Earning the Bird on the Trainer

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Earning the Bird on the Trainer

Happy Thanksgiving! A lot of our athletes are all about “earning the bird” on Thanksgiving. Getting a big day on the bike, and then relaxing with friends and family over an excellent meal. It’s a great feeling! Well, if you are in Colorado today you are probably stuck “earning the bird” on the trainer. Just in case you need a little bit of inspiration of what to do, here’s a great workout that’ll probably be a mix up from the typical base training and make plenty of space for a great Thanksgiving meal!

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Getting the Most out of Winter Tempo Work

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Getting the Most out of Winter Tempo Work

Whether calling it “tempo”, “medio”, “zone 3”, “sub-LT”, “sweet spot” - this kind of upper aerobic work, below the line that occurs around FTP is pretty bread and butter work of most athlete’s winter training program at this point. It certainly is bread and butter work for our athletes. We do a lot of this work because of the physiological benefit it has down the road in building up a robust and reliable aerobic foundation without the stress of bringing on form too fast, or overloading with intensity before a proper base is built up.

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Recovery Tips From Dr. JIM

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Recovery Tips From Dr. JIM

When you talk about nutrition, everyone has an opinion. This is especially true when discussing nutrition to recover from a workout. I read a book on Kenyan runners (some of the best in the world) and the author said they didn’t eat anything after a run. My dad, on the other hand, prefers eating enough popcorn to feed Continental Europe. As for me, I recently found myself trying to decide between two post-workout recovery options: a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch or a bowl of ice cream.

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Sean Quinn Takes us Inside the Baby Giro

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Sean Quinn Takes us Inside the Baby Giro

Going into the year I wanted to be at my best at the Baby Giro in June. However I assumed that maybe I would be playing a domestique role more than a leadership role. After only a few races in the u23 ranks in Europe I knew that I probably had a good shot at leading the team. This only motivated me more in training. Nate didn’t want me to get too carried away and sucked into the GC mindset and possibly sacrificing chances at stages or at least racing aggressively. I was already set on at least going for GC to start the race and seeing how it played out. We raced in Tour de Yorkshire at the beginning of May. Lining up next to WorldTour riders and then making the front selection over the final climbs gave me more confidence heading into the start of my big build towards the Baby Giro.

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Fall Fun

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Fall Fun

It’s Fall. The weather is gorgeous (or we hope it is where you are!). And you’ve got a hard earned summer’s of fitness and no races to use it in. What to do? Go enjoy it! We’re big proponents of not “shutting it down” and taking time totally off just for the sake of the racing season being over. There is definitely a need for time totally off the bike, but it doesn’t have to be October if you’re fit and ready to race. There will be a day in the near future where the sun will set at 5 and the mercury will sit below 40 degrees F. So might as well enjoy it while it doesn’t. There are many pros that aren’t able to live this life, as they really need that October break to stay on the right cycle of recovery and building for their race calendar. However, the every day joe is not most pros - so take advantage of it.

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Physiological Determinants of Performance

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Physiological Determinants of Performance

There’s a lot of interest from both researchers and athletes in understanding the determinants of athletic performance. In the cycling world, much of the recent focus has been on aerodynamics. As coaches though, our primary focus is on the physiological determinants of performance. The most well-known physiological determinant is VO2max while two other key determinants are lactate threshold and efficiency. These three determinants are interrelated yet also independent, and are important to understand to get the most out of your training.

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The Workout: Tempo - Speed - Tempo

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The Workout: Tempo - Speed - Tempo

Today I wanted to look into a workout that I often don’t really think about, but for the simple reason that we use it so much. A lot of times the workouts that I think of as super important, and put a ton of thought into, we might do them less than 10 times all season and never more than once a week. However, there are a whole bunch of bread and butter workouts that we use all the time, because they just work. Today’s workout I like to call, “tempo - speed - tempo”. When you see the workout you’ll see it’s actually fairly self explanatory. I give the workout that name because it outlines what we’re doing, but then the specifics might vary at different times of the year, or with different athletes. The outline is warm up, do a block of tempo, do a block of more speed based intensity, do another block of tempo. The specifics of the tempo and speed work might vary, but the outline works. Here’s the workout:

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Getting Less Specific to get More Specific

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Getting Less Specific to get More Specific

Warning - rant format post today. Quick one, but important. Training has gotten really advanced in the past few years, or decades. Mostly it’s really awesome, but sometimes I think it keeps us from getting the hard work done, or even the effective work. With the continued development of training metrics, we have so many ways we can “measure” a ride or effort. What I see happening often is that this then leads to a push to more specifically constructed workouts. A lot of athletes and coaches end up doing a majority of workouts where every effort is to a specific duration, a specific power, specific reps, etc. We’ve gotten very good at quantifying the demands of races, and then using that data to churn out workouts that we believe meet these demands.

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The Science Behind Lactate Threshold Tests

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The Science Behind Lactate Threshold Tests

Nate and I were recently guests on the VeloNews Fast Talk podcast during which we talked about how research has influenced training and racing (check back later for when it goes live!). Even after the podcast ended, I’ve still been thinking of the many ways science has helped athletes improve performance. The lactate threshold test is a great example that we unfortunately didn’t have time to cover during the podcast. Luckily for you readers though, I’ve got time to cover it now.

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What Does the Science say on Pacing?

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What Does the Science say on Pacing?

In previous blogs, we’ve covered ways to pace time trials, but for this week we’ll take a look at what the science says. A number of studies have examined various time trail pacing strategies in a number of different sports. These studies aren’t always perfect (a lot of tests are conducted within the lab where it can be tough to get that competitive atmosphere that elicits strong performances) but there’s still great information out there for you to use on race day.

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