The last two weeks have put a deep freeze on North East PA, so needless to say I haven’t been going outside to ride much, my limit is around 20F, anything colder it’s strictly MTB riding weather.

It’s interesting the things you notice as I put miles in the bank as I ride the stationary trainer indoors. With nothing to really look at and no cars to dodge, I’m left only with being entertained by the sounds of the bike and trainer, and a heighten awareness of my position and pedal stroke. Listening to the sounds of the trainner and bike, I’ve been starting to pick up on certain sounds that give clue as to how smooth or choppy my pedal stroke is and noticing differences in sounds comparing the left stroke vs. the right stroke. The two main sounds I’ve picked up on are

• The sounds of my cycling shoe cleats lifting up and clacking around in the little bit of play they have within the pedals. I notice that my left foot does this much more then my right. I think the cause was because my left pedal stroke isn’t as smooth or strong as my right, I wasn’t scrapping my left foot back and following through with the left’s backstroke and also if I did remember to lift my left back stroke I would lift too far and my cleat would lift up inside the pedal. My right foot doesn’t do this at all, and when I became more aware of this and really focused I could feel that I wasn’t pedaling the same with my left as my right. I’ve been working on it and after a couple weeks now I can “hear” and feel that my left is getting a lot smoother and my left leg isn’t as sore as when I first started working on it.
• The sounds the bike’s drive train makes when you really crush the gears on the down part of the stroke, a certain kind of rumble comes out of the chain and chain ring, I think this happens as the chain ring becomes off axis at the same time the chain is under full tension on the down stroke and the chain and chainring aren’t meshing together perfectly. I noticed also that this sound only really was happening on my dominate right leg downstroke. To get the left pedal stroke to sound just like the right down stroke I have had to apply more force with my left leg and give it more of snap, so faster and with more speed on the left downstroke, that has made the sound the same, and made me realize after focusing on it that I was not apply the same amount of force with my left leg as my right and this was also probably causing my right leg’s corresponding backstroke to work harder then it should. I rather my left quads get stronger and contribute like the should as oppose to my right hams being overworked.

I  notice other things as well on the indoor trainer like position, over all pedaling motion, if I’m bouncing or not etc. etc. I’ll probably talk about these in future posts.  Have you noticed any sounds or other feedback you normally don’t notice like this that give you clues about your pedaling form etc. let me know I’d be interested to hear about it.

We had some really nice weather this weekend it was about 50F and partly sunny, so I went out road cycling both days. I was very rusty on the bike, the last couple months on the espresso trainer and hitting the weights was not translating as well as I’d hoped, but I was happy to find that some other issues that where bothering me last year are now fixed. This is what I learned this weekend from my real riding mid-offseason progress report

Improvements

1. On the road bike last season I’d always have problems with sore hams and glutes, but since I’ve been doing lots of squats and leg presses, I no longer have that problem now.
2. My legs do feel stronger, but strength is very specific to joint angle, speed etc. I’ve found
3. My legs don’t get as sore on the bike, I recover much faster from hard rides since I’ve been lifting.
4. I have less knee soreness from hard days
5. My running has improved a lot from having stronger legs
6. Stronger legs help a lot on trail runs where you have to deal with more lateral forces and twists etc.
7. I’m seeing a big jump in my watts on the trainer, but …
8. I’m sweating less, and need less salt replacement it seems since I’m getting better shape and losing weight.
9. The weight training has helped strengthen my back and neck muscles where they don’t feel fatigured during rides now.

Issues to work on

1. My bike trainer needs to be the same length crank, and riding position etc. I’m seeing a big improvement in watts, but that was on a unique type of stationary bike that is using a crank length that is about 3/4″ of an shorter then my 190mm road bike cranks, the Q factor is much wider on the espresso bike, the seat position, handle bar position, the resistance, the coast down, everything is just way to different then my real bike.  I found out the hard way this weekend when I got dropped from a ride I should have been able to hang in on that you have train as closely as possible to the exact thing you’re trying to improve at.And I should be riding 80% of the time on real bike, even if that means getting out there in freezing temperatures. I’m annoyed, but not surprised or too worried though, as last fall when I first starting riding my long cranks it took me about a month to adapt to them, and once I did my average speed when up 2.5MPH on my TT test loop I do, and spinning and cranking felt more natural. But I’m not 100% sure if the increase in my TT speed was the cranks, or the fact that I was able to train and rest at my own pace, where the whole summer I was tired most of the time from doing so much group riding.
2. There is no better training for riding a bike, then riding a bike, you can improve certain aspects of road riding by doing specific training, you can spin on trainer to work on leg speed, you can do single leg exercises easier on the stationary, you can improve pedal stroke smoothness on the rollers, you can increase your raw strength with weights, but only real hardcore, honest to god riding is going to bring those pieces together in a meaningful way. “Ride lots”, as Merckx said, I don’t think he meant on a trainer lol
3. I need to get a system down for on bike fueling that I use in training that I can use in racing. I haven’t been doing any pre or during training session fueling because I’m forcing my body to dig deep into fat reserves, and get my body use to burning fat as fuel. I only do post training fueling with pieces of fruit or juice, vs. some nasty artifical garbage that costs lots of money.
4. The on and off bike strength training I’m doing is paying off but I need to do my on bike strengthening, on a real bike preferably out side. I”m currently riding one of these expresso bikes, and as I said before it’s too different from my real bike for it to help me much, maybe if I rode the mountain bike with normal length cranks then it would help? But I think the bike position and the resistance etc. are all too different from the real thing.

Conclusion

All in all I’m happy with my offseason progress,

1. I’ve lost another 15lbs,
2. according to the espresso bike I have increased my average watts by 120, but that doesn’t mean much if the improvement doesn’t translate to the bike, I think it will, but it’s going to take me a month on the real bike to transfer and adapt to the longer crank length and riding position etc.
3. I need to ride outside as much as I can even if it’s freezing out, I can’t kid myself anymore that training so much indoors is going to help me reach my goals.
4. I need to get an indoor trainer I can put my bike on too, for days that it’s just too nasty out, and also since I want to burn as much calories as possible in a day with a couple extra trainner sessions.
5. I’m done with the expresso bikes, they’re just too different from a real bike, in particular my bike with it’s 190mm cranks.  I may still ride it once a week just to test myself and see if I’m improving, as riding on shorter cranks shouldn’t effect me as much as the other way around.
6. I should have my hard day be a group ride or training with my local bike shop owner who is an animal, even though I’ve been training year fairly hard, training with him one day feels like I’ve just started training. I’m going as hard as I physically can when I’m trying to keep up with him, it pushes me harder then I could push myself normally. I’m not sure how I would coordinate my weight training around this though, as I’m going to be spent from a group ride. I guess I lift weights, but I have to cut the number of sets down, but I’m sure it’s better to do that, then to ride less.
7. I need to start running more, I did a trail run yesterday and I could tell that my running muscles where suffering. Today, there are so many muscles sore that normal road or treadmil running just doesn’t activate. Trail running and trail running in snow as fast as you can, seems to be really good for cardio, agility, core muscles etc.

Update 2/14/08

The results and conclusion of my mid-offseason cycling report have now to be taken with a grain of salt as I discovered a couple days later that, I had a really bad bike fit which was the majority of my problem of transferring my expresso bike fitness to the real bike. The crank length difference and position difference still matter but I think 80% of the trouble I had last weekend was all because of poor bike fit. I just didn’t know about it, and last season I was getting better and better at riding in this bad position, so the expresso trainer was actually a better fit then my road bike, not the other way around.

I’m still going to start doing most of my riding outside though, and I’ll ride the trainer inside on days once and a while, just not all the time like I was doing.  The experince I had last weekend really made me think about riding a real bike for real benefits. By training outside on the road in the winter I know it will be challenging and miserable at times, but I know that I will be training as close to ideal as possible and not be risking major disapointment in my training when it wasn’t specfic enough. There’s just no substitute for riding the road bike on the road, the next best thing would be mountain biking, but even with mountain biking the position, the types of efforts are not the same as on the road, I’ve found that my MTB riding improved a lot by my hard road riding, but not the other way around. It’s just easier to push yourself longer and harder without intruption on the road bike in a way that would be hard to replicate on the MTB unless you’re riding on fast smooth trails with road like inclines.

Had a little bit of breakthrough today on the espresso bike, I was a little sore and tired today and was planning on just taking it easy lol. Funny how on the days I really tell myself to back off that I end up feeling great on the bike and end up having a breakthrough session, today was no exception as I set a PB personal best for my 5 mile TT course, when I was suppose to be “recovering”.

What happened today was that I warmed up, and then I remembered something I read, that you should try to find your optimal cadence by seeing which cadence gives you the most watts for the lowest heart rate. Normally I try to keep things above 80RPM usually around 85RPM.

I’ve been trying to emulate Lance Armstrong, spinning at a fast RPM, I just figured that since I have lots of endurance and not much sprint that I must be a spinner not a masher. I’ve been doing high RPM spinning drills the last month or so to break the habit of mashing. Today I tried something different, I thought let me see what happens if I crank the resistance up to gear 30 and pedal at a very slow RPM, and see what my watts and heart rate do in reaction.

So I pedal along slowly increasing the gears and resistance,  so I try pedaling slower while watching my heart rate and wattage. I noticed my legs burning more, but my heart rate wasn’t going up through the roof, and my watts where higher then what I could hold at an easier gear and faster RPM. So I ended up with having a 20watt higher average on my time trial today coming in at 330Watts for 11 minutes. A couple of days ago I did 314watts as my best average. I was even able to push at almost 500watts for the last minute, which surprised me. I was popping as my heart rate was about 98% MHR when I crossed the line. I’m feeling less like I’m on the verge of death when riding at my limit at and above then when I started last spring. If I would stay at 175BPM for more then a couple minutes I was really hurting to where I thought I might puke or really pass out or something. Now I can hang out there for much longer and I feel much more composed even when at 90%+ or my MHR.

The interesting thing I’m learning in my latest TT efforts is learning where my threshold is where the exact point is where I blow up and have to slow down dramatically. I think right now it’s around 175BPM for me, if I go above that and stay there more then a couple minutes lactic acid builds up faster then I can clear i.e anaerobic threshold. I’m learning how to back off right before I blow a gasket and let my heart rate drop a couple beats per minute slower so that I can get tip the scales of lactic acid production back in my favor. It’s a crazy thing to to ride to a point of near death and have the mental clarity and sensitivity to know when to ease up just a little. I’m starting to be able to do it now, it’s like I’m getting use to being drunk and doing math lol. I can hear myself now talking to myself, focusing on one thing at a time, since you can’t focus on more then one thing at a time, so I watch my watts oftentimes, telling myself, keep it above 330, don’t let it drop lower. Or I notice something and then I try an experiments as I ride. Like trying to mash and increasing the force of your pedaling more toward the bottom of the stroke don’t just apply force evenly, as I notice that if I add a little pop to the end of my pedal stroke it can have a big improvement in watts then just pushing with constant pressure. Not sure if this would actually help on a real bike outside, or this is a trait of the espresso training bikes, I bet it is. Or it could be that it helps because you have more leverage the more extended your leg is, so it makes sense to push the hardest the farther your leg is extended. This might be good mashing technique, but pushing through into the ground and the end of the pushing phase of the pedal stroke is the opposite of what you want to do if you’re spinning as it wastes energy, you want to be light yet powerful on the pedals when spinning, you dont’ want to “stretch the crank arm out” ahhaaa.

I also think this flirting with your AT is great for training as it helps stretch and push your capability out just a little bit more then the last ride. If you ride over your AT you blow up and have to slow way down and let your body catch up with the lactic acid conversion.  Then since your legs aren’t pumping as hard it’s actually moving the lactic acid out slower I think. Kind of like when you drive a car hard in the summer then stop, that car can overheat as the heat keeps building up for a while even after the motor has stopped. If you ride to slow it doesn’t challenge your system enough. But if you ride right below that spot, and keep your effort there for longer and longer lengths of time, I think that is what increases your LT lactic acid threshold and also your aerobic threshold, and increases your heart stroke volume.

Speaking of heart stroke volume, did you know that the volume of blood your heart can pump is the main thing that improves when you do “cardio” workout? There are other adaptations like increased blood volume, bigger lung volume and more capillaries in the leg muscles, and mitochondria etc. But stroke volume is the biggest improvement. From training surveys I did I found that most people said that interval training was the thing that helped them get faster on the bike more then any other training method, ie. High volume cycling, weight training etc. I believe that one of the adaptations besides skeletal muscular strength improvements from interval training is that it is like “strength training” for the heart or weight lifting for the heart. So really to ride faster longer you need to not only strength train your legs and core muscles for cycling but your heart muscle as well. Think of it as your fuel pump and your legs the engines, they both have to be strong to go fast. Riding hard and getting your heart rate up high challenges your heart muscle, not just raising your LT. They say you should limit the amount of high intensity training you do, as your cycling can improve with moderate intensities. I agree that you can increase capillaries, lung volume, mitochondria density etc. by riding a million miles, but it takes lots of very hard riding to make your heart work hard enough that it will grow bigger and thicker and be able to pump more blood in one stroke. Just like your leg muscles need rest days after lifting weights your heart muscle does too after doing high intensity training. So you don’t want to make sure you’re fully rested when training at your threshold.

I’ll make another blog post about “strength training and the heart”.

But getting back to today’s training session, I’m starting to think that I might be a masher, even though I’ve been working on spinning more, and I can see my spinning improving a lot, when I need to go as fast as possible it seems like mashing works best for me. It depends on the terrian and distance and if I’m TT or in a group. My heart rate goes through the roof if I spin a hard gear, but if I mash an even harder gear, it seems to work for me, at least for shorter distances. I think that the extra 20watts I gained only help me for a TT, if I was riding in a group, my low RPM and high gearing would make it impossible to jump and react and keep up and tire me out faster, and I couldn’t sprint as fast at the end either I think. Time trials and group riding are two different things, and I think a lot of riders pick slightly longer cranks and tend to mash more when time trialing. If it where a long time trial i.e like a 120 mile iron-man etc. anything more then an hour or so I would tend to mash less and spin more as I’m sure my legs would be fried after mashing for that long. So I think in the right situations mashing can work for some riders, but in other situations spinning is better. A rider that can do both well might have an advantage over a rider that can only spin or mash.