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Training Tips are designed to shed light on different aspects of training that may seem basic, but are often overlooked. 
Read. Enjoy. Train. 

How to prepare your bike and equipment for a successful workout.

4/21/2015

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Written by: Joe Siegel

Intro
Let’s face it – there’s a lot that goes into getting ready for a hard training day on the bike. Most people focus on the body however, getting the right amount of food, water and espresso before your ride is important. As is getting a lot of that stuff OUT of your body. This isn’t a nutrition post though. How have you prepared your equipment and logistics to support your ride and training goals today? We ride with a lot of stuff, go lots of different places and have a lot of data available to us during the ride. So what’s the best way to prepare your “stuff” for success?

Logistics
No one really likes logistics so let’s get these out of the way first. Assuming you’re riding outside, where are you going? Route planning can be important and a somewhat tedious task. I recently moved, so I need to plan out almost every route because I don’t know where I’m going. There are many online mapping services – Strava, Ridewithgps, mapmyride, etc. I prefer ridewithgps, it has easy exporting capability to my Garmin for turn-by-turn directions. Strava does as well and will let you know where and when any segments are on the ride.

These routes get uploaded into my Garmin which directs me turn by turn. It’s an awesome feature that I love, but before the turn-by-turn, I used a cue sheet. A sticky note either taped to my stem of folded and tucked up a short leg. It includes any turns/road names I’m not sure I’ll remember and the mileage when they occur. For short rides, it’s simple, for longer rides I found myself printing these out.

Ok, you can follow your route, but how to create it? Firstly, how long? I don’t like training by miles, so I don’t plan workouts by miles. I plan by time and intensity (think about the difference between a 1 mile effort on flat terrain vs a 1 mile 5 % - the latter will be much longer and much more work). So knowing my typical speeds I plan for a ride length accordingly (e.g. a 2 hour ride where I’ll average ~20 mph is a 40 mile route). Be sure to watch elevation and know the weather to plan for impacts (wind will slow you down, as will bulky/heavy unaero winter clothes). Next, will you need anything on the ride? Typically I drink about one bottle per hour which is about 20 miles. So any ride over that, I like to plan a stop to refill. This may be easy or hard depending on your location, but important nonetheless.

The bike and supplies
This section is easier. What do you leave home with? Clothes suitable for the current and future weather. Wind jackets, arm warmers and gloves are easy to don or doff mid ride and make good choices to adapt as the weather changes. I always bring some calories (e.g. cliff bar) even if I don’t plan to eat it, just in case. Any ride over 1.5-2 hours, I generally eat something. Bring what you think you’ll need, plus a little extra. Be ready for on the road mishaps – multi-tool, tubes, CO2/pump, tire levers, patch kit, cell phone, etc are all nice to have in the event of a flat or something worse. Lastly, is everything on your bike safe? Quick-releases secure, bolts tight, brakes working, tires pumped? At minimum for each ride I check tire pressure (a squeeze on the sides of the tire make it easier to gauge pressure by feel), brake alignment and that the drive train spins freely. More detailed checks come on a weekly schedule.

Computer
We’ve all got fancy computers now, tracking our HR, Power, GPS, etc so let’s set them up to get the most out of the data. Here are the screens I find most useful for training purposes:

3 sec avg power (or just HR) – where am I, right now. A little smoothing helps when watching power

Lap avg power (or HR) – I’m 4 min through an 8 min interval – am I on track? It’s important to hit the “lap” button at the start and stop of each interval to make this field useful. When not doing intervals or during a race, I set this field to auto lap every 5 miles. This gives me a good snapshot of what my power (or HR) has been doing recently.

Lap Time – straightforward, gives me a timer for my current interval

Avg Power (or HR) – for long rides, it’s nice to see your whole ride average. 3 hours into a Z2 ride, you can compare your lap to avg power/HR to see if you’re still holding steady

Some other “nice to have” fields I use:

Speed – don’t really need it, but just for reference

Total Time – helps know where you are in your ride, especially long ones

Cadence
– Helpful if you’re trying to maintain a certain cadence, otherwise just a reference point

TSS – Most of the time my workouts have a TSS target. I like to see if I’m on track to hit it. Additionally, during a race, it will let me know how much work I’ve done so far to help make decisions on attacking/bridging/sitting in.

Lap distance
– gives context to my lap average since I auto-lap every 5 miles when not doing intervals

The above go on the front screen of my Garmin 800 (It allows up to 10 fields per screen). On second screen I keep some other info, which isn’t critical for my training goals but is sometimes nice to know:

Avg HR, Avg speed, Time of day, distance to finish (if using turn-by-turn), Normalized power, avg cadence, temperature, etc.

Post-Ride
Just three simple steps – eat, upload your data so your coach can review, and nap!

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The Balance between life and training

4/7/2015

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Over the course of the year every athlete will go through a hard period of time where it feels like they are always striving to be a better version of themselves. This is true because the simple reason we all train for events is because we want to see how far we can take our abilities and how fast, strong, or agile we can become. However, at what point does your training start to become detrimental and keep you from achieving those lofty goals. At what point does more actually become less. I have decided to touch on this topic today because over the past couple of weeks I have both read and heard of several examples where athletes have become so focused on training that they have actually begun to dig a theoretical hole that is extremely hard to climb out of.

So Derek, how does one find themselves out-of-balance?
 I generally see individuals getting a little bit out of balance around the 4-5 month mark. The reason for this is because over the first 3-4 months, improvements in fitness are easy to come by. You can make improvements by adding more volume, frequency, or intensity. However, once you start getting to that 4-5 month mark, the individual starts to become aware of a certain amount they have improved and now see it as necessary to continually hit high workout loads in order to either maintain or keep increasing their fitness levels.

How does one keep balance but still improve?
 I don't want to give away all my secrets, but I will offer you one piece of advice. Instead of looking at training on a day-to-day basis in which you must hit "x" number of reps or distance, start thinking in terms of weekly goals. I find what this does is it gives the athlete some freedom in how they meet these goals. Now instead of the athlete viewing workouts on everyday that they must hit in order to stay on track, it gives them a sense of power in how they work around their own personal schedules. For example, this athlete with a weekly goal now may be able to go out golfing all day Friday instead of riding or running because they know that they have a group ride on Saturday that will easily make up for both days. At the end of the week this athlete still has gotten in the same amount of work, but they have adjusted their days accordingly to either rest when they wanted to rest, or workout when they wanted to workout.

What do you see a key contributor to becoming out of balance?
 Even though I am a coach, I am still an athlete who is inspiring to achieve strong results as well. I know when I get out of balance it is because I start to become  a slave to technology and numbers. Talking with several other athletes, they tend to share the same feelings. You are working hard those first few months after your off-season and are seeing constant progression in terms of power or TSS (Training Stress Score). You almost get addicted to these numbers as they are an indication of your fitness and you love being able to track them. However, there comes a day when you don't want to go ride for whatever reason. Maybe its raining, maybe you don't have the motivation to go train. Regardless, that day shows up as a decrease in fitness and you start to press a bit as you don't want to lose the gains you've already made. Another day of rain is in the forecast and now you get stressed out because you aren't going to be able to hit the numbers you need to. This is why in my opinion sometimes you need some freedom weeks from technology.

So, should you use technology in your training then?
Absolutely! Technology is the best means for tracking data and fitness over time. There is so much you can get from analyzing heart rate or power files that would be lost from week-to-week and year-to-year. With that being said, you don't need to become a slave to numbers. Yes, there are times when structure is needed to maximize your results, but that isn't 12  months out of the year. Sometimes it is needed to take a "freedom" week from power or heart rate and get back to riding a bike just because its a fantastic thing to do!

Last thoughts
 Its easy to become out of balance in today's training world with numbers surrounding every workout. Use these numbers for what they are, but when things become to stressful, its perfectly fine and actually needed that you step away for a couple days in order to collect yourself. At the end of the day, endurance athletics is about the ability to consistently workout and improve your fitness over time. Whatever you find as the best method to stay on the bike or running trail is the method you should follow. My only suggestion to you is that every now and then you should switch things up in order to stay fresh both physically and mentally. Make sure you have balance in your life. Without balance, you are only prolonging the period until you return to your original state of fitness that you found yourself in, to begin with. 
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    Author

    Derek is a Level III USAC coach with his masters degree in Coaching Sports Performance, his passion is to help others in the sports of cycling and triathlon.

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