BVC-CHAT Another Winderful Ride

Sat Jan 5 08:39:28 CST 2008

Wow.thanks. I suppose I should chime in about my ride more often, as it
looks like I can get some great advice here.

-Ryan

  _____  

From: bvc-chat-bounces at philebus.tamu.edu
[mailto:bvc-chat-bounces at philebus.tamu.edu] On Behalf Of Brett
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 9:54 PM
To: Brazos Valley Cyclists
Subject: Re: BVC-CHAT Another Winderful Ride

You should be consuming calories the entire ride if it's two hours or more.
You don't need lots, but you need a constant flow so you don't bonk.  3 fig
newtons or a banana or something similar per hour is a nice base.  Since
you're trying to lose weight, you don't want to overdo it.  Start eating 15
minutes into your ride and keep it up for the entire event.  You will have
an even flow of energy the entire time and you will recover faster so that
you will ride better the next day.  

When we do Ironmans, you're talking 6+ hours riding to be followed
immediately by a marathon.  Athletes figured out that you have to consume
calories as soon as physically possible and keep doing it during the entire
ride.  I think my schedule was a fig newton at 00, gel at 15 after, fig
newton at 30 after, half a banana at 45 after.  Repeat for 6 hours.  You
burn through something like 6000 calories during one of those races but you
wouldn't want to eat that often during a recreational 2 hour bike ride
because you're not riding as hard as you are during a race.  (Plus you are
trying to stockpile energy on the bike because it is much easier to eat on
the bike than when you're stomach is bouncing all over the place on the
run.) 

A longish bike ride is no Ironman, but the exact same concepts apply.  Start
the calorie flow early and keep it going.  DO NOT overeat after the ride or
you'll gain back all the fat you burned off.  The perfect recovery drink is
a nice glass of chocolate milk.  It has the perfect 4:1 carb to protein
ratio that you pay a zillion bucks for in all those name brand recovery
drinks.  Drink it as soon as possible after you finish. 

Riding 2 hours at a time as often as you are is really, really good for your
aerobic base.  You should come out of this a much improved cyclist.  Just up
that caloric intake a bit and start it early in the ride.  Eating after you
feel depleted is too late.  Consider getting a Bento Box (little black box
behind your stem) to stuff food in so you can eat finger foods while you
ride.  Make sure that what you are eating is a nice balance of stuff that
isn't pure sugar (gatorade, gels, gummy bears).  That's the kind of stuff
that will make you reeeeeaaally hungry later in the day.  Stuff with some
protein in it keeps your stomach busy so you won't feel as hungry. 

I just went swimming and came home and drank a chocolate milk.  I'll recover
faster so that I can go on my long run tomorrow.  I'll be running 4 hours,
drinking gatorade and popping fig newtons the whole way.  I'll drink another
chocolate milk after that and try not to overeat afterwards.  Then the long
ride on sunday, I'll ride a casual pace to flush the lactic acid out of my
legs from the long run and eat a mix of fruit, fig newtons, and gatorade the
whole way (bananas have a little protein in them).  I won't ever push hard
during the long run or bike.  The end result is your body becomes extremely
efficient and can go for hours on end at a moderate effort level.  The pro
types are racing 23 mph for 6 hours at only 140 bpm.  It's absolutely insane
that you can teach your body to do that, but you can.  The big secret is
that they are riding at 16 mph for 6 hours at a time every other day all
winter long.  That kind of working out tricks your body into burning fat
instead of carbs and fat is like diesel fuel. 

In the late 80's and early 90's "the Germans" moved to SoCal and trained all
winter in that perfect weather at 15.5 mph.  All the other pros thought they
were insane for going so slow.  The Germans got teased pretty badly over it,
until race season.  They had such a huge aerobic base and weren't burned out
from going too hard all winter, they were able to ramp up their speed in the
month or so before their races and blew the crap out of everybody else on
the bike.  Now all the pros do it.  My coach last year was Mike Ricci (d3
multisport) and did the training plan for the last Olympic team or something
like that.  He had me biking for hours on end at a very low to moderate
effort and running 11 minute miles for 7 months before we started speed work
2 months before race day.  I ended up dropping 2.5 HOURS off my Ironman PR
because of it.  And instead of coming across the finish line and crashing
like a meteor, I waltzed across carrying my 2 year old son and hung out with
friends for about 3 more hours.  It was fantastic. 

So, long story short, your longer bike rides are a great idea.  Just fuel
right and recover right.  Keep the rides long and slow now and you'll be
able to ride longer for faster during the summer.  And losing weight will
make you much, much faster.  It's all about the power to weight ratio. 

On Jan 4, 2008 8:28 PM, Ryan Brown <garthhog at suddenlink.net> wrote:

This is good advice, and may explain a lot. I have recently started to
extend the length of my rides, due to all of this free time I have between
semesters. I am not bringing anything to eat, and for fluid I just take two
bottles of either water (shorter rides) or Gatorade (longer for me rides).
For nearly all of last semester, my rides were only about 1 hour 15 minutes,
4 to 5 days per week. I took 4 to 5 weeks off at the end of the semester
(zero exercise) due to workload issues, and over the winter break have
ramped up to 2 to 2.5 hour rides 5 to 6 days per weeks. I know these are not
long rides for most of the folks here, but I've been working my butt off
trying to shrink from 256 lbs at this time last year to my goal of 200 lbs
by this summer ( I currently 225 lbs). I may be shocking my body a little
after the layoff followed by the ramp-up in miles. I think I am hydrating
well, but I may be under-fueling. Any ride over two hours causes me to have
a food-in-mouth problem for the rest of the day, which isn't helping me lose
weight. As for my cadence, I keep a moderate to high cadence for most of the
ride unless I am doing anaerobic drills up the rollers (big ring, small(er)
cog, out of saddle to the top). Then it drop to about 50 to 60 rpm.

-Ryan

  _____  

From: bvc-chat-bounces at philebus.tamu.edu
[mailto:bvc-chat-bounces at philebus.tamu.edu ] On Behalf Of Brett
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 6:47 PM
To: Brazos Valley Cyclists
Subject: Re: BVC-CHAT Another Winderful Ride

"I notice that my heart rate was lower than I expected, considering how hard
it felt like I was turning the cranks."

Low HR in relation to high perceived effort is a sign of dehydration,
underfueling, or too low rpm.  Once that happens, you need to evaluate those
three factors and adjust.  Stay around 95 rpm and whatever your target HR is
regardless of the wind.  If you fuel correctly, you should have a great ride
and simply ignore the speed. 

On Jan 4, 2008 5:10 PM, Ryan Brown <garthhog at suddenlink.net> wrote: 

I just returned from yet "winderful" ride, solo, on SH47. God decided to get
exciting today and change the direction of the soul-sapping "training
opportunity" to a southerly direction. I have had a lot of time lately to
ponder just how awesome a tailwind can be, and also how effectively a
headwind can slowly drain my will to live (or at least pedal). One of my
depressing epiphanies came as I was churning up one of those rollers into a
headwind. I realized that a tailwind does not help you nearly as much as a
headwind can hurt you. I came to this realization after I looked at my
average speed. It was depressing and embarrassing. I suppose I should ignore
that particular feature of my computer.

At another point down the road, as I was churning along in the soul-crushing
direction, I notice that my heart rate was lower than I expected,
considering how hard it felt like I was turning the cranks. As hard as I was
trying to work, my legs just wouldn't do it. It was likely due to the pain
in my lower back, which gets considerably worse when I have been fighting a
headwind. At this point, I began to wonder how much of my inability to work
harder, go faster, and feel better was psychological, and how much of it was
actually physically due to fighting the wind.

So, how much does a headwind tend to slow you down? How much of this slow
down is due to the extra physical demand of fighting the wind, and how much
is psychological? What can I do about this nagging pain in my lower back
that tends to start around mile 20 and gets progressively worse, especially
when I have to fight the wind?

-Ryan

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