don't hold back, mike.  tell us how your really Friel.

Thinking ahead to the summer here.  I'm going to France for two weeks last week of June to first week of July.  I'll be completely off the bike during that time but don't want to lose all my fitness.  I'm planning to do some running while there - any advice about how best to incorporate running to complement cycling fitness?

I'm hoping to do Capital Region when I get back, but I'm worried that I'm gonna be a sluggish mess after two weeks off.

rent a bike!

Take an airline other than Delta and you bike will probably fly free.

Tito two weeks isn't that much to worry about, especially if you've got a lot of intensity beforehand.  It may take a week or so to open up when you get back but I wouldn't sweat it.

Let me take a stab at answering the question here...2 weeks in France. No bike. How best to make sure it all doesn't go to waste.

You're not going to be without bike long enough to worry too much about any "de-training" effect. Although when you get closer to 3 weeks I think you do have to consider that problem. I would definitely take Jules' advice and schedule your training so that week 1 of your stay in France is effectively an off or recovery week. So lots of volume and intensity leading up to your trip.

Then, use the time away from the bike to do things we probably all should do more of. Stretching, core exercises, like ab work, push-ups etc.

Running can be incorporated to keep the engine moving, but be careful. You don't want to get a running injury because your body isn't used to that kind of effort. Running is hard on the joints, for one. I wouldn't run more than 2 or 3 times in one of those weeks and they should be of easy, shorter efforts. No 10 mile runs, okay? 20-40 minutes max.

Also consider getting some compression stockings for your 6+ hour plane trip. Or at least make sure you are up and about during the flight. You want to avoid blood clots in your legs.

The biggest things you will deal with, potentially, upon your return is jet-lag, and possibly general body tightness that will cause your bike to feel totally wrong. You want to make sure you have time enough to work through both of those issues. Give yourself enough time to have at least one easy short 60-90 minute spin and one easy endurance ride 2-4 hours, before you jump back into intensity and/or a race.

i did a 5k on saturday after not running since last year (literally...i always ride my bike or don't bother doing anything).  terrible idea.  my legs are broken.  i limp when i walk because my right calf muscle has apparently been replaced with a large chunk of silicon.  on the bike, i can't get out of the little ring. 

Let's not talk about high school (or at least give it a separate thread).

If your  wife wants to take a nap, it's time to go find a pub and meet the locals!

Troquet is more appropriate for us froggies.

@Mark. "RN Marc" here with a response. The primary concern with "over-hydration" relates to your electrolyte balance. You probably heard a few years ago, a lot of amateur marathon runners were drinking way more plain water than they needed to and became "hyponatremic" and suffered serious consequences. They essentially diluted their blood so much that things started to go seriously wrong for them.

Symptoms of hyponatremia, from less to more severe include: nausea, malaise, lethargy, decreased level of consciousness, headach, seizures.

If you came to the ER c/o urinary frequency, I might ask you about diabetes, but since you don't appear to have any other complaints, I'd say you are probably well hydrated, but not over hydrated. A visit to your doctor or a clinic and a "venous blood gas" test can give you more specifics on how your levels are, if you are concerned.

Let's get one thing straight. I have a PhD, not an MD and although we do have some blood in the lab, it comes from mice, not humans, and goes straight into a test tube.

As for hydration, I have milk on my cereal and 1.5 cups of coffee for breakfast (maybe 16oz). I have green tea with lunch (maybe 12-16 oz) and a large glass of something (too often beer) for dinner (another 16-24 oz). There might be another 0.5-1 L during the day (whoops, I switched to metric).

If you are peeing 'quite often', then I would say that you don't need to drink so much. At your age, you should certainly be able to get through the night. But I doubt that you are in danger of hyponatremia (ok, lets break that down: 'hypo' means too little, Na is the abbreviation for sodium from the latin natrium, 'ia' is an ending that indicates some kind of malady. My favorite is neuralgia, meaning pain in the nerves. When I hear a diagnosis like that, I understand why I could never be an MD).

 

7L a day is a ton of fluid dude, but hey; if Ryan can fly straight into the top 10 in the Cat 3 field at Dragons on a diet of beef jerkey and pigs feet soaked in scotch, I'm not sure why you can't drink all the H20 you want...

For a 120km race like Hunter mtn, how much / what kind of warming up do you recommend? I want to balance burning matches pre- race vs. being too cold/slow on the first uphill....

Thanks

Floris Backer van Ommeren said:

For a 120km race like Hunter mtn, how much / what kind of warming up do you recommend? I want to balance burning matches pre- race vs. being too cold/slow on the first uphill.... Thanks

@Floris the rule of thumb is the shorter the race, the longer (and hotter) the warmup.  I think you can roll around for 15-20 minutes and be fine.  I don't think you need to burn any matches beforehand.  If you want to throw a 3 or 5 minute low tempo effort in there it won't cost you anything tangible in the race.

Yep. And the rolling around is as much for equipment shake-out than any kind of real warm up.

Double cross posted...


Okay folks, seeing as how folks are either "the date doesn't matter" or I could do it on the 18th, but not the 19th, lets change the date of the crit racing workshop to Saturday May 18th. Jersey side of the GWB at 9am.

Scroll up on this thread to read more about what I have planned, but I want to encourage riders to come out, even if they don't think they will ever race a crit. We're going to be working on a lot of bike handling basics, drilling tough corners over and over and over again. There will be a short intramural crit at the end of the session for bragging rights and hopefully some Ride Brooklyn gift cards.

For those of you who have come to my crit workshop in the past, I promise a couple of new drills that should spice things up, including my super-mini criterium of death (It's going to be sort of like the bike version of those circus motorcycle globes of death).

Can I get a general head-count of who thinks they will come?

I have a question about FTP that I am sure is going to open a can of worms. Basically, if during a training block you manage to hit a 20-min power number (not during a race) that is markedly above your last field test, does the new number become your FTP (minus the requisite 5% of course) for the next block? I am leaning towards a yes on this one because, after all, the number is supposed to be based on your max effort for a specific 20-min period, and I know now that I have a higher maximum.

No.
Simply, in order to use the 20min - 5% protocol, you need to exhaust your anaerobic stores with say a 5 min all out effort before the 20 min effort. 5-10 min in between is permitted as recovery from the 5 min effort to the 20 min one.

If however, you do a 20 min effort and then another 20 min effort - chances are the first will be higher than the second and the second will come close to your FTP as you've used up your anaerobic stores.

Another thing to do is a Monod Test - so, do a 5 min max effort. Use it and your 20 min number here: http://www.cyclingpowerlab.com/MonodCriticalPower.aspx

The higher your 5 min in comparison to your 20 min, your FTP will drop more. Play with numbers, its fun.

thanks eric.  so the pre 5-min all-out effort is key.  got it.

using the site and plugging in my observed 1m (580w), 5m (340w)  and 20m (291w) power outputs, the predicted 60m effort, which i presume is what we'd class as FTP, is 281w.  that is 5w above the 276w that i get by subtracting 5% from my originally observed 20m effort.  however, the calculated CP value is 275w -- nearly exactly the same as the 5% calculation.  so in terms of calculating training zones, should i base off of the calculated CP value or the predicted 60m value?  i guess it's only 6w, so perhaps barely matters. 

Sorry for all the questions!

Mark-

The 5 min number you use needs to be from within a day or so of your 20 min number.
If your PM is 2% accurate on 275w, that gives you 5w. No?

I wouldn't worry too much over 5w.

I definitely wouldn't sweat 5 watts. In fact, I generally work within a 20-ish watt range for my zones. If I can do the higher end of my zone, with the same perceived rate of exertion, I know I'm on a good day...

thanks fellas.

How do I isolate power efforts for say  5 minute 10 minute 20 minute on Strava?  When using the Garmin connect software it had a window that let you plug in best power time frame....I really want to see my 10 and 20 minute max power after a hard ride or race...