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.