I Love Bicycling

I Love Bicycling is a website that is geared towards cycling for beginners with road cycling tips, training articles, nutrition tips, weight loss, how to’s and bike repair articles.

Tips for Biking in the Heat

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Summer can bring great riding weather, but sometimes it goes overboard and brings excessive heat as well as humidity which can bring your riding to a grinding halt.

The biggest thing to heat is how used to it you are, or acclimated.  Remember in the early spring when 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6°C) used to feel like balmy shorts and jersey weather? And now, during summer, you practically want a jacket and gloves for the same temperature. Your body becomes adapted to heat over time but if you try and ride in excessive heat before your body is ready for it you can pay dearly.

Whether you are adapted to it or not, you need to take the necessary steps to stay hydrated and cool before, during, and after your ride.  Doing so will not only keep you out of the hospital but also make your rides in the heat more enjoyable.

Biking in the Heat

Biking in the Heat

Acclimating

Getting used to riding in the heat is the first step to being able to ride comfortably and efficiently when the mercury goes up. Hopefully the temperature eases its way up but if it doesn’t, try avoiding the heat of the day and ride in the early morning before it warms up too much. If you are traveling someplace where it is considerably warmer or if you see in the weather forecast that the temperature is going to be hot, overdress on your rides now.  Wear an extra jacket or vest to add a few degrees to your body. Don’t go overboard but if you do, you can simply take it off and cool down. This is an easy way to prepare for riding in the heat without yet having the heat around to ride in.

Hydrating

Whether it is cold or warm you should always hydrate properly. When it’s cold your body won’t feel as inclined to drink as it is to eat but you should make sure to drink enough. When it gets warm those tendencies switch. You need to drink more than just water as your body needs electrolytes to continue functioning at the same level. Salt, or sodium, along with potassium, magnesium, and calcium will help your body to continue muscle function as well as other life essentials. Electrolytes allow your cells to absorb the nutrients they need (in short). Depending upon how hot it is and how hard you are riding, you should roughly be aiming to drink one 24oz. bottle each hour.  This should be primarily sports drink mix but can be supplemented with water.

Prior to riding in the heat you need to make sure you are hydrated going into the hot ride. Focus on drinking enough water and carry around a water bottle throughout your day and make a mental note to drink to thirst. This combined with having enough salt in your meals will help your body to be fully hydrated going into your ride. Half an hour or so before your ride you can start drinking small amounts of your sports drink mix. Drinking it before this is not necessary unless it is an electrolyte only drink that only contains electrolytes and no sugar or carbohydrates. Save them for the ride as your body will need and burn them then.

Following a ride you still need to make sure you hydrate. Having a super sugary drink such as soda or a strong sports drink can make your stomach upset so focus on water with electrolytes and some sugar and carbohydrates. A post workout recovery drink can be a good option which combines protein and other building blocks to help you recover from your ride.

Some good food options to eat during the heat are those that are simple and easy to digest. You will want to go lighter on the protein as well as fat as they are harder to digest. Some foods like homemade rice cakes give a good balance of water in the food itself so your stomach doesn’t need to pull water from elsewhere in your body to digest. At rest stops, foods like watermelon and cantaloupe give a big punch of water so stock up on these if they’re available.

Staying Cool

Along with drinking enough during your ride you will want to make sure you stay cool as well. This starts with wearing a jersey that is made of a light material that is also light in color. Having a lighter jersey will allow air to more easily pass through as well as to more quickly absorb and evaporate sweat from your skin which is how your body keeps cool. Having a lighter color jersey will keep you much cooler as it will absorb less of the sun’s rays by reflecting much more of its energy. Some riders find that unzipping their jersey all the way helps to get more air across their chest thus keeping them cooler. This can be true if you have a hot jersey but a lot of warm weather jerseys are designed to stay zipped up to wick sweat and keep you cool.

Some riders, particularly racers, in the heat will put ice socks on the back of their neck in their jersey. This may feel good but it actually does more harm than good as the extreme cold on the skin sends a shock to your body causing it to send blood to the core instead of to the skin where it can dissipate heat. The best way to stay cool is to continually squirt water on your head, the back of your neck, and shoulders as this will help to dissipate heat more effectively.

Riding in extreme heat can be dangerous so if it’s too hot, simply don’t ride. But if it’s not crazy hot and you are ready for it, biking in the heat can give you more days of good weather riding. Prepare ahead of time and make sure you bring enough water as well as know where your stopping points are mid-ride as well as what your options are if you need to bail out half-way through. Riding in the heat can also help to raise your VO2 max as well as help you shed some extra weight. Stay safe and stay smart and you can come to enjoy riding in the heat!

What Muscles Do You Use When Cycling?

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With cycling’s focus on aerobic capacity, metabolic capabilities, and ability to suffer, it can be easy to forget that all of these important aspects are what drive your muscles that power the bike. Boiled down, that is all pedaling a bike is – recruiting your body to produce energy to move muscles to move the bike forward. What muscles do you you use when cycling though? And in which part of the pedal stroke do you use each one? Read on and you’ll know.

what muscles do you use when cycling

What Muscles Do You Use When Cycling?

The short answer is a lot. Many of your leg muscles drive the pedals, but you also use core muscles to push those legs muscles off of and hold you semi-upright on the bike (for the sake of this article, hip flexors are part of your core). You use your arms in a supporting role. But mostly, it is your legs that do the work. The other muscles only need enough conditioning and strengthening to allow your legs to do their work without distraction. Do not be fooled; enough conditioning and strengthening for core and arms is more than just riding.

The Cyclist’s Main Attraction

Looking at a group of cyclists standing around, their most prominent feature is their calves – the gastrocnemius. They are chiseled and defined and often quite a bit larger than the average person’s calves. What role do they play in the pedal stroke and power production? The answer is that they only transmit the force of power produced in the quadraceps for most of pedal stroke.

In the dead spot of the pedal stroke, from six to nine o’clock, the calves provide a little force to get over the top of the pedal stroke. The front side of the lower leg, the tibialis anterior, for a moment becomes a star in that six to nine o’clock range when it is the only muscle working to get that leg over the dead spot.

The lower leg can be impressive in appearance, but in reality, it provides little of the force from a cyclist’s legs. The size and shape is not an indicator of a rider’s strength. At a given level, most of those factors are genetic. Calves will tell you nothing of a rider’s ability. No need to be intimidated by chiseled calves.

The Meat and Potatoes

Between the knees and the hips is the seat of a cyclist’s power. That seat of power is most productive on the down stroke of the pedal stroke – from twelve to six o’clock. This is when your knee is extending and larger muscles put their effort into the pedals. This is different from six to twelve o’clock, when smaller muscles bring the pedals back up and around, providing little else other than reloading the crank for another go-around.

The muscles that keep you moving (in order of power produced) are the quadraceps at the front of your thighs, gluteals in your behind and hamstrings at the backs of your thighs. The quadraceps and gluteals extend your knee from its most bent to about four o’clock. Once the pedals get there, hamstrings take of the bulk of the workload bringing your pedals back towards six o’clock.

Implications for Your Pedal Stroke

Lots of people say you should have a round pedal stroke. Knowing what you know now of the muscles involved, you know that it is impossible to produce even power throughout the pedal stroke from one leg. The muscles you recruit between six and twelve o’clock are not powerful enough to make an impact on overall force. Almost all of your forward motion on a bicycle comes from pressing down on the pedals.

This is different from having a smooth pedal stroke, which is probably what most people mean but have not articulated properly. Smoothly transitioning from each phase of the pedal stroke will avoid jerky motions and add to efficiency. Pro cyclists look like they have round pedal strokes, but that comes from smoothness and hours upon hours of perfecting muscle memory. Guaranteed they are producing far more power in the front end of their pedaling.

Follow the Pain

Now that you know what muscles you use when cycling, you can use that to understand proper seat height and use it to help diagnose knee pain. Hamstrings pull on the knee and quadraceps push on the knee. If the outside or back of your knee hurts, it could be the hamstrings pulling too much on your knee. Try lowering your saddle to lessen the strain on your hamstrings. If your knee hurts on the inside or front, your quadraceps are pushing on your knee too much. Try raising your saddle to lessen the strain on your quadraceps.

Change your seat height in small increments. Big changes pull other variables into the mix and are harder to get used to.

Muscles Make the Pedals Go Around

Having a well-rounded understanding of “what muscles do you use when cycling” can help you focus on a better pedal stroke, strengthen comparatively weak muscles and diagnose problems. A little foundational knowledge can make you a better cyclist because you know what your body is doing and how it makes your bike go.

Ride All Year Round (Yes, even in the rain)

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The group ride starts at 8:00am but when you open your eyes in the morning it’s dark, cold and raining outside.  The snooze button is a few feet from your head but that’s how far away you were from first place at last season’s key race.  That’s why you pull yourself out of bed, make your coffee extra hot and get out in the rain to ride.  Riding in the rain doesn’t have to be miserable, some of the best cycling is during the winter on the West Coast, also known as the Wet Coast for all the rain, and you don’t want to miss any training days this year.  Here are a few tips for making riding in the rain a little more ‘fun’ so that you can ride all year round.

Safety First

The most important thing is to check your brakes.  Rain will exaggerate the negative wear of brake pads, meaning if the pads are worn down and too far away from the rim of the tires, the braking reaction will be slower and less powerful.

Stopping control should not be compromised due to poor bike maintenance.

If you are going to be riding in the rain often you will need to replace your brake pads more often.  Make sure that as your brake pads wear down you use your micro adjust on your cable to bring the pads in closer to the rim for optimal stopping action.  Your rear brake pads should wear faster than the front so keep an eye on what is behind.  Another thing to check is that there is an equal distance between right and left brake pad for simultaneous contact on the rim while braking.

Front and Rear Fenders

A lot of people when they start riding use only a rear fender for the rain (and to keep their friends riding behind them), but totally miss out on the benefits of a front fender.  A rear fender is obvious to keep your back from getting the rooster tail spray and also helps the rain and mud the group that you’re pulling behind you (remember you’re training so you want to be in the front).  However, what works for you might not work for the rider behind you.  How long should your rear fender be?

Your rear fender should be as close to the ground as possible, try 4 inches from the pavement.

When buying fenders make sure they will fit your tire size.  A skinny road tire fender will not suit a wider cyclocross or recreation road bike tire.  Buy your fenders as long as possible, even then you might have to do your own modification to be suitable for your next rainy day group ride.  Sometimes you can buy fender compatible extenders that you easily attach to reach the 4 inch rule.  Other times, you can take an old water bottle, cut it in half, punch out two holes and zap strap it to the end of your fender.  You can make this attachment as wide and sweeping as you want either to make more friends or add more resistance to your ride.

The same principles apply to your front fender.  The front fender does miracles for delaying the wet penetration of road spray into your booties. The day after I got a front fender I came home after my rainy day ride and was surprised that I could actually feel my feet touch the floor when I took them out of my shoes!

Protect Your Head, Hands and Feet

You lose the most heat through your head so a rain hat with a brim not only keeps the water off your glasses, but also traps in some heat – unless it is made out of cotton, which soaks up the rain and stays cool.  Choose a synthetic, quick-dry hat or better yet, a brimmed fleece cycling beanie that fits under your helmet and cuddles your ears to protect them from the cut of the wind.

The point to keeping your hands and feet warm is solely purposed for your riding comfort and greatly increases your happiness factor.  If your hands or feet go numb it doesn’t matter how many times you stop for coffee, you will hate riding in the rain.  Choose wool socks, maybe even two pairs!  Even if they get wet they will stay warm.  Buy a good pair of shoe covers, wind-proof is NOT rain-proof.  A silicone or rubber pair will protect against the rain but have no additional thermal properties.  A pair that is fleece lined and wind-proof will delay the wetness but can have enough of a barrier effect for your wool socks to maintain a warm enough temperature (and, if you’ve made it this far your front fender will help too!).

Wind-proof is NOT rainproof.

Use the double glove technique: a thin inner wool layer with a bulky winter snow glove on top. The lobster claw gloves came from the idea to have multiple fingers together in order to share body heat, but they don’t work for everyone because they feel different when shifting and braking.  The outer glove layer needs to be a water-proof layer while the inner glove, as the insulated layer, than can be thicker or thinner depending on what weather you are expecting.

Layer-Up!

Your base layer should not be a base layer cycling shirt but a thick layer of embrocation cream.  This stuff is incredibly popular for Belgian cyclocross races and during the wet Spring Classics.  At the moment of application the lotion doesn’t seem to do anything but once rain or wind reach the cream it gives off a delightful glow of warmth on your skin.  If on a rainy day ride you get stopped by a train crossing, the emobrocation layer keeps you from shivering, instead you wait at the railway crossing feeling tingly and warm!  Just remember to put your chamois cream on first, then embrocation, and wash your hands after so you don’t burn your eyes from touching your face.

Apply chamois cream BEFORE applying embrocation lotion.

The next layer is a merino long-sleeve undershirt, short-sleeved jersey and water repellent rain jacket.  If you get too warm on the ride and take off the rain jacket the merino wool can get wet while staying warm.  Finish layering with a jersey and a waterproof-breathable jacket and get out riding in the rain!

How To Get The Best Morning Ride In

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A great way to start your day is with a morning ride. It could change your perspective for the rest of the day and you will feel great while everyone else is slowly waking up at their jobs.

morning ride

Benefits of the Morning Ride

Starting your day with exercise is a great practice. The easiest reason is that you get your ride in before you start the rest of your day. There will not be anything to sidetrack you from your ride later in the day: low energy, extra work, lack of motivation, enticing last minute plans. Life throws all sorts of roadblocks at you as your day progresses. It benefits you to get a jump on the day and avoid the roadblocks altogether.

Waking up early to exercise helps you sleep at night. Early morning exercise, when there is a rush of hormones from waking, lowers blood pressure. The lower blood pressure carries throughout the day, in turn resulting in better sleep (lower blood pressure and better sleep are linked). Once you get this cycle going, you will feel great.

Getting out before rush hour is the easiest way to have the roads mostly to yourself. Most people are still sleeping or getting ready for their day while you are in the thick of yours, doing something immensely enjoyable.

You will benefit longer from the release of hormones related to exercise. The “runner’s high” feeling will jump start your day. Even after the hormones have subsided, your mind will already be used to the good feelings that started your day, continuing on that trajectory. This, along with knowing that you are more in shape already is a great way to start a day.

Plan Ahead

Riding first thing requires planning. You have to have everything ready to go so you can maximize your time on the bike and minimize your time searching in the dark for everything you need while trying to stay quiet so you don’t wake anyone else up.

Lay Out Your Gear

Do this the night before you ride. You do not want to scramble in the dark, post sleep haze and forget something. Put all of the riding clothes you think you might need in one place. The bathroom is convenient so you can do your business, get dressed and brush your teeth all in one fell swoop. Have your food ready to go. Bottles should be full and on the bike. Make sure your bike is dialed and functioning perfectly with a fully charged light if you’re leaving in the dark.

Food

Figure out what you can stomach quickly and comfortably. On rides of an hour or less, you probably do not need anything unless your ride will be very intense. Another possibility is to prepare food that you can bring on the ride and eat it during the beginning of the ride. Some people need coffee to wake up. If that is the case, then have some coffee ready to go. An even better plan is to ween yourself off of coffee so your body can wake up naturally, removing another step in your wake up routine.

If one of your goals is to lose weight, then exercising before eating is most effective. This study shows that even with a terrible diet, participants gained no weight when they fasted before exercise. The other two groups gained significant weight and developed insulin resistance.

If you are looking to boost performance in your ride as opposed to losing weight, then eating is best. You will get the most out of each pedal stroke.

Sleep!

Ensure that you get enough sleep the night before. It is not worth compromising a good night’s sleep to get up early and ride. You will not feel great and it may dissuade you from trying more morning rides. A good tip to ensure good sleep is to turn off electronics about an hour before bed. The blue wavelength that their screens emit cause an alert state in the brain by suppressing melatonin production, a hormone that induces sleep.

Wake Up!

People have different amounts of time they need between waking up and being functional humans. Some can jump out of bed and straight onto the bike. Others need lots of time. Figure out what works for you so you can be fully awake and pedal effectively. You want to feel good on the bike so you can get used to getting the morning ride in.

Standardize Routes

Settle on a route before going to bed. The routes you choose should be familiar; limited duration morning rides are generally not for exploring. You should also know how long you will be out on each one. If you have an hour to ride on a given morning, you take your hour long route. An additional thought is to have a route that has a few escape paths in case you have a flat or other mechanical. It will allow you to fix the mechanical and still get to your first morning destination on time.

Morning Rides are the Best

There are a few challenges to getting out for a morning ride, but they are easy to overcome. A little planning and preparation goes a long way to starting a successful morning ride routine. Once you get the ball rolling it becomes easy, sometimes even necessary when your body is accustomed to the the morning ride.

Training With Power

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One of the biggest revolutions in cycling training has been the introduction of the power meter as a training tool. It has rapidly thrown cycling into the highly technical world of sports science, and the benefits can be enormous – Chris Froome’s win in the 2013 Tour de France was aided greatly by Team Sky’s extensive use of power meters in both their training and racing plans. So what is power training, and more importantly, can it benefit you?

Training With Power

What is Power?

Everyone has heard of power, but unless you have a particularly good memory of high school physics, you may not be familiar with what it means in a technical sense. Power is defined as the rate of work; how much ‘work’ is done in a certain interval of time. Work is defined as a force applied over a distance. So power is essentially a measure of how hard you can push on the pedals (the force) and for how long (time). The harder you can push, and the longer you can maintain a certain level of ‘push’, the faster you go! And going faster is what bike racing is all about.

Why Should I Use it?Training With Power

Now, you might be saying to yourself ‘OK, that’s nice. So what?’ Well, the ‘so what’ is that cyclists can use power to train and race much more effectively. Power is ultimately a measure of how hard you are working, and by using a power meter on your bike, you can more precisely monitor your effort. Other ways of monitoring effort do exist – rate of perceived exertion (a subjective assessment of how hard you feel you are working) and heart rate are the two most common methods, but neither comes close to the precision you get from a power meter.

This precision can be extremely beneficial to cyclists. By using a power meter on a climb, for example, you can ride the entire climb at precisely your optimal power output – never going too hard and pushing yourself into the ‘red zone’, but also not being too conservative and leaving too much in the tank at the end. You can also train more effectively, doing intervals at an exact percentage of your maximum output, or riding a tempo ride right at your lactate threshold to name a few possible applications.

How to Integrate Power into your Training

Hopefully you’re convinced that using a power meter can make you a better cyclist. The obvious question is how? First things first, you need a power meter. Debating the merits of the many options available on the market will be the subject of another article, but in short – invest in a good one. You might be tempted by the low cost of some models, but these are no where near as accurate as the better ones, and accuracy is the whole point of using a power meter. The cheapest worthwhile option I know of is the Stages Power meter, which retails for $700.

Training With PowerAfter you have your new power meter ready to go on your bike, the next step is to do some baseline tests to determine your power profile. Ideally, you will want to determine the maximum power you can produce for 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and 30+ minutes (this last one is referred to a Functional Threshold Power). All-out 5 second effort is easy enough, and even a 1 minute maximum effort isn’t too daunting. The 5 minute and 30 minute efforts take a bit more planning to execute properly, but when you know all these numbers you will have a much better idea of your strengths and weaknesses as a rider. There are tables available online that provide approximate equivalent levels of power for each duration. If your values for 5 second and 1 minute power rate higher than your 5 minute and 30 min values, then you know you are relatively weaker aerobically, and can emphasize aerobic training.

Power meters also help you to gauge efforts better. If, for example, you know that your FTP is 300 Watts (watts are the standard unit of power), then you know that in a time trial that will take you about 45 minutes to complete, you shouldn’t be riding above 300 Watts at any time. Riding with the most even power output over the course of your effort will give you the best results.

It is impossible to cover every aspect of power training in a single article – there are entire books written about it. If you are an aspiring racer, or even just someone who loves to track progress, a power meter will be your best friend. Now that you are familiar with the basics, you can start your journey into training with power!

5 Of The Best Cycling Power Meters

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cycling power meters

What is a Cycling Power Meter?

Cycling power meters have been a common tool used to gauge training amongst professional cyclists for years, but really only within the last decade have they become affordable for the everyday cycling enthusiast. So what exactly is a power meter? Cycling power meters are strain gauges that measure the amount of displacement of an object, say your crank, which is imputed into an equation that gives you the amount  of work done which when combined with time gives you power measured in joules/second or watts. This work energy expressed in watts determines how much power a rider produces at any given second within a ride.

Why are Power Meters Good to Ride With?

The benefit of training with a power meter is that it can show how much power the rider is putting down to help track progress. It is a better measurement than heart rate to track training. Heart rate fluctuates a lot, whereas power is always consistent, but they are really best used together. Cycling power meters can help you also ride a much smoother pace throughout an entire ride, climb, or interval. You can pick a number and stick to it, whereas heart rate will creep up throughout the ride, hill, or interval. Cycling power meters are such a great training tool; soon you can expect to see them coming standard on bikes straight from the manufacture. Below is a list of 5 of the best cycling power meters and what makes them different.

5 of the Best Cycling Power Meters

PowerTap

PowerTap C1 Chainrings - Primary

PowerTap is one of the only companies that offer three positions for power to be read. Originally, PowerTap sold the rear hub power meter and now they offer chainrings and pedals to read power. All three are useful in their own way. The rear wheel is great because you can transfer it from bike to bike easily, but when race day comes, the race wheels replace the power meter.

SRM

SRM cycling power meters are certainly the most common amongst top professionals. The SRM is crank based and has its own head unit compared to most other brands that rely on Garmin head units. SRM claims to have a margin of error of less than 1%. SRM is the original power mete and focus on quality; the price is certainly reflective of that.

Stages

Stages GXP 3up

Stages cycling power meters are in the left crank arm, and dependent on what drivetrain a rider is using. For instance, if a rider uses Shimano Ultegra and purchases a Stages, they would receive an Ultegra left crank arm to replace their original one. The only difference is that there would be a small black piece attached to the inside of the crank arm. Stages is certainly one of the more affordable power meters out there, and installation and setup is a breeze.

Pioneer

Pioneer power meters are crank based and have dual strain gauges to measure both left and ride side power. Pioneer offers complete cranksets and installation kits for user supplied cranks, i.e. you already have a DURA-ACE crankset and don’t want to buy another.

Garmin Vector

Vector™ 1

Garmin Vector pedal pods fit on your crank, taking only 15 minutes to install and calibrate. The pods do left/right pedal analysis, along with a feature called Pedal smoothness, to see where there are soft spots in your pedal stroke. These pedals are run on a simple CR 2032 battery, and the new Vector 2 design makes replacing the batteries much easier.

Cross Training For Cyclists

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With the weather turning cooler, spending less time on the bike might be appealing. There is more adverse weather to deal with, along with waning daylight. Riding indoors on a trainer or rollers is a good way to maintain cycling form despite being a bit on the boring side. Cross training for cyclists on the other hand can keep up some of your fitness while being fun, exciting, and simply different.

cross-training-for-cycling

There are additional benefits to cross training for cycling besides maintaining hard-fought fitness gains you made when the weather was nice and the days were long:

  • Workouts in cross training disciplines can be shorter, while making similar fitness impacts.
  • Cycling is a low impact sport; you need to do other work to boost bone density. Cycling alone can lead to bone mass loss. Many cross training activities have some impact, increasing bone density as your body responds to the training. (this is particularly important for woman)
  • Cross training can be a great mental break. After all of the hours you spend on the bike, sometimes a change is nice, especially if it is going back to an activity you love.
  • Hiding from the bad weather is not always a bad thing. Too many wet and cold rides can take away some love for cycling.

Cross Training for Cycling

There are lots of ways you can spend your time cross training. If you are excited about it and it will keep you fit and moving, go for it. Below are five activities that are common and will have a few of the benefits mentioned above.

Running

The benefits of running when it is cold and the days are short are easy, it takes less time to get a workout in and because you are going slower, there is less wind, thus it’s easier to stay warm. With the impact of each stride, you make your bones stronger. You may see less of the world on the bike, but you can see it in greater detail – it will give you a different perspective of your local training grounds.

Weight TrainingTips For Cross Training For Cycling

Weight training can give you great benefits on the bike by developing both muscular endurance through high repetitions and low weight exercises and neuromuscular explosiveness with high weight maximal exercises. It is very easy to stay warm when you are working out indoors, while benefiting your bone density greatly by putting strain on your skeleton. It might not be the most mentally uplifting activity, but staying focused on the benefits can get you through a winter’s worth of workouts and stronger on the bike.

Other Sports

Was there a sport that you enjoyed before cycling? Now is the time to do it. Lots of sports that are traditionally outdoor sports have some indoor version – soccer, rock climbing, basketball, etc. It can be an enjoyable mental break that will keep you fit and healthy through the cooler days of the year.

Tips For Cross Training For CyclingYoga

Core strength is quite trendy right now. Yoga is an activity that can boost core strength, along with all-around strength and flexibility. It can also be a time to get your mind focused and settle your thoughts unlike many other competitive disciplines.

Skating

The first few times you run after exclusively riding, you will be sore (but your lungs will work great). But there is an activity that does use roughly the same muscles and movement as cycling – skating. If you know how to skate, you can jump right in and show off your fitness immediately. If not, go learn and you will be skating well relatively quickly. There are even skating clubs that offer competition and the group environment that cycling offers during the fair weather. (And if you were wondering which type of skating was being referred to… well all three: skate skiing (traditional cross country skiing in skating form), ice skating, and roller skating which can be a great activity when it’s cold out but not cold enough for snow and ice.)

Do not let the word training fool you; cross training for cycling should be a fun and beneficial distraction through the fall and winter. Find and activity that suits you and enjoy yourself while keeping up your fitness.

How To Ride Long Climbs Faster

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In part two of his climbing series, Travis explains how to ride long climbs. From reaping the rewards of endorphin highs on the top of the hill, to the best pacing strategy, Travis gives us some tips on how to tackle long climbs. If you missed his previous video on gearing and cadence, check it out here.

 

Why Do We Ride Long Climbs

  • Uninterrupted riding
  • Sustaining heart rate
  • Reward of accomplishing something huge!

How To Ride Long Climbs

  • Pace yourself (don’t go too hard in the first five minutes)
  • Vary your position by standing every once in awhile
  • Relax. Relaxing will allow you to breathe properly on the bike

We would like to thank Jody, one of our readers who inspired us to get this video online. Jody just turned 50 and asked us if we had any tips on tackling Mauna Kea, so if you are in the same boat of ambition stay tuned for more videos. Also, check out Joe Friel’s book Cycling Past 50.

 

Why Fall Bike Rides Are Some of The Best of The Year

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It’s that time of year again when the weather cools down, the hours of daylight decrease, and maybe the idea of watching Netflix seems better than getting on a bicycle; however don’t let the conditions fool you.  Fall bike rides can be some of the best of the year!

fall-bike-rides

Gear for Fall Bike Rides

Getting outside for fall bike rides is much easier and more enjoyable when you have the right gear.  Investing in a good pair of gloves, booties (shoe covers) and a riding jacket will help keep you warm and dry.  Having a set of fenders and some lights will allow you to ride when it is wet, or before or after the sun is up.

Goal Setting

Set a goal to ride on one new road each time you get outside.  This will bring out your inner child (because as if wanting to ride your bike a lot doesn’t make you a kid enough) and will allow you to discover more of your surroundings.  It will also open up new routes or hills to incorporate into workouts in the spring.

Fall bike rides can also be the best for goal-setting for the next season.  You have time to leisurely reflect on how the spring and summer unfolded and now you can pedal through fall leaves and decide on which races, events, and rides you want to attack for next year.

Coffee

Plan stops at different bakeries and cafes!  Fall bike riding is the best time of year for the token ‘coffee-shop-rides’.  After ripping around in the cold for an hour or two, nothing feels quite as satisfying as coming inside to a delicious-smelling cafe and sitting down to rest with a hot cup of coffee and a strudel, cinnamon bun or doughnut.  Fall is the time of year to gain back some of the calories burnt off in the summer.  Lots of bike riders put on body weight in the fall; this is the time to rebuild and recover from some epic summer rides, so go enjoy a doughnut or two!

Relax

Don’t worry about keeping a strict schedule.  It can feel very liberating to go for rides without the bike-computer, power meter and heart rate monitor in the fall.  Ride by feel and listen to your body for how hard and far you wish to ride.  Look at your surroundings and take in all the colorful leaves, the crisp smells, and the chill in the air.

Experiment

Fall bike rides are a great time to try new types of riding such as cyclocross, gravel road riding and mountain biking.  All of these have lower average speeds than road cycling and thus you often won’t feel as cold since you don’t have much of a wind chill.

So don’t let the cooler darker days of fall turn you off of bike riding.  Make sure you have some good gloves and lights, and go explore and have fun!

How To Improve Your Fitness Without Training More

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Achieving better fitness with a limited schedule can be difficult. To get stronger within your time constraints, you must be exacting in your methods of both training and recovery. This is the best way to make the most of your time and effort.

How To Improve Your Fitness Without Training More

Riding Hard

There is no sense in riding easy if you have only a few days per week to ride to improve your fitness. Three very hard days on the bike should get you passable fitness to get you through your local group rides. More than three very hard days on the bike could burn you out if you do not get a week of recovery every four weeks or so. A very hard day means blindingly hard, so hard that you probably want to quit, have tunnel vision or maybe even release your bowels in your chamois. If you have never tested this dark, dark place, now is the time to try it.

Specific IntervalsHow To Improve Your Fitness Without Training More

Set out with a plan of specific intervals for your extra hard days. This way you cannot cheat or have the power fall off by the end of the ride, or if you do cheat, you will know it was blatant. High intensity interval training has proven to be quite effective in increasing fitness with short workouts. Remember the last paragraph; you must be prepared to really slay it on the bike to make the most of these workouts. Start with small sessions once or twice a week and build up.

Sleep

Without sleep, all of your hard training, all of the hours you suffered on the bike are for nought. Sleep is when you make your real gains. It is when your body compensates for the training stress you put it through and adapts to the load. It is always incredibly important, but if you are burning the candle at both ends with work, family and other obligations on top of training, quality (and large quantities) of sleep will keep you afloat in all aspects of life and let you make fitness gains.

Nutrition

Again, with the focused approach that is necessary when you are short on hours, your nutrition needs to be completely dialed too. You will not be doing huge volume, so you do not need large quantities of food, but you need to make sure you are getting the highest quality food. Good nutrition will fuel your workouts to the best of your ability along with fueling proper recovery.

When you are pulled in many directions, it is easy to fall into a routine of quick and dirty food. If you want those fitness gains bad enough, you will need to figure out a way to get the best nutrition possible. It will make every pedal stroke that much better and mean that much more in the long run.

Drink lots of water (with electrolytes, not purified water, whether it is distilled or reverse osmosis) to keep your blood viscous and flowing. It will deliver nutrients to your muscles more freely and keep your heart’s work to a minimum.

Cross TrainingHow To Improve Your Fitness Without Training More

With limited time, sometimes a full training ride is difficult to squeeze in. On those days, cross training may be a quick way to maintain fitness that you are trying to hold onto or increase. If you can keep it cycling specific, whether it is in the weight room, skating or nordic skiing, that is great. If you have other activities that fit into your schedule, like running, that is fine too, although it will not have as much of a positive impact on your cycling musculature.

Recover Hard

Recovery should be happening whenever you are not training, although that is probably a stretch when you have a busy life. When you are recovering, do it full on. Get your feet up, keep hydrated, eat well and keep the external stress down. An additional recovery tactic is compression gear. You can wear it when you are at work under your normal work clothes.

Do it Full-on

If your time is limited and you want to make fitness gains, everything you do has to be full-on: your riding, your sleep, your nutrition and your recovery. Make it a routine that works and you will make the most of your time.

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