replacement

TSS/CTL/ATL/TSB

2006-10-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

This entry is almost certainly going to complicate things a bit. People who use a Power Meter (PM) are going to read this and scoff at it. Those that don't are going to think it's too much. If you don't fit in those 2 groups, this might be useful. Or, it might sound almost useful, but a lot of fuss over what amounts to little more than riding your bike. On one hand I tend to see that point. But on the other hand I put a lot of effort into riding my bike these days. I want to make sure that I fall into the range that covers the following areas:

I'm riding enough
I'm not riding too much
I'm not ramping too much
I'm not slowing down or stagnant
I'm allowing myself to rest enough
I'm covering all energy systems evenly

This whole mess allows you to do that. How you put it together is where the art of training comes in.

Having said that, getting into TSS is a bit of a blind venture, since TSS is a PM specific metric used to measure your workout load. Defined as Training Stress Score (TSS), it is a number which represents the total amount of stress a particular workout puts on your body. By tracking this and watching both short & long-term trends, you can get a different view of how your workouts add up and why a certain day felt better than the others. Note that this does not differentiate kinds of stress. 10 low intensity points and 10 high intensity points are just 10 points.

If you really want to start at the beginning, you can read the link here to get a foundation for what power training is all about. As I write this, I do not own a power meter nor do I plan on getting one in the immediate future. Maybe next year, we'll see. For now, I'm skipping the actual power measurements and using estimated TSS, which isn't perfect but gives me a metric to use to judge my recent workout load. This is all about quantifying as best you can.

To get the long explanation on TSS/CTL/ATL/TSB you can go here. For those less inclined, the following will suffice:

TSS: Training Stress Score of a ride
CTL: Chronic Training Load, longer term "fitness"
ATL: Acute Training Load, short term "loading"
TSB: Training Stress Balance, "freshness" which equals CTL-ATL

That's it. I have a spreadsheet which calculates these based on the TSS score you enter. If you want it, email me (normZurawski@yahoo.com) and I'll send it to you. It has a nifty little graph which will give you squiggly lines and trends. Many people in the power forums refer to it as TSTWKT, or The Shit That Will Kill Them. Not very professional, no. But it is what it is. For a quick discussion of TSTWKT you can click here.

What to do with all of this? The only thing you need is your TSS. Everything else is calculated. How do you estimate your TSS? First, you need to read my blog on Energy Systems. These concepts are crucial to knowing what kind of workout you're doing. Absolutely crucial. If you don't have a reasonably firm grasp of these energy systems you can throw it all out the window.

It should be noted at some point in this discussion that if you're dicking around on the bike, or doing a group ride where you stop and bullshit with your friends at the top of every hill, that's not training. That's nothing more than JRA, or Just Riding Along. I say this to emphasize that in order for all of this to have some semblance of accuracy, you need to put a level of honesty and hard work into it. The reality is, some of these workouts hurt, especially L4 and above.

Ok, moving on from that little rant, where to go next? Well, assuming you have your levels worked out you can now reasonably guess what kind of ride you just went on. From there you can slap a TSS score on it, enter it in the spreadsheet, and leave it at that. Again, if you need the spreadsheet email me at normZurawski@yahoo.com and I'll send it to you.

It sounds easy enough, and really it is. There are a few things that are worth mentioning at this point.

Structured intervals are going to be easier to estimate TSS
Groups rides will be hard, nearly impossible
Variable mountain bike rides are very difficult as well
Low intensity endurance rides are fairly easy as well
The trainer is an excellent way to base line this

So how do we take care of item #2/3? Personally, I don't go on group rides very often. If I do, I basically subtract the time spent not riding and then use my estimate for #3. Variable mountain bike rides get a score of 72 TSS/hour. Why? Why not? That number represents a point between L2 and L3. Since any off-road ride will be a mix of L1-L7, with much of it landing in L2, this represents a value right between L2 and L3.

But the number really isn't all that important. What's more important is that you generally find your off-road riding groove and stick to it. Basically, if that number is off by 25%, you want all your estimates there to be off by 25%. And when you're training for off-road events (like I am), you merely need to make sure your MTB-specific TSS totals slowly rise as your events get closer.

So what exactly is TSS? TSS = IF x IF x 100. IF is intensity factor. Here is how I break it down:

L2: IF~.8, 64 TSS/hr
MTB: 72 TSS/hr
L3: IF~.9, 81 TSS/hr
L4: IF~.95 (rest periods not included), 90 TSS/hr
L5/6: IF~1.0 (rest periods included), 100 TSS/hr

L1 isn't stress, so I don't count it. L6 is close enough to L5 to strap it with that level. And L7 work lasts for about 10 seconds and gets wrapped up in my MTB rides since I don't do L7 specific work.

A lot of this is discussion for the benefit of the reader. If you know your energy system levels and the numbers above, that's enough to move forward with the discussion. Of course, you need the spreadsheet as well. Then you need to stop reading, go out and ride for a few weeks, and start entering numbers in the spreadsheet. Unfortunately the numbers don't mean anything until you have about 6 weeks of data. If you've logged your rides you can go back and put in estimates. Otherwise you need to slog away for 6 weeks until you see where you are. Resist the temptation to go nuts in an effort to fill up your CTL. It'll only bite you in the ass down the road when you're burned out.

Now what?

Now you need to learn how to work with these numbers. Well, there's the rub. There is no generally accepted way to work with these numbers. This concept is relatively new and there are any number of ways you can work with this. Obviously, the goal is to get CTL as high as you possible. What CTL range do you want to be in? One coach on Cycling forums has his athletes at 55 CTL in October. It ramps up to about 70 by January. From February through September it ranges from 70-100. Peak areas end up in the 85-100 range. The hours come up to 7-11 in the winter, and 11-13 in season.

In one discussion with a respected sports scientist in the field, his estimate is that 150 is about the highest reasonable CTL you can maintain, with numbers in the 200 realm representing a level nearly guaranteed to blow you out of the water sooner than later.

But only focusing on CTL won't get the job done. Obviously the most efficient way to build CTL is to work at L5 and above. But if you know your levels, L5 is brutal, and after an hour of that you're ready to lay on the ground and sleep. So going the other way, if you have the time you can easily build your CTL using L2 workouts. By piling up loads of endurance riding you can get your CTL sky high. But then, you're just training yourself to go a long way, slowly. You need to build with a mix of workouts in order to be able to ride any reasonable trail/course.

I'll throw in here the way that Coggan classifies workouts in terms of total TSS accumulated:

100- low (easy to recover by following day)
100-200 medium (some residual fatigue may be present the next day, but gone by 2nd day)
200-300 high (some residual fatigue may be present even after 2 days)
300+ epic (residual fatigue lasting several days likely)

While I'm here, I'll also link the Coggan post for reference, here.

SST, or Sweet Spot Training, is a great way to raise your CTL. A good article is one by Frank Overton which can be found here. The basic idea is that after your first peak, your CTL has dropped significantly because of your race prep and taper. So it's easy to build up TSS with SST, but you also rack up a lot of ATL, which can put you "in the hole", so to speak. After this "reloading" of CTL, then you can take a little time up to come up for air, watch your TSB go positive, then hit the higher intensity stuff hard.

But this only covers a time frame between peaks. One account which promotes SST training during the off season:

"Starting last November, I went cold turkey on pure L4 work for the 1st time since I started training with power. I decided to target the 0.80-0.90 IF range and see what my n=1 experiment yielded. Average week was ~12hrs, ~850TSS, and ~0.85 avg IF. I followed that base routine until around six weeks before our 1st TT in early May with the usual transition into L4-5 work.

(a) FT increased about 25W before I started typical 0.95-1.05IF L4 work
(b) CTL up where I wanted it (roughly 120 and I built somewhat higher)
(c) I set PB's this year for durations of 30-sec to 5-hrs and they were quite evenly distributed throughout the year. That was a big departure from the last 2-3 seasons where my last PB's would be in May and then a big gap until Sept/Oct. where I'd occasionally pull off a nice 1-5min PB.
(d) No 'dread' of training sessions throughout the winter as I'd typically get when pounding at the higher intensities. I doubt I missed more than a couple of sessions all off-season.
(e) No perceived or demonstrable fade in performance over the season. I know the word 'base' means a lot of things to a lot of people but I felt I had a great one."

L2-L4 workouts are essentially the same, in a way. They are all endurance training which you do at sub-threshold. L4 obviously pushes the envelope which is why you can only do so much of it. L2 is a lot easier, but it takes a lot more to get the same physiological adaptations. Basically it's a tradeoff between intensity vs. duration. So 60 minutes of L4 is "better" than 60 minutes of L3, but you can do significantly more L3. As you build, your time in L3 can easily get to the 3 hour realm, which will really boost your TSS totals. Compare that with what you get for an hour of L4.

Ok so that's SST, which is how I'm spending my off season between 2006 and 2007 because I want to drop pounds as well as get ready for the L5 and L4 blocks in mid-late winter. I'm also using that time to get myself used to riding at 5:00 am because that's the way it works out when you work in the city and you have a new daughter. Time is what you make it. I make it by getting on the bike at 5:15 am 3 days a week. I also need to make sure I can handle riding 5 days a week.

Coggan says that while you aim to get your hours in, you might also want to get on the bike at least 5 days a week. His contention is that spreading the training load over more days makes it easier to maintain your CTL and keeps your TSB from going too negative, ala the Weekend Warrior. After having dabbled in this Estimated TSS venture, I actually came to the same conclusion before reading this suggestion by Coggan.

Overall, the generally accepted CTL ramp rate is 3-8 points per week. Any more than that and you're probably going to be susceptible to injury and illness and so on. If you're starting from a low CTL, you may be able to build at a faster rate. But once you've established some sort of baseline, the 3-8 rule is good to follow. If you push for the high end of that, you may need to throw in a rest week every 4th week.

So there you have a plethora of random thoughts on this emerging and ever-changing subject. Ideally you want to build your CTL as high as you can. You also want to do this with a steady mix of L3-L5/6 work. You then need to fill in the gaps with L2 work which is how you teach your body to ride long distances. As your events approach, you want to back off so your TSB rises. This will cause your CTL to drop, but not too much if you don't taper/peak a lot. So the ideal way to present yourself is with a high CTL and high TSB. How you get there is up to you and is often a work in progress.

Carb Loading

2006-09-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

I have never experimented with carb loading. From what I read, carb loading is mostly a myth and will often do more harm than good. I don't have any general philosophy on the matter, since I've never experimented with it myself. The upside is that it is supposed to work. The downside is that traditional carb loading procedures are brutal and Draconian. The good news is that you don't need to use the classical approach. The bad news is that if you do it wrong, you may just end up feeling fat & bloated by the end of the week.

If your event is less than 90 minutes, don't waste your time. Here are the 2 approaches that I would give some weight to:

One
In the week before your event, structure your exercise volume and carb intake accordingly:

7: 90 min (50% carbs)
6: 40-60 min (50% carbs)
5: 40-60 min (50% carbs)
4: 20-45 min (70% carbs)
3: 20-45 min (70% carbs)
2: 0-30 min (70% carbs)
1: Race (70% carbs)

Personally I don't think you should exercise every day leading up to a race. I also don't think you should take the day before off.

Two

Workout the day before the event
Moderate total time, ~60 min
Do a short 2-3 min burst of ultra hard effort
Rest as much as you can for the remainder of the day
Eat a diet of 90% carbs

Good luck!

Morris Principles

2006-09-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

Here are some notes drawn from the MTBR posts of a guy who goes by MTBDOC. I don't know who he is, but he apparently espouses a lot of the Dave Morris principles and has used him as a coach. The full version of his posts can be found here.

The Morris book can be found here.

My aim here is to put this in some kind of order as it pertains to a season plan. Any rough outline would be offseason, base, and season. This is very rough, but it gives you something all plans structure by. A lot of the thoughts presented in the raw link above are forum replies. So you don't get complete feel for the post he was replying to. In the end, this is one guy's perspective of a training philosophy. I think it's a good approach, since Morris essentially advocates reverse periodization as well as intervals year round, which fits in with my personal philosophy given time constraints and winter weather.

Weight Training
The details of weight training are left to the link above. I'm currently not a big believer in a rigorous weight routine at this stage. I believe my efforts are better directed at weight loss and riding through the winter right now. I do not plan to devote much time to resistance training this winter. I may do some work to help maintain weight and to switch things up. But it will not be the basis of my offseason biking plan.

An extensive description of the Morris offseason plan can be found here.

Base Training
Many of the base training concepts are old school. LSD rides are far from efficient in terms of getting the most out of your training time. Look for your base miles to be more race simulation, or at least race distance plus hard efforts. From where I'm sitting, my race distances are 24 hours. So this clearly doesn't apply. As much as I'd love to give a 24 hour winter event a shot, no such animal exists...thankfully. Having high intensity during high volume is ok as long as you can hit the duration targets. In fact, many riders compromise fitness gains by not having some intensity. Interval work is beneficial year round, short and long sessions.

In going forward with this, many of the workouts are going to be intervals. Morris preaches block training, and pure block training some of the time, specifically as his program moves from weights to the bike. The goal is to maintain your speed/effort/power throughout the interval. It will often feel easy (relative) at the start, then deadly at the end. You get the most effect this way. Your rest is easy, make that EASY. It's all about recovery. This goes for between intervals, between sets, and on your rest days. When called for, you need proper rest to make solid gains. Morris is all about hard work combined with hard rest.

The structure of your intervals is a personal thing, like the number of reps and sets, as well as the duration of the second/third day of a block. This will take some time to work out through trial and error. Truly structured intervals should probably be done on a trainer. There are so many outside variables that maintaining your environment is difficult if not impossible. Plus, on a trainer you get the most benefit in the least amount of time. Having said that, you don't want to make it harder than it needs to be. I personally find intervals much easier on the flat roads.

So the general plan is such:

Weight/resistance training
High power, short range intervals
Aerobic endurance base (volume) with periodic high sustainable power for 4 weeks
Moderate duration intervals, VO2max, 2-6min range, 20-40m of work per session, 4 weeks (early March)
LT intervals, 8-15m range, work:rest=2:1

At a higher level, you want to do high intensity, then power, then endurance.

I doubt I will ever follow this plan. It still suffers from the problem that your aerobic endurance base will be in February. I'm not doing 3 hour rides routinely in February, neither indoors nor outdoors. Maybe I occasionally catch a break and get out on an epic ride when the weather is a balmy 40 degrees. But I'm not packing in 3+ hours when it's 8 degrees out. It should also be noted again that this is just one guy's version of how to use these methods. The following will be presented from short duration to longer duration.

Interval Notes

Shorter intervals build VO2max power.
For LT intervals, you don't need as much rest, maybe 2:1 work:recovery, up to 5-7 min.
To develop the ability to make & sustain power above LT, it requires a fair amount of volume at that intensity.
High power (anaerobic) intervals are done to develop power.
After the high power phase, you want to sustain it for large periods (first make, then maintain).
You can add sprints to the beginning of a workout, ME/LT to the end.

Short duration stuff.
Maximum force generation needs a lot of short efforts, on the order of 10-20 seconds. Your rest between efforts can vary between 20 and 60 seconds. Try something like this:

10 secs seated, as hard as possible, 60 sec rest
Do 4 reps, with an easy 5 min between sets
Do 3-5 sets
Another day do 20 secs on, 20 secs rest
This can be done along with high volume training (ie, this does not necessarily need to be done in a block)

Anaerobic capacity/tolerance
Anaerobic capacity/tolerance is trained by doing hard efforts with insufficient recovery to "restock" energy substrates (ATP, creatine phosphate, lactic acid). These are hard efforts at greater than 120% of LT power.

Shoot for a pace that gets hard in 1 minute
Recover 1 minute
Do 6 reps
For the next set try 30 secs of rest

Moderate Length Intervals, VO2max
The best way to build power output is to focus on moderate length intervals in the 2-6 minute range with a 1:1 work:rest ratio, say 6x4:4. These are most beneficial in 2 day blocks, with the second day often being a lower duration that the first day, say 6x3:3 or 8x2:2. This is essentially the first step "in season" for the typical Morris Plan user and is what I plan on starting with in January 2007. The overall structure (macrocycle) is going to be something like this:

week1: 2on, 2off, 2on, 1off
week2: 2on, 2off, 1on, 2off
week3: repeat week1
week4: 2off, spin, 5x1:2, 3off

You'll note here that this is pure block training, and that there are no weekend rides in this mix. This is going to be in the January time frame, when temperature is often measured in the single digits. At the end of this pure block, you will (theoretically) see huge power gains. After this Morris suggests another pure block of LT intervals in the 8-12 minute range.

Moderate Length, VO2max, in season
The above is a pure block which is how the Morris Plan season starts. When in season - usually March or later - you're not going to forsake all other training for a single energy system. So you need to work in race simulation rides or endurance rides on the weekend. Here is a sample guide for how to work that into a mixed schedule.

Mon: 5x3:3
Tue: rest
Wed: 6x3:3
Thu: 6x2:2 (slightly faster than 3:3)
Fri: rest
Sat: Race simulation/endurance
Sun: Race simulation/endurance

It's not required to ride on both weekend days, but you should be riding one or the other. Monday will hurt more if you ride on Sunday. Saturday will probably hurt a bit if you pull a race simulation that day. Keep the total workout time under 30 min, and as usual, keep the workout at a speed where you can barely finish the last one. Over time, you can bump these times up to 4-5-6 minutes, though that begs the question about what energy system you're actually working. At times I think a lot of this gets caught up in too much terminology and levels and whatnot, which leads the potential training rider to throw it all out the window and just go ride.

The following 2 weeks, add a rep to each of the interval days, if you can. On the 4th week - or the rest week - do something like this:

Mon: rest
Tue: rest
Wed: 5x1:2
Thu: rest
Fri: rest

Then you can pick it up from there. This is one sample recovery week, which I don't specifically use. I would do an easy hour ride on Tuesday and the 5x1:2 ride on Thursday, then on Saturday I would do a 1-2 hour ride with some intensity to get myself ready for a harder ride on Sunday. I would also up the carb intake a little on Saturday to make sure the muscles are ready to go the following day. This overall scheme can be used for any in-season block training.

LT work
For either a pure or in-season block, you can use the guides as outlined above. The duration of these intervals is much higher than the higher power intervals. In the Morris Plan, a pure block of this follows the initial pure block of VO2max work. Then you get into more mixed work in March. These intervals are at a lower power, and they need less recovery. As the season winds on, you'll be doing 20+ minute reps, where a 1:1 work:rest isn't necessary. In general, 5-7 min rest should be sufficient.

To start, shoot for intervals in the 8 minute range, and do 2-3 reps. You probably want to keep the early season stuff around 20-30 min of total work. After that, you can progress to 8-10-12-15-20 min reps. Ultimately you'll be doing 2x20:5 sessions as your LT work later in season.

Conclusion
There is no conclusion, this is just a way to separate the final comments from the last section. These are snippets of the Morris Plan as yanked from some guy's postings on a message board. You may or not may agree with them. They may or may not work for you. You may or may not be better off getting the book from Morris. Mine is on order, so I'll see what I think of all of this after I read it. Essentially, there's a lot of information out there, and this is one of many ways to approach your training. Coggan is another, as is Friel, Burke, and Carmichael. If you put them all in a pot and boil them down, you'll probably have one hell of a confused view of things. I know I do. That's the main reason I've put together these pages at all, so I can make heads or tails of all of this.

Testing

2006-09-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

Testing is a fairly important part of training for 2 reasons. The first being that you need to determine your power/hr zones through a test. The second is that it confirms your training is working. From an idealist point of view, if you have a plan and stick to it, your training will work and there's no need to verify it. Also, with a lot of trail and error, you can get the workout zones without a formal test. But in reality, testing covers these issues a lot more efficiently and without the blind faith.

For any test, you should perform it when rested and keep variables as consistent as possible. For instance, always do a test on a Saturday at the end of your rest week, at 9:00 am with the same breakfast, a full night sleep, same warmup, etc.

LT Test
The standard test to find your LT can be found here. Essentially you "should" be able to ride at your LT for 60 minutes. Since this is painful, a 20-30 minute test is much easier. With experience, you'll know when you're getting close to your LT and testing will become less formal. This test is what Friel uses in his plans.

3 mile
Carmichael uses a 3 mile time trial to determine your various zones. Regardless of your using this method, it's not a bad idea to mark off a 3 mile course and test yourself on it occasionally. If you're recreational, the Mendoza Line is 10 minutes. If you're a racer, it's 8 minutes. Beating the 8 minute mark puts you in the advanced-intermediate category of riders.

Make It Up
There's no reason you can't make it up as you go along. I have a short 13 mile loop I occasionally use for recovery rides which loops around the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. I use this as a metric to test where I'm at. There are other common loops I ride which I check as the season goes on. Some are hill rides, some are 30-40 miles. Some are nothing more than how I feel on a particular off-road ride.

Or make up whatever you think works for you. The LT test is a good "industry standard" to go by. On top of that, there are any number of things you can do to measure your progress, even if it's nothing more than comparing this year's race results with last year's.

Goals & Events

2006-09-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

It's probably important to have goals & events in mind when you set out to train on your bike. In addition to a yearly plan which lays out specific cycles, ramps, rests, and peaks, goals and events allow you to have some tangible mark to shoot for at the end of the road and/or period. Personally, I'm always trying to lose weight. But I don't consider that a goal, per se. It's more of a side benefit of what I do. Given that so many people are trying to lose weight, I figure I'd mention that I don't think weight loss is a viable goal in terms of why you might be doing 60 second intervals which make you want to puke at the end.

Anyway...I believe it's important to set goals and to be tough on yourself in trying to attain them. At the same time you need to know yourself and your limits. If you're just starting out it's not a good idea to jump right into trying to do the RAAM. Set realistic goals, ride in events which stretch or test your goals, have a plan, and be smart about how you put it all together.

Above all else, you need to have fun. Don't get me wrong, I'm not so delusional to think that riding in a 24 hour event isn't somewhat painful - it certainly is. But you need to be able to come up for air now and again and realize that a lot of what you do is fun as hell. If you're not having fun some of the time, then you need to reassess your plan, your goals, and the events you do.

So ok, this entry really doesn't have much meat other than to say, you need goals and events. So there you have it. Find some goals and events.

Designing a Training Plan

2006-09-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

At a certain point you're going to hear the expression "training plan" enough to decide for yourself that you need to have one. A training plan is not, IMO, something you go out and pick up at the food store. Sure, there are any number of websites selling training plans but unless you get an online coach with your plan, you're going to end up asking more questions than you answer. Eventually you'll put together enough information where you can cobble together a rough outline of what your season should look like.

To start you probably want to read the following links first:

When you've digested all of that, you may be ready to either put together your own training plan or throw it all out the window and just go ride. Personally, I'm still debating. But for the time being let's assume I'm actually going to work with a plan. Here are some things I might consider when I do that.

Your plan would normally have macro & micro cycles.
You may want to have macro & micro goals
Every workout should have an objective
The more specific your goals, the better/smarter you can train

At this point I think you need to work with a spreadsheet or create a chart to go further. I basically got the idea from Friel where you break down the year on a week-by-week basis. Most of my spreadsheet columns are different than Friel. I use week, race, focus, score, and long ride. This is specific to how I train and I highly recommend that anyone designing their own plan do the same.

My columns are as such:

week is the Monday of the week in question
race is any ride/race I might do that week
focus is where I'm directing my efforts for that period
score is TSS (training stress score) for the week
long ride is my longest ride of the week

You may want to pause at this point and take a look here. This is a training plan for long-distance riding. You may find this is all you need to go forward with the season. I like to be more detailed and specific to what I think works for me. As long as you have some plan, you should see improvement in your performance. You may want to tweak as the season progresses, or as you enter a new year.

Assuming you want to go forward with designing your own plan, and you have some sort of spreadsheet or chart to work with that encompasses what you want to focus on, I will now lay out how I am going forward with my training plan for 2007. This is how I plan to tackle the season for 2007. Since I've never actually run through a season before, you can assume that there will be changes along the way. But we're in October now, so what we have here is the basis for how to approach next year.

Step 1

You need to put dates in your spreadsheet. For 2007 I'm starting with October 30, 2006. Biking seasons do not begin and end when Dick Clark says. So we mark the start of next season with the end of this one, which is roughly the end of October. In the first date cell, enter 10-30-06 and in the one below it enter 11-06-06. Then highlight both boxes and pull down the square in the lower right corner so Excel fills in all the dates through 11-05-07.

Step 2

Enter your races/events in the race column. Enter anything that you might be interested in doing. You can (and should) put in any major group rides or riding vacations/tours/etc that you might want to make note of in your training. Highlight the primary races in bold. This way you know where your targets are. General practice is to not mark any more than 3 as primary. Anything else you train through, or use as experiments. If you have more than one potential event for any given week, enter them both.

Score is filled out as the season goes so leave that blank for now.

Step 3

Training focus for me starts on the first week. It is "Weight loss, Enjoy." I plan on riding through the fall and enjoying things a little more than you might during the season. Since weight loss equals better performance, it's pretty integral. I may also lift some weights in here but nothing lower body and only because it makes me feel better and burn calories. But this is not a bike training tool I subscribe to. So it's not part of my "plan" per se.

On Jan 1 I add a pure block of L5, then on Jan 29 I add a pure block of L4. This is what I would call the preseason. I probably won't do much, of any, outdoor riding during this time of year. So this is when I start hammering out the block training following the Morris philosophy. After these 8 weeks, the season starts.

My first target event is the week of May 28, which is a 12 hour race. So I have 3 periods to build up to that. Each period is a 4 week block with a rest week at the end. The first period will be L3 on Feb 26, followed by L5 on Mar 26, and L4 on Apr 23. These are all mixed blocks. The L3 I'm pretty sure about. The L4 and L5 are still up in the air. I may toss in shorter blocks, or I may work on mixed blocks, or I may do something completely different. Either way I will be riding off-road on weekends as well as building my endurance. Nothing in season is pure for me.

The weeks before and after the event are Peak and Transition. Peaking is covered in another blog entry. I'm not entirely sure what works in terms of peaking. I have a lot to learn in that regard. Transition means taking it easy for a week and allowing your body to detox from the event of the previous week.

After the transition I have 2 periods, L5 on Jun 11 and L4 on Jul 9, then a week of mixed work on Aug 6. I very well may alternate L4 and L5 for 4 weeks, then do a 5 week L3 block leading up to the 24 hour race, the second target event of the year on Aug 20. Add in the standard peak-race-transition around the race and you're left with only a handful of weeks before the last event.

There are 6 weeks between my second and third target events, which will be transition, mixed work for 4 weeks, then peaking. After the last target I work on enjoyment and whatnot.

Step 4

Now I need to figure out how to ramp up my long rides on a week-by-week basis. Leading up to the first event, the 12 hour ride, my rides look like this (in hours): 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, 6, 12. There's really not a lot of peaking going on with the 6-6-12 combo, so that middle 6 may change to a 3 or a 4. That's a peaking detail I need to work out. Some say that for these kinds of rides riding through it is better. We'll see. I may also be asking too much of myself to do block training as well as this hefty amount of hours. Again, learning experience so we'll see.

Leading up to the 24 we get a similar build: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, 6, 24. Again, that last 6 may turn into something smaller. And the 8 in there represents a training mark to try and hit as a confidence builder and final run to make sure you're all set to go. I'll have the previous 12 to go by, so it's probably not as crucially important.

Leading up to the final event, a 50k race, the long rides look a lot smaller: 2, 2.5, 2.5, 3, 3, 3.5, 4. The 4 is the target event here, or so we hope after all this planning.

Step 5

Be flexible, things will likely change. Also you have to realize that any training in the season means you have L2 and L3 rides on almost all weekends. Similarly, you need to work L7 into the mix, which is usually done on the trail as you need. You can also work on some of that in the beginning of any workout.

Notes

If time is limited, workouts should look more like race simulations
Your score needs to ramp up as the year/block goes on.
Your score needs to be lower in those rest weeks.
Once every 14-21 days, push your limits.

Conclusion

I think the planning of a season is highly personal. If you're totally clueless you can try Friel, who sets out a fine outline but does nothing with reverse periodization nor block training. So for me I'm not really interested in that approach. Or you can check out the link above, which is a nice classic training plan. Or you can get yourself an online coach. Or you can wing it, a plan which has gotten a lot of people basically nowhere over the years. Having some sort of structure is good, and ramping up to a peak is what all of the plans you pay for will have you do.

In the end, the priority is to have fun. Plan on enjoying it all and you probably will.

Specific Workouts

2006-09-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

A lot of what's on this site is observation, theory, and planning. But when the day rolls around, you have to get on the bike and do something. This is the big transition from "just riding" to riding with a purpose. This page is a list of various workouts you can use to hit the different levels of intensity. It is a good idea to read the Energy Systems link first, and then maybe the Block Training link as well. If you don't use the same system (Coggan) I use to label these workouts, it's going to be hard to follow.

These are organized by the Coggan levels as described in the Energy Systems link. The HR and Power numbers can be found there.

L1: Active Recovery
Active recovery is basically a rest day. You can choose to ride really slowly, or not ride at all. If you do ride, you should keep your HR low. We're talking a Sunday cruise in the neighborhood, maybe with the family. Your feet are feathers on the pedals. If you can't do this, take the day off.

30-90 minutes, 90-95rpm, generally flat course, small chain ring
Active recovery is useful in all periods, save for offseason.

L2: Endurance
Endurance, or LSD rides. A lot of time spent in the saddle. Don't mistake these rides for 3-5 hours of nothing but spinning your legs at a moderately low HR. You can (and should) add some intensity to these rides because it keeps you from going crazy and it's more realistic.

2+ hours, moderate intensity
...or, 2+ hours with 10 second bursts (@130rpm) every 10 minutes
...or, 2+ hours with some hills, some extended runs, but of moderate intensity/duration
You need to be able to hit your endurance goals
The road bike is better for these rides
Duration is usually goal/event appropriate
These rides are done all year round

L3: Tempo
Tempo rides are like endurance rides but ramped up on the intensity. These tend to be longer, but not of endurance length. You can also throw intensity into these rides. Fartlek workouts are usually done at Tempo pace. Recreational rides should be able to do Tempo rides of 45 minutes.

up to 2 hours at target HR
...or, 40 min, 20 min low cadence, 40 min, 20 min high cadence
...or, a typical fartlek workout, with no stops
These rides are done all year round.
As the season goes on, the L3 workouts should increase in length
At your peak, 2 hours at L3 is outstanding

L4: LT
LT workouts are usually in the realm of 8-20 minutes, with some people pushing this limit to 40. LT workouts are used to push the limits of your lactic tolerance, so you can exercise at a higher intensity without having lactic acid buildup rapidly. The basic workout for this level is 2x20:5. That means 2 reps of 20 minutes with 5 minutes rest between. This is where you start to see (what I call) the "goofy" workouts, from L4 up to L7. Some of the workouts are so mixed with zones and levels and sprints and cadence that you need an IRS agent to help work out the details of what you should do. These are all variants of the very basic, very standard interval.

2x8:5. This is where you start the season, at 8 minute intervals. Work to 20 as the season progresses.
...or, 3x20:5. As the season progresses, you can try to add a 3rd rep to the standard 2x20 set.
...or, 2x20:5 then 8-10x1:2. This is late season stuff.
3-5x6-12:5. Another variation on the same theme. More early season stuff to break up the work into more reps.
20-40 minutes alternating between L4 and L5 every 3-5 minutes. Late season work.
Set your HRM limits to LT-8 and LT+6. Increase your speed to the upper alarm, then decrease to the lower alarm. Do this every 2 minutes. Extend the time you can maintain this as the season goes on.
2-4x8-20:5 long, steady hill climbs @ 70-85rpm (can also be done with lower rpm for force/muscle tension work)

L5: VO2max
This is where the workouts really start to hurt. Anything you can only do for 3-8 minutes at a time necessarily hurts for a good part of the time spent doing it. While this zone is defined as 3-8 minute intervals, the workouts are almost always 3-5 minutes. Remember, the idea is to do the interval at a constant pace, and to be able to finish all your reps. Work:Rest is generally 1:1 in this level.

4x3:3. This is your season starting L5 workout
6x5:5, 2 sets. This is later season. Progress from the above to this as the season progresses.
6x3:3, rest 5 min, 4x2:4
Intervals of 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, 7 minutes with 5 minutes rest between, rest, 2x3:5
A pyramid variation of above with intervals of 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1. rest=work. This crosses into L6.
3-8 reps of a moderately steep hill. Enter the hill & pick up speed. Shift up, jump, explode to the top in the last minute.
...and so on. There are an infinite series of possible combinations, all of them hurt.

L6: Anaerobic Capacity
Like L5, these workouts also hurt. They range from 30 sec to 3 min. More often than not you'll see a standard set in the realm of 1 minute intervals. IME, these are a lot harder to get right, because they're so short. Go too easy and the interval is useless. Too hard and it's impossible to finish. As with all of this, you need to work it out a few times before you really get it right. The first few times you do these you will feel like crap.

8x2:2, rest, 8x1:3
3x2:1, rest, 3x30s:1m
Hill repeats, 1-3 min climbs seated (gears change according to aims)
Short loop off-road course with several tight turns. 6-9 sprints of 1 minute each.
60-50-40-30-20 seconds descending. Equal rest. Finish with 2-4x30:30.
...and so on, again. Start with smaller total work time at the start of the season and progress up.

L7: Neuromuscular Power
These are sprints, which are generally worked on year round and at the beginning of a workout.

6xsmall ring, wind it out to 120 rpm, rest, 3xbig ring, wind it out, rest, 3xbig ring, wind it out
2x10m of 15s on, 15s off, rest between sets
6-10x10s all out, full rest between
3-5 sets of 5 jumps, concentrate on explosive power, each jump is 10-12 revolutions
8-12 hill sprints, 8-10s in duration

Other Workouts
These workouts don't really fit anywhere in the above. So they go in the "other" category.

Isolated leg work, trainer, 80-100 rpm, low gear, concentrate on smooth pedaling
Off-road skills practice (bunny hop, wheelies, balance, slalom cornering)
Race simulation, targets all energy systems
10-20 minute off-road time trial loops, 4 sets, try to lower time each loop

Billat Intervals
These are supposed to be intense, I've never done them. She claims there is no improvement if done more than 1 time per week. She also claims there is a 3-6% improvement over 4 weeks. In order to keep this working, you need to retest yourself every 6-8 weeks.

The test:

Warm up for 30 minutes
Start going at 12.5 mph
Every 2 minutes, add 1-1.5 mph to your speed.
Continue until you have to slow down, or cannot accelerate anymore
The last speed you could maintain for 2 minutes is your VO2maxSpeed

Rest for 48 hours then do the second part of the test:

Warm up for 30 minutes
Ride the same course you did the above test on
Get up to the VO2maxSpeed you found above, via rolling start
Time how long you can maintain this speed
This is your timVO2max, on average this is 4 minutes

A 30-30 session:

alternate 30s@100% VO2maxSpeed with 30s 50% VO2maxSpeed
repeat for a total time of 1.5*timVO2max

A 2km session:

ride 2km@100% VO2maxSpeed
recover for the same time @50%
total time of work=2*timVO2max

Power, Heart Rate, RPE

2006-09-18T11:06:00.001-07:00

This is a big question. How do I train? What system do I use to structure my workouts? Do I just go out and ride, or do I use one of the standard metrics to gauge my daily workout? This is a tricky area, one where you will never get a unanimous answer for. Your options are 4:

Heart rate monitor (HRM)
Power meter (PM)
Rate of perceived exertion (RPE)
Nothing

I own an HRM that I don't use all the time. I wish I owned a PM (too expensive). I sometimes use RPE. On my weekend off-road ride, I use nothing, though it could be argued that I inherently use RPE since I know myself well enough at this stage to gauge my level of effort.

What's the difference between RPE and nothing? Well, RPE is a skill where you can tell how hard you're riding based on experience. If you're reading this you're not experienced enough to use RPE. Don't delude yourself, you're not the exception to this rule. Despite the fact that RPE has been shown to be highly accurate, you don't know how to use it, for now.

That's not to say that you couldn't learn in a short time. But unless you've been inwardly focusing for a good long time, RPE is not going to be that accurate for now. And if you're reading this at all, chances are that doesn't describe what you do when you ride. So what to do?

Heart Rate
Heart rate is probably the best way for a beginner to pick up the whole concept. An HRM is fairly inexpensive and allows you to really get a feeling for how your efforts correspond to your RPE. If you've been riding for a long time it can still help, but it probably won't be as beneficial. Still, HR allows you to put a cap on your efforts, especially for the long ones. Even those who have gone to power often still collect HR data.

Power
If you have the money go buy yourself a power meter. It's the so-called wave of the future and when a moderately reliable mid-range model comes out ($500 range), I'll probably get one. Power allows you to exactly measure what output you can maintain for how long. Software packages have made it a lot easier to sort out the data. Those who have converted to power never go back.

RPE
As mentioned before, RPE has been shown to be highly accurate. But you need to be in tune with yourself and it takes hard work as well as experience. This is a very cheap way to train and it allows you to not get caught up in the numbers. For my LT intervals, I'll put on my HRM and go. But for longer rides or shorter intervals, I leave the HRM at home and do my best with RPE.

Nothing
Just get out and ride. Good advice, but it only goes so far. If you use this technique you're probably not going to make huge strides in your biking. You'll feel better at the end of every season and then gain 10+ pounds and start all over when spring rolls around. This is great if it's your thing. But if you want to make gains and keep them over the winter, you'll need to be more dedicated than that.

What you choose is up to you, your wallet, and your aims. There is no right answer. But if you want to see sustainable growth you need to do more than just go out and ride your bike. If you want to structure a program it's going to help if you have some power or HR or at least RPE framework to exist in. Any book you buy will break down workouts by these parameters.

Energy Systems & Target Workouts

2006-09-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

This is one of those crucially important concepts which borders on being overly obsessive. It's an interesting aspect, the one of energy systems. On one hand, in order to train thoroughly and efficiently, you need to identify and address these energy systems. On the other hand, you can go way overboard, and feel overwhelmed by all of this information. So what to do?

To start, you need to simplify. There's always room to expand and learn more later. But to start you need to quantify the energy systems at a very basic level. So let's break down the energy systems:

Your body

That's it. When you get on the bike, all you have to rely on is your body. No matter how convoluted these discussions get, remember that it's all about you getting on the bike and riding. The rest? Details. Ok, so let's take it one step further. Give me 3 energy systems:

ATP - extremely short duration, in the order of 10 seconds
Aerobic - the long stuff, where your body learns to burn fat as an energy source
Anaerobic - the shorter stuff, primarily carbs used as fuel. Hill climbs.

This combination gets you a start, but this is really the beginner view of things. Ignoring ATP, you'll never be completely aerobic or completely anaerobic. There's always a mix of the 2 systems. But this still isn't really enough. You need to break it down a little bit more.

At this point, every expert has their own system they use. There are the 5 HR zones. Friel uses something like 7 HR and power zones. Coggan uses 7 power zones. Carmichael doesn't break down his work by zone, per se. He sort of lives outside the box with his recommendations. For my purposes I have started using the Coggan zones. Yes, they are based on power. And no, I do not own a power meter. His array is complete enough that I think you can get by using these 7 levels.

For a thorough explanation, you can look at Coggan's intro to power PDF here.

The part we're interested in is Table 1, page 17. This breaks down the training levels from 1-7, which is what I use. I'll leave the details of that table to the PDF linked above, but will briefly summarize them here, with rate of perceived exertion (RPE) listed on a scale of 1-10.

L1/Active Recovery. RPE 2. Easy spinning.
L2/Endurance. RPE 2-3. All day pace, regular breathing.
L3/Tempo. RPE 3-4. Spirited group ride, halting conversation.
L4/LT. RPE 4-5. 10-30 minute blocks, conversation difficult.
L5/VO2max. RPE 6-7. 3-8 minute blocks, conversation not possible.
L6/Anaerobic Capacity. RPE 7+. 30 sec-3 min intervals.
L7/Neuromuscular Power. RPE max. Super intense.

If you're not familiar with this stuff (and training in general) you're probably going to be surprised to realize most of your rides are in the L2-L3 area, with the occasional foray into L5 and L6. L4 is usually too hard to maintain for the prescribed times unless you push yourself, and L7 is usually avoided in order to not blow up. One of the things breaking it all down does is show how much room there is for improvement.

So these levels are all based on some scale, where Coggan uses power. The reality is that the top of one level will always meet the bottom of another level. So L3max and L4min is essentially the same thing. This is the same with any system, and gets at the heart of the fact that these are all approximations in order to help you train better. To that end, the aims of each system is described by its name. Here are more comments as I perceive them:

L1 is all about recovery. If you choose to take the day off instead of riding, then you will never be in L1.
L2 is for everyone. Everyone spends time in L2 since this is where most people naturally default to. It is important to realize that this level does not stress the body enough to cause significant aerobic gains. It helps you in other ways such as saddle readiness and energy expenditure (fat versus glycogen).
L3 is tempo, which is probably as accurate as you'll get in terms of a name. These are where your real aerobic gains are made. Your body learns to store more muscle glycogen when you do big tempo blocks. This is a key area for the endurance athlete.
L4 is where you get into your LT training, where you increase the level you can ride at before lactic acid builds up and stops you. LT Training is one of the most important areas for training gains. The standby here is 2x20:5.
L5 is where you increase your VO2max, which gets you over your LT. This is in the realm of anaerobic training and gets you into the painful category of training. This introduces you to the ability to clear lactic acid. 6x5:5.
L6 is also anaerobic, pushing your limits there. This is generally combined with L5 when you get into block training. 10x1:1.
L7 is sprinting. This is a very specific area that most people (who train) train all year round. 10x10:60.

In terms of block training, it will be most common to block L4 and then L5/L6. L7 is done year round. L3 and L2 are done on weekend during the season. And L1 is a recovery ride. Anything more than that is overkill, IMO. Or maybe you just have that much time on your hands. I personally subscribe to block training, and if you were to block L3, L4, L5, L6, and L7, you would lose your L3 gains by the time you got done with L7. So by boiling it down to L4 and L5/6, you can block train and keep all energy systems sharp as the season wears on.

By combining L5 and L6, we're essentially doing blocks that decrease in length by day. So if you do 5min Monday, you can shoot for 4min Tuesday, and 3min Wednesday. Or you can do 5-4-1, or 5-3-1.

Friel

For those of you who favor Friel, I have attempted to break down his areas and match them to Coggan's levels. But first it's worth looking at Friel's areas of concentration. Friel uses 3 basic abilities and 3 higher abilities. Endurance, force, and speed are basic. Muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance, and force are higher. You start the season with the basics:

Endurance. The ability to delay/reduce the onset of fatigue. The basis of everything. This teaches you to conserve glycogen and burn fat.
Force. The ability to overcome resistance, or the amount of pressure you can apply to the pedals. This is an extension of resistance training for Friel.
Speed. The ability to move quickly/efficiently/smoothly at high cadence, and to negotiate terrain quickly without wasted motion.

After this, he advocates adding some muscular endurance, then the other 2 higher abilities:

Muscular Endurance. The ability to maintain a high load for a long time. This is a combination of endurance and force. Friel contends that this is the critical ability for mountain bikers.
Anaerobic Endurance. This is the ability to resist fatigue when effort and cadence are high. This improves your ability to clear lactic acid. This is a combination of endurance and speed.
Power. The ability to apply maximum strength. This is force plus speed.

Friel contends that the longer races favor the basic abilities. He also contends that Anaerobic Endurance and Power are not terribly important for endurance racers. I highly disagree. If you cannot efficiently navigate the tough climbs and technical spots, you'll be burning matches when the aim is to save as many as you can.

Here is how I perceive the Friel areas correspond to the Coggan levels:

Active Recovery = L1
Endurance = L2/L3
Force = L6 (lower cadence)
Speed = L6/L7 (higher cadence)
Muscular Endurance = L4
Aerobic Endurance = L5/L6
Power = L7

This isn't a perfect match, especially since Speed and Power are both in the L7 range. But it works well enough. I think Friel gets into areas geared for the weight lifter. Force, for instance, is a direct offspring of the resistance training he advocates in the offseason. Force workouts are dropped after the base periods in the Friel plan.

Periodization, Reverse Periodization

2006-09-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

Periodization gets into an area of training where you not only adopt the philosophy that every ride has a purpose, but these rides combine to form a bigger plan where you obtain a peak of fitness targeting a certain event. The idea is that you break your year/season up into periods which lead up to a peak. The general approach is something like base, build, peak, race, transition, offseason.

The wikipedia definition can be found here. To better follow some of the ideas here it is a good idea to read the Energy Systems link first.

Friel uses the classic approach as such:

Prep. Late fall through early winter. 3-8 weeks in general. This consists of resistance training, cross training, and some bike training.
Base. There are 3 sub-periods in the Base of 3-4 weeks each. The focus is basic abilities. Muscular endurance is introduced in base2 and the focus in base3.
Build. There are 2 sub-periods in the Build of 3-4 weeks each. The focus here are the higher abilities while maintaining the basic abilities.
Peak. 1-2 weeks where you taper/sharpen.
Race. 1-3 weeks where you cash in, but lose fitness in the process.
Transition. 1-4 weeks, take a break, active recovery.

Carmichael has a similar approach:

Foundation. A 16 week base where you work on your aerobic engine, strength training, and pedaling mechanics. Carmichael does not believe endurance and resistance training mix well.
Prep. This is where intensity & volume increase. Sustainable power @ LT is a focus, obtained by doing frequent & long intervals @ LT. Work can be 2 or 3 days in a row, but you need to increase recovery time (block training). These workouts need to be done at intensity, just below your actual LT.
Specialization. Your goal is in this period. Here you focus on race specific elements & high-end energy systems, high intensity, and lower volume (this assumes non-endurance events). Workouts are full throttle and there is plenty of active recovery. Your aerobic conditioning may suffer here, so you can throw in a few weeks of endurance to maintain that.
Peak. A time of unloading and & supercompensation, really just an extension of specialization.

As you can see, there's really not much difference between these 2 plans. They start slow, ramp up, then focus as the event draws near. This is in agreement with the traditional periodization schemes used for decade.

Reverse Periodization

But many people, including myself, believe this structure is outdated and less practical. First of all, you should never take the offseason off. So you should never need to start each year like you're never ridden before. Thus, base rides with little intensity are a waste of precious training time. Secondly, how do you start your season in January with long, steady rides? For those of us in the winter locales, this isn't practical. Finally, doesn't it make some sense to build up the higher skills then go for long rides which tax all of these higher skills while working on increasing your endurance? Indeed, and thus we have reverse periodization.

This is where you want to make sure you've reviewed the Energy Systems link. We're basically focusing on 2 of the higher energy systems to start the season, VO2max (L5/L6) and LT (L4). These are the 2 most important energy systems a rider can focus on. Dave Morris (see Morris Principles) advocates this as well, so far as I can tell. These are general thoughts on reverse periodization.

First start off with a pure block (see Block Training) of VO2max (L5/L6) work. This will help you build the power you need to successfully ride for longer durations. This may very well be the single most important energy system in terms of focus and block training. After the VO2max block do an LT (L4) block, again pure. In season, some LT work can be tacked on to VO2max days, but the reverse is less productive as the L5/L6 work suffers when done tired.

After these 2 weeks you get more into "in season" riding, where you go for long rides on the weekends. You basically want to start these in March and do them once a weekend. You can also tack endurance time onto the end of the VO2max intervals if you so desire. I prefer to keep it for the weekends. You should also start hard group or off-road rides around the same time, once a week.

Now you're at a point where you've built up some power with VO2max and LT work, and you're working it into your season plan by using those abilities in your hard group rides or off-road rides. You're also working on endurance with a long weekend ride. After some time of this, you should start to swap out some of those endurance rides with L3 rides. Or you can reverse the order you introduce L2 and L3 or make them the same ride. Details up to the user in a lot of cases. The L3 work is more important for the endurance rider, who is going to need to be able to put in a lot of time with a brisk yet efficient pace.

You should be sprinkling sprints in with all your work save for the first 2 pure blocks of the season.

As the season gets towards the event/goal, you're going to work on mixing more than focusing on one system. You may do a mixed L5 or L4 block leading up to a race. But you'll still be doing sprint work (L7) as well as race simulations and endurance/tempo work.

In between events it's important to step back and focus on L4/L5/L6 work again to build up these systems. But you don't want to do pure blocks now because you've also got to hit the endurance rides as well. Endurance usually suffers near an event so you need to get that built up between events.

You can use the group rides or hard off-road rides as part of a block. It makes more sense to use it as your first day, then do a second day after it. Or for those of you who are doing 3 day blocks and ride better following a ride day, make it your second day. There are more variables here than you might think. Slight changes often times make more of a difference than you'd imagine. It is crucial to run through a lot of these permutations first to see what works for you.

Essentially, traditional plans boil down to L2 work, then adding L3/L4/L7 work, then later hit ting L5 and building to L6. In reverse periodization, you almost do the exact opposite. You start with L5 and L6, then add L4. After these blocks you add L2/L3 and L7. You then cycle back to the L4/L5/L6 as a focus later in the season, either right before or right after events, or both. The idea behind reverse periodization is that you make the power first, then you maintain it. Then you add it to your normal base/tempo rides that act as race simulations.

Block Training

2006-09-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

Block training is useful in getting the most effect from a limited time of training. The idea of block training is to target a specific energy system and focus on that system for a certain period of time. The variables you work with are:

The energy system to focus on
Length of the block
Stacked or staggered days
Pure block training, or not

Block training allows you to get the most bang for your buck for the time spent. If you have limited time to train, block training is a good way to go. That's not to say people with plenty of time shouldn't train in blocks. Blocks are extremely effective regardless. More than that, it's a great way to train very hard and get away with it. This volume of intervals mixed with a traditional training approach could easily lead to burnout.

An example of a block using the variables above might be as follows:

Targeting the LT system (LT push workouts)
A 4 week block
Back-to-back LT work on Tue/Wed
Non pure, where weekends are used for other rides (race sims, endurance)

This is something I might do mid-season, between events. As mentioned, the block work here is really the Tue/Wed stack during the week. Mon/Thu/Fri are rest days. Sat is an off-road ride. Sun is either an active recovery day or an endurance day. The first week I might do a pair of 20 minute LT push intervals on Tue, with 5 min between. Wed I would try to match that, but might fall short at 18, or 15, or whatever.

The next week I would bump the 20min set up to 22, or 25, or whatever worked for me. Week 3 would be another increment. Week 4 is rest & recovery. R&R actually starts on Sunday of week 3, as I will ride an easy 60 min on Sunday, then do the same Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Thursday I throw in some sprints or harder work to get myself back in the flow. On Sunday of week 4 I got for my normal hard ride of the week. Monday starts a new 4 week block.

The theory is that you get the most gains from a block of training where you pick one area of focus, then rest, allowing your body to super-compensate. After the rest you move on to another energy system. The focus should be heavily on one system at a time. It doesn't matter what energy system you focus on, but rotating systems makes sense. How to lay that out is more an effort of your periodization plans.

The system in question is up to you, your goals, and the current point you're training at. To be complete, you should probably spend some time in each of the L3-L6 levels, as defined by Coggan. Essentially these levels are summarized by the time you can spend at a certain power output, roughly:

L1 Recovery (forever)
L2 Endurance (3+ hours)
L3: Tempo (45m+)
L4: LT (8-20m)
L5: VO2max (3-8m)
L6: Anaerobic Capacity (30s-3m)
L7: Neuromuscular Power (~10s)

For the sake of this conversation, we generally omit L1, L2. Many people combine the L5 and L6 work so you are often really left with L3, L4, and L5/L6, and L7. These are details. The takeaway here is that the higher the system the shorter the interval. Also, the block is going to be maximally effective when you work at a stress level that isn't maintainable for any more than the duration of the interval. Simply stated, if you're doing a 5 minute interval and you can actually maintain it for 10 minutes, you're not going hard enough. You need to barely be able to finish the interval at 5 minutes for it to be most effective.

The most common approach is the 4 week block, where you spend 3 weeks training and 1 week recovering. Stacked back-to-back days lead to greater adaptation, as opposed to the classic staggered approach where you rest after a hard workout. Mentally this is tough, but the results are better. In order to maintain overall fitness I don't use pure block training, since that omits all other training for 3-4 weeks. My approach is usually 2 days of blocks on Tue/Wed, then an off-road ride on the weekend. Racing, race simulations, hard off-road rides, and group rides will tend to work all energy systems. I then follow a hard Saturday ride with an endurance Sunday ride, or an active recovery ride if the day before was really difficult. This is as outlined above.

An alternate approach is to do a mixed block, where you can do 2 days of L6, 2 days off, 2 days L4, 2 days off, and so on. This is probably effective at keeping yourself sharp, or for mixing up your trainer work in the offseason. This may be a good approach for the weeks leading up to a race. You can also tack L4 work onto the end of an L5/L6 workout, so long as the overall work load doesn't leave you spent. You generally want to do the more intense stuff earlier in the workout. Having said that, you don't get to choose when the killer hills are going to come up during a ride. So some high intensity stuff at the end of your workout probably better mimics the "real world", if you want to call riding a bike the real world. This isn't Day 1 sort of stuff. This is a good time to remind yourself that intervals lead to a much higher rate of dropout when added to any exercise program. They also lead to vast improvements.

In general, the training load is reduced somewhat as the block progresses, but not always. If you do 5 min intervals today then maybe shoot for 4 min intervals tomorrow. Or maybe 5-3-1, 5-4-3...you get the picture.

The exception might be the beginning of the season when the trails are messy and the roads are loaded with salt, sand, and chunks of pavement from the snow plows. The biggest drawback with pure block training is that you literally focus on only a single energy system at the expense of the others. At the beginning of the season, when you're not at the peak of fitness, you can probably get away with jumping right into a block of L5/L6 and going from there.

This fits with the reverse periodization scheme as well as the aforementioned lousy weather blues many people experience. Also, when you hit the highest energy system, you do actually work the lower systems in part. So if you're going to be exclusionary, shoot for the L5/L6 intervals at the beginning of the season. This translates to roughly 3-5 minute intervals. Many say this is where you see the best gains in the shortest period of time. So it could very well be the best way to introduce yourself to the regimented season again. After that block, you're probably better suited to get away from the pure block training and mix in some race simulation type work on the weekends to make sure you're not neglecting anything. Or at most, do a pure block of VO2max stuff, followed by a pure block of LT work. Then start your off-road or group rides to maintain your overall fitness.

There's one key to make sure it all works. Rest. With block training, you usually don't need to worry about the "hard enough" aspect of your training, though it does sometimes take a few weeks to realize that yes, you can actually go harder. If you follow the ideas of block training you'll be getting plenty of training stress. The thing you absolutely need to do is rest & recover enough. The general rule is a 1:1 ratio of work:rest. So if you have a block of 2 days, rest for 2 days. 3 days is tougher. Some can get away with 2 days but others need 3. You really need to play around with it a little to get it right. But your better off erring on the side of too much rest, especially as you get further into your block. This is a time to be in tune with your body, and to learn how to be in tune with your body. Overall, it's good to rest every 4th week for the whole week. Some people can push this to 6 weeks. Some people also choose active recovery rides on their rest days. I prefer to let the whole system rest, which includes tight knees, potential saddle sores, back issues, etc, Again, details which need to be worked out.

The amount of time you rest is also dependent on how hard you've worked. Again, this is a time to be in tune with your body. If your 3 days block has left you struggling to get out of bed, a 2 day rest might not be quite enough. Overall, block training is going to put more stress on your body, which is the driving force of the super compensation. But if you do it properly you also allow for full recovery. Another thing to remember is that it isn't necessarily based on a 7 day work week, at least pure block training isn't. So many are either forced to abandon the 7 day rotation or to not train every available weekend day, something foreign to those of us with real day jobs and free time on the weekends.

With pure block training, you would look to do something like M/T/W on, then T/F/S off. S/M/T on, and so on. Some advocate 4 day blocks, but that may be putting too much stress on the body at one time. You can also work with 2 on, 2 off, or maybe 3 on, 2 off, 2 on, 1 off. Again, much of the structure is what works for you. But you need to make sure you have 2 cornerstones for this: hard work and hard recovery. Otherwise you'll either be burnt out or underworked.

David Morris, author of the book Performance Cycling, advocates the pure approach. Says Morris:

"Remember, improvement in work capacity requires hard work and periods of rest and recovery. Thus, you should follow each block of interval work with an equal number of days complete rest or easy recovery rides."

and

"...involves training very hard for several days in a row and then resting for several days to allow the body to recover and super compensate. Frequently, to increase the training stress on the body, the same types of workouts are performed on each day of the training blocks. The theory behind block training is that overloading a single system and then allowing adequate rest will cause the system to supercompensate more than with traditional training strategies"

Morris also advocates focusing on VO2max and anaerobic intervals before LT, which also works well with reverse periodization and inclement weather. The general idea there is to first build the power, then maintain it.

Here is a quote form Tim Crowley CTS coach

"Block training- This training concept is quite popular for elite cyclist and multi sport athletes. Simplified, block training combines several (usually 2-3) quality training days, followed by an equal amount or more days of recovery. Hard training on Saturday and Sunday can be followed by 2 days of recovery. Another 1 or 2 quality days mid week can round out the training week. This is an effective method of increasing the total minutes of quality training in the week without over reaching or over training."

Here is a quote from Carmichael

"this can mean alternating workout days and recovery days one for one, or applying training load over two or three consecutive days and then allowing one or two days for recovery"

and

"After giving athletes appropriate recovery time, I found that the consecutive days of load lead to greater training adaptations"

Block training can be used in the cycles of your periodization plan. Instead of generic base1/2/3 or build1/2 periods, these can be L4 or L5 periods. Or you can mix them together. A lot of this really depends on what works for you. But many people have had success in using block training. So the principles certainly apply.

To get the most out of block training, you need to experiment and see what works for you in terms of intervals and back-to-back days. It's also a good idea to have a reasonable grasp on the concept of different energy systems, as well as a rough training plan which follows some sort of periodization principle. Putting it all together is a mix between assessing how you deal with this kind of training and laying it out into a plan that will have you in good shape for your target event without overdoing it. As always, the whole process is a work in progress. You won't be able to sit down in October and lay out exactly how next season will go. It doesn't work that way. You're always going to have snags along the way and you'll assuredly change the plan as you move along. By having a good understanding of yourself and your approaches to training, on-the-fly changes will be more useful and training more effective.

A Blog Is Not a Bike Log

2006-09-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm ceasing this experiment to post my ride recaps on the blog. First of all, it's starting to be a bit of a chore to do. Basically, this is because not much happens on a ride to ride basis. Adding a generic entry that I'm sure I will never look at does nothing to help the cause. So, experiment over. And more to the point, experiment successful. Now I know this doesn't work.

Next I will try the paper log. I think it's more reasonable that way. Plus you can stack entries on top of one another and go from there. That gives you a table of what you're looking at so you can see trends. It's a better medium. The big problem will be keeping track of it in a way which allows you to reference it in the past.

So I'm going to delete the specific ride entries and transfer them to a paper log. This will be my second experiment in bike logging. I will maintain this blog for general observations, like, "Man, Block Training is Hard."

24 Hours of Allamuchy Index

2006-08-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

A collection of all the 2006 Allamuchy posts. First set is from the Normbrero site.

Taking the Plunge (June 16, 2006)
My Biking Reality (July 11, 2006)
Monday (August 21, 2006)
Tuesday (August 22, 2006)
Wednesday (August 23, 2006)
Thursday (August 24, 2006)
Friday (August 25, 2006)
Saturday (August 26, 2006)
The Happy Recap (August 28, 2006)
More Notes on the Recap (August 29, 2006)
Dorks on bikes (SFW) (August 30, 2006)

Next from the Training site. Some of these will have a scope beyond this ride but they originatedas a direct result.

Food for the 24 Hour Ride (August 11, 2006)
Camp/Bike stuff for the 24 Hour Ride (August 11, 2006)
Ride Plan for the 24 Hour Ride (August 15, 2006)
Pre-24 Hour Notes (August 25, 2006)
Notes on the 2006 24 Hours of Allamuchy (August 25, 2006)
24 Hours of Allamuchy Timeline (August 29, 2006)
24 Hours of Allamuchy Calories Per Hour (August 29, 2006)
Cramping (August 30, 2006)

Cramping

2006-08-30T16:58:00.000-07:00

So here is what I get on cramping. I'm going to distill what I believe is the answer to cramps:

"Most of the time, its plain ol 'too much effort(watts or power output)' over 'too short of time'(for a given riders fitness atm) that causes cramps. No banana, salt pills, Sport Legs(they do work tho, as I swear by them for racing), etc is gonna fix that. Help to a degree yes, but the rest is the riders job. Depending 100% on training and level of fitness at the time..everyone has "so many matches" to burn. Burn them too early, and your done for that ride, or atleast your gonna suffer from then on when trying to make any decent power. Everytime you go into the red zone(anerobic), your digging a "hole" sorta that will shorten your overall performance "window" for that ride 10-fold. A 12-24hour solo racer will try to never ever go in the red zone for this reason. As a loose rule, most fit endurance racers have about 2 hours of LT so to speak(meaning the above "matches"). You get the idea."

This posted by Duckman, last post on this thread on mtbr General Discussion forums. After reading this and that, I totally agree this is why I cramp. It happens after I've been riding longer than I've been training for.

Here is an article from cyclingnews.com, an article from cptips.com, and an article from ultracycling.com.

The cyclingnews.com article has a great description of what cramps are. Regardless of what causes them, it's essentially your brain going ballistic and sending repeated messages for your muscles to work. It needs to go ballistic because your muscles can't work. So the brain says "go" and you're muscles say "no." The brain replies by saying, "go go go." And it hurts. The article then goes on to say that inadequate training, dehydration, glucose supply, and electrolyte imbalance may play a role. It lists other reasons which, IMO, stretch the limits of practicality.

The cptips.com article says, " Cramps are most common when you use your muscles beyond their accustomed limit (either for a longer than normal duration or at a higher than normal level of activity)." This sums it up for me perfectly. It's not so much the duration, as I never have problems on a road bike. I can extend the road rides a lot longer and general fatigue is my main limiter. But the longer MTB rides tend to bring it out, as I'm riding at a higher activity level than I'm used to riding at. The article then goes on to give the various alternate theories.

The ultracycling.com article is a bit more technical, which to me seems to be avoiding the issue at hand, which is, "Why did this happen and how do I stop it?" They do mention fatigue, briefly. And the other things in passing. But the article, for the most part, is useless in terms of it's practical application. Focus on Duckman and the first 2 articles to resolve your cramps. In other words, train better.

Slice it any way you want. In the end, more often than not, it's because you're trying to go harder or longer than you've trained to go. No magic pill is going to fix that.

24 Hours of Allamuchy Calories Per Hour

2006-08-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is going to help in the future. I can't currently make much of it now. But I post it for future reference. This would be better in table format. Observations/notes:

The "180/hour" inside the parentesis is the rate for that time frame
Obviously I was not consistent in calorie intake, bad job
I think 300 calories per hour is my current target
Endurance racing does not kill my ability to digest, so I don't need to eat pure sugar foods
Note the major corrections after laps 2 and 3
Note the pattern during laps (240/270/300/350)
Note the calories between laps (150/450/510).
Note the average per hour creep up(189/206/272/304 laps or 227/300/329 between)

lap 1 12:03-1:19, 240cals, ( 240tot, 189/hour) 189/hour overall
after 01:19-1:46, 150cals, ( 390tot, 333/hour) 227/hour overall
lap 2 01:46-3:15, 270cals, ( 660tot, 182/hour) 206/hour overall
after 03:15-3:45, 450cals, (1110tot, 900/hour) 300/hour overall
lap 3 03:45-5:14, 300cals, (1410tot, 202/hour) 272/hour overall
after 05:14-5:53, 510cals, (1920tot, 784/hour) 329/hour overall
lap 4 05:53-7:31, 350cals, (2270tot, 214/hour) 304/hour overall

24 Hours of Allamuchy Timeline

2006-08-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

This is obviously for the sake of record keeping and looking back.

7:30 - Leave house, pick up ice
8:30 - Get to campsite
8:45 - Woody arrives
11:00 - Prerace meeting
12:03-1:19 - First lap (1:16)
1:46-3:15 - Second lap (1:29)
3:45-5:14 - Third lap (1:29)
5:53-7:31 - Forth lap (1:38)
8:15 - shower
8:30 - dinner
9:00 - back at camp
10:00 - bed
5:50 - wakeup
7:18-9:00 - Fifth lap (1:42)
9:15 - Back at camp, coffee
9:30 - Pack up camp
10:40 - Drop off race badge
10:50 - leave site

Notes on 2006 24 Hours of Allamuchy

2006-08-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

Limiters

Cramps
Cramps
Cramps

Not sure I can sum it up any better than that. Ok, so let's try to refine this a little better:

Not being in good enough shape (cramps)
Bike food is still a major WIP (as is drinking from the bladder)
Muscular endurance?

I'd say #3 is more my need to fill in a 3rd option. That really goes with #1 though there's certainly something to be said about the fact my longest ride was 3 hours before this. Considering, I'd say the 7.5 hour stretch was impressive enough.

Race & Setup Notes

Course was good, technical but not too much
No need to setup the day before, especially if we want to camp together
Having said that, site was quite far away, would prefer closer
Better off taking the Monday off than the Friday (unless you want a close camp)
Did I mention cramps?
Need a canopy next year
Consider a stove, or anything warming
Don't start at the end of the pack
Make lap #1 slower?

Food List Assessment

cold pizza was excellent
pasta with chinese sauce was excellent
potatoes seemed unappealing - too cold
corn flakes and grape nuts and rice milk work well
any more than 1-2 bananas is useless
you only need 1-2 salty snacks
bagels good to have, but not 12 of them
did not touch fig newtons nor PBJ nor Clif bar in ride time
did not touch V8, coke, pudding, or soup
had too much food again
bagel chips were good

Camp List Assessment

need canopy
cold weather clothing a must (include footwear)
stove might have been handy
Overall had all bases covered save for above items

Ride Plan Assessment

may have started a little too fast
having said that, being in the main glob of a pack was frustrating and energy sapping
calories is a major concern still
liquid intake seems fine
pit stops handy, though we were pretty far away
taking notes at pit stops was tough, but I did it
had a lot of fun
did not ride a night lap - only glaring omission
slept for 6 hours
ate plenty of recovery food Saturday, not enough Sunday
hot shower was amazing
Consider mixing all bottles before race

Bike Drinks

Accelerade - I've had enough of this stuff, use as light flavoring
Gatorade - Not as bad as Accelerade, but also just for flavoring
Maltodextrin - only thing I could stand after a long day
Consider mixing all bottles before race
Need to learn to drink from bladder routinely

Course Description

This is my post to the mtbr.com forum in response to course description...

9.5 mile course, maybe 1+ then 1.5+ miles in the boy scout camp at the beginning and end.

Course started as it did last year, with a climb on the fire road out of camp. Short descent after that then some mild climbs, some techincal through 2 miles. Overall climbing wasn't anything brutal - there are certainly more painful loops available in the park. Technically there were a handful of log jumps, none that caused me to clip out. There were 2-3 rock gardens that were pretty tough, but again, nothing that a carefully picked line, some patience, and a good grind couldn't overcome. Probably the toughest section for me was a rocky/grassy incline that was not well travelled, half submerged in grass. At the end, there was a 2 foot rock laying in wait, which I wasn't able to clean on any of my 5 laps. It's the only obstacle that got me every time. On the last lap I made it up the climb but bailed due to lack of energy. There were a few downhill runs that were outstanding in this section. Aid station was just short of mile 6. From 6 to 7 was some climbing and roots/rocks, generally rolling. From 7 to 8.5 was mostly flat to downhill, very nice run but very wet on the next day. The last mile was a brutal climb which occured as you got back into the boy scout camp, so that was a surprise for most people. That was followed by the same fast descent as last year, but in much better shape because it wasn't washed out.

All in all, solid technical but not brutal. Decent climbing but again, not brutal. There were no climbs I couldn't clean most laps. As a reference, I cannot clean all the climbs at Round Valley. Also, I cannot make that steep climb going East from Chimney Rock Road. I am sure there are a handful of people who can say they clipped in, started their lap, then cliped out when done. I was not one of them.

Pre-24 Hour Notes

2006-08-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

A few things to note on the day before the race:

Checked in at noon, nobody in line
Still parking in the lot at that time
Entirely did not need to check-in today
Need a bigger tent, or a sitting area tent-like thing

Training Plan Between 24hrs and 50k

2006-08-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

Here is my training plan for the time between the 24 hour race (August 26) and the 50k race (October 15). This leaves 7 weeks between (1 recovery, 4 build, 2 peak/taper).

Specific ideas here are to a) extend/build MTB duration, b) maintain and improve race skills, and c) work on ME (muscular endurance). Other skills (power, anaerobic endurance) will be covered in RS (race simulation) rides on Saturdays. Note that we still might want to add some A workouts to the Sunday ride, or weekly rides.

This schedule will change to reflect changes made during the week or at the time of workout.

Pass 1: Initial outline
Pass 2: Filled in specific workouts
Pass 3: Adjusted 4 week block to 3 plus rest, then 1/2, then Peak.
Pass 4: Adjusted all details of workouts to come

Week 1 (recovery)

* 8/28 (mon): trainer, recovery
* 8/31 (thu): road, partial M1 ride
* 9/02 (sat): trainer (45)
* 9/03 (sun): road, M3 then E2, Clairmont Rd then Swamp(172)
* 9/04 (mon): road, M3 then E2, Clairmont then Lake (125)

Week 2 (build 1)

* 9/05 (tue): trainer, recovery ride (30)
* 9/07 (thu): road, M2, 21min in zone, 45 overall
* 9/09 (sat): Round Valley, RS, 2:40
* 9/10 (sun): road, E2, 93 min

Week 3 (build 2)

* 9/12 (tue): M2, 31m in zone, 49 overall
* 9/13 (wed): M2, 28min in zone, 48 overall
* 9/16 (sat): RV, RS, 2:50
* 9/17 (sun): road, E2, 120 min

Week 4 (build 3)

* 9/19 (tue): M2, 2x20
* 9/20 (wed): M2, 2x20
* 9/23 (sat): CR, RS, 2:00
* 9/24 (sun): road, L2, 57m

Week 5 (rest)

* 9/26 (tue): L2, 31m
* 9/28 (thu): L2, 60m
* 9/30 (sat): L2, 60m
* 10/01 (sun): CR, RS, 120-180m

Week 6 (build 1 - 50%)

* 10/03 (tue): M2, 2x10
* 10/05 (wed): M2, 2x10
* 10/07 (sat): CR, RS, 2:00
* 10/08 (sun): road, L3, 60m

Week 7 (taper/peak)

* 10/10 (tue): L2 ride, some intensity (45 min)
* 10/12 (thu): L2 ride, some intensity (45 min)
* 10/14 (sat): L2 ride, some intensity (60 min)
* 10/15 (sun): race, go home and drink beer

Maltodextrin Notes

2006-08-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

Took out 2 bottles for yesterday's recovery ride of about 20 miles (on the road). Didn't plan on drinking them both, but wanted to overdo it to see how much I could stomach in a short time. I used an entire do-it-yourself mix:

3 scoops maltodextrin (330 cals)
1/2 tsp salt
1 pack emergen-c
1 pack mango kool-aid

Added this all to a 32 oz Nalgene bottle, added about 16 oz of water, and shook it. And shook it. And shook it. The little white blobs of maltodextrin mix very reluctantly. After a few rounds of shake, then do something, it was finally mixed.

I divided it into 2 water bottles, then topped them off. Roughly 48 ounces of water.

So I find myself thinking in terms of limiters these days, identifying rides in terms of the 1 thing that held me back the most (almost always short & steep climbs). In terms of this concoction, there was 1 clear limiter. Taste. The mango kool-aid was designed for 64 ounces of water, and a whole botaload of sugar. As a result, this mixture was bitter, not sweet. The lack of sweetness is something I could probably get used to. The bitterness, not so easily. I have a few other kool-aid packs. Obviously I need to use less kool-aid, and maybe another flavor, fruit punch or something classic like that. Am I old if I refer to Fruit Punch Kool-Aid as a classic?

I knocked out 1 bottle in about 45 minutes, which is a fair calorie intake (220 per hour pace). The stomach was fine with it, no adverse reactions. But the taste...it wasn't awful but it wasn't something I enjoyed much. That clearly needs work.

In terms of energy I never felt weak, which would happen at the end of a 20 mile ride had I brought nothing. But this clearly isn't a true test of anything. I need to work out the details of the mix. I know some mix it with Gatorade but I'm trying to avoid simple sugars with this mix...I really don't know why. I note that Hammer uses some sort of apple concentrate for sweetness. Perhaps I should just toss in some table sugar.

At some point this weekend I will more than likely fall back to a maltodextrin mix. Despite the fact that every intelligible source says to not try anything new on race day, I'm an idiot. As such, I will likely follow up this post with colorful vomit stories. Stay tuned.

Ride Plan for the 24 Hour Ride

2006-08-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

Everything I read says you should have a plan for your ride before you get there. It makes sense, because if you rely on your wits to guide you nothing but trouble can happen, especially considering I'm looking to ride more than not in the time I'm there. The one good thing is that Woody and I are riding together, making it either half as likely we'll do something stupid (2 people to think things over) or twice as likely (double the idiocy double the fun!). Consider that Woody and I once agreed it was a good idea to camp in 10 degree weather....

Maybe I should rethink this ride?

So what's the plan? Right now my concerns are more in the realm of food & drink than the physical aspect of it. While I understand that it will hurt more than I want it to, we're under no delusions that we're going to knock out any best times in our laps. As such, it gives us more leeway. So here is my basic checklist of thing to keep track of for the race:

Keep a maintainable pace from the gun
Shoot for 250-300 calories per hour
Shoot for ~32 ounces of liquid per hour, at least in the beginning
Pit stop after each lap to take stock of the ride
At every pit stop, record time, food eaten, liquids drank, how you feel
Have fun
Ride at least 1 night lap
Make sure you sleep at some point
Before sleep, make sure you enough recovery food
Shower before bed
If the plan isn't working, change the fucking plan!!!
Have fun, again

Remember to have fun. Otherwise why are you out there?

Backing Off

2006-08-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

Scheduled road ride but getting sick. Signs of something wrong all over the place but I failed to admit it early on. List:

Thursday woke up groggy, never felt good on the ride. Felt good at work.
Friday woke up groggy, never got out of it, felt like shit all day, headache end of day.
Saturday felt lousy, RHR at 75. Ride ok but really tough in spots.

Overnight the signs finally made themselves too obvious. Scratchy throat, stuffy nose, congestion in ears, mild head soreness. Resting HR on waking was 77. Obviously I need to take off.

Better to have it happen today than in 2 weeks. Focus in the next 2 weeks is sleeping enough. Of paramount importance.

Chimney Rock, hurting

2006-08-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

Chimney Rock, 2:00, with Kirt. Route was different, his lead. West side normal, but small loop on bottom and return as entered, no fast descent. Quarry section was up all the way, then across middle, then out bottom. Across CR road & up. Then down to river & cross river. Climb then switch back left & climb more. No rock view. Left over rocky technical to intersection, right towards gravel road, normal route from there. Took Warmup back to ballfield, in reverse direction. Playground finale. Pace too fast for expected Allamuchy ride.

Felt basically lousy the whole time. Woke up hurting with a 75 RHR, not a good start.

Eventually got into it but faded, climb to rock & swithback was good, felt strong. Was generally sloppy behind the wheel overall today. Technically did very well, basically clearing everything attempted today. Physically low on energy.

Basically same breakfast as last week. Same bike food, same post food. But today was lethargic. Felt like I was choking down all my recovery food. Got home and realized I drank only half the bladder, so low calories & Water there. Felt upset stomach. Maybe not enough water? Maybe slight overtraining? Not enough sleep for sure. Not eating enough calories. All of this is a wakeup call. Need to be careful in these last 2 weeks.

Feel ok now at the end of the day finally. Took a light spin on trainer to get legs warm.

Camp/Bike Stuff for the 24 Hour Ride

2006-08-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a list, always evolving, of the things to bring to the 24 hour ride. I subscribe to a few basic tenets. First, you're not camping. This is a bike ride so don't waste too much time & effort trying to plan every little item you might need. Secondly, keep it simple. The less you need to worry about, the less you'll worry.

Bike Essentials

If nothing else, you need this to ride. If you show up with this stuff, you'll be able to ride up to the start line, and pedal away. You'll have nothing else besides this. But at least you'll be riding. In other words, pack this stuff first. But put it in the car last.

bike
shoes
helmet
gloves
all bike clothes you own
headband
bladder & pack
bike pump
water bottle cage
bike bag

Base Camp Crap

Probably your next most important set of items. Food and sleep are going to play an important role in the race for most people. For those who plan on riding the whole 24, then you'll probably have a support team that needs to sleep. If not, you might crash and need to take a nap anyway. You don't want to burn out at 2:00 am and not have a place to sleep. Also, you'll need to eat. The canteen is probably open 24 hours but they run out of food every year. It's a nice fallback but don't rely on it too much.

food (see other link)
tent, blankets
canopy
sleeping bag
air mattress
pillow
bag chair
ground cover
non biking clothes (plan for colder weather regardless of season)
soap, shampoo
towels (2 at least)
small table
toothbrush, toothpaste
lantern or camp light

Kitchen

This list could be infinitely long. I am not of the mind that you need a kitchen sink. Just keep to the basics and bring 1 spoon, etc. The nalgene bottle is for mixing sports drinks on the fly, or for sipping if you have some down time. The small towel is for wiping your hands when they invariably get wet for any number of reasons.

nalgene bottle
garbage bag
cooler
utensils, bowls
small towel
big water jug
aspirin
stove

The Un Category

This is a mix of things you might consider essential (wallet) to completely frivolous (ipod). It's a catch-all which includes the things that you may or may not need. Money is required, because you may want a hot meal or cup of coffee at some point. Or you may run out of tubes. Wallet and car keys are also essential, as you'll see when you try to leave the house without them. A notebook is an excellent idea for any number of reasons.

notebook, pens
digital camera
ipod
cell phone
wallet
car keys
money
GPS

Bike Nice-to-Haves

None of these things are show stoppers. All nice to have, but you can get away without them. I would pack these last because you'll survive if you forget some of them. Make sure you bring money because most of these can be found if you have some cash. If you forget lights, at least you still have 12+ hours of riding. These become more important if you plan on riding the whole 24 hours. I plan no such thing. Some of this stuff can be left in the car, especially if the car is parked close by.

spare tubes
spare tires
lube
bike tools
bike stand
lights & backup
backup bike
duct tape
bag balm
lock
standing bike pump
shock pump

Food for the 24 Hour Ride

2006-08-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of food I plan to bring to the 24 hour ride. This list is compiled from books, personal experience, other people's lists, and common rest stop items in other endurance events. I normally do not eat thing like M&Ms & soda. BUt the more I read the more it seems like you bow down to cravings during these races. So to have it and not use it is better than not having it when you're desperate.

Sports Drinks and Such

(The drink mixes should be pre-mixed in ziplock bags)

Endurox
Accelerade
Gatorade
maltodextrin
soy protein
Emergen-C
Sports bars (clif, powerbar, etc)
GU (or similar product)

The Rest

Corn Flakes, Grape Nuts, or other high GI cereals (not fiber)
rice milk (much higher GI than regular milk)
bananas (moderate GI, potassium)
assorted other fresh & dried fruit
potatoes (baked previously, of course)
salty lowfat snacks (crackers, pretzels, baked nachos) - choose 1
bagels
fig newtons
cooked pasta/rice/noodles (with your favorite lowfat mixings)
ice, water
salt
your favorite recovery meal (if you're going to bed at some point, or for after)
something to eat when you can't eat anymore goddamn carbs (pizza, sandwich)
peanut butter/almond butter
jelly
white/wheat/potato bread
V8, coke
pudding
coffee
M&Ms, snickers
cheese
soup

Bike Nutrition Notes, Hill Ride

2006-08-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

Road ride with a ton of hills today. So much I couldn't fit all the planned hills into the ride. Not going to post the route just to say up Somerville Rd area, Allen, then into Lake rd hill set. Just under 3:00 at 2:53. Whatever I'm doing is working. I'm able to grind out 3000-4000 feet of vertical in those 3 hours with no problem. Ended up with a 13.9 pace which is good for me, considering the total climbing.

Preride meal was the same as yesterday without the banana. Just wasn't hungry enough.

Tested Gatorade and salt on bike this time. Started with Accelerade (2 sccops) and Emergen-C (1) plus 1/8 tsp salt in each bottle. Filled up 3rd bottle with Gatorade, EmergenC, salt for the 3rd. Lower calories in that bottle made it refreshing. Makes me think that switching it up for a longer ride (ie, 24 hours) is going to keep the fluids moving faster. Did not keep up with 32 ounces per hour of water intake but did not seem the worse for it. Probably could have used a little more liquid but no big deal.

Second day in a row that 3 Endurox after the ride didn't sit well in the stomach. I'm thinking that pulling in the correct number of calories per hour leaves me less "accepting" to the Endurox after the ride. This is fine since the on-the-bike food is more important than the after ride food.

Chimney Rock and Bike Nutrition Notes

2006-08-06T02:19:00.000-07:00

Chimney Rock felt good out of the door so I'll note my pre-ride meal:

- water, coffee
- 2 slices costco bread, 1/2 tbsp butter
- cup of corn flakes, 1/2 cup rice milk
- 1/2 QT gatorade, 1/2 pack Emergen-C
- banana

* Raised the seat post 1-1.5 inches and it gave obvious benefits. Make sure you fit your bike properly after you buy it. Stupid, but better to have found the problem out now than in 6 months.

* Tried Emergen-C today, 1 packet in a QT of gatorade that I split before and after. Then 2 packs on the ride. By the end of the ride felt great, hitting the last hills harder than planned (for a pace ride). Not sure if it works or not, probably not long enough ride.

* Headache after, maybe 6 hours later. Seem low on salt? Craved salt all day.

* Recovered very well. End of night felt great.

One

2006-08-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

As the summer progresses and the time winds down, drawing closer and closer to this year's 24 Hours of Allamuchy, I find myself reading more and more articles online about training, prep, fitness, food, and so on. You name it, I'm reading about it. Lactate thresholds, VO2 max, smearing balm on your ass to make the ride go smoother.

Anyway, one thing I read over and over is that you should have a training log. Well, this isn't a trianing log so much as it's a training blog. You see, training logs are numbers, and maybe a comment or 2 about RPE, or wind conditions. Beyond that, there's really nothing which tells you what you were thinking that day, or the day before, or how you felt, etc etc. That's what this is for.

I doubt many people will read this. No big deal, since all the people who say to have a training log say that it's obvoiusly for their own benefit. This is meant as a running commentary for the next X days, weeks, months, or years, assuming I don't burn out of bike training and start flying a kite, or some such. Right now the goal isn't on this year's 24, it's on next year's season.

See, I already know this year is a wash. Up until this year, I've been mostly a road biker who very randomly goes off road for a bit of fun, but not enough to really make much of a difference. Well this year has been my transition year, where my road rides are geared to make me a better mountain bike rider. I understand a lot of what I do this year will be for the sake of learning. And I'm already looking to next year's season as a season, as opposed to a collection of weekends where I get up early and go for a bike ride.

So that's what this is. I mean, at least for now.