Health, Fitness and Training

Fit Bit o' the Month: Warm Winter Wonder Workout, by Doug Rennie, Portland Velo's health & fitness guru

Linda Jellison — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:24:00 GMT

Or: On, Done, and Off in 45 minutes.

During the 12 years I wrote for Runner's World magazine, my Go-To Guy for any training feature was one of this country's premier exercise scientists. PhD. Head of the human performance lab at a major Big 10 university. Big name in the field, tons of street cred. He remains anonymous here because he now dispenses his info on an online subscriber-only basis. But I mined his expertise broad and deep while researching the many How To Get Faster pieces I wrote for the mag. And what he says, works.

One point he made over and over, both in phone conversations and email responses, was this (direct quote): "Intensity is the Most Potent Producer of Fitness". Specifically, short bits of harder-to-WAY-harder effort than even your normal hammer-ish tempo on selected sections of club rides will eventually make you stronger than longer chunks of, say, moderately hard riding. Think: Shorter, harder. WAY harder. Just not for very long. It's like marathon runners doing 400-meter repeats at a tempo a lot faster than their marathon pace.

Judiciously done, of course. Say, one of these suffer-fests every 7 to 10 days max over the winter.

So, what exactly are we talking about here?

Well, based on a bunch of double blind studies his lab did, one of the best, most efficient stamina-building sessions consisted of 2.5 minute repeats at hard to most-unpleasantly-hard to okay-that's-freaking-ENOUGH efforts followed by 1.5 minute easy-spin recoveries. Seems that 2 1/2 minutes is close to optimal: Long enough to let you really amp it up and hover just barely beneath the Red Zone, but not so long that you can't sustain this kind of hyper-high output (about the time you're running out of gas, time is up). And the 1 1/2 minute recovery gives you just enough time (barely; believe me. Barely) to semi-clear your legs and get your HR back into the 120 bpm zone to permit another 2 1/2 minute blast. But not so long that you are able to fully recover.

No, this isn't any kind of Magic Bullet workout. There's no such thing. But, apparently, the 2.5-1.5 combo platter IS one that works better than many others for increasing stamina (the ability to go "fairly long" at speeds faster than you previously could with the same effort).

Yes, yes. I know. Winter is for "base building". Mainly. Mostly. But slogging every gray-skies mile at 70% HR turns legs, brain, and spirit into lead. Makes more sense to add some intensity, even in the Dec-Feb dead zone. Moreover, during this workout, you are almost always changing the effort, so time passes far, far faster. And you do it indoors: On the bike, done, and off (dripping and panting) in maybe 45 minutes. Tired, but immensely satisfied, knowing that you have just done something substantial. Something that is making you stronger.

Do this 3-4 times a month for the next 2-3 months and see if you don't come into spring a notch or two higher up the Velo food chain than you are right now.

So, here you go. I prefer to do this workout on a LifeCycle at the gym as you can specifically and instantly change the resistance. But you can also do it on your indoor trainer or rollers. Your call. Whichever, here's what you do:

1. 10 minute warmup: 5 minutes of steady pedaling starting at level 1, then, over each subsequent minute, increase it to 2, 3, 4, 5. Follow this with 5 minutes where you work in, say, the level 5-7 range (whatever feels right for you) alternating 30 second high-spin bursts with 30 seconds of recovery cruising. Get your heart pumping, the blood flowing into your legs, just starting to break a sweat.

2. Meat of the workout: Pedaling in the 90 to 100 rpm range, do 2.5 minutes of hard effort, progressing to very hard, progressing to DAMN hard (not really all-out. But close) so that your legs are bitching big time and your heart thundering when the 2.5 minutes are, mercifully, up. Start out at a resistance level that feels demanding from the outset, hold this for 1 minute, then kick it up 1 level for another minute (getting really hard now). Finally, add 1 more level of resistance for the last 30 seconds. While you never want to feel that the last 5 or 10 seconds is the absolute most you can do (again, NOT all-out; rather very, very hard. Just on the cusp of going anaerobic), you want to finish the 2.5 minutes feeling pretty pooped.

Example: 1 minute @ level 7, 1 minute @ level 8, 30 seconds @ level 9. Or 6-7-8. Or 8-9-10. This is the part you have to figure out. Use your first workout to experiment. Play around a little. It doesn't take long to come up with your own personal template.

3. After each 2.5 "on", punch in level 2 or 3 and spin easily at 90 rpm for 90 seconds. Then hit it hard again for 2.5 minutes.

4. How many of these little Four Minute Maulings do you do? Shoot for 4 x 2/5/1.5. If you're fried after that, spin easily for 2 or 3 minutes, then do a second set of 2 to 4. Your eventual goal is Eight Straight. If you do this workout right, that's plenty. Your goal is getting stronger, not to be admitted to the ICU.

5. Finish off with 5 to 8 minutes of easy pedaling for a cool-down and leg-flusher.

Remember: Once a week. No more. The rest of the time, just ride your bike or do longer, less intense indoor sessions.

Bike Passion: Are Cyclists Insane? by Marc Altman

Linda Jellison — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:59:17 GMT

Arriving home from another excellent Saturday Sig Ride, I started to ponder. It was cold and wet. Windy and gray. I could have stayed home in the warm house watching the rotten weather descend but instead, found myself riding West of Hillsboro eating road dirt from the rider in front, dodging rain, wind gusts and sausage-crazed Verboortians.

According to our official PV survey, most of ya’ll are presently chowing down on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups while madly spinning at the gym hamster-like, waiting for the next sunny (or even dry) day to sneak in a ride.

22% of you are going toe-to-toe with the Pacific NW by continuing to ride hard in the rain while dining on a steady diet of lean protein and vegetables, not to be humbled by anything as puny as the weather or dreaded holiday weight gain.

Being half-indoor trainer hamster and half outside hard-core, I started pondering. WHY?

Why didn’t I stay home today?

Why do I spend so much time, money and energy on cycling? Why do others spend so much time, energy and money on cycling? Obviously, there is much passion for cycling and at the epi-center-for-cycling-Nirvana-Mecca PDX, obsession is especially towering. But, WHAT are we actually talking about here? Why the insanity?

After much rumination, I came up with a list of all the things over the years that cycling has meant to me/done to me either directly or indirectly and in greater or lesser proportions that have caused it to become a PASSION. Perhaps you recognize some, or have others of your own that by themselves or in combination with others affect you the same way. They are in no particular order except how they popped into my (empty) head:

Freedom

Nothing equals the feeling of freedom you can get from heading out on the road, down a gnarly slope or tearing up on a long, flat piece of highway. Just you and the bike whirring along, surrounded by big open spaces and big sky… Epic climbs to scenic vistas to make you feel on top of the world…

Screaming wide-eyed descents on curvy roads unfettered by cars following behind you, grinning ear to ear! Very motorcycle-like, but that is another story.

Even if the open road isn’t so open because you are bike commuting, you are still more free than the car-encased folks grid-locked in traffic, no?

Aliveness

Being alive comes in varying degrees - from lazily sipping hot cocoa in front of the fireplace to having your hair on fire and then jumping into a frozen lake. Cycling usually lands us on the far side of aliveness.

Riding headfirst into a Westside sleet storm, receiving a face-full of mud on an MTB ride, crashing into the bushes, baking in the scorching heat ascending a long climb, pegging your max. heart rate during a sprint, conquering the local hill. Any cycling experience, really, is guaranteed to make you feel alive and get all those synapses firing, which is exactly what we crave.

Fitness and Health

We ride to feel fit. We ride to lose weight. We ride to relieve stress. We ride to become more efficient oxygen-powered machines. We ride to see our muscles get toned and taut. We ride to blow out the cobwebs and think more clearly.

We are “low riders”. We ride to lower our: heart rate, waist size, body weight, body fat, stress, wallet thickness, route times and rate at which we age. We ride to see what our bodies and minds working together can actually produce in a performance.

The benefits of exercise are well documented and we are just doing our part.

Supporting your local ER

Not that this has been a great source of passion for me, but I have done my part to stimulate the economy as far as keeping ER physicians, EMT’s, ER nurses, ER staff, ER equipment manufacturers and even Joe, The ER Plumber employed via my various cycling mishaps, mountain bike wrecks, getting hit by cars and a sorry ass flotilla of other reasons I have been cut, bunged-up, dislocated, avulsed or otherwise been rendered out of commission while cycling.

Adventure and Exploration

Exploring a new area on a bike is just the best way to do it. No question. You can see more new things faster on a bike than via walking, running or by car.

Being new to PDX, bicycling has let me discover and explore hundreds of roads, towns, areas, parks and crannies I otherwise would have never seen. Every ride is a new ride, full of promise for some sort of new outing. Armed with a good map, all you have to do is pick a destination and go. Getting lost is not necessarily a bad thing as you end up places you never thought you would.

In one misguided circumnavigation adventure, I discovered the joys of climbing Rocky Point Road, Logie Trail and Laurelwood in the same day, getting lost a few times in between the two. Had I opted for a known route, I never would have had that “growth” experience. Forest Park has been a continual discovery process and I keep finding little spurts of hidden single track along side my growing repertoire of Fire lanes.

Self-Discovery and Potential

Our cycling lives are full of instances where we did something we did not think we could do or we tried something new and fell in love with it. We like pushing our limits, trying new things and seeing our progress (See Number Love).

Every day, all over the world, some cyclist somewhere rides further than they ever thought they would, rides faster than they ever thought they might, participates in a race or event they never thought they would enter, loses that stubborn weight they never thought would come off, or takes up a new cycling discipline only to add another dimension to their life. The possibilities for discovery and growth are always available and endless.

Inspiration

There are so many cyclists that defy the impossible; it is hard not be inspired. Not just Lance, but everyday folks doing extraordinary things and making cycling work for them.

Hardcore senior citizens mixing it up at races, long-distance events and Ironman Triathlons. Single Moms with full-time jobs putting in hundreds of miles per week. Folks with missing legs biking trails that regular mountain bikers find difficult. Newcomers to cycling taking the sport and going with it, reaching top levels in a few short years.

Look around our club. You will find lots of inspiration.

Transportation and Being Green

Bike commuting is cool.

Whether it is your personal manifesto against the car-choked, Hummer-invaded world or simple transport, how else can you combine fitness, environmentalism, gas savings, getting to work, calorie burning, workaday stress relief and quality time with your bike all into one? Plus, surmounting the challenges of getting around in rotten weather and not getting creamed by an SUV or a maniac street racer gives you an extra psychological boost and sense of daily accomplishment you might not get from your job.

Travel

Yes, you can actually travel on your bike!

I’m not talking about commuting here. I’m talking about travel. From A to long distance B to long distance C on your bike, carrying your house with you and being self-sufficient as possible. I never thought I would ride my bike across the Canadian Rockies, set up a tent in the rain, wake up in the rain, cook meals over a fire or live on PB & J for weeks on end, but the satisfaction of doing so could not have been replaced by a bus tour.

As a bike discipline, hard-core solo bicycle touring is just is not as popular as the others, but remains the coolest of them all. Given, it is not the easiest, fastest, most convenient, but probably the most satisfying.

Compromises between going hard-core solo and sitting on a tour bus give rise to great things like Cycle Oregon, which is on my to-do list. Maybe even mountain bike touring!

Good ol’ Working with your hands

Lubricants, cleaners, solvents, grease, tools, wrenches, truing stands, glue, nuts, bolts, components, parts, cables, repairs, hot lights, late nights all in service of creating and installing your next upgrade, replacement part or cool new toy. What is not to love about getting close and personal with your bicycle to maintain, clean and modify it? What is not to love about the sense of satisfaction obtained from doing your own wrenching, tweaking and repairs and not having to drag it to a shop? What is not to love about doing some actual physical work with your hands, caveman style to sharpen up your steed?

I have known many cyclists who have never washed their bike, never carried a spare tube nor pump. Blessedly ignorant, they are under some sort of Cosmic Dispensation, allowing them to ride their bikes for years it seems without ever giving a thought to the idea that airmight be needed in the tires, it might need a bath or that those crumbs of rubber near the rim were once actually brake pads that helped stop the bike. Sigh. But for those of us who like to spend QT in the garage, bike maintenance is a relaxing, enjoyable, hands-on task we relish.

Mad Variety and Compulsive Collecting

What other sport gives you such Baskin-Robbins variety? You got your road biking, mountain biking, commuting, cyclocrossing, bike touring, Single-speeding, track racing, BMX, time trialing, down hilling….

With such multiplicity it naturally follows that you come down with MBS (Multiple Bike Syndrome).

The road bike, the rain bike, the commuting bike, the mountain bike, the cyclocross bike, the TT bike, the old road bike, the old mountain bike, the fixie. That is just for starters. And those are just YOUR bikes. If your significant other rides, double that. Naturally with so many bikes, you will need to get a larger garage. To get a larger garage, you will need to buy a larger house. To buy a larger house, you need larger $$$. To get larger $$$, you need a larger job. Basically, your life is hijacked by cycling and all your money goes into it.

Camaraderie

Suffering, like fun, is a funny thing. You can suffer, hurt, be in pain, be miserable, tired and frozen out there by yourself and think “This S##KS!” “This is S#IT!”. But, take the same ingredients, stir in some fellow cyclists who are also experiencing the same wretchedness and Viola! You are now having FUN! Quite the interesting transformation, I always thought. Suffering and peak experiences are the perfect incubator for “War Stories” being told around the campfire (or PV forum) and is a tradition as old as humankind.

Sure, camaraderie happens on sunny, warm and pain-free rides, but what fun is that?

Lust

Is lust involved in cycling? Is that rider in the tight-butt Lycra ahead of you the future love of your life? Hmmm…

Sure, lust is involved, but not that type of lusty lust. I mean bike lust.

There I was at Lakeside Cycles, completely drooling over $7,000 bicycles, fancy wheels, shiny paint, whammo-dyne cyclocomputers, top-end Showers Pass Jackets and in total bicycle lust. I know it affects all cyclists as surely as a candy store affects a 5-yr old. I’ve never been able to walk past a bike shop without stopping in to “See what they have” just as I have never been able to bypass a bakery to “See what they have”.

Fresh baked cookies and fresh baked components never looked so good.

Number Love

Cycling is about numbers. If you heart numbers, you gotta love cycling. Wattage. Frame weight. Gear ratios. Heart rates. Distance. Speed. Gradient. Body Fat. Time. Calories Burned. Feet of Climbing. RPM, MHR, RMR, BP to name a few. If Excel spreadsheets, Excel macros, online tracking logs, training software, and downloadable GPS cyclocomputers torque your endorphins, you gotta love cycling. If you love to track, graph, chart, compute, trend and analyze data, you can be a statistician.

Or you can be a cyclist.

Insanity and other maladies

I have a confession to make.

As a transplant, I had never seen a cyclocross race until September. I had never seen a cyclocross bike. While riding along the California shoreline for decades, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that this thing cyclocross was a BIG DEAL in Portland, it being rainy and sloppy and cold and all.

I had no idea of the psychosis involved.

After reading race reports on PV forum, seeing armies of photos depicting mud encased cyclists freezing in the rain, hearing about the legendary intense pain, big heart rates, lunatic run-ups and finally seeing the bizarre Halloween race photos on pdxcross.com, I know that insanity IS cyclocross and I have to try it. I want to bunny-hop a coffin.

I have bad feet and cannot run, pretty much “X’ing me out” of the whole thing. But since ‘cross is, by definition insane, it won’t matter. My brain cells will shed out my ears like lemmings off a cliff and I will be ok with that.

Fun

It all comes down to fun.

Fun is funny stuff. Everyone knows what it is and everyone knows what it is not, but we cannot define it. We all instinctively and collectively know things that are not fun, things we don’t want to happen again. Like:

Waiting in line at the DMV
Having your car conk-out on a busy highway during a storm
Having the toilet backup onto your new carpeting
Ending up in the hospital

And we know things that are always fun, which keep us doing them time after time, and form our collective bicycle lives.

The ones that affect me are listed above. You?

PRE-WINTER WISDOM X 4

Linda Jellison — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:26:00 GMT

It’s Official: the Big Gray is now upon us.

Not “real” winter (is this like “real” Virginia?) yet, but close enough. You know, stretches of rainy-showery days, during which only the self-flagellaters and the Certifiable ride, and those back-to-back-to-back dry-but-cold days when the saner Velo-ites among us clip in and head onto the road.

Let’s call this pre-Winter, pretty much what we PDXers get for maybe the next 6 weeks——if 2008, unlike last year’s meteorological purgatory, is a “good” year. Let’s assume it is, and that we’ll be out on our bikes as often as not well past Thanksgiving.

So. Some things to be aware of, to Do, and Not Do.

#1: TAKE YOUR CUE FROM THOSE REVELERS IN ‘THE STUDENT PRINCE’ (Ah, Broadway Musicals! The only thing Ty likes better than bike riding) and “DRINK, DRINK, DRINK!!!”

Listen up. No, seriously, LISTEN UP. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it all before. Still.

L.I.S.T.E.N. U.P.

During a 2-plus hour summer ride, you will (or should) drain a pair of 24-ouncers. But during a leaden-skies Maggie’s Loop in mid-November? Ha. You maybe, MAYBE, pull de-cage your bottle twice, end up back at Longbottom with it still 2/3s full.

”Well,” you say, pathetically, “I never felt, you know, thirsty, so I . . . . I mean, jeez, it was so cold . . . and all . . . “

Dumb.

How come? Because fluid replacement needs, despite subjective feelings, don’t vary much at all between hot and cold temps. “Don’t be fooled because it’s cold and you feel you don’t need to drink,” warned the late Ed Burke, cycling coach and exercise physiologist extraordinaire. “Obviously, you still sweat on winter rides, and a considerable amount of fluid is used during breathing. Inhaled air {more so even on cold, dry days} must be moistened in your throat and lungs. When you exhale, fluid is lost in that cloud of steam you see. To make matters worse, you also lose more fluid through increased urine production in cold temperatures.” Moreover, Burke adds, that while there is “No need to significantly increase your caloric intake during cold weather, you may want to have a snack before you ride. Digesting it will add some heat to your body via metabolism, sort of like putting another log on the fire.”

Consider yourself apprised.

#2: HEED THE WORDS OF PAUL SIMON: “SLOW DOWN, YOU MOVE TOO FAST . . . “

Cold air is thicker than warm air. Baseballs don't fly as far in cold air. A field goal attempt that clears the crossbar from 52 yards out on a 70-degree day falls 5 yards short on a 35-degree day.

Everything moves through cold air more slowly. Including you in the saddle. The same pedaling effort just doesn’t propel you through cold air as fast. If your steady state summer speed is, say, 19-20 mph, you’ll need same effort to maintain 17-18 in the winter. Also, your body expends more energy just keeping your ass and adjacent appendages warm in the winter, so this, too, compromises your capacity for kickass cranking.

You see where we’re going here, right?

In winter, ride medium hard sometimes, even hard in selected bits, if you want to. Nothing wrong with that. Breaks up the monotony, maintains a subtext of stamina until the warm weather returns that makes the transition back to faster riding that much smoother. Just don’t use speed as your guideline in the winter. Dial it back. Focus not on miles-per-hour, but on EFFORT. Plan on, and accept, that you just aren’t going to go as fast in the winter and don’t fight it. Your winter mantra: No Need For Speed. At least not summer velocities.

# 3: PROCTOLOGY 101. MINUS THE EXAM.

A nifty little trick passed on to your Fit Bit columnist by one of the resident female medical professionals who comprise our Portland Velo Nursing Corps: For cold weather glove liners, snap on a pair of those super-thin latex gloves. I’m sure you know the kind.

They take up almost no space, so your regular gloves fit as they normally do. Unlike heavier glove liners, they don’t “bulk up” your hands which can make braking and shifting difficult. And, mainly, they keep your digits amazingly toasty. Oh, your hands will be wet when you pull them off at the end of the ride, but they’ll also be warm. These things are cheap, too. You can even pick them up at places like Home Depot in bulk packages.

#4: DRESS (BUT NOT OVERLY) FOR SUCCESS

One personal observation, nothing scientific here, based on 14 years of competitive running and 11 years of cycling. Yes, layer up in winter. MUCH better than wearing some honkin’ heavy jacket. Traps and retrains body heat better, allows you to peel like an onion if the weather warms, as it often does over the course of a 2-3 hour ride.
But. One tip to consider. If you are not a little cold at the start of a ride, that is chilly enough to think “Damn, I should have worn another base layer. Or two,” then you are most likely overdressed, a realization that will surface 10 minutes into the ride. If you are hot tub-comfy at your first clip-in, you’re probably too bundled up. Better mildly uncomfortable at the start.

Anyway, give it some thought.

Next Month: Maximizing Time on the Trainer. Or “45 minutes, and Done”.

CYCLING: CURE-ALL FOR NEUROTICS?

Linda Jellison — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:43:00 GMT

This month's "Fit Bit" from Portland Velo's Fitness Guru

Well, Maybe. Maybe not. Let's see what we have here.

Seems that, yeah, cycling DOES strengthen your legs, lungs, heart and all its accompanying circulatory plumbing——but NOT, apparently, your psyche.

Elevated HDLs? Sure. Pumped-up Quads? You bet. Bottom-feeding resting heartrate? Check.

But mood boost? Uh, sad to say, no.

So says a team of Dutch researchers.

Reporting in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, the Netherlands nay sayers detected NO DIFFERENCES IN DEPRESSION, SELF-ESTEEM, OR OTHER ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASURES” in the 62 sedentary, mentally healthy adults who participated in either 4- or 8-month exercise cycling programs, OR the no-exercise-at-all fat-ass control group. Though the cyclists undeniably look hotter in spandex.

But.

If you’re one of that large group of Velo-ites prone to performance-anxiety neurosis (which, on Saturday, is nearly everyone from the A17s on up), there is still good news as the Bad News Boers did concede that exercise such as cycling may prove “psychologically helpful” to depressed or anxious people.

You know who you are.

So get out and ride, you'll feel better.

HOW TO BOOKEND THE SATURDAY CLUB RIDE——AND WHY YOU SHOULD

Linda Jellison — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:57:07 GMT

by Portland Velo's own Health & Fitness Guru

Warm-up. Cool-Down.

Concepts fixed in the folklore of cycling. And concepts considered, oh, let's say "quaint" by way too many Velo-ites, particularly on the Saturday club ride where Full Frontal Assault, 74-Gun Broadside, Drop the New Guy, and No Quarter are more the operative terms.

Yes, yes, yes, we've all seen the Saturday onslaught, and most of us have willingly participated. Take a right out of the Longbottom lot, another right on Evergreen, then wait for the sonic boom.

Warm-up? Uh, not unless you want to do the rest of the ride solo. Not a good thing. Not good at all.

So, listen up.

Your body is much like a car's engine. A smart driver piddles along at low-revs for a bit until the engine reaches optimum operating temperature. This produces both better performance and higher engine longevity. Ditto, your bod. It, too, needs time to reach its ideal working temperature, time to gradually goose the HR and open the delivery gates to working muscles. To do so, to ease into it, will mean that you will not only ultimately have a faster ride, but you'll also enjoy it a hell of a lot more.

Study after study have established this certainty: Elevating the body temperature gradually (and well before you hit it hard or hilly) allows oxygen to be released into the blood much more effectively; energy output becomes more efficient, and muscle viscosity improves. So a warm-up of easy-working-to-moderate intensity gets your whole body physiologically prepped for the more rigorous riding to come.

I mean, you're going to be doing 40, 45, 50 miles for God's sake, so what's the rush? Going a bit more mellow and a bit less manic for maybe 5 freaking minutes can make all the difference. Alas, too many of our breed consider such cruising "wasted time". Wrong. Wrong.

Wrong.

There are 3 ways to warm-up for exercise: Passive (hanging out in a warm environment, like Longbottom); General (anything that moves the body such as 5 minutes of jogging in place or jumping jacks. Which, I suppose, you could do, but a) it doesn't carry over well to a specific activity such as cycling, and b) you look like a horse's ass doing it.

No, the best warm-up is Specific: A low intensity version of the exercise you are about to perform. Since we are bike riders, this means biking. How much? 5 minutes is good, 10 is better. How hard? No more than about 50% effort. Where? Ride down to the corner of Shute and back to do your time. Or ride down to Hillsboro Stadium and circle the parking lot a few times. The route is irrelevant. Saddle time/minimal intensity is the thing.

What about stretching, you ask? Good warmup, right? Au contraire, brothers and sisters. A lousy, possibly harmful "warm up", a bastardization of the term.

THE JOURNAL OF SPORTS MEDICINE recently published a study titled "Stretching and injury prevention: an Obscure Relationship". The title pretty much says it all: Stretching just ain't what it's cracked up to be. In fact, clinical evidence suggests that pre-exercise stretching (of cold muscles) does nothing to prevent injuries, in fact may help cause them, and that cyclists and runners are far better off doing mild aerobic work to heat up the muscles, stimulate circulation, elevate the body's core temperature, and put head and heart on exercise alert. The study further noted that stretching of muscles and tendons for cycling, "where range of motion is limited", offers no advantage at all. Cyclists "are not 100-meter runners or gymnasts," the researchers write. "Think about how far your ankle, knee, hip, and lower back actually bend when you ride. Not far."

Moreover, the study cautions, "If you want to stretch after an aerobic warm up, keep the stretching light and relaxed. NEVER (my caps) use stretching to warm a muscle instead of riding." Because, baby, no matter how much you stretch, until you actually ride, it's still cold in there.

And at the other end of the ride: Chill, Chill, Chill.

Quick show of hands out there!

How many out there in Velo-Land shut it down at the final stoplight on Evergreen, click down to the small ring, and gently spin all-but-resistance-free from there to the LB parking lot? Okay, got it. Just needed the fingers on one hand for the total.

Now, how many, at this same point on the course, hear the starter's pistol go off in their demented minds and ride hard enough to blow an O-ring from there to the lot? Yep, just what I thought.

Bad dogs. BAD dogs.

What you should do, what you NEED to do is cool-down over the final 5 minutes of a hard ride (and on Saturday, is there ever any other kind?). Note I say COOL-down, not warm-down. What you are doing, literally, is letting all your organs and muscles and assorted internal plumbing cool down, back to the body temps you had when you were driving out to the ride, your "stasis" temp. What you are doing is letting your core temperature drop and your HR and hormone levels to get back to normal. Various studies show that a lower resting HR is achieved after a ride as a result of a cool-down. You also get improved heart function and general cardiac health when you get off the bike after a cool-down period vs. sprinting into the parking lot and immediately dismounting, HR still in the Red Zone.

My own cardiologist must have told me this a dozen times over the past few years. Those 5 (or whatever) easy minutes at the end of a hard ride really promote blood return to the heart from your just-worked-to-the-max muscles. If you are just temperamentally unable to resist the "challenge" of full gas over the final mile of the Saturday ride, then, fine, just make sure you do at least 5 minutes of gentle spinning before exiting the saddle.

There you have it, then: Warming up and cooling down are not "wasted time"; rather, there are essential ingredients, twin "bookends", in safe, fun, hard riding, and overall heart health.

Not that I expect to see anything different next Saturday. Or the one after that. Or the one . . .

But at least you've all been informed. My work here is done.

NEVER RIDE HARD ON TIRED LEGS. NEVER. EVER.

Linda Jellison — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:20:00 GMT

Rewind.
Stop.
Play.

NEVER RIDE HARD ON TIRED LEGS. NEVER. EVER.

This absolute core principle of intelligent training is repeated mantra-like by most of us. And all too often ignored. But do so at your peril, be you race teamer or serious fitness rider.

Who says? Well, everyone. Including Scott Saifer, the Head Coach at Wenzel Coaching, a nationwide apparatus of pro cycling and assorted other endurance sport coaches for riders of all abilities. It matters not your personal position in the Portland Velo food chain 'cuz the maxim is absolute: NEVER RIDE HARD ON TIRED LEGS.

"Riding hard when your body is not ready for it is a bad habit for several reasons," says Saifer. "Riding OTHER THAN RECOVERY (my caps) when you are already tired makes you more tired WITHOUT MAKING YOU FASTER, and delays the time when you will be able to do quality riding again."

Get it?

You DON'T become a stronger, faster rider by bludgeoning the crap out of your legs ride after ride after ride. Riding hard 2, 3, 4, whatever days in a row isn't just extremely unpleasant, it's flat-out stupid. Putting the hammer down on rides you go into with legs already aching makes you very, very good at going hard——without going fast. Who in hell would want to do that? Oh, yeah. An "Animal".

I bring this up to offset the possibly seriously damaging effects of a story The Oregonian ran last Sunday on some guy called the "Big Dog" who believes that every ride has to be some sort of gasping, grunting, squinty-eyed, snot-flying-out-your-nose, gray-viscous-drool-burbling-out-your-lips penance or, you know, it just don't count. You gotta SUFFER, man. On the ride you're currently doing. And the one after that, and the one after that, and so on, in perpetuity. A recovery ride? Ha! Day off? Anathema!

And when your body eventually breaks down into a tortured stew of ripped muscles and fractured bones and you're running a 102 fever? Well, hell, get out and ride as hard as you can, of course! Hurt? Exhausted? Sick? So what? Ride harder! I mean, you got no cojones, or what?

Freakin' wimp.

Okay, so how, exactly, are we defining "tired"? Simple, says Saifer. Not really subjective at all. "My (most successful) clients have learned to go easy on any day they feel ANYTHING BUT TOTALLY EXCELLENT (my caps)." These riders (let's call them The Few, The Smart, The Speedy) "progress faster than other riders who go hard for various reasons OTHER THAN BEING READY AND KNOWING THEY AREN'T. Bad reasons, Saifer says, include wanting to set a new PR on a training loop; slavishly sticking to a laid-out-weeks-in-advance training plan; wanting desperately to "keep up" on a group training ride regardless of how you feel; letting your glands and your ego override wisdom, judgment, and patience.

Moreover, counsels Saifer, it's the recovery days that allow you to take lively legs into your hard rides and really amp it up. And THIS is where you get faster and stronger, how you develop, in Saifer's words, "the ability to ride fast without riding hard, and then the ability to ride tremendously fast when riding hard."

All of this holds true for all of us, from the 17s up through H/N'ers and the race team. Every ride need not be a blood-letting.

RIDE HARD, STAY YOUNG LONGER?

Linda Jellison — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:01:00 GMT

Recent research suggests that the answer could be “Yes”. At worst, maaaaay-be.

So, let’s see what we have here.

Well, for starters, the pessimistic stuff: All kinds of scientific studies have long established that for endurance sports, of which cycling is one, once middle age is reached, the Great Decline begins.

Need proof? Here you go.

A shiny new University of Texas study (2007) concluded that “Peak endurance performance is maintained until approximately 35 years of age, followed by modest decreases until 50 to 60 years of age, with progressively steeper declines thereafter.” Back-up factoid: No one——not Eddy, not Lance, not The Badger or Big Mig, no one——over the age of 35 has won the Tour de France.

Oh sure, there are exceptions such as Lance lieutenant Viatcheslav Ekimov who punched it at the head of the Postal/Discovery paceline at 40 (both years of age and mph), and CSC’s Jens Voight at 37 still able to kick ass on the young ‘uns. But these are exceptions. Genetic freaks.

How come? Well, mainly declines in VO2 Max and increases in body fat. Kinda makes all you mid-30s Velo-ites want to permanently unskewer your carbon aero wheels, doesn’t it?

BUT WAIT!!!!

We got us some new research here that challenges the veracity of the oft-cited “Apres 35, les deluge” maxim. New research that, dare we say, even offers hope for the aging cyclist? Well, yes, if we define “aging” as, say, 45.

An new Italian study concluded that what really caused on-the-bike performance declines up to age 45 were NOT the long-stressed physiological deterioration, but rather because the older athletes TRAINED LESS THAN YOUNGER ONES. So, not lung leakage, but laziness is the cause of 4th decade performance fall-off. Maintain your training levels, maintain your fitness well past where conventional wisdom says you can.

Fine, you say, but I’m in my 50s now (there ARE a few of you out there on Saturdays, right? I mean, besides me?). What about me? you bleat. Am I destined for the cycling slag heap?

Maybe not.

A recently-published study out of Wisconsin found that a test group of 10 athletes with an average starting age of 52 were able to maintain their VO2 max just fine, thank you, with steady, regular bits of high-intensity training, head-butting the accepted belief that all should have lost 10% . . . or more.

Now.

This does NOT mean that, to stay young in the saddle, you go out and hammer every ride, knuckleheads. It DOES mean that using high-intensity training JUDICIOUSLY, as in a few chunks of rides a couple of times a week, will keep the pistons pumping like in the old days.

So, ride hard, yes. Just not all the time. Or even close to it. Pick your moments. When you’re feeling strong, when IT’S THERE, run it up to the red line and hold it a while. But not so long that you blow an O-ring. But never, ever, NEVER, EVER do this on tired legs. Never. Ever.

Ride hard, even really hard, now and then and carry superior fitness levels well into middle age, and beyond.

Or ride hard all the time and turn yourself into a bowler.

RACE TEAM: DON’T BOTHER EVEN PERUSING. THIS ONE IS FOR THE CIVILIANS.

Linda Jellison — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:32:00 GMT

by our mystery "Fit Bit" author - to be revealed in next month's VeloCITY. Or not. Wait and see.

Before I became a cyclist, I was a competitive long distance runner for 11 years, and posted some respectable times. I trained hard, but I also trained smart. Which meant NOT training hard every day. And when it came to coming up with the best workouts, I was a shameless thief, a protocol pirate forever asking “What do you do?” questions to every el/la rapido I raced against. I tried them all, everyone’s favorite workout, turning my body into a clearing house for every imaginable training scheme. Eventually, I tossed out what didn’t work so well, maintained and fine-tuned what did, and boiled everything down to a few core principles that seemed, for me, to work best and, over my final 2 years as a road racer, I recorded personal bests at every distance from 8-K through the marathon.

So, when I bought my first road bike 8 years ago (the first bike I had since I was in the 8th grade), I figured that what worked to make me a stronger, faster runner, I could carry over into my cycling. I did. And it worked. As a result, I’ve gotten stronger and faster each year I’ve ridden. So far. But at my age this perpetually ascending curve is eventually going to flatten out.

Here’s the bottom line: Running and cycling are (obviously; but it still needs to be affirmed) NOT the same activity; running isn’t going to make you a stronger, faster cyclist, and vice versa. But. Many of the same physiological principles and training techniques effectively cross over from one to the other. And here they are.

1. Ride some of your weekly miles (say 10-15+% of your total, certainly not much more than that) harder-to-way harder than your usual, normal moderate pace, your lock-in/auto pilot tempo, the brisk (to you) but mainly comfortable effort you ride almost all the time. Second, ride, say, 20% of your miles slower than this normal pace, even if it means willfully dropping down to a slower group where you HAVE to ride slower, even if it now and then means tripping-over-your-feet slow. This is really when true recovery and rebuilding (of both body and brain) takes place, and when strength gains are actually built——and not during the hard riding when you are actually tearing muscles down. The rest of the time ride your normal pace. Too many riders ride almost the same pace/tempo/effort almost all the time—_this includes almost every Velo-ite——spending anywhere from 90% to 100% in this “Grey Zone” that is neither hard nor easy. The result is stasis because you train your body to do only one thing, and that is ride at THAT pace. Mile after mile after mile.

Instead, try this:

2. Ride long (whatever that is for you) once a week, probably Saturday or Sunday since this is more enjoyably done with a group. From such rides you build/increase ENDURANCE——the ability to ride and ride and ride over longer and longer distances, though at a moderate pace.

3. Ride a good, hard sustained pace (say 6 to 8 minutes) several times during your ride once a week, something that has you breathing hard and your legs getting toasty, but still out of the Red Zone, that is short of anything close to what you’d call squinty-eyed all-out. Think “pleasantly uncomfortable” for these efforts. This kind of interval training produces STAMINA, an increased ability to ride “fairly long, fairly hard.”

4. Finally, once a week (maybe twice, if, as you get stronger, it’s done in conjunction with #3), do some short, but extremely hard efforts that end up being about as red-line as you can ride for 20 seconds to 1 minute. Maybe punch it flat out up a moderate 200-to-300-meter incline. Or come out of the saddle in the big ring and drive as hard as you can for 10 seconds, then sit down and maintain a max effort for another 15 or 20 seconds, or whatever you can manage. Hammer it in the drops for 2 or 3 telephone polls. Get creative. Just make sure that you ARE squinty-eyed and gasping over the final bit. Do this 3 or 4 times during an otherwise normal ride whenever you feel like it, or the terrain serves up an opportunity. It doesn’t take that many reps. What you improve here is muscle STRENGTH, and with it the ability to reach top speed faster and hold it longer, to stand and accelerate on a hill, to sprint.

ENDURANCE. STAMINA. STRENGTH. Improve in these 3 areas, and you cover all the bases. There really isn’t anything else. Do #2-4 above for 6 weeks, and you come out the other end of the pipeline a stronger, faster rider. There is a difference between riding (heading out and turning the cranks however you feel every day) and training (adding some reasonable structure to a few rides each week that is aimed at improving some specific capacity while still keeping your riding fun)

That’s really all there is to it, all you need to do. Oh sure, you can buy training books and CDs and get anal about monitoring heartrate, blahblahblah. And if this makes sense to you, and gives you confidence that you’re doing the right thing, or if you’re one of those people with a compulsive need to quantify everything, then by all means keep doing it. But understand this: riding/training to become a stronger rider isn’t particle physics. If you’re a Tour rider, and hundredths-of-a-second can put you on, or keep you off, the podium, then, yeah, maybe you do want all the lab stuff and computer analysis/feedback and have blood drawn at the summit of every training climb. But for the rest of us, it’s really a pretty simple formula: Ride some of your miles faster to a lot faster than your norm, ride others slower to a lot slower, and just ride however you feel/want to the rest of the time.

It’s worked for me as both runner and cyclist. It may for you, too.

Give it some thought.

Mitachondria's Magic Bean?

Carlo Delumpa — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:48:00 GMT

It's responsible for the production of 95% off all the human body's energy requirements. Got your attention? Read on.

It's main job is firing up the little one-per-cell energy-producing furnaces called mitochondria that produce energy in muscle cells.

It, like damn near everything else, decreases as we age. Levels begin to drop after——Yikes!——age 20. My god, where does that leave poor Uncle Norris? With flabby quads and a sagging ass, that's where.

It's called Co-enzyme Q10 (or CoQ10, to its close friends)

The Big Question: Can daily doses of this crucial-to-cyclists magic bean improve in-the-saddle performance?

A recent UK study suggests that, yes, it just might.

One group of cyclists were given daily 100mg CoQ10 supplements. A second group (a.k.a. the Lucky Ones) popped 300mg each day. A third group was given a placebo.

The result? "Significant on-bike performance gains", wrote the researchers, for the 300mg-ers vs. No Gains for both the 100mg grupetto as well as the pathetic placebos.

But wait, there's more!

"Subjective fatigue sensations" (i.e. feeling tired, or in Brit-speak, knackered) were "substantially alleviated" in the kick-ass 300s, but NOT in either of the other two test groups.

But wait, there's more! No, seriously!

CoQ10 also provides "significant antioxidant functions" by preserving levels of vitamins C & E even as it is stoking up your working muscles. A real multi-tasker this.

The Layman Lowdown? Researchers suggest trying this: Pop 300mg CoQ10 supps daily for 8 weeks prior to a target race or touch event ride (such as the PV club century). The stuff is cheap, and could well improve your workload capacity and overall performance. One good source is www.vitacost.com.

May Fit Bit: Proper Pedaling

Linda Jellison — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:09:00 GMT

A BIT OF PROPER PEDALING: One Way to Move Up the Food Chain

Look around at the noobs (and, truth be told, a fair number of Velo-kitted vets) on the next SatSig Ride. You'll likely see at least some, and more often than not, too many riders either in a teeny-tiny gear over-spinning (>110rpm) and looking like a crazed hamster on crack, or their polar-opposites grimacing while grinding a too big gear (<60rpm).

Either of these capital offenses and/or just flat out poor pedal technique.

Right now in the transition time from the toilet bowl weather we've too long endured to the glorious sun-splashed days we know lie ahead (note: change "know" to "hope") is a good time to work on improving your pedal action, and temporarily abandon the focus on pure mileage or heartrate-orientated rides. Okay, okay. Keep your damn HR monitors on if you absolutely must, but for God's sake for AT LEAST part of every other ride, abandon the squinty-eyed "gotta be a half wheel ahead" mania and target your technique. Pick at least two (ideally, give them all a shot) from the following menu choices:

1. Take some indoor spin classes, or (I cannot believe I am writing this) invest in a fixed wheel bike ("fixie" to the in-groupers) on an easy, mainly flat route. Turn the pedals at 100rpm+ and, most importantly, focus on relaxation (loose jaw, loose grip on the bars, think "mellow quads", whatever you need to do) as you approach 2 revs-per-second. Aim at carving full circles and not just punching the pedals up and down. All of this leads to the improved neuromuscular/biomechanical efficiency you need to become a smoother, and hence more efficient and ultimately stronger rider.

2. On longer, moderate grade climbs (the long slogs up Helvetia or Clapshaw come to mind), try gearing down to a harder gear and climbing out of the saddle with a lower cadence of, say, 60-70rpm. Relax your upper body and rock with the bike, albeit under control.

3. On your trainer, or on a LifeCycle at the gym, close your eyes when you cycle and concentrate on the FEEL of the pedals rotating. Vary where you press and pull to see how it changes your internal pedal "feel". Turn these sessions into little explorations and find the stroke that fits you best. LifeCycles are good as they give you instant rpm readouts.

4. Once you are warmed up, do 1-minute cadence intervals that follow the classic training Pyramid Pattern: 70rpm, 80, 90, 100, 90, 80, 70, all in the same modest gear. Repeat this cycle 5 to 6 times with 1 minute of casual, unmonitored riding in between. After you're done, you can resume balls-out run-downs of the closest potential road kill. Be sure to pick a flat to VERY slightly rolling terrain so that you can concentrate on the proper cadence without getting into any real fatigue. Yeah, I know. Any ride where your tongue isn't hanging on the top tube is a wasted ride. Whatever. Just Do It.

5. Alternate 1-minute easy gear spinning with one leg only: 1 minute, right leg followed by 1 minute left leg, repeat, repeat, repeat. Repeat. If you want, start with 30-second one-leggers and work up to a full minute. Keep the "dead" leg connected to the pedal if you feel more secure that way, just don't use it.

That's it, brothers and sisters.

Off with you now.

Fit Bit O' The Week: HGH (Human Growth Hormone) 101

Linda Jellison — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:33:00 GMT

Questions you always wanted to ask but didn't...

1. So Just What is HGH, Anyway? And Why Do the Tour Dopers Scarf It
Down?

HGH——Human Growth Hormone——a protein produced and released into your
bloodstream by the pituitary gland ACCELERATES FAT BURNNG, MUSCLE
BUILDING, and METABOLISM. It's not a drug, rather a naturally occurring
substance in the human body.

2. So If We Make It, How Come We Have to TAKE It?

'Cause by your early 20s, HGH has largely done its job, that is
transforming your kid body into the adult version. So natural
production starts to decline. The sad results? More body fat, less
muscle mass, a sputtering sex drive. Ah, but the OPPOSITE is also true:
Boosting HGH levels leads to increased testosterone production (which
does show up in drug testing) and all the accompanying gains in
strength and repair work on cells, tendons and muscles damaged by
rigorous exercise. Remember how much faster things healed when you
were, like, 19?

3. The Buzz

HGH hit the fan in the late-1990s when a study published in the New
England Journal of Medicine pumped HGH into 12 really lucky dudes aged
61 to 81 for 6 months. What happened? Well, the geezers gained 9% in
muscle mass, lost 14% of their body fat, and WITHOUT EXERCISING.
Moreover, most said they felt horny for the first time in a decade and
walked around sporting full blown rats. The results of a half-year's
worth of HGH squirts, the researchers wrote, were "comparable to
shedding 10 to 20 years." So sign me up!

4. The Problem

Whoa. Settle down. You can't get the stuff (legally) in the United
States unless you're an HGH-deficient kid on the fast track to
dwarfism. Last Uncle Norris heard, that was the only FDA-approved use.
Even if you could legally score some, the natural source of HGH (the
pituitary glands of cadavers. Eeek.) is limited, and recombinant forms
(rHGH) although "abundant and safe" are prohibitively expensive,
according to Pharmacological Review.

5. The Options.

Now there IS a way to amp up your HGH levels. Two ways, actually: Sleep
tight, and work out short and hard. The pituitary pumps out more HGH
during sleep, particularly the first 90 minutes, than at any other
time. Ah, but the BETTER way to hype your HGH at any age is, according
to Dr. Mauro De Pasquale (sounds like maybe Marco Pantani's
"connection"?) in the journal Drugs in Sports is HIGH-INTENSITY
exercise, but no more than a couple of times a week. But the watchword
is SHORT AND HARD. Like sprinting balls out for a few hundred yards to
a stop sign, or putting the hammer all the way down on a 100-meter
roller. That kind of thing. Maybe half a dozen times during your ride 2
or 3 times a week. Such explosive bursts, Dr. de P claims, can increase HGH output by AS MUCH AS 50%.

Yikes!

More next month from your Fit Bit Funster, Norris Couchman. Until then,
look for me on my polka-dot Pegoretti at the Saturday ride.

Make March Transition Time!

Carlo Delumpa — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:03:00 GMT

Most likely you've not been riding much over this dreadful winter. Most likely when you have ridden it's not been very vigorous (you know, the cold and all). Most likely you're still doing a lot of gym pedaling, be it in spinning classes or slogging out 40 minutes on a LifeCycle, or you've closed your eyes, grimaced, and shut down your brain for yet ANOTHER session on your dungeon trainer.

Well, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, the weather it's-a-changin'. Soon enough, brothers and sisters, you'll be out there trying mightily but futilely to fend off the repeated attacks that have become endemic to every Saturday "Sig Ride" north of the 15s. You will pay for your season of sloth.

Time then to make your gym time count, and have some fun ("fun" a highly relative term here) atop a LifeCycle, or at home straddling your trainer. Time to try out Uncle Norris's "Simulated 3-Rider Time Trial" where you do 1 hard "pull" for every 2 "drafts". I understand that the concept of a "pull" is alien to you legions of inveterate wheelsuckers out there. Look it up.

Okay, you can do this either of two ways, so mix 'em up for max variety as well as a bit different kind of applied stress to legs and lungs.

Do 10 minute warmup (5 minutes of gradually increasing resistance, but still in the mild-to-moderate range, 5 minutes of alternating 30 seconds of high-rev/low resistance work with 30 seconds of easy recovery spinning.
Now the red meat. Option A: Find a resistance level that feels moderately hard (say, 6 or so on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being flat out sprint). Stay there for 2 minutes, then kick it up to level 7 or 8 (but nothing higher) for 1 minute. By the end of this minute, your legs should be most warm, and you should be breathing hard, even very hard, but not gasping. Repeat this cycle 3 to 8 times (for a 9 to 24-minute 3-Rider TT), however many sets you can handle. BUT always finish feeling you could do one more set. Just don't do it. Get off the bike tired, not trashed. Unless you really want to. Digging deep once every 10 days or so is fine.
For variety, alternate 40-second drafts with 20-second pulls, using the same warmup and exertion levels as described above. Do this for 12 to 24 minutes.
Cool down with at least 5 minutes of easy spinning.

Try it. You'll like it.

Training on an island in Alaska

Linda Jellison — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:30:00 GMT

OK, so it’s not so much the poorly paved (if at all) roads, or the lack of shoulders, or the fact that the shoulders never are swept clean, or the fact that at any moment you could be plastered across the grill of a truck which outnumber cars four to one. No, the difficulty in training to race at a (“lower 48”) competitive level becomes quickly obvious when out jumps the fact that the island I live and train on gets 180 inches of precipitation a year and a hot Summer day is when the temperature reaches 70 degrees. There are no hills longer than a half mile in length, and none taller than 500 feet in elevation; only 24 miles of paved road and only 36 miles of total drivable roadway.

In 2005, the last day I wore just shorts and a jersey was in September, and I didn’t wear shorts alone again until May of 2006. In the summer of 2006 we had 89 days of rain, and winter arrived in August, as it often does. Most every night dips into the 40’s, and the majority of summer days are barely in the 60’s. Which brings the obvious question of why would anyone choose to try to race (and be competitive) in such a harsh climate? The answer, I believe, is the same in Portland, Bend or Kotzebue, Alaska (which has no roads!) We love the sport and we desire the joy and pleasures it gives back to us.

Ketchikan, where I live, is a special place. Rain, yes. Snow, yes. Cycling club? Yes--me. But that‘s OK, because in two miles I’m on a road where it’s not uncommon to have to pause for a bear to wander across the road, or hear loons on a nearby lake. Wilderness--true wilds where you can die on your own if you’re ill-prepared surround us, and we all take a certain pride (and preparation) in that fact. There is novelty, too, in being only one of a few cyclists on the island—and certainly the only one that speeds around in sublimated lycra! I see people over and over throughout a training ride and there is most always a wave or a smile. With the odd cantankerous driver, it’s often that a friend of a friend knows who it is and more often than not the problem is solved just with a bit of education---like “that HUGE HOLE is why I was out in the lane.”

To ride in the summer on Revillagigedo Island—to ride any time in Southeast-- is akin to riding the mid-Wintered sanded roads of the mountainous NW. Grit and grime cling to chains, chain rings, and rim surfaces with equal abandon. Think Larch Mountain in mid-March, which is when I rode it and thought it was great—pouring rain, sleeting at 1,000 feet AND a decent climb, what could be better?

On the island I live on, there is no bike shop—NONE—And while capable on the bike, I’m no modern mechanic, and even simple problems become large dilemmas. Lose a chaining bolt through the deck onto the beach and gone it is forever—need to order one from Seattle. Need cable housing--same thing. Go down to the Trading Company and ask for a 12-25 cassette, or durace derailleur, and you get a stare like you’re speaking Tlingit in Downtown Albany.

And yet we ride. In any weather—in all weather—because when you live someplace that gets 17 feet of rain, you either get out or you don’t. I raced a semi-full season in 2006. Four stage races, a few road races and a number of criteriums. One of the beauties of racing as a Master (for me) is that I’m doing it for myself. I won’t ever return to racing full-time, and so a shift in the principles of competition change a bit I think. I like road racing as a Master mostly because when I go off the back on an early long arduous climb, I know that after awhile solo the women will catch me and I’ll have the enjoyment of finishing the race off the back of their main field! Most any company in a race is good company when you’re off the back. Never been off the back you say? Well, you haven’t raced enough, then, I’d say.

When I travel throughout the West in winter (or summer) and see nicely paved back roads that seemingly go on forever, I am envious—to a point. Just the thought of being able to ride a 100 mile LOOP is mind boggling, and the array of daily choices for training rides—or pleasure rides—is endless. BUT, there is traffic, and smog, and really fast speed limits, and some mean people. And having only lived in SE Alaska for six years my memories of such run-ins are still fresh, so let me say I TOTALLY admire and respect those who commute and ride and train in a “climate” that is equally challenging. At this point I’m not so sure I could do it again.

So here I sit, dreaming of sun and dry pavement and long seemingly endless climbs, craving suiting up to head out for a bit of a DRY spin to view budding trees, daffodils, crocus, and greening grass…something that I won’t be privy to at home until late April—if lucky. Just make sure you get out there and ride, no matter the rain or wind. And find something good at the end of it all, even if it’s just to say “Dude, (or Dudette) I just rode in the worst rain of my life…!” Believe me—I speak with experience here—you’ll look back on it and be pleased you were there. Good for the soul, perhaps better for the ego, but priceless for the memory.

Mike Schuler is a professional photographer who also works for an Engineering firm in Ketchikan, Alaska. He raced as a pro from 1985 – 1997, and since then has raced Masters in the summer. Mike also enjoys open water swimming (in 38 degree water!), hiking, climbing, speedskating, and Nordic skiing. He visits the Portland area to skate, train and ride when his schedule allows. Samples of Mike's photography can be seen at www.keyephotos.com.

Fit Bit O' The Week - The Caffeinated Cyclist

Carlo Delumpa — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:35:00 GMT

LONGBOTTOM: Not Just for Post-Ride Fueling Anymore!

Want to ride as hard, but suffer less? Then quaff a double/triple espresso an hour before you ride.

According to research recently published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, caffeine makes exercise less painful. Even better news for female Velo-ites is that le jolt-a-caf seems to more effective in women than in men.

THE SET-UP: 11 college-age women were put on cycling ergometers (LifeCycles) 3 times with 1-2 weeks between sessions. Each time they pedaled at a rigorous effort (about 65% of VO2 max) for 30 minutes, and each time 1 hour after ingesting a not-identified-to-them "magic potion"

THE DOSE: The first hit was a "moderate dose of caffeine", defined as 5mg per kilogram of body weight; the second was a "high dose of caffeine" (10mg per kg of body weight), and the third a placebo.

SO, JUST HOW MUCH CAFFEINE IS THAT: Well, figure a cup (8 oz) of brewed coffee contains between 60 and 100m of caffeine, a potent espresso in the neighborhood of 150-250mg. Now, we all know that a kilogram is 2.2 pounds. Soooooooooo, a 120-pound woman (there are some in the club somewhere. Right?) would weigh about 54 kg, hence a moderate caffeine dose would be (based on 5 mg per kg of body weight) about 270g, pretty serious stuff. Double that (540g) for a high dose.

YOUR BASIC MATH: The formula then is to divide your weight by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms, then multiply that number by either 5 or 10 to determine what is a moderate/heavy hit for you.

WHAT YOUR JOLT GETS YOU: The woman pedalers's perception of leg discomfort/pain was recorded every 5 minutes during exercise, along with power output and heart rate (to make sure they weren't cheating). "We said 65% of VO2 max, dammit, so PEDAL!". Leg pain was rated on a scale of 1-10 with 0 being no pain at all, and 10 being root-canal-in-the-legs excruciating. The average pain intensity scores for the 3 sessions were:

    1.3 for the 5mg hit
    1.6 for the 10mg dose
    2.9 for the placebo

The difference between the effects of caffeine and placebo on pain perception was "significant and large", according to the researchers, who also added that "despite the different pain scores, there was no statistical difference between the effects of the two doses of caffeine": that is, the higher doses didn't really deliver a bigger bang for the buck in terms of pain relief.

So, probably more prudent to go for the 5mg dosage, whatever that is for you. If you're Big Johnny O, that's like a quart of high-octane espresso.

GENDER BIAS: Previous research has shown that caffeine has similar effects on men. They're just not as good, only about half the benefit women get. How come? "Reasons for this large sex difference is unclear," the researchers say. Okay, whatever. But it's still not fair.

Fit Bit O' The Week - Get Schmeissed!

Carlo Delumpa — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:02:00 GMT

Ciao, Velo-ites.

Uncle Norris's message for you this week is one you aren't going to want to hear: Stop wasting your time futiley chasing fitness and longevity through something as mundane as cycling.

Nah, instead GET SCHMEISSED!

So say a group of men who, according to a report in the London newspaper The Independent, meet thrice weekly at London's Porchester Baths to be "schmeissed": being whipped while standing buck-naked in a steam room, then jumping into ice-cold water. The practice has existed since the 1930s, and true believers are adamant that this is THE path to deep relaxation and long life.

"You see, your body is like a car," offers one blissful Brit, "and a schmeiss is like being serviced."

And this is a country that has nuclear weapons.