I guess I’m a masher not a spinner?

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.