Joe Friel

Changes at JoeFrielsBlog.com

I’ve been hard at work to bring some much-needed upgrades to my website for you. Today, I’m proud to announce JoeFrielTraining.com! For now, it is the same, easy-to-navigate site that you have been used to seeing but with some very useful new tools. You are now able to easily search/filter to find the training plan(s) that match your needs, read the details, and connect directly to the TrainingPeaks page to make your purchase. Some backend enhancements to the site should also allow for a smoother experience while you are visiting and allow me to provide more content and additional features in the future. If you are an RSS subscriber, please be sure to update your feed to reflect the new website URL (https://joefrieltraining.com/blog/feed) so you don’t miss any new posts. I look forward to helping you train better and smarter this season.
Best, 
Joe

Changes at JoeFrielsBlog.com

I’ve been hard at work to bring some much-needed upgrades to my website for you. Today, I’m proud to announce JoeFrielTraining.com! For now, it is the same, easy-to-navigate site that you have been used to seeing but with some very useful new tools. You are now able to easily search/filter to find the training plan(s) that match your needs, read the details, and connect directly to the TrainingPeaks page to make your purchase. Some backend enhancements to the site should also allow for a smoother experience while you are visiting and allow me to provide more content and additional features in the future. If you are an RSS subscriber, please be sure to update your feed to reflect the new website URL (https://joefrieltraining.com/blog/feed) so you don’t miss any new posts. I look forward to helping you train better and smarter this season.
Best, 
Joe

Riding Indoors and Pedaling Skills, Part 2

In Part 1 I explained why your power output is likely to be lower when riding an indoor trainer as compared with riding on the road. And I also touched on the how this is related to the skills of pedaling a bike. Making some slight changes to how you pedal can benefit not only your indoor power but also your on-the-road performance.

So how do you change your pedaling technique? Let’s take a look at a "square-pedaling” novice and a “circular-pedaling” experienced rider. The novice starts applying a downward force to the pedal at about the 2:30 or 3 o’clock position. And the force application ends very quickly at around 4 o’clock or perhaps even sooner. The rest of the pedal stroke is usually also wasteful as it typically involves the novice letting his or her foot rest on the pedal except for that very brief episode of force application. The “recovering” leg resting on the pedal on the backside of the stroke simply means that the other leg, the one now driving the pedal down, has to work very hard for a very short period of time to keep the pedals turning and maintain speed or power. That’s a huge energy waster.

The experienced and economical rider, however, applies force on the downstroke very early—starting at about 1 o’clock. And force is applied all the way down to about 5 o’clock. Of course, the force applied becomes greater as the foot approaches 2:30 and is reduced after 4 o'clock. But force is provided to the pedal at some level throughout nearly the entire downstroke. He or she also doesn’t let the recovering leg “go to sleep” on the backside of the stroke. Nor does the experienced, economical rider pull up on the pedal as many think they should do (the exception is when sprinting). That would also be very wasteful and result in extreme fatigue in the hip flexor muscles within a few minutes. The experienced rider simply “unweights” the pedal on the upstroke (from 6 to 12 o’clock).

If this circular pedaling technique is new to you or you feel your pedaling could be improved, how do you make the changes in order to be more economical? Note, again, that this is not just an indoor pedaling skill change. It is intended to be applied in both indoor and outdoor rides, on flat terrain, and when climbing hills. In fact, you’ll probably discover that you climb better once you master this pedaling technique.

Let’s start by looking at the downstroke. Remember that the goal is to start the force application to the pedal early in the stroke—at around 1 o’clock. The key to doing this is your heel. As your foot passes through 12 o’clock the heel should be lowered a little so that it’s level with the ball of the foot, or even a bit below it, by 1 o’clock. That will allow you to drive the pedal slightly forward and slightly downward at the same time. As the foot approaches the 5 o’clock position the heel is raised somewhat so that it is just above the ball of the foot. This may only be about a half inch or a centimeter. That foot position is maintained all the way through the backstroke. And then, as mentioned before, you should feel like you’re taking the weight off of the pedal—not pulling up on it. The slightly high heel will help you do this.

Let me toss in a caveat here. If you are a triathlete or time trialist who rides a very upright bike with the seat tube at about 76 degrees or steeper, you may find it very difficult to get your heel below or even perhaps level with the ball of the foot when on the saddle and in the aero position. That’s normal for this type of bike since you’re seated farther forward relative to the bottom bracket. Just get your heel as low as you can get it at 1 o’clock without putting undo stress on the calf muscle, Achilles, or ankle. And make the downstroke last as long as you can.

Riding Indoors and Pedaling Skills, Part 1

There are a few things that change when you ride indoors on a trainer as compared with on the road. A common one is heat. Since you’re not moving forward when on a trainer body heat tends to accumulate. Your core temperature may rise causing you to sweat more. At the same time, blood is shunted to the skin to seek some cooling. This dual demand for your blood—providing energy for the muscles while also cooling—causes you to work harder thus wasting energy. This problem is easily solved—if you have enough fans.

And there are other energy wasters when riding a trainer such as the bike not swaying side to side as you pedal. On the road it does, albeit only slightly when seated, but a great deal more when standing on a climb or sprinting. But what happens indoors is your bike remains stationary while your body moves slightly side to side. That also wastes energy.

Of all the indoor energy wasters the most uneconomical has to do with pedaling skill. This changes a lot from what it is like on the road and can result in a significant decrease in power output. Your functional threshold power (FTP) may be decreased by 10% or more.

Pedaling skill has a lot to do with the “dead spot” in your pedal stroke. This occurs when the pedals are 12 and 6 o’clock in the rotation. When pedaling you come to this position twice in every pedal stroke or about 10,000 times per hour. During this brief but frequent interlude while riding outdoors on flat terrain the rear wheel continues to rotate because of momentum. But when on some trainers—especially friction, fluid, and magnetic trainers—the rear wheel immediately slows down when the pedals are in the dead spot since there is no tension on the chain. It’s not a gigantic slowdown but it’s enough to waste energy because you have to apply a great deal more force on every stroke to keep the pedals turning to maintain your power and the speed of the rear wheel. And that’s happening about 10,000 times per hour. That makes for a lot of wasted energy. But if your indoor training machine has a flywheel then you’re much less likely to see any change in economy when indoors versus outdoors. The weight of the flywheel boosts the momentum of the rear wheel so that it behaves more like it does when on the road.

If you don’t have a flywheel, over time your pedaling technique will adapt and slightly “correct” how you pedal. You’ll learn to engage the pedal earlier in the downstroke. That could take a few weeks. In the meantime your training is less effective. But it’s possible to speed up the adaptation by consciously adjusting how you pedal when indoors. The good news is that this new adapted pedaling technique will also improve your road-riding energy economy.

            In Part 2 I’ll get into the “how-to” of improving your pedaling skills for both indoor and outdoor riding.

Duration and Intensity in Training

The most basic component of training is the balance between workout duration and workout intensity. Whether you are an Olympian or a novice "how long" and "how hard" are the only two variables that can be used to produce a workout within a given sport. How these are balanced is at the heart of preparing for competition. It seems this should be simple, but it’s not. Many athletes get it wrong in their training and it’s evident on race day.

In the first couple of years that athletes are in their sport they discover that increasing workout durations and therefore volume (the sum total of workout durations for a period of time such as a week) improves their performance. They get faster by simply training with longer durations or more miles/kilometers. In fact, the rate of performance improvement at this stage is so steep that if continued long enough the athlete would eventually break a world record in their sport. But that’s rare. Something changes in these first few years.

It’s easy to think in terms of duration (and therefore weekly volume). One can determine a personal hours number and assume this is the key to building their fitness. That’s evident by how most athletes think and talk about training. Unfortunately, this way of viewing training continues well beyond the novice stage. After several years in the sport if you ask an athlete how training is going he or she will still nearly always cite volume: “Last year at this time I was training 8 hours per week and now I’m training 10.” The key to their performance simply becomes doing more duration and more volume. “If next year I can train 12 hours per week and then 14 the following year and 16 after that then I will be unbeatable.” Nearly all athletes, regardless of their levels of performance, think the key is “train longer.” After all it worked really well for the first few years so why not continue down that same path? More weekly volume becomes their focus. They reconfigure their lives in order to fit in more and longer workouts.

Very few athletes talk about their performance as a product of workout intensity. There’s a good reason for that oversight. How do you put a number on intensity? I can say I ran for one hour. That’s easy to measure and quite understandable by everyone. But how is the intensity of that one-hour run measured and expressed? That’s hard to do without getting bogged down in the details of the warm-up, work intervals, recovery intervals, and cool down. Most seem to understand that intensity is some how important, but it’s not easy to express so it’s largely ignored or at best given limited credit with a long-winded explanation. Instead, more weekly volume continues to be the key to success throughout the athlete’s career—with obvious limitations as time passes.

In the first few years in a sport there is no doubt that increased duration is effective. Train more; within the boundaries of one’s physical, mental, and time constraints; and better performances are a common result. I came to realize quite early in my coaching that an ever-increasing weekly volume was not the path to take. At some point the return on investment plateaus and may even turn downward. I found that for the advanced and experienced athlete – usually starting around the fourth year of dedicated training – the focus needs to shift toward intensity. Making such a shift often keeps the positive performance slope steep for a few more seasons.

Of course, by all of this I don’t mean that duration is unimportant. You can’t train a total of two hours per week with high intensity only and expect a personal best performance in a marathon simply because you’re in the fourth year of training. You’ve still got to put in a certain amount of volume. How much? I’ve come to think of the duration-intensity relationship as proportions of training that must somehow be balanced. To be more clear, I believe that performance on race day is roughly 60 percent determined by recent training intensity and about 40 percent by workout durations (weekly volume). That’s just my opinion from a few years of competing and coaching. I know of no research that substantiates that ratio. But there is research that supports the notion that intensity is a better predictor of performance than is duration or volume, especially in the more experienced and advanced athletes. I’ve listed some below. By clicking on the references you can read the abstracts. These studies are all around 10 to 20 years old as there seemed to be more scientific interest in the topic then (it’s now shifted more toward the balance, or “polarization,” of training intensities).

The bottom line here is that for the advanced athlete with about four or more years of dedicated and consistent training, the key to performance improvement shifts toward intensity as duration plays a somewhat lesser, but not unimportant, role. Getting that balance right is more complicated than simply doing more weekly volume. This is determined by the type of event you're training for. Getting that balance right is the key to success.

(This is also a good time to point out that on TrainingPeaks you can express the intensity of a workout just as easily as you can its duration. It’s called the Intensity Factor (IF) and is simply the workout’s normalized power/pace/speed or average heart rate divided by your functional threshold power/pace/speed/heart rate. Also by knowing the workout’s duration and IF the session’s training stress score (TSS) can also be expressed. That means that a single number gives you a pretty good idea of how much you accomplished in the workout relative to your current level of fitness. These breakthrough training metrics all come from the work of exercise physiologist Andrew Coggan, PhD.)

Duration-Intensity Research

Helgerud, J., K. Høydal, E. Wang, et al. 2007. Aerobic high-intensity intervals improve VO2max more than moderate training. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 39 (4): 665-671.

Lehmann, M, H. Mann, U. Gastmann, et al. 1996. Unaccustomed high-mileage vs intensity training-related changes in performance and serum amino acid levels. International Journal of Sports Medicine 17 (3): 187-192. 

Midgley, A.W., L.R. McNaughton, and M. Wilkinson. 2006. Is there an optimal training intensity for enhancing the maximal oxygen uptake of distance runners?: empirical research findings, current opinions, physiological rationale and practical recommendations. Sports Medicine 36 (2): 117-132.

Mujika, I., J.C. Chatard, T. Busson, et al. 1995. Effects of training on performance in competitive swimming. Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology 20 (4): 395-406.

Problems With Determining FTP

A while back I received an email from a triathlete who explained that he got different FTP results if he did a 20-minute test on his Watt Bike indoor trainer versus doing a 40km time trial on a tri bike that took about an hour versus doing a 20-minute test on the road on a road bike. He pointed out that the results don’t all agree, and, in fact, there are considerable differences. Should they agree? And if not what should he do to set his FTP? These are all good questions I’m often asked by athletes and their coaches. Here’s my reply.

There are many different ways of determining FTP. They won’t all agree based on unique characteristics that show up in each. It’s not a perfect system no matter how you choose to do it. For example, when you did the 40k TT was it a race or a hard workout done solo? How tired were you? What was the terrain like? How hot or cold was it? All of these things (and more) could affect the calculation of your FTP from a racelike event, which is, by the way, a good option for determining FTP.

Also, indoor tests give different results than outdoor tests. Different power devices (Watt Bike trainer versus whatever power meters you have on your tri and road bikes) give different results. Your positions on the bikes also affect power output. For example, everything else being equal, an extreme aero time trial/triathlon position will typically produce lower power numbers than a typical road bike position. The terrain and steepness of an outdoor test course has a significant impact on results also. As does the temperature and humidity, especially when testing indoors. Different indoor trainers will also give you different results.

And there’s a lot more that we could get into here, but it starts becoming a bit techie and detailed. The bottom line is you need to test on the bike you will be racing on, have one primary method (and test course if on the road) to determine your FTP and then stick to it. That will give you more meaningful data to work from so you can more accurately set training zones and gauge changes throughout the season.

More on Overtraining

Yesterday I received an email from a female pro cyclocross racer who shall remain anonymous. She described what certainly sounds like overtraining. It’s hard to be certain, as I’ve written about here and here. But I’d be willing to bet that she has indeed pushed herself beyond her natural limits, which takes great motivation, and is overtrained. Her email described how she had been feeling lethargic and producing very poor race performances. Those are certainly common symptoms. She went on to explain that she had blood testing done which revealed high cortisol and low estrogen levels. Again, common signs of overtraining for a female athlete. She asked if I could provide any guidance as to what she should do to get back to normal training again. There’s not much. The following is my reply

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I’m sorry to hear of your current condition. Overtraining is certainly a life-altering condition when it happens. While actually rare among athletes, it is possible to drive oneself so hard that it becomes obvious that something is wrong. You were wise to get a blood test done. High cortisol and low estrogen seem to support your conclusion. Your numbers for those certainly increase the likelihood of it being OT while reducing the possibilities of other diseases with similar symptoms, such as Lyme disease and mononucleosis. But those should really be eliminated as possibilities before ignoring them. Being a CX’er would certainly put you in an environment where Lyme disease could happen. Mono is also a possibility.

Assuming these are not what you are experiencing I’d continue to be aware of OT symptoms that indicate the condition. The most common is fatigue. While the motivation to return to training may be high, if fatigue is still present then rest is the only option. Once unrelenting fatigue is no longer a factor then you can return to training, but it initially must be all aerobic (zones 1-2) with no anaerobic or even high aerobic-intensity training. The rides should also be short, probably meaning, for you, an hour or less followed by a day or more off when you start back. This reduced training may last for a few weeks. It can’t be hurried. Gradually over several weeks you can return to “normal” CX training but the process must be very gradual taking weeks if not months to allow for healthy adaptation. Don’t try to rush it. I’d be hesitant at this point to plan on doing those world cup races in September. Better to be 100% healthy for the remainder of the season than to force your body back into an unhealthy state and then miss an entire season. The body doesn’t operate on an artificial timeline. Patience is the key.

I’d suggest no racing or training timelines that must be met until you are without doubt healthy and feeling normal again. Along the way pay close attention to how your body is responding. Frequent days off are likely to be a necessity for some time. Be very careful to monitor your status on a daily basis by watching recovery metrics such as hours of sleep, quality of sleep, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, appetite, body weight, general health, normal periods, irritability, and depression. There are apps available that can help with most of these.

I’m sorry I can’t be more specific as to the details of your return to a normal lifestyle, especially the timing. OT isn’t the same for all athletes so there isn’t a one-size-fits-all process to follow. So what I’m suggesting above is just a guess on my part based on the little I know about you. You and your coach will have to watch your progress very carefully. Again, be patient.

The Triathlete as Fast Marathoner

The following is an article I wrote for a magazine sometime back. Here I lay out how to prepare to run a fast marathon. Of course, “fast” is only relative to your ability, goal, experience, training, and confidence. This training plan is primarily intended for the triathlete who wants to continue doing some bike and swim workouts even though preparing for a marathon. With this plan you can still fit in a couple of easy swims and rides each to help maintain base fitness.

If you’d rather not go through all of the tedious planning details for your marathon you can find training plans I’ve written for several common goal marathon times (3:00, 3:15, 3:30, 3:45, and 4:00) based on the following method by going here and scrolling down. By clicking on “Preview” and then “Sample Workouts” you can get an idea of how the training weeks are laid out (“Day 2” is Monday, “Day 3” is Wednesday, etc).

__________________________

Maybe you’ve been thinking about running a marathon some time this season. If your only goal is to finish, which is a good idea if this will be your first time at this distance, all you need to do is put in some long runs. It will take about six runs of two to three hours done over eight to 10 weeks to have you ready to go the distance. Expect to do some walking every couple of miles both on the long runs and in the race.

Or maybe your purpose in running a marathon is simply to build a good base of aerobic endurance for running as a triathlete since it’s hard to bike much in the winter where you live. Marathon-type training with long runs and hills will certainly do that for you, too.

But if you want to run a personal best time in a marathon while also building your running base before launching into full-time triathlon training, there’s quite a bit more to it. In this case, training goes well beyond simply doing long runs.

What It Takes

First of all, you must forget the notion that weekly volume is the key to running a fast marathon. Increasing logged miles every week is not the way to get faster. Race-specific intensity is what will have you ready to run full out for 26.2 miles. Here are the workouts that will prepare you to run well in a marathon.

* Long run. Before you can train for speed you’ve got to first be able to go the distance. I call a “long run” for the marathon one that is two-and-a-half to three hours in duration. Regardless of your race goal time this is as long as you need to run. Going longer won’t give you significantly more aerobic fitness, but will greatly increase your risk of injury and overtraining. Start from your longest weekly run now and add 15 to 20 minutes each time you do one of these. The pace is moderate – about two minutes per mile slower than your 10k pace or in heart rate zone 2 (Friel system).

* Hilly run. Besides the long run, this is the most valuable workout you can do early in the season. These will give you not only strength for hills on the marathon course, but also a more powerful stride.

* Tempo run. The longer a race is the more critical having a good sense of pace becomes. If you go out too fast you’ll crash and burn. In fact, I encourage marathoners to break the race into three distinct parts with a unique pace for each (see “Table 1. Three-Part Pacing” below).

The basic tempo run is 30-45 minutes at the pace you’ll use in miles 4 to 20 of the race. This is done following a 10- to 20-minute warm-up and is followed by a five- to 10-minute cool down.

The more advanced tempo-finish run comes at the end of a long run. For example, run 60 minutes at your long run pace described above, and then pick it up to tempo pace for another 30 minutes for a 90-minute workout. Gradually make the tempo portion longer until you run 60 minutes of long-run pace and 60 minutes of tempo. This is a great session for preparing you for the rigors of a marathon.

* Cruise intervals. These are mile repeats done a bit faster than your average marathon pace in order to improve muscular endurance. “Table 2. Mile Repeats” below shows how many cruise intervals to do and at what pace based on your marathon goal time. The recoveries between the repeats are 200-meter walks. This is a grueling workout that comes after the basic endurance and hill training are completed in the base period. The cruise interval pace will make the marathon seem easy.

* Downhill strides. The purpose here is to improve your running economy – how smoothly you run – while “inoculating” your legs against the quad soreness that typically shows up late in the marathon. On about a two-percent grade run for one minute downhill at slower than top speed. This is best on a soft surface. Do not run these on concrete or asphalt. Concentrate on perfect form and relaxation on each one. Walk and jog slowly back up the hill. Get in 8 to 12 of these in a workout.

* Cross-train. Don’t just run every day. Also bike and swim on recovery days. Athletes in their 20s may run five or six times a week since they recover quickly. For every decade of life after age 30 subtract one day of running per week to a minimum of three.

Marathon Periodization

The following 12-week schedule is an example of one way to prepare using the workouts above. It assumes that you begin with good base fitness built with runs of two-and-a-half to three hours, and sound, total body strength developed in the weight room. The following suggested schedule is based on four-week mesocycles. If over age 50 or prone to injury or overtraining you may be better off training in three-week periods. Every third or fourth week reduce the volume by half for five or six days and then test your progress on the sixth or seventh day. Be sure to separate the long and intense runs by 48 or more hours.

* Weeks 1-4. Do a long run on a hilly course in weeks 1, 2, and 3. Also complete a basic tempo run each of the first three weeks. Include one cruise interval workout in weeks 2 and 3 starting with about one-fourth of what is indicated in the “Build to x Reps” column of Table 2.

* Weeks 5-8. Complete a long run on a rolling course (not steep hills) in weeks 5 and 7. In weeks 6 and 8 do a tempo-finish run. Do cruise intervals in weeks 5, 6, and 7 adding one or two more reps each week. Also do downhill strides in the first three weeks of this block. Start with four and add one or two each week.

* Weeks 9-12. You’re now starting to taper for the marathon at the end of week 12. Reduce volume by 20 percent each week. In weeks 9 and 10 include tempo-finish runs of 90 minutes. Also maximize your cruise intervals and downhill strides in weeks 9 and 10. In week 11 include a basic tempo run and half of the maximum number of cruise intervals and downhill strides done in week 10. In week 12 run a basic tempo run of 15 to 20 minutes early in the week and otherwise keep everything short and easy.

Testing Progress

Recall that every third or fourth week, depending on how long your mesocycle periods are, is a rest week culminating in a test of progress. One of the best tests is to run a race of less than 10 kilometers. Another test which I’ve found to be an excellent gauge of progress is 8 to 12 x 800 meters run as fast as you can with 20-second walking recoveries. As your hoped-for marathon fitness improves so should your average time for this workout.

The average time may also provide a ballpark prediction of how fast you can go in the race. For example, if your average was 3 minutes and 10 seconds expect to run about 3 hours and 10 minutes for the marathon. It’s uncanny how closely this workout predicts race time.

The Race

When you get to the starting line you should be ready for a fast marathon based on three-part pacing. Forget about going out hard to “build a cushion.” Running fast early in the race will only cause you to crash and burn later on. Be patient and have confidence in all of the hard training you did over the last 12 weeks. It will pay off.

Table 1. Three-Part Pacing

Goal Race Time	Average Pace	Pace Miles 1-3	Pace Miles 4-20	Pace Miles 21-26.2
4:00	9:10	9:25	8:59	9:28
3:55	8:58	9:13	8:48	9:16
3:50	8:47	9:01	8:37	9:04
3:45	8:35	8:49	8:25	8:52
3:40	8:24	8:38	8:14	8:41
3:35	8:12	8:25	8:03	8:28
3:30	8:01	8:14	7:52	8:17
3:25	7:49	8:02	7:40	8:04
3:20	7:38	7:51	7:29	7:53
3:15	7:27	7:39	7:18	7:42
3:10	7:15	7:27	7:07	7:29
3:05	7:04	7:16	6:56	7:18
3:00	6:52	7:03	6:44	7:06
2:55	6:41	6:52	6:33	6:54
2:50	6:29	6:40	6:22	6:42
2:45	6:18	6:28	6:11	6:30
2:40	6:06	6:16	5:59	6:18
2:35	5:55	6:05	5:48	6:07
2:30	5:44	5:53	5:37	5:55

Table 2. Mile Repeats

Goal Race Time	Build to x Reps	Mile Reps Pace
4:00	5-6	8:50
3:55	5-6	8:40
3:50	5-6	8:25
3:45	6-7	8:15
3:40	6-7	8:00
3:35	7-8	7:50
3:30	7-8	7:40
3:25	8-9	7:30
3:20	8-9	7:20
3:15	8-10	7:10
3:10	8-10	6:55
3:05	9-11	6:45
3:00	9-11	6:35
2:55	9-12	6:20
2:50	10-12	6:10
2:45	10-13	6:00
2:40	10-13	5:45
2:35	10-13	5:35
2:30	10-13	5:25

 

The "All New" Cyclist's Training Bible

I recently finished writing a "somewhat" new book—The “All New” Cyclist’s Training Bible. The original version was published more than 20 years ago. It had been edited three times over the years. Last year my publisher suggested it was time to edit it yet again. I balked at that as editing it could end up being a more daunting task than rewriting it from scratch. There had been lots of changes in training since the last edit. An edit in one chapter would require small changes in several others. And those might call for other somewhat nuanced changes downstream. It would have been like putting bandaids all over it. So I decided to throw away the old manuscript and start with a blank page.

I didn't realize at the time what a huge task this would be.

More than a year later the all-new version is just being released and is due to be on bookshelves by the middle of April (the e-book version will take another two months). The paperback book can be preordered here.

The following is the Prologue to the book where I describe what you’ll find in it. I hope you enjoy it.

Prologue

The Cyclist’s Training Bible was the first book I ever wrote. That was more than 20 years ago. When I decided to write it my interest at the time wasn’t in selling books. In fact, I figured it would sell only a few copies and within a handful of years would be long gone. My motivation then was to see if I could describe the training philosophy and methodology I had developed over the previous 20 years as an athlete, student, and coach. I never dreamed this book would become the best-selling book on training for cycling and play a role in changing how so riders prepare to race.

This latest edition of the All-New Cyclist’s Training Bible is, indeed, “all new.” That’s not just marketing. When I decided it was time to rewrite it I threw away the old manuscript and started with a blank page. The only thing that stayed about the same was the Table of Contents. But that also went through some revision. The project took me a year. That’s partly because the content nearly doubled in 20 years—from 70,000 to 130,000 words. Whew! But it also took me a year because before writing each chapter I went back to the research to see what exactly had changed over the past two decades. While that certainly added to the project’s writing time, this was crucial for describing the advanced and updated training concepts you’ll find here. The bottom line is that I’m pleased with how it turned out. But what’s more important is that you find it beneficial to your training. That was my motivation for taking on such a task this time around.

Writing a book for a broad spectrum of riders is always a challenge. I know that some who will read this book are novices in their first year in the sport and everything here is new for them. Others are what I call intermediate riders in the second and third years of riding who are still developing their basic fitness and learning about training. Then there are the advanced riders who have been in the sport for more than three years, read the original book, and have developed a sound understanding of training and many of its nuances. At the highest advanced level are elite athletes who have not only been in the sport for several years, but also have the ability to perform at a very high level in their race categories. They generally have a deep knowledge of not only training but also of sport science. Regardless of the group you belong to, I’ve tried to address the needs of each of these categories so that by following the training guidelines proposed here you will advance to the next higher level of performance.

In fact, competitive performance is what this book is all about. My hope is that you will learn new ways of training to help you grow as an athlete while also producing better race results. Of course, I don’t suggest that reading this will magically transform you into a professional grand tour rider, but it’s certainly possible to take your riding up to the next level of performance and achieve goals that you previously didn’t think were attainable. I’ve seen this happen many times with the athletes I’ve coached over the years. I’m certain you can also do it by applying the principles you’ll read about in the following chapters.

The purpose of this book is to help you become fitter, ride faster, and achieve high goals. Collectively, these outcomes make up what may be called “high performance.” I’ll use that phrase a lot in the following chapters. I certainly intend it to mean those three outcomes, but it means more than that. High performance goes well beyond your results. It’s as much an attitude as an indicator of well you race. In fact, attitude comes before race results—way before. It implies living a lifestyle that makes possible the achievement of high goals: how consistently you train; how disciplined you are about training; what, when, and how much you eat; who you hang out with; how you think about yourself; and much more. A high-performance attitude is a lifestyle that is pointed directly at your goal and relentlessly pursued. Chapters 1 and 2 will touch on many such matters. Attitude and lifestyle, however, are not the focal points of this book. There are other works by sport psychologists that can help you achieve mental high-performance. After introducing the mental component in Part I we will start down the path to developing your physical high performance.

It’s been more than 20 years since I wrote the first Cyclist’s Training Bible. The sport has changed in many small ways since the mid-1990s. Back then few cyclists wore helmets, clipless pedals were new, electronic shifting was introduced but didn’t catch on, and aerodynamic time trial handlebars were still a novelty. These are but a few of the small equipment changes we’ve seen happen over the years.

In many ways cycling is a different sport than it was 20 years ago. Other than the bike itself the biggest change has been the acceptance of the power meter by riders since the early 2000s. Very few riders in the 1990s had them even though the technology was developed in the late 1980s. They were simply too expensive—about a month’s salary for the average person. Back then we gauged intensity with heart rate monitors, which had been around for 20 years and were relatively inexpensive. Before that, riders determined training intensity strictly on perceived exertion—how they felt. With power meter prices coming down dramatically in the last several years, training with power has become common as heart rate monitoring and perceived exertion appear to be fading away. In this latest edition of The Cyclist’s Training Bible, while the workouts rely heavily on power, heart rate plays a supportive but still important role. And perceived exertion remains critically important for high performance as you’ll see in Chapters 4 and 5.

There have been many other changes unrelated to equipment since this original book was released. At the time of the that first edition training periodization was largely an unknown concept for the average rider even though some elite Western athletes became aware of it two decades earlier. It was a closely guarded training secret of Eastern Bloc countries throughout the 1950s and 1960s and remained an enigma even in the West throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s. Before the later introduction to periodization most riders in the West simply trained however they felt and decided what to do for a workout as they rolled out of the driveway. Saddle time was considered to be the best predictor of performance. In the first edition I introduced the annual training plan based on periodization. At the time, this was a new and somewhat revolutionary concept for many riders. At the time, in order to keep it simple, I described only one seasonal planning method—“classic” periodization. In this latest edition I expand considerably on the topic of seasonal planning with periodization by introducing several other methods in addition to classic. All of this is found in Chapters 7, 8, and 9, and created using the Annual Training Plan template in Appendix A. And I assist in helping you decide which method is best for you. I consider this to be the hub of the book. The chapters that come before and after this part are intended to enhance your unique training plan.

In the previous four editions of The Cyclist’s Training Bible I also offered only one simple way to train for all riders regardless of their unique physical attributes. Cyclists have become much more knowledgeable about training since then. This all-new edition allows for individualization by considering the reader’s unique cycling phenotype—his or her sport-related strength—in recommending how to train. This comes down to one’s personal racing characteristics as a climber, sprinter, time trialer, or all-rounder. Every rider fits into one of these categories, and so the training methodologies you’ll find here are built around this concept as described in Chapter 2.

The science of training has also grown considerably in the last 20 years. Here you will learn how to apply the latest proven concepts for improving race performance. This includes Training Stress Score (TSS)-based training that is becoming quite popular among serious endurance athletes. There’s a good reason for that: It’s a much more effective way to gauge training load than simply adding up hours, miles, or kilometers spent on the saddle each week. That’s how we had to do it 20 years ago. But there weren’t any other options then. Learning to train with TSS is one of the smallest and yet most effective changes you can make to increase fitness and race faster. I know that probably sounds far fetched, but I know it works. It will focus your training around what’s important for high performance. And that’s not saddle time. In Chapter 3 I’ll teach you what TSS is and how you can effectively use it.

One topic here that remains much the same as in the first edition is individualized training based on abilities and limiters. You’ll find this explained in Chapter 6. In many ways this simple concept is at the core of successful training for endurance sports. This is closely related to your goals, objectives, and even the workouts as found in Appendix B.

One area of study that has seen a lot of research since the first edition has to do with the stress of training and how best to recover from it. It’s been well established that in order to approach your potential as an athlete you must frequently flirt with overtraining. This is a challenge for most riders as the frequent fatigue of such training has an impact not only on subsequent workouts but also on lifestyle. Fatigue is a powerful outcome of training that may be thought of as a tool for high performance. Managing fatigue is a balancing act that is critical to training as it has to do with adaptation to purposeful stress. The timing of the stress-adaptation-performance loop is dependent on how effectively you recover following hard rides. The challenge is to keep the time to accomplish this progression as brief as possible without short-changing adaptation. This is the dilemma of short-term recovery and is explored in Chapters 10 and 11.

Long-term recovery from cumulative fatigue also has a lot to do with high performance. This is especially evident in tapering for the most important races of the season. Achieving a peak of fitness at the right time is not well understood by most riders. Tapering is a rather complex undertaking that has to do with removing fatigue while maintaining fitness in order to achieve what in sport is called “form.” It’s another balancing act related to recovery. Chapter 3 introduces this three-part concept with the full explanation reserved for Chapter 13 so that all of the training methodologies of the intermediate chapters are fully understood before delving into this multifaceted topic.

The strength program you’ll find in Chapter 12 is also greatly updated from the first edition to provide more options for developing the muscular force necessary to producing high power. This is one of the most significant changes in this book. If you are time-constrained, as many riders are, you’ll learn in this chapter that not all strength training needs to be done in the gym. Much of it can be done on the bike without the need to lift weights. That greatly decreases training time that is a concern for many athletes who have a very busy lifestyle. But should you decide to follow a more traditional gym-based strength program the weightlifting exercises are updated from the original book to provide maximum benefits for the time invested along with additional exercise alternatives when time and energy allow for them. All of these options are explained along with their pros and cons.

There wasn’t much in the way of training analysis in the first edition. Now that there are more precise ways of measuring training and racing performance the topic is more thoroughly addressed. In Chapter 14 I’ll help you effectively measure progress toward your performance goals that were explored in Chapters 1 and 5. Analysis of training is crucial for the continued improvement of the rider who has high goals in the sport. In this chapter new ways of looking at training information are discussed with an emphasis on examining only critical data to more precisely train for high performance while also limiting the time needed for analysis. This will save you time while also improving performance.

If you read and closely studied the original book you’ll find there are many such changes in this edition. In fact, you will find some contradictions. What I’ve written here sometimes disagrees with what I said in the earlier editions. That brings us back to where we started: things change. The sport has changed. Sport science has changed. And I have changed. The evolution of all of this will continue. And that’s a good thing. My hope is that you also evolve as an athlete from having read what follows.

Training to become a high-performance cyclist is not easy. I suppose that’s partly the reason we do it. Growth in any challenging area of interest is rewarding in many ways. It’s not just standing on a podium that makes you successful. Such a huge challenge produces habits and an outlook on life that are good for you in many ways, but not easily formed. You’ll become not only a better cyclist, but also a better person for accepting the challenge. It’s not easy because it takes time, energy, purpose, dedication, and discipline to achieve. But that’s also what makes the challenge rewarding. The benefits come later and are mostly recognizable only to the rider. It is my hope that this book will help you realize all of this.

Sleep, Part 2

I apologize for the long gaps between posts to my blog. Even though I am now retired from one-on-one coaching it seems there’s still never any time for writing here. But one thing I seldom pass up in the daily bustle is sleep. In Part 1 on this topic I railed against athletes having so many responsibilities in their lives that they have to cut out something, and that, unfortunately, is usually sleep.

As I tried to explain in Part 1, giving up time in bed means a reduction in your adaptive response to training. That means you don’t reap the full fitness benefits of the day’s workout. It’s during sleep that the good stuff you want happens. Your fitness increases as naturally occurring anabolic (“tissue-building”) hormones are released. This is why I often say that hard workouts don’t make you more fit—they only produce the potential for increased fitness. It’s during recovery, especially sleep, that this occurs.

Hormones are released in waves in certain sleep cycles during the night. There are several repeating cycles as you doze. The two that seem to be most productive, as far as increased fitness due to hormone release, are the rapid-eye movement (REM) and deep sleep cycles. These are when scientists who study sleep agree that tissue-building hormone production is greatest resulting in adaptation to the physical stresses you experienced that day. REM sleep seems to be especially critical. It happens about every 90 minutes to two hours and lasts only a few minutes at a time making up perhaps 20 to 25 percent of your sleep time—if you have a full night of sleep. And, curiously, REM sleep appears to occur mostly late in sleep—in the final hours before you wake up. So artificially shortening your sleep with an alarm early in the morning may well be costing you fitness. A portion of the previous day’s workout was for naught.

All of this is why, when I was coaching, I urged my clients to get as much sleep as they could. Adequate sleep means greater fitness and that means improved race performance and, therefore, goal achievement.

And I should make one other important point here. A common thought among athletes is that they can cut their short sleep Monday through Friday and then “catch-up” on the weekends. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t hold hormones in reserve for a few days and then release them in larger quantities later on. The daily opportunities were simply lost. It’s good to sleep on the weekends, but that doesn’t mean everything having to do with adaptation is therefore going to balance out for the week. It was just lost opportunities.

So how do you know if you’re getting enough siesta time? If you are waking up naturally—no alarm clock—then you are probably doing pretty well in regards to the benefits of sleep. That probably means around seven hours in the sack. But if you’re like most of the athletes I coached over the years, you’d like to see the data that supports this assumption. The best I have found is a device called Emfit QS. It measures and reports your nightly sleep-cycle durations and much more, such as total sleep time, heart rate patterns throughout the night, heart rate variability, breathing patterns, sleepless movement, and more. All of this appears on your smart phone once you are out of bed for the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most basic sleep data is also automatically uploaded to your TrainingPeaks.com account every morning as shown here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s simple to use, which I really like. No chest strap or other devices to wear. No manually turning it off and on. You just go to bed and it starts working. The device looks like a short belt that is placed between your mattress and box springs beneath where you sleep and perpendicular to your body position when in bed. It’s then connected to your local Wi-Fi network. Once set up you never have to touch it again. It’s pretty amazing that it can check all of these parameters given my 14-inch mattress and yet never appears to include my wife’s data from the other side of the bed. Is the data accurate? I can’t say as I have nothing to compare it with. But if it is simply dependable that is ok by me.

The downside, as with many of these amazing high-tech devices on the market these days, is cost. The cheapest I’ve found is $235 on Amazon.

The bottom line, whether you actually measure your 40 winks or not, is that to fully reap the benefits of your training, lengthy and regular sleep is necessary. Artificially shortening your nightly sleep means less fitness and reduced performance.

Sleep, Part 1

I’m now retired from hands-on coaching. It was challenging work for thirty-plus years, mostly because there was never a break. All of the athletes needed unwavering attention whether I was on vacation or not. Yet I still tremendously enjoyed it and, in a sick sort of way, now miss the pressure of preparing an athlete for competition. What especially made it so hard was that, for the most part, I coached athletes who had very high goals—podium at a national championship, qualify for Ironman Hawaii, win a highly competitive race, set a personal best time, or whatever. What really made it so challenging was that for most of the athletes I coached such goals were near the high end of their athletic potential. To improve their chances of succeeding we had to get everything right. That wasn’t just their workouts, but also their lifestyles. The latter was by far the more difficult thing to align with their goal.

To achieve such goals the athlete invariably had to agree to make lifestyle changes. They usually did so willingly. But this meant I had to get to know them quite well and then make suggestions about what had to change. That usually involved the primary aspects of life that affected performance and, especially, recovery. It required understanding and possibly altering their nutrition, friend and family support, the mental aspects of training and racing, physical limiters such as a propensity for injury or physiological imbalances, and lots more. Most athletes were quite willing to address and attempt to correct such limiters. The one that was always most difficult to correct was their sleep schedules. Yet this was almost always the most critical to their success as sleep is when adaptation (read: “increased fitness”) occurs. Without adequate sleep, adaptation is severely restricted.

It’s not that they were opposed to sleeping more, as I almost always had to suggest, but that they simply had so much stuff in their lives that “had to get done” every day. It was nearly always the same: career, family, personal time, other responsibilities, and training. There was never enough time in a day for everything they wanted to do. Something had to give. The most flexible time constraint was almost universally time spent in bed. So they chopped off the needed time there—before I came along. They typically got to bed late for a myriad of quite good reasons. Then they set an alarm to go off a few hours later so they could get going again on their list of daily must-does. They saw sleep as an interference—something that must be done but was sort of a waste of time. I can’t tell you how many times I was told that, “I can sleep when I’m dead.”

That may be the case. And, in fact, shortchanging sleep may well lead to an early grave. I can’t support that with research, don’t know of any, but I can support what limited sleep means to performance. It isn’t good. And the older you are, the more of a problem reduced sleep time is when it comes to high performance.

Personal example… When I was a college student I was on the track team. Training in the 1960s was nothing like today. Our coach knew only one way of training. Back then I called it “intervals ‘til you puke.” We’d warm-up and then he’d blow his whistle meaning we should all report to him where he was seated in the bleachers at the track sipping a Coke. We knew what was coming next. After a few comments from him on our next competition he’d tell us to line up on a mark he’d made on the track with his foot (it was cinders back in those days). We knew what was next. We were going to do 440-yard intervals (there were few 400-meter tracks in the US back then) until he decided we’d had enough. There was never any discussion of goal times we should be aiming for—only that we should “run faster.”

Everything about the workout was entirely by the seat of his pants. We never knew how much recovery we’d get between the fast intervals. It could be a few seconds to a couple of minutes. We just stood bent over with hands on knees breathing heavily after each one as he told us how slow we were. Then he’d say, “line up” and we’d do it again. We may do 10 x 440, or 15 x 440, or 20 of them. We never knew in advance how many. When he got tired of blowing the whistle we were done. The only other thing that seemed to affect that decision was our reaction to the workout. But in a weird sort of way. When runners started throwing up we knew the end was in sight. That’s why I called it “intervals ‘til you puke.” I was often one of the pukers.

The amazing thing back then was that we’d often do this workout five days a week (no one trained on the weekends in the 1960s—at least no one I knew). Somehow, at age 20, I was able to bounce back day after day for this. And on top of that I crammed in late-night college classwork and led a life full of other stuff common to twentysomethings. There was little time for sleep. And yet I would do this workout day after day with no sign of performance loss. Now one such day of intervals ‘til you puke would leave me knackered for several days. There’s no way I could do that again, day after day.

Why not? Well, despite getting little sleep for days at a time I, like all the other young guys (there was no women’s track and field then) on the team, had youth on our side. That largely came down to the endocrine system where anabolic (“tissue-building”) hormones were aplenty. That’s such naturally occurring stuff as erythropoietin (EPO), steroids, human growth hormone, testosterone, and more. I, like the others, had an abundance of such hormones at that young age. But as I got older my hormone production plummeted, as is common in all aging humans. It’s just life.

So why would sleeping more as we get older have an impact on hormones and performance? It’s because that after tearing down tissues with hard workouts, rebuilding by means of such hormones is necessary. And they are most available to the body during slumber. That’s why I usually had to push my clients to sleep more.

Most of them had to change their daily patterns in some way to fit in more bedtime. The first thing that had to go was the alarm clock. For serious athletes having sleep artificially shortened by an alarm is one of the worst things they can do. Awaking should be a natural occurrence, not an artificial one. This meant that the athletes I coached would have to change their lifestyles some how. It wasn’t just going to bed earlier. That’s a given. It meant something in their lives had to go. That had to be their decision, not mine. It might have come down to cutting out late evening TV shows. Or reducing voluntary community responsibilities. Or something else. It’s not an easy decision to make, but it’s necessary especially for the older athlete with high performance goals. The more important the goal, the more important this lifestyle change is.

We have many ways of monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of sleep these days. I’ll touch on a few of those in Part 2 of this topic. Soon—I hope.