That’s it, I’ve put my foot down and I refuse to look at the scale anymore this winter, it’s too upsetting to see the weight I worked so hard to lose come back on in the winter. Unless I starve myself and train like a man possessed I don’t lose weight and esp. in the winter when I think everything is working against me to lose or maintain a lower weight. I think it’s normal to put a little back on in the winter, most people do, esp in places like North East Pennsylvania with it’s long, cold, gloomy winters and culture of drinking the winter months away.

I’m sure if you work hard at it you can keep it to a minimum, and if you’re lucky even lose weight, but at what price? Maybe you’ll be burnt out in the regular season because you pushed to hard in the off-season, or you’ll feel wasted all the time in the winter, since you’re making your body do something it doens’t want to do, I find it hard to push myself as hard in the winter as the summer, and I bet there’s actual biological reasons for this, probably with the shorter daylight hours it effects your body’s hormones and ability to train at the same level or something. All I know is it feels wrong to ride 100% effort VO2Max when it’s 20F out. And all the pro level coaches advocate base miles and strength training, not going out there and riding at your limit in the cold and dark of winter.

The worst thing I think would be to get discouraged from training because you’re putting weight back on and think it’s a losing battle and give up your winter training routine. Just think you could probably burn off 10lbs in a month or two of riding once the weather is nice out, but you can’t build a base in a month which normally takes the whole winter. So that’s why I refuse to look at the scale right now, it was just making me crazy. I think it’s better to just focus on building a quality base and check the scales later when the weather is better and I’ve been putting in the miles outside. Avoid eating too much sugars and refined starches and alchol and stay consistent with your training, and don’t’ fret over putting on a few pounds.

And who knows it might even be desirable to have a little bit extra weight in the winter, at least that’s the clue nature gives us. I know for strength training etc. the worst thing you could do is not eat enough to fuel the workouts and protein and fat to help rebuild your muscles to be even stronger. I think the trick in winter is to reduce the number of carbs, unless you’re actually training at the same level as the summer.

How much weight have you put on or lost so far this winter?

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.

Being a cyclist is starting to make me hate people and become a “bitter biker” since almost every ride I go on somebody does something crazy and dangerous on the road that puts me and or their life in danger. 90% of drivers either speed up or maintain their high rate of speed when they pass, and every single ride there’s always a couple drivers that either pull out in front of me, or pass very close, or pass me when there clearly is no room etc.

Drivers treat you like you’re an obstacle in their path, some garbage that blew onto the road, that they need to navigate around by either straddling with their tires or maybe even running over for fun to see what happens, a suicidal rabbit or something, not a human being, a person that would like to go home in one piece to their family, and certainly not a motor vehicle with the same rights and considerations as a car, including 3 foot minimum passing distance.

And some of the worst offenders, are commercial drivers, guys that should know better, ambulances, tractor trailers, box trucks, dump trucks, oil/gas trucks, school buses, people who make a living out of driving.

It will be interesting when gas is $10/gallon in the next few years and all these inconsiderate uneducated hillbilly assholes up here have to ride a bike to get to the their temp jobs and to the bar, karma is a bitch.

It never fails to amaze me when someone does something nuts, here’s a short list of of the last two season’s near misses

1. a block from home after a long ride, I’m coming up my street in the middle of the block not even an intersection, and a car darts crosses over the opposite lane to park on the sidewalk on the other side of the road, facing the wrong direction. I had to lock my breaks up and skid sides and came inches of getting run over. If I wouldn’t have reacted faster I would have surely been hit.

2. In the middle of raining thunderstorm I got caught in, I’m racing towards home, I’m coming down 8th street, for you locals that know the road I’m talking about. I’m hauling ass because I’m freezing and I have to stay warm, so I’m actually doing 5+mph over the posted speed limit. I’m taking over the whole lane, which I’m legally allowed to do, esp. if I’m at or over the speed limit. An old fuck passes me around the worst possible blind corner when we’re both going over the speed limit, he swings out in the opposite lane to pass me. Now this is a very busy road, and there’s always people coming up and down, luckily nobody was coming up the hill around that corner at that exact moment, or it would have been a real mess. I was infuriated, and road super hard and caught the guy a minute later at the next stop light at the bottom of the hill, I rolled by and yelled a couple warm greetings at him, i was just glad to be alive and shocked at what just happened. When the light turn green I went straight through the intersection, and he passed me again 30 seconds later, I was mad and riding really hard now, the next light was about 2 miles a way, I did +400watts all the way to the next light and caught up with the guy right away again, this time when I coasted by him, he rolled down the window and an astonished driver proclaimed,”you’re faster then me on that bike” with a mouth missing half his teeth and a sheepish half drunken grin, I said, “you’re dumber then any driver I’ve ever seen in that car” and rode up to the line and rode away when it turned green.

3. Last March, I’m riding and I’m even in the shoulder which here is the “glass, gravel, etc bike lane”, and an elderly driver swerved and into the shoulder and clipped me on the side and almost sent me off the bike, I was at least a foot into the shoulder, I would have probably been run over had I been in the lane slightly as I usually am to avoid the glass and gravel and potholes and garbage on the shoulders up here in “low maintainceville”.

4. This summer, climbing up a hill which has two lanes i.e a passing lane, on route92, a minivan stayed in the right lane and passed me at a high rate of speed and came within inches of hitting me, there was plenty of room to seem me from at least a hundred yards away, I think there was another car in the passing lane, but they could have slowed down or even sped up and moved over. I wish I had a helmet came and could have gotten their plate number.

5. My Friend Sean almost got killed last summer while out leading a group ride, some idiot cut him right off on the intersection, guy had no license and tried to switch positions with the passenger after the accident I heard, needless to say I think this guy is behind bars right now.

Anyway thanks for reading, I feel better now getting that off my chest.

I’m having a really great season this year cycling, I’ve made a lot of progress since last year and most of that I attribute to having trained like a machine all winter and spring, I never took off more then a week in the last year and half. Granted I have plenty of scheduled rest days and recovery weeks so I avoid getting fried like I did this spring when I got a little too carried away ahaha.

What I learned this season was I reached my peak strength in about 3x months, after that point anymore squats or weights or power training or intensity wasn’t going to give me much more significant improvement, I tried really hard for the first half of the summer to take my strenght and power on the bike up another level put no matter what I did I couldn’t do more. What I did notice a good improvement on is power endurance I can repeat those short hard race spike efforts over and over where in the winter and spring I could only do that a few times before I’d blow a gasket.

Cycling fast and long requires both strength and endurance. I always thought of myself as having good endurance, and that strength was my limiter. I failed to recognize that yes endurance might come easiest for me, but that doesn’t mean I should only work on strength. Even if it is a strength if you don’t use it you lose it and cycling is 80% endurance and 20% strength unless you’re doing short track efforts. So the 80/20 rule should apply to cycling I think and so do other top coaches I’ve read about. They say 80% of riding should be aerobic sub-threshold training and only 20% or less should be high intensity. Of course depending on your genetics, time of year in your schedule, and target events you may do more of one or the other.

I only started training seriously 1.5 years ago, so I basically really screwed up by going out and hammering on almost every single ride then spending the winter hammer the weights and obsessing over power. Yeah it helped develop my anaerobic system much much better, and improved my VO2max etc. but my endurance was so neglected that it has now become my limiter even though it’s historically always been a strong point for me in running and cycling.

Focusing to much on intensity and not base was a bad mistake also because I don’t have years of cycling and training under my belt, I’m building up from nothing, I could barely ride my bike around the block last spring and I was 80lbs over weight too! Base and aerobic cycling should be the focus esp. the first couple years of cycling or longer as strength and power are built on top of a big aerobic base and synergisticly help your anaerobic system work better.  I was all icing and no cake.

Even though I did mostly group rides last year,  every ride was a race for me as I was riding at my limit to keep up, I was out of shape and over weight, and I suffered the whole summer long, I was exhausted and burnt out by fall and it felt good to ride a bit slower and on my own schedule in the fall. But that lasted about a couple weeks then I was hungry to make a big improvement over the winter. I wanted to lose as much weight as possible and improve strength as I thought that was my limiter. I was only half right though, yes strength was my limiter, but in only 3 months I was much much stronger a rider and my endurance was now dwarfed and now the limiter. But I thought I could keep improving strength more I worked on strength all winter spring and half way through the summer, but never got stronger of faster then where I got after 3x months of focused strength and power training. I should have spent the fall and most of the winter doing lots of aerobic base miles, then did 3x months of strength work in the gym, then more base miles in the spring and early summer while converting gym strength into on bike strength.

I don’t regret what I did, as it was really neat to see my strength make a big jump, and help my riding a ton, as strength was my biggest limiter but not my only. The other limiter was endurance and that you can’t improve dramatically in 3-4 months like you can with strength. Endurance base training is miles in the bank, paying your dues.

I think for a bigger rider like myself having a big aerobic engine is even more important as it’s so easy to go anaerobic on even the smallest hill because of the power to weight ratio is so poor. I think if you’re a lighter rider, you can get away with more as your weight doesn’t trigger you body to go into the red as fast.

So needless to say I’m focusing most of my training now on aerobic training, and throwing in some on bike strength training and racing once a week or so to maintain the anaerobic system. This winter I’ll hit the gym again in January and do that until the start of April, I’m still going to do base miles during these three months but I’ll be cutting down on volume
a bit, but will still do at least one 3-4hr ride a week in to maintain the aerobic system. Then in March I’ll start to do more on bike strength work and start ramping up miles and then in April I’ll be putting the miles on and merging gym strength with bike strength and bike endurance and working on power in the May, then by end of May beginning of June I should be coming into really good form for some A events and I’ll try to carry that form through most of the summer and fall.

But I know now how to build up my anaerobic system and that racing helps build anaerobic endurance, but that the meat and potatoes of my riding in my training schedule for the week, the month and year need to be 80% aerobic and 20% anaerobic.

So what things have you learned from first hand experince in regards to your own base training over the years? Did you skip weight and power training, or cadance and effientcy training and not improve much? Or did you spend your entire winter on the fixie and blow everyone away the nex season. Let me know your thoughts I’m curious.

Today was one of the coldest road rides I’ve done yet, and I’m slowly but surely figuring out how to dress for it. I started to get cold after a while and noticed that I was having real trouble producing much power, but my heart rate was pretty low, so I knew that something was up, just couldn’t figure it out. I felt really heavy and slow, more then normal, the only thing I could think of was that the cold was effecting me someone limiting my performance.

I did a little research and I found out that was once it gets cold enough and your body starts to react to the cold your body will slow the blood flow down to your arms and legs to keep your core temperature up. I was getting a chill once I got sweating and started going downhill. This might explain why I felt so heavy and sluggish on the bike, my muscles didn’t feel sore or weak, and my heart rate wasn’t that high, but yet I felt like something was holding me back, I guess that’s the reason why, also it’s hard to breath deeply when the air is really cold.

I wonder if there is any benefit to training in the cold, that must put an extra burden on your leg muscles, basically they’re trying to operate in a fuel starved environment because of the reduced circulation, much like when you’re riding really hard in warm weather and your leg muscles aren’t getting enough oxygen so you start producing lactic acid. I wonder if any research has been done on the effects of training consistently in the cold, that would be wild if it ended up having some kind of superior benefit.

There are some things you can do from what I’ve read that will help you be comfortable and perform you best in the cold

1. Dress warm enough so you don’t get cold, once you cold enough your body will start to shut down your legs, you want to avoid that.
2. Drink plenty of water, it’s easy to not drink enough when it’s cold out, maybe even more so then when it’s warm.
3. Keep your blood sugar stable, eat small meals through the day, don’t eat sugary foods, or soda etc., fats and proteins and quality carbs are good
4. Don’t drink alcohol
5. Don’t eat too big a meal before a ride, eat more smaller meals
6. Try  ginseng, which is a warming herb
7. ginger tea is warming also
   

Reference

It is well verified that subnormal body and especially muscle temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular and physical performance capacity (e.g. 2).

http://www.sig-temperature.com/environmental-effect.aspx

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/pmr/coldweather.cfm

http://www.ehow.com/how_1363_eat-optimal-athletic.html

It was suppose to be 40F today, maybe it was at some point, in the sun where there was no wind, but not where I rode today, burrrr.  I thought maybe I was over dressed for my 25 mile road ride I did today, I was ok until I did the first 1 mile 4-10% grade climb, I was wet with sweat at the top and it only took a few minutes of coasting down the back side of the hill to realize the I was in for a fun next hour, esp. since the sun was starting to set and things where cooling down more, and I was riding in dimly lit hilly woods.

Then I almost got side swiped by some 200 year old lady that had no business behind a steering wheel anymore, I was on the shoulder and instead of moving away from me, she actually swerved towards me and came inches of hitting me, a few minutes later my my poor shifting problems I’ve been having the last couple rides since the mechanic “fixed” it, got a lot worse then my chain ended up snapping about 2 miles from my house, luckily I had my chain tool with me and had myself back in action in a matter of minutes.

And then to top things off I felt like my bike weighed 100lbs, it was really weird, or I just felt really weak. Maybe I just didn’t have much power because I’m just getting over a cold? I wonder if riding in the cold makes you ride slower because the metabolism in your legs isn’t at an ideal temperature? I don’t know but I’m not impressed with my riding right now cold or not. My hams and glutes where cramping up in the first 15 minutes, but eventually got better, not sure what that was about, probably my new position I’m experimenting with.

I’m jut getting over a cold and I wonder what effects that has on your ability to ride fast?

But there where some good things today I noticed too

1. I was climbing slow, but my heart rate was a lot lower then where it would be last summer doing the same hills, even though I was climbing and pushing a bit on the flats today the most my heart rate got up too was maybe 86% and that was my peak heart rate most of the ride was 70-80% even when climbing, normally I’d be at my threshold around 92% MHR most of the time when climbing.
2. I can tell I have more strength and leg power etc. but I need to put the saddle time in to take full advantage of it as I don’t have much muscular endurance, but I definitely have more power then before, and my legs don’t feel sore at all now after riding where before they’d be all rubbery and tired. If I pushed myself a little I could see that I could average over 20MPH on the flats without too much trouble, I just need to do a bunch of riding on the road and get my position dialed in.

Things I learned in general today

1. I need to get thicker gloves for when it’s down near the 30’s
2. Might not be a bad idea to have a dry shirt or two to bring with you change out after any killer hill climbs, or just wear more layers so even if you get wet you won’t get a chill. Maybe just wear a scuba diving suit lol
3. It’s smart to have your tools with you, glad I had a chain tool with me, I would have been screwed without it.
4. The crappier the conditions the more you should focus your route closer to home so you can back inside if you have trouble with the cold or you have a major mechanical.
5. You might want to get one of those side view mirrors, so you can see if someone is coming up behind you and about to swerve into you.

Review of  position changes

1. 1. the handle bars feel much better in my hands now that they’re rotated up a bit
   2. I think I put the seat up to high now? I’m just guessing as my lower back and back of legs where hurting
   3. I think I need to move my cleats forward I think I want my foot more under me.
   4. I’m probably too far forward on the seat’s fore-aft now

Clothing adjustments

I need to make some changes to my cycling clothing when riding when it’s in the 30’s, I have down to 40’s figured out

Today Temperature ~33F, and I had on

1. Head: Hood:
   Seemed to be fine until I was going down the hill after climbing, probably not much you can do hear about it though.
2. Hands: Crappy gloves:
   The gloves got to go, they sucked once they got sweating from climbing, they turned into ice cubes
3. Upper body: Thin underarmor type shirt> realitevly think polar feelce> cycling wind breakerMy upper body wasn’t too bad, but once I started climbing and got slightly sweaty the downhills got chilly, and I could feel my back get a little cold and the muscle in my back started to tighten up. So I’m thinking next ride I’ll put either another layer on or use the thicker polar fleece I have.
4. Legs: Thin pair of cycling shorts>long underwear>cycling tights>wind/rain pants
   I didn’t like how the rain pants where a bit tight, but they blocked the wind and I don’t think I was over or under dressed there.
   I think I was dressed good in the legs but I need to either get tights that are windproof or find slightly loser wind/rain pants.
5. Feet: regular cycling shoes and neoprene booties
   Feet where fine, no problems