During the winter months it seems that some riders have the notion that they need to do these big long slow rides. You get the email or see the forum topic that says its low slow ride time.
They organize to meet up and head out at an average pace somewhere around the 16-18kmph zone and do about 4 hours

What a waste of time.

The thinking behind this is that you will train your legs up to withstand turning around and around for long periods of time. Fine, but they still wasted k’s. This is time on the bike that could be much better spent doing intervals or threshold training. The 4 hours at granny like pace will barely raise your heart rate, you may as well watch a thriller on cable and eat some celery

I agree that your winter training plan should be a little lighter than your summer schedule, but that does not mean you need to let your legs go to sleep. There used to be another thought that winter is “small chain ring” season. RUBBISH.

Even if you have massive amounts of training hours available to you in a week, i still recommend against joining these rides. Don’t even use them as a recovery ride. Spend a portion of that time at a higher intensity training a specific zone

so you have bought the carbon fiber seat post, stem, pedals, saddle, bars and you have saved yourself 112.6 grams.. well done. but has it made you any faster. no really. So what can you buy that will make you faster?

A power meter

These units are getting cheaper and cheaper and there are a few new players in the game that have some great products.

So the question most cyclists are asking themselves today is “Should i cough up some money and invest in a power meter”

The simple answer and the same answer i give anyone who asks me is YES.

Having power data to look over and knowing your FTP and other power profile limits helps you become a better cyclist in a shorter time frame. Since i moved over from heart rate training to power based training i felt myself improving. My best times up local climbs where getting better. my 40km time trial times where improving and i felt stronger in sprints during criterium races.

I have written a few other topics on power but don’t think i have ever told you to go and buy one.

you can save a few grams here and there and end up spending big dollars, but the gains to $ ratio will never be as good as if you spent the money on a power meter. yes the power meter will most likely make your bike heavier but that’s a price you have to pay to get better at this game

Options

There are  few options on the market. i will briefly touch on each one

Powertap: these a rear hub based. the old ones transmit via a wire the newer versions let you transmit via ANT+ very handy for pairing with a garmin 705. having the rear hub as your power meter means you can use it with any of your bikes (if you have more than one) but the downside is that if you want a power meter on your race wheels your going to need another hub

SRM: the oldest player in the game. you will see many a team on the TDF using these. They are crank based. meaning they convert a crank into a power meter. the strain gauges are mounted within the spider assembly of a new crank set. good if you have one bike and many wheel sets. bad if you have 2 bikes.

Quark CinQo: the latest offering in power meters. works the same as an SRM but comes in a few more options. also uses ANT+ so you can connect it to a garmin. same advantages and disadvantages as a SRM

iBike: these use newtons third law. they measure opposing forces from the computer on the bars and give you a power figure.

polar: they use a chain tension measuring device that translates frequency into power. every person i have met that has one of these has given me the same feedback. don’t get one.

There we go. move forward with that information and arm yourself with a power meter so that you can start to see some serious improvements in your riding

Its common knowledge that if you want to build muscle you need to push/pull against some some of resistance. Just like body builders do at the gym we can do the same with our bike

This topic is partly covered here, so i am going to be brief this time round. The previous version was for purposes of building power for sprints. Climbing hills uses the slow twitch muscles fibers so building them is slightly different.

To build power you need to ride at a cadence of about 50 to 70 RPM. Any lower than that and you will be damaging your knees. any higher and you get into what i call the sweet-spot. This lower candence helps create the resistance required to build muscle. You need to feel like the legs are burning. normally this requires you to climb in a gear higher than normal. Remain seated as seated climbing utilizes the bigger muscles in your legs.

You can break this up into a few sets of about 3 minutes. Normally i would do 5 sets. i like to finish the training session with a climb in my sweet spot

What is normal climbing cadence?

Sweet-spot as i call it is between 75 and 85 RPM. I find i climb my best at about 81 or 82. Often the gradient a gears don’t allow you to be this precise but when they do you need to milk your sweet spot. Any higher and your heart rate starts to get a little out of control, any lower and you putting too much strain on your legs and will most likely blow up before you summit, or on your way home

I was asked this question by a fellow cyclist the other day and after some thought i responded NO. Too which he was amazed

Let me explain…

Fixed gear bikes have very little in common with road bikes, yes they have 2 wheels, bars saddle etc, but when it comes to propelling them forward and developing pedal stroke the fixie is no help to the roadie.

1. You might think that as the pedals move around nice and fast in perfect circles this would translate into better circles when you get on the road bike. wrong, it actually makes your legs lazy. the fixie drags your feet around. On the road bike you are forced to pull up through the back of the stroke and pull over the top before you push down at the front. The fixie does all the hard work for you

2. The muscles you need to rip through the high cadence on the road bike are different ones that are used in the same cadence on the fixie. so you might feel like your building this amazing ability to ride in cadence brackets up around the 150 mark. but try that same technique on the road bike and you will find out why you have wasted valuable hours

the skills needed for a road bike and a fixie are different and very specific, especially when it comes to the high cadence work. Yes riders who are good on the track can bring those skills to road cycling and do well, we have seen many a rider do this in history, but for the average you and me looking to gain that little bit more, we shouldn’t waste our time

Unless your goal is to be better on the track or better at looking cool down at the expensive coffee shop with your crumpler bag, mac book pro, soy latte while wearing tight jeans and some t shirt with random words on it, don’t waste your valuable training hours on a fixie.

I took a ride up a mountain this AM and had a photographer (Ross Smith) with me. He was there to capture a few pictures of the CycleKrazy kit that will most likely go on sale in next few months via this website. (demand dependent)

here is a taste of the kit and a few arty shots using the light and back drop

Along with the topic i did called Carbon Care i have decided to add another one that is specific to frame protectors. if you have ot read the first one, i suggest you read it as well

If you don’t know what a frame protector is then i will explain. Its normally a small sticker that is placed on the frame under where the cables would rub. what this sticker does is protect the frame from wear. You might be thinking your carbon frame is safe and strong and no silly little cable is going to damage it. How wrong you are. As you ride more and more the rubbing of the cable will slowly wear a nice groove into your lovely new carbon frame. once it has a small groove the cable will stay in that groove and it will only make it bigger. The protector sticker kit allows you to save the frame from this damage.

There are other products on the market that you could use. one of these uses a rubber outer that you put around the cable where it would come into contact with the frame. It will do the trick just as well as the stickers, but if your looking for a nice clean finish then the clear sticker kit is the way forward.

check out wiggle for some options

1. Hold your line.
2. Don’t go racing up the inside of the pace line. If you want to move up, do so on the road side when its safe to do so
3. Don’t half wheel the guy in front of you
4. Don’t Swarm cars at traffic lights. There is no point cause 20 meters up the road the car will need to find a way round you
5. When you are mid pack and the light changes make sure you call out your intentions. either “rolling through” or “stopping”
6. When leading pedal the downhills and maintain a nice steady pace on the flats
7. Call out the Hazards
8. If your ride has a hard paced single file section make sure you roll around the correct way. Roll off into the wind
9. Leave your aero bars at home, in fact if you bring a TT bike on the bunch ride you should be sent home to the naughty corner that your kids sit when they put crayon on the walls

if you want to read the original bunch skills post then head here

here is my original review of the Garmin 705 i did link

Today i went out for a long ride did some serious power tests and was looking forward to getting home and reviewing my data, but when i connected my unit to the computer and tried to download the file all i got was distance, time, ave speed, av power and av cadence. i them tried a few “tricks” i have used in the passed to get files to work, but without luck

Lately there seems to be the growing problem that my 705 seems to corrupt files after rides. i would say about 1 in 4 rides creates a bad TCX file. most times i can fumble around and get some sort of data out the corrupt file. today – nothing

There are ways to fix these broken files and guys on the internet who check through the xml, there are even a few applications that try to fix them. This is all very well, but it should not be an issue to start with. Garmin a selling a top end product that should deliver its users the features they expect. They have released numerous new versions of the firmware but the fault seems to stay. The garmin forums run hot with complaints from other users who seem to have the same problems as me.

You can understand that it is very frustrating. If it was not for this ongoing issue the 705 would be perfect, but lately i just don’t have the confidence in it that i used to.

if your experiencing the same problems please check out this forum for help

https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=21

or email this guy

Dario Costa dario(AT)teambikeolympo.it

If you don’t have a plan for 2010 already then i suggest you nut one out today.

You want to start building a plan that builds to a part in the season. There might be a big road race you want to do well in or a series of crits you want to try and win. Winning them or doing well in them will reply on the correct training plan with regimented rest days. If you goal this year is just to beat your best TT time or to improve it by x% then train for that. You need to have a goal insight. Jumping on the bike every day or 2 and busting out 80+km’s will be fun and you will improve but you don’t have a goal to achieve. Its easy to sit back and say “i wanna be a better cyclist, that’s my goal for 2010″ Better cyclist how? faster TT time. Faster in the hills. 1400+ VAM? Faster sprinter? where do you want to be better? you need to train specifically, cause your improvements will be much better then if you just “go riding” every now and then.

Last year i wrote up a few articles that will enable to you build specific workouts that you can fit into your training plan. I also have a power workout series that is online in .zip format for Garmin devices that can be used and optimized for you.

If your a little bit serious and have a coach he/she  should have already given you a full plan that should see you through at least the next 6 months.

How?

Break the year into 37 weeks. If you have a race period/season record that. If your attending any training camps record that as well. If you know how many hours you can train a week, write that down. It will help create workouts that will best utilize that time

Use a wall calendar for this. one with nice big squares for each day. that will make it easy to see and read

The first 12 weeks should be used to build aerobic strength.
The next 3 or 4 weeks should be intensity training and your race period will follow that (about 7 weeks)
This “bank” should be followed by a week off

You main plan should run about 4 weeks. that 4th week should be a recovery week, that means riding at lower intensity and at least 1 day off the bike altogether. You can then insert that day to day month plan into the remaining months of your entire plan but extend the time and intensity with each  “paste”
Plan around races. You don’t need to race every weekend. some weekends can be spent doing some serious 150+km rides. You need rides of this sort in your plan. There could be times that you need to change your plan. days might be missed due to illness or injury. don’t try and make them up. leave them as lost days. If you more than a week off for some reason then scale back the intensity of the following weeks rides

Good luck and safe riding for 2010

i hope that you have a festive Christmas and happy new year. Stay safe out on the roads.

be careful of those turkey and ham left overs…. you might find next season will have to start with a serious diet to shed some extra weight

Thanks everyone who has supported CK over the passed 8 months. Its been great bringing you tips and seeing my hits continue to grow. 2010 will be more of the same and some new stuff

cheers

Neil