Friday, July 15, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Tapering Fact and Fiction
Alright, just to make sure people don't think I feel tapering is the devil (which I've stated it isn't),I've reached out to some of the cycling world's heaviest hitters to get their opinions to make sure you guys are getting the most up to date cutting edge info available.
I've contacted my sources for a crossit + cycling article I wrote a few months back. So hopefully Darcy Norman (HTC/Columbia strength coach) Joe Friel, Jim Rutberg (CTS), Ann Trombley (Olympic MTBer and cycling coach), Ben Day (pro cyclist/coach) and Frank Overton (coach regularly featured in VeloReviews) can shed some light on the subject for us. I lucked out on the crossfit article, so hopefully lightening will strike twice here.
Here is specifically what I asked them:
1) How far out from an event?
- Century
- XC MTB "A" race
- Time trial "A" race
- Ultra endurance events, the Death Ride (16000' and 120 miles), Double centuries, etc
2) How much intensity do you leave in (Friel says 40% if I understood it correctly) each week leading up to the event?
3) How do you mix functional training in to combat the repetitive stress motions of cycling?
4) How much of a factor is the fact that you get your body used to a certain level of activity, and it does its best when those levels remain constant?
5) I get "clever rest = performance improvement," but how much is too much?
6) How much fitness can someone lose if they taper too long?
When I get the answers back, I'll write the article and put it up!
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Is Le Tour Cursed This Year??
Just saw the French tv car take out Flecha and Hoogerland. What the heck is going on this year??
Absolutely disgraceful. Hope that driver is tossed out of the Tour for good and fined severely.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Absolutely disgraceful. Hope that driver is tossed out of the Tour for good and fined severely.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Friday, July 8, 2011
Tapering is OVERRATED!
> We hear a lot about Carbo-loading before a big event, but I am wondering why is it such a big deal.
>
> Most of us who ride centuries, routinely do rides of 80 miles or more in the weeks leading up to the event, the marathon runners amongst us run 20 miles in their normal training. When I have ridden centuries I have not found much difference between the century and the 80 miler -
> we start earlier, we may have shorter rest stops, but I don't think we ride any harder. So why do we carbo-load before an "event", but not before our regular weekend rides?
>
> The same goes for tapering - is it really necessary? I can see a need for a recovery period once in a while - but during the TnT season, we rode 70-80 miles for quite a few successive weekends. After STP last year I was in pretty poor shape for a while but that was after the
> event.
>
> So, I guess my question is what is the advantage of carbs and tapering for us folks who ride centuries and run marathons rather than race them?
>
> Ray
Great question Sugar Ray! Unfortunately there is a ton of misinformation out there about cyclin and nutrition. One of the bigger ones is being told that you should expect to gain weight training for a century, total rubbish!
Carbo loading and tapering are also two massively misunderstood topics as well.
1) Carbo loading
Here's Alberto's take, remember an RD or RN is the best resource for this kind of information. Neither of which am I!
From what I understand, if you are't properly fueling your body on a regular basis, you can't just jam in a ton of carbohydrates into it a few days from an event and hope that it works. The glycogen (essentially the batteries for your muscles) can only hold so much fuel, and if you try to overload them with massive influx of carbohydrates, your body will only absorb so much and store the excess as fat. There is also an excess insulin release issue at play here that is detrimental as well, but I can't put the exact science into words.
Carbs AREN'T The Devil
Now, carbs have gotten a horrible rap as being bad for you and that cause you gain
weight. FALSE. Excess caloric intake without burning off what you take in causes
weight gain. We need carbs to fuel a ton of base cellular level activity, particularly getting glucose to the brain. Without them, your body will take what it needs from your muscles, break them down for fuel slowing down your metabolism and causing you to lose strength, not good.
Now, to your question of group rides vs events, this has been blown way out of proportion and grossly misrepresented. It isn't like the event is this epic adventure that your body will fail you if you don't gorge on carbs the night before. Besides, men and women have different caloric absorption rates, so we can't even eat the same way. My understanding is that for men, 48 hours out is the window for eating/drinking/sleeping to affect your ride/event.
Your eating should be no different the month of, week of or eve of your event. If you remain CONSISTENT you will be fine.
GOD I HATE THE WORD "Taper"
THE BAIN OF MY EXISTENCE! This is one of the things that drives me insane. Way too much emphasis is put on this. When you're training for an event, your body gets used to a certain level of activity, adapting eventually and responding accordingly. If you begin to change that, you can have a negative affect on your fitness.
I hate tapering, don't think its necessary, and is a word that should be banished from the cyclists vocabulary. Now, should you do Blandor Way repeats two days and the day before an event? No. I'd probaly lump in intense strength work here too. Light to moderate, yes, intense probably not unless your body is used to it. Volume manipulation is much better. You play with your training variables (intensity, speed, time, etc), you don't go cold turkey.
Can you do this five days out from an event and not pay the price? MOST DEFINITELY. There is a reason our MVP riders did Blandor way within a 7-10 day window of the Death Ride and Livestrong: so they could get the fitness gains to take into their rides.
Yes, you do need to overload the system so at rest it can adapt and get stronger. BUT, IMHO you cause more harm than good by slowing down your training the week of an event. I've seen people have much better results tapering two weeks out before an event, then ramping back up the week of the event.
The only thing you should do the week of an event is take the day off 48 hours before so your body gets the rest effects the day of (we are 48 hours behind what we do to our bodies), and then do a 90 min "leg opener" the day before with 2-3 hard efforts RPE 8-9 for 90 secs. I got into this conversation with my readers from VeloReviews, and I convinced five riders to not taper, and do the leg opener approach to their event. All five said it was the best their legs had
ever felt at even.
Also keep in mind (again from what I've been told) that about 7-10 days out from an event is the fitness you take into the event. It takes about this long for your body to gain any benefit from
a training bout. So the Blandor Way training effect should more or less be felt this weekend. This is why consistency is the key. Again, the reason I wanted MVP to have its most intense night 10 days from DR/Livestrong.
There's a reason someone like PBJ Hitchcock can ride 75 miles the day before a century: he does it consistently enough so there isn't a shock to his system the day of an event. That's a perfect example of why you don't need to taper if you are consistent with your riding.
This is why the fellas ride on their day off for the Tour. If they don't, they
would have "stone legs" when the race resumed. Now, I know this isn't a popular
stance. I also know that it isn't uncommon for people to ship their bikes five
days ahead of an event and do no riding whatsoever.
This is insane because all you're doing is letting your legs "get cold." You actually begin to lose
cardiovascular fitness after ONLY THREE DAYS of inactivity. How's that for the benefits of tapering?
So long story short, if you can't tell, in this reporters opinion, it is a vastly bloated detail in the world of cycling. This is why there weren't any cupcake rides this week for MVP. I wanted the intensity to stay consistent with what you have conditioned your bodies to do on weekly basis.
Similar to your group ride vs event carb loading, have you ever heard of anyone tapering for a long weekend ride of 70-100 miles? I've only heard them referred to as "training rides." Why change the intensity of your training for an event that might only have 30 miles of additional riding than what you've been training at?
The funny thing is training rides are typically done a lot harder than you'd ever go in century, for mileage that isn't much different. So why would you do this? If you can go at max capacity for a training ride and have a great performance, why would you soft pedal the week of an event where you don't go nearly as hard?
Doesn't make sense does it?
>
> Most of us who ride centuries, routinely do rides of 80 miles or more in the weeks leading up to the event, the marathon runners amongst us run 20 miles in their normal training. When I have ridden centuries I have not found much difference between the century and the 80 miler -
> we start earlier, we may have shorter rest stops, but I don't think we ride any harder. So why do we carbo-load before an "event", but not before our regular weekend rides?
>
> The same goes for tapering - is it really necessary? I can see a need for a recovery period once in a while - but during the TnT season, we rode 70-80 miles for quite a few successive weekends. After STP last year I was in pretty poor shape for a while but that was after the
> event.
>
> So, I guess my question is what is the advantage of carbs and tapering for us folks who ride centuries and run marathons rather than race them?
>
> Ray
Great question Sugar Ray! Unfortunately there is a ton of misinformation out there about cyclin and nutrition. One of the bigger ones is being told that you should expect to gain weight training for a century, total rubbish!
Carbo loading and tapering are also two massively misunderstood topics as well.
1) Carbo loading
Here's Alberto's take, remember an RD or RN is the best resource for this kind of information. Neither of which am I!
From what I understand, if you are't properly fueling your body on a regular basis, you can't just jam in a ton of carbohydrates into it a few days from an event and hope that it works. The glycogen (essentially the batteries for your muscles) can only hold so much fuel, and if you try to overload them with massive influx of carbohydrates, your body will only absorb so much and store the excess as fat. There is also an excess insulin release issue at play here that is detrimental as well, but I can't put the exact science into words.
Carbs AREN'T The Devil
Now, carbs have gotten a horrible rap as being bad for you and that cause you gain
weight. FALSE. Excess caloric intake without burning off what you take in causes
weight gain. We need carbs to fuel a ton of base cellular level activity, particularly getting glucose to the brain. Without them, your body will take what it needs from your muscles, break them down for fuel slowing down your metabolism and causing you to lose strength, not good.
Now, to your question of group rides vs events, this has been blown way out of proportion and grossly misrepresented. It isn't like the event is this epic adventure that your body will fail you if you don't gorge on carbs the night before. Besides, men and women have different caloric absorption rates, so we can't even eat the same way. My understanding is that for men, 48 hours out is the window for eating/drinking/sleeping to affect your ride/event.
Your eating should be no different the month of, week of or eve of your event. If you remain CONSISTENT you will be fine.
GOD I HATE THE WORD "Taper"
THE BAIN OF MY EXISTENCE! This is one of the things that drives me insane. Way too much emphasis is put on this. When you're training for an event, your body gets used to a certain level of activity, adapting eventually and responding accordingly. If you begin to change that, you can have a negative affect on your fitness.
I hate tapering, don't think its necessary, and is a word that should be banished from the cyclists vocabulary. Now, should you do Blandor Way repeats two days and the day before an event? No. I'd probaly lump in intense strength work here too. Light to moderate, yes, intense probably not unless your body is used to it. Volume manipulation is much better. You play with your training variables (intensity, speed, time, etc), you don't go cold turkey.
Can you do this five days out from an event and not pay the price? MOST DEFINITELY. There is a reason our MVP riders did Blandor way within a 7-10 day window of the Death Ride and Livestrong: so they could get the fitness gains to take into their rides.
Yes, you do need to overload the system so at rest it can adapt and get stronger. BUT, IMHO you cause more harm than good by slowing down your training the week of an event. I've seen people have much better results tapering two weeks out before an event, then ramping back up the week of the event.
The only thing you should do the week of an event is take the day off 48 hours before so your body gets the rest effects the day of (we are 48 hours behind what we do to our bodies), and then do a 90 min "leg opener" the day before with 2-3 hard efforts RPE 8-9 for 90 secs. I got into this conversation with my readers from VeloReviews, and I convinced five riders to not taper, and do the leg opener approach to their event. All five said it was the best their legs had
ever felt at even.
Also keep in mind (again from what I've been told) that about 7-10 days out from an event is the fitness you take into the event. It takes about this long for your body to gain any benefit from
a training bout. So the Blandor Way training effect should more or less be felt this weekend. This is why consistency is the key. Again, the reason I wanted MVP to have its most intense night 10 days from DR/Livestrong.
There's a reason someone like PBJ Hitchcock can ride 75 miles the day before a century: he does it consistently enough so there isn't a shock to his system the day of an event. That's a perfect example of why you don't need to taper if you are consistent with your riding.
This is why the fellas ride on their day off for the Tour. If they don't, they
would have "stone legs" when the race resumed. Now, I know this isn't a popular
stance. I also know that it isn't uncommon for people to ship their bikes five
days ahead of an event and do no riding whatsoever.
This is insane because all you're doing is letting your legs "get cold." You actually begin to lose
cardiovascular fitness after ONLY THREE DAYS of inactivity. How's that for the benefits of tapering?
So long story short, if you can't tell, in this reporters opinion, it is a vastly bloated detail in the world of cycling. This is why there weren't any cupcake rides this week for MVP. I wanted the intensity to stay consistent with what you have conditioned your bodies to do on weekly basis.
Similar to your group ride vs event carb loading, have you ever heard of anyone tapering for a long weekend ride of 70-100 miles? I've only heard them referred to as "training rides." Why change the intensity of your training for an event that might only have 30 miles of additional riding than what you've been training at?
The funny thing is training rides are typically done a lot harder than you'd ever go in century, for mileage that isn't much different. So why would you do this? If you can go at max capacity for a training ride and have a great performance, why would you soft pedal the week of an event where you don't go nearly as hard?
Doesn't make sense does it?
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
The Eyes Have It!
On Sunday June 26th, I climbed Blandor Way to Olive Tree Rd in Los Altos Hills. This is a nice little leg massager that spits you out after it forces your mind and your legs to battle for supremacy over your body. Your legs unleash a tsunami of lactic acid into your quads while your mind sends out "STOP PEDALING RIGHT NOW!!" thoughts to your legs at about 1758mph.
This wonderful little physiological fountain of "OH MY GOD THIS HURTS!!!" happens because you gain almost 900' of up of over 30% in some spots. In only .63 miles. Brutal, horrible and sucktacular don't begin to scratch the surface of this little ditty. It is a spot where there are three extremely steep pitches you have to summit without anything resembling even a 5 second break.
Ok, back to why it works. On the 26th Strava clocked me in at 4:21. On Thu the 30th, 3:56 with almost a complete vomit comet coming out of my mouth.
On Sunday the 3rd (the day after a 50 mile ride and 5000' of climbing in 90 degree heat fighting nasty crams), I did the eye drills at the base of the climb before we took off. I then set my watch to start beeping after 3:40 to give me an idea of where I was, and what was left. As the climb starts it pitches up a little, but it isn't too bad. I seemed to be going at a pretty good clip in a gear that was bigger than Thu.
After .19 miles you make a right hand turn, and the road kicks up to 16.4% for about a 10th of a mile. You then get a brief downhill (maybe 15 yards), another slight incline, then down a steep pitch where a wall of 16.4% awaits you on the other side. This is the sink or swim area. You either coast down the hill tucked in an aero position and fight like hell to get up the other side, or you burn a ton of matches and almost sprint down the hill to carry as much speed as possible up the other side. I opted to sprint and give the cycling gods the finger.
Once you get past this, its now time for the big stuff. I told you it SUCKS. After this you get a steady upkick from 16% to 30% at the highest spot. At which point, you still aren't done. I'll have to drive it and take video so you can see what I'm talking about.
At any rate, even at 30%, almost at the end, I still felt there was a little in the tank. Which confused the hell out of me at this point. By all rights, between oxygen debt, the time that had elapsed, (or more importantly, hadn't elapsed) my body should've shut down my legs. Adamantly. But there was still room to go before completely hitting the wall. Which wasn't there on Thu btw. Thu was game set match with nothing to spare about 3/4 of the way up.
Well, at the last punch below the belt pitch just before the end, the timer still hadn't gone off. I thought I had ridden it faster, but in that much pain, it was hard to tell. Well, after the watch beeped, I only had to ride for another 20 yards or so. I begged my legs for one last burst, and for some reason unknown to the laws of physiology, they gave it to me. I was able to big ring the last part up a short 15.8% incline to the end. Mission accomplished, but how?????? This made absolutely no sense. Especially after the small cramps the day before. There is no way in hell I couldve recovered that fast at 39-years-old.
After several primal screams at the top, VR-er Kevin Eck came up behind me. He had the strava app going on his iPhone, and it said 3:55. He figured he was about 10-15 secs behind me, and that I broke 3:50 for sure.I thought it might be possible, but I didn't want to get my hopes up.
Well, low and behold, upon upload, my time was 3:42.There is no way in hell this should've happened given the time I had seven days before, the way it felt Thu, the ride the day before and the fact that I woke up with one of the more nasty cases of cotton mouth I'd had in a while.
So in only three days, 39 seconds had been knocked off one of the most physically demanding climbs in my area. Coincidence? Placebo? I wanted to know for sure.
So I tested it again on Monday in the hills again, but this time on my MTB. On a stretch of singletrack .8 of a mile with an Avg Grade of 5.7% and 235 ft of up, my time was 4:01. Once again, this was after doing the eye drills before the effort. My previous best time? 5:27 in October of last year. This is a time I've been chasing for nine months, and it just now happens? I still wasn't convinced.
So I had one more test on the bike: Concepcion Rd in Los Altos Hills. A road .8 miles long, 3.3% avg grade and 235' of up. So far this year I've had a hell of a time breaking 3:00 on my best day (2:55). My first trip up without really being loose after the eye drills was 2:48. And, at the top, I felt like I couldve gone a hell of a lot harder.
One more test: 12 sets of KB swings for :30/:30 for the last nail in the coffin. Previously, my forearms were pretty much useless by the 5th set. Like barely able to hold my water bottle worthless. Today, that didn't kick in until the TENTH SET. 10th, five sets later than usual. I did these on Wed of last week, so it isn't like I've had a ton of time to adapt to the stimulus to get stronger.
So after hitting these times on these segments of riding on top of the swings today, I am convinced this works. I will be researching it more and continuing to share what I find.
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