As a reminder perhaps to even the more seasoned cyclists amongst you, as as espoused by Joel Friel of Trainingpeaks, there are only three things that you need to improve as part of your preparation for endurance events. These are (1) increasing your aerobic capacity, (2) raising your lactate threshold (otherwise called anaerobic threshold) and (3) improving your Efficiency and Effectiveness, or as we call it, your Economy.
Whatever you do leading up to your events ride in terms of training and preparation, you need to be focused on these three things.
You may have heard the term, or be training to “functional threshold power", so shouldn’t that be the focus ?”, well, that is an output of your training, you need to focus on increasing your aerobic capacity and lactate threshold, only then will sustained power, and otherwise called functional threshold power increase as a result.
Aerobic Capacity
Explaining in a little more detail, aerobic capacity, is how well your body uses the volume of oxygen in each breath you take to create energy in your muscles, (for the technical minded, measured using your VO2Max), and the higher the better.
The average sedentary male has a VO2max of about 35 to 40 millilitres per kilogram of bodyweight per minute. For a women the range is slightly lower at about 30 to 35. So for an untrained male weighing 75KG, they can use 3 litres of oxygen per minute.
With a trained, middle age cyclist, their VO2max could be 65 millilitres per kilogram of bodyweight per minute….let’s say they are are also 75KG so we can compare like for like, we are now talking about nearly 5 litres per minute…so you can get an idea of how much more power you can generate with this extra 40% of energy....it’s a bit like the size of your car engine.
If you want to do a quick and dirty approximation, divide your maximum heart rate by your resting heart rate, then multiple this number by 15. It is likely to be quite a bit off, but can be remarkably close for others.
Lactate Threshold
The second consideration is how to improve your lactate threshold (generally measured by the highest level of activity you can sustain for one hour).
As you work your muscles produce a by-product inside the cells called lactic acid, and as the intensity increases this lactic acid seeps into your bloodstream, releasing hydrogen ions called lactate. Now lactate, rather than being bad is beneficial as it is used to create more energy, however at some point the amount of hydrogen ions gets too much to be used and creates an acid that feels to you like your legs are burning, together with laboured breathing as your body is desperate to exhale the excess hydrogen.
This is referred to as entering the “red zone”, or redlining, and to complete the analogy, we only have a finite number of matches, so if we start burning them unnecessarily through periods of over exertion, such as attacking the nasty hills to keep up with the group, we could end up burning out and collapsing with exhaustion.
However, if you can raise the threshold of this build up before it becomes an inhibitor, then you will be able to both generate more power when you want, eg to win a sprint or attack a hill or produce the same power, but for much longer periods of time…this is exactly what we want for endurance rides…..we want to avoid overloading our body with hydrogen ions,
There are various tests you can do yourself on the bike to work out your lactate threshold, such as going flat out for 20 minutes and measuring your maximum heart rate and/or your average power over the period, and in the case of power multiply it by 0.95 and you have your FTP. Once you have your thresholds you can tune your training such that you are riding at levels of intensity that will be beneficial to increase you aerobic capacity and lactate threshold, but avoiding overtraining through ignorance of what are our limits. This should be part of your training plan.
If you’d like to talk more about V02Max and Anaerobic Thresholds then I’d be happy to take that offline, after all it is important that you understand these principles to ensure that you avoid what we call “doing junk miles” during your training, or overtraining and getting injured or demotivated.
So to the third consideration, and the topic of this series of blogs.
Economy
Your Economy, ie getting the best out of your fitness, can be improved by tweaking a few techniques to give you the maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
The reason for looking into this is that for those of you following training plans, these programmes are designed to improve your VO2Max and your lactate thresholds, but improving Economy often gets overlooked…..you may be getting fitter, but if you are not getting efficient and effective as you could be, you will waste lots of energy.
If you can also take on board some of the Economy considerations we will discuss in this series of blogs, then you will start to use your fitness to much better effect.
I do realise that some of you are seasoned cyclists, and I do not intend to try to teach you to suck eggs but please take this as some additional points to consider when you are doing endurance rides....by improving your techniques by just a small margin, you will see a huge difference in how you feel and will be key to lowering how frazzled you will feel after each event....and of course how well you are prepared for the next.
In this series there are four techniques I want to discuss.
- The first is pedalling efficiency, ie how to get the best out of each pedal stroke and make the whole process smoother. You will turn the cranks somewhere in the region of two hundred and seventy-five thousand pedal rotations, make them count ! If you are able to improve just slightly how you pedal you will find that your power and efficiency will increase dramatically and of course as an added benefit, reduce the chance of you picking up an injury due to overworked hips, knees and ankles.
- We will then talk about the use of gears and how anticipating the right gear at the right time will help you keep you momentum, and avoid worse case scenarios such as falling off the bike because you are in the wrong gear....and yes it happens a lot when you get to an unexpected steep hill.
- We will then talk about how to ride in a group, making sure you understand the benefits of working together to overcome the main limiter for every cyclist, ie the air around us ; we will also talk a little about keeping yourself and other safe when riding in a group, how to avoid common and avoidable mistakes that could end up with you and others hitting the tarmac.
- Finally we will talk about managing the hills. Not just going up but also how to get down them safely.
So look out fo the next blog where I will discuss how to improve your pedalling technique.
Until then, safe cycling !
So look out fo the next blog where I will discuss how to improve your pedalling technique.
Until then, safe cycling !
So look out fo the next blog where I will discuss how to improve your pedalling technique.
Until then, safe cycling !