Degrees of Freedom

Triathlon is a single sport consisting of 3 components: swim, bike, and run. (Some would say long course triathlon has a 4th component - nutrition; and some might say transitions are even another component; anyway, you get the idea...)

Getting better means continually assessing where you are in those 3 components and working on your weaknesses. In my case, my weakness is swimming. I come out of the water mid-pack (I'm slowly moving up) and then start passing people on the bike and then more and more people on the run, which is my relative strength. Sure, I was a lifeguard as a kid, but I quit swim team after like 1 year because I didn't really enjoy it and I wasn't that good at it. However, I continued to play land-based sports because I loved them and was good at them. Now, in my 30s, and wanting to continue some form of sport and competition, I find myself working on getting faster in the pool.

So what is it about swimming that makes it harder to get better, at least for me. There are several reasons:

1) Water is orders of magnitude more resistant than air - Slicing through the air at 20+ mph requires a certain amount of energy applied to forward motion (in our case, it's the power we put into the pedals that is transferred to the road). But moving through water is WAY more difficult.

2) Human beings are not fish - We are simply not designed to be fast swimmers. Almost nothing about our shape and dynamics as human beings lends itself to moving quickly through water.

3) Too many degrees of freedom - When we are running, there are 2 fixed points, i.e., when each foot hits the ground. When cycling, there are 5 fixed points on the bike that restrict the motion our bodies and limbs can have - 2 pedals, 2 hands (or arms), and 1 seat. However, when swimming, we have nearly unlimited degrees of freedom, i.e. our arms and legs can move and articulate any direction, untethered in the water.

4) That brings me to #4 - it takes A LONG time to develop the muscle memory and patterning to create the optimal motions to move us through the water. This is why a 100 lb female can swim circles around a big strong guy if the girl has been swimming since she could walk and the guy is a relative newbie. It's not about shear power or strength; it is about the correct motions with our arms, legs, shoulders, and hips in a concerted, finely tuned way that minimizes resistance and maximizes forward propulsion. This is why HS and college swimmers have a huge advantage - there simply is not enough time for an average AG'er to invest in "catching up" to the folks that have been swimming all their lives.

So, what CAN we do to get better in the pool? Well, you hear about people talking about the "feel for the water" ... but to those of us that are just not natural or experienced swimmers, we don't really understand that. What is a good catch supposed to feel like? What should good body roll feel like? Well, the best way to understand this and your own swim form is by getting some direct visual feedback. Having a coach tell you is one thing, but SEEING it for yourself is something different.

At the risk of large amounts of embarrassment and ridicule, here's a video I made recently of my swim stroke.

Though I'm not a super-fast swimmer, I do have a good understanding of what a good stroke should look like and mine has some significant flaws. Can you say dropped elbow? Holy cow. Check out my left arm in the side-view. And I really didn't think I had much, if any crossover either, but in the front-on view, you can see my left arm crossing over the center line. Not good. Now that I've seen these things, I can work on them in the pool and start to make corrections. Then, in a few months, I can make another video and see the improvements. I will also see improvements in my times (in the pool and in races) throughout this process. The other great thing is that you can find any number of great swimmers and video of their strokes on the web. You can get an idea of what good swimmers look like and compare your stroke to theirs and work to improve.

This is what I love about triathlon, there is always something to work on and a way to get better, stronger, faster and beat our previous selves.

Early Season Results

Vitality Multisport athletes are off to a great start of the 2011 season with some very strong performances:

On 3/27, Justin Waller took more than 33 minutes off his marathon PR with a 3:23 and change at the River City marathon. He overcame some adversity during training and still delivered on race day with a 3rd place in his age group. Being a triathlete from a swimming background, this definitely bodes well for his impending race season! I will definitely be looking for some strong results from him this season…

On the same day, Bernhard Sturm took to the road biking scene and raced in the Bariani road race, a 30 mile jaunt with 40+ of his closest friends. Turns out it was quite windy (quite the norm for the Central Valley in CA) and there was some confusion early on in the 1st lap when he attached for the KOM (there is one small hill). He ended up in a breakaway with one other guy and they stayed away for the entire race!!! I knew he was strong, but what a result! He ended up 2nd on the day, but not bad for a triathlete.

Then, on 4/2, Rebecca Reichardt raced the extremely competitive IM 70.3 in Oceanside, CA. This race always draws a stacked pro field and since it’s one of the few half-iron distance races left that has spots for Kona, it is always VERY competitive from an AG-stand-point, too. Rebecca faced some tough wind on the challenging bike course, but still clocked a fantastic 3:05 bike split and then proceeded to take almost 20 minutes off her previous half-IM run split to demolish her PR and come in at 5:56 and change. A great result on a tough course! She will have ample opportunity to improve on that as she is planning several other half-IMs throughout the year.

Race season is upon us and everyone is off to a great start!!!

Race Report - River City Marathon

(Disclaimer: this post is a bit wordy and I only have 2 pictures, sort of)

This marathon was my first key event for the year. After 2 IMs last year, I had a few lingering knee/Achilles issues to sort out and was not able to run CIM as planned so I wanted to find another marathon to see where my run fitness is nowadays. One of my athletes found the River City Marathon – a small event in April on the bike trail. The timing worked and he was OK with it, so I jumped in to run it also. In January we learned that they moved the race back to 3/27 because of an issue with the number of events on the American River Parkway. That didn’t really bother me because early Winter running had been going well. The course was supposed to go from Negro Bar down to Discovery Park, with the whole thing on the bike path, which I thought would be quite fun. I’ve run many miles on the bike path and running almost the whole thing for a marathon is pretty cool. However, with the weather the way it’s been and the fact that Discovery Park is completely under water, they had to change the route to an out-and-back from Negro Bar to William Pond (or close) and then back. It would make the run harder and generally uphill in the 2nd half, but it’s a route I’ve run a lot and I was still confident in having a good, solid run.

I hadn’t run an open marathon (hard) since 2005. Training had been going well and I formulated a good race plan: 4x30 minute laps with a gel at the end of each “lap.” Then I would switch to 15 minute laps and evaluate my pace at the 2:15 mark. With respect to pacing, I was going to shoot for a steady 6:48 per mile the whole first 2 hours and the 15 minutes past that to get me to about 20 miles. Then, I was going to give it what I had for the last 10K and add another gel at the 2:30 mark. I had 6 gels ready to go at the beginning and ate one of them about 15 minutes before the start. I had also decided to carry a bottle of water with me to make sure I had water when I needed it. The aid stations were about 2.5 miles apart and I didn’t want to be dependent on them and wanted to make sure I had enough water to get the gel to digest. I also knew (based on my metabolic efficiency testing with Sheila – see previous post), that I would burn about 18 Kcal/minute at that pace and 12 of those would be from CHO. Therefore, I would go through about 2160 calories of carbs over 3 hours. 2000 calories is a conservative estimate of the glycogen available for fuel in the muscles and liver. However, knowing that I had been able to get gel down at that pace in training gave me confidence that fueling would not be an issue – I would have plenty to go on and it would go down well.

This was a pretty low-key event and the start was somewhat anti-climactic to say the least. I lined up at the front with my friend and we chatted for a minute. Next thing I know the race director is counting down and just says “Go!” No gun. No bull horn. No nothing. I doubt people near the back even heard him. Anyway, we were off and running – a quick left turn onto the path and then almost immediately downhill. I eased into my pace and just tried to get into a rhythm. A couple people blazed past me… one of them took off like a rocket. I figured he either knew what he was doing or I would be seeing him later. Turns out it was the former. A couple more people passed me, one dressed in all pink and wearing Vibram Five Fingers. Very noticeable so I figured I’d track behind him for a while. Another guy chatted with me for a minute about Ironman… turns out he had done Vineman and Cozumel. He wanted to stay around the 3-hour pace, but only like another mile up the path and he was falling behind. Oh well, there goes my running buddy. Shortly after that another guy passed me. He was running strong and we were in 5th and 6th position as we approached the Hazel bridge. I stuck with him for quite a while, all the way past Sunrise and well into my “2nd 30-minute lap.” In the mean time, I saw Bart Z. at Hazel – don’t know how he got down there that fast after being at the start!!

I got to the end of the first hour and started my 3rd lap and ate another gel. At this point, my bottle was getting low. However, conveniently there was an aid station coming up and I made a split decision to ask them to fill my bottle and keep it for me to grab for the return trip. I figured I’d need to go about 50 minutes without my own water supply, but then I’d have a full bottle for the run back! I chucked my bottle to them and kept motoring, hoping they would remember. It was about this point when we started running through the half-marathoners. They started at William Pond an hour later and were heading the other direction on the path. Only a few at first, but then it was several hundred. It was never really an issue, but some of them could’ve paid a little more attention… regardless, it was kind of a good pick-me-up to go through the crowd, plus, we’d get to chase down a lot of them on the way back. Around this point, I had already passed the guy running in 6th and had moved up a spot. Shortly after that, I passed the guy in the pink with the Vibrams and kept motoring. I was now running in 5th approaching the turnaround. The first place guy was in another zip code already (as I mentioned, he knew what he was doing when he took off at the beginning). #2 was quite a ways back from him, but still a ways up from me. Numbers 3 and 4 we also well-ahead, so I just kept focused on my own race. I approached the turnaround and grabbed some water and ate a gel since I knew this was the only aid station until I got back to my bottle. Fortunately, the volunteers told me to turn around since the only sign was a small orange cone with a cardboard box that said “turn-around” on it. I seriously almost didn’t see it.

I think I had 29:20 something on my watch at this point at the end of my 3rd lap, so right on pace. I hit lap a few seconds later and moved on. The 4th chunk of 30 minutes at ~6:48 pace was starting to get a little harder, but I was still in complete control and my HR was the same. From the beginning, my HR was a touch high. I was expecting it to be in the 155 range for that pace, but it was about 160 most of the way. It always seems to be a little high for me during races. I decided early on not to worry about it and just focus on pace and RPE, which were both right on. Very comfortable. I also had been using some mental exercises in the first hour to get into a rhythm. I repeated “easy, light, smooth” over and over in my head through the first half. I threw in a “save it for the end” every now and again to remind myself that the race really hadn’t begun yet. Some say the half-way point of a marathon is at mile 20. Once I hit the turn-around, I switched over to my “relaxed, calm, focused, strong” rhythm and it worked really well. I stuck with that for the whole return trip. I started letting myself feel like I was working a little bit at this point and my legs were starting to fatigue some, but it was still a very comfortable pace and I motored on. In the next several miles over my last block of 30 minutes, I passed a LOT of half-marathoners and walkers. It kept it interesting as I rolled along. I tried not to focus on anything but my mental focus, my mantra, and keeping good form. Short, pendulum arms and controlled breathing in rhythm. I approached the aid station where my bottle was and they had been saving it for me!!! It worked out GREAT – I now had a full bottle of water for the last 10-ish miles. Spurred on by the help of the volunteers, I kept it rolling and got through the first 2 hours and then hit lap again and at my 4th gel (this time Raspberry Hammer Gel). My plan from there was to do another 15 minutes at the same pace and then see how I felt. It was fairly uneventful. I was running in 5th place still with nobody that close behind me and continued to pass half-marathoners. When I got to 2:15 in (not sure what mile it was, somewhere around 20), I tried to start working a little harder. My HR was in the 160-162 range and I still felt OK. My legs were tired and I was now officially working hard, but I was still in control.

As I approached the end of that next 15 minutes, I saw a guy up ahead that had taken his shirt off. I remembered from the turn-around that the guy in 4th place was bald with no shirt and thought, “hey, I may actually have caught this guy!” I continued to run up behind him and when I was about to pass, he saw me coming and said “wow, you caught me.” I asked him what he was shooting for and told him to hang with me to try to get to 3 hours. He tried for a little bit, but when we came around under the Hazel Bridge, he told me to have a good race. I actually felt OK going up the Hazel bridge and let myself work fairly hard. No point in saving anything now, it was the last ~30-35 minutes! Time to give it what I had left! Once down off the bridge and rolling down the hill towards the dam, I saw the guy that had been in 3rd place!!! I seriously did not think I was going to catch him, but I rolled right on past and kept going, now running in 3rd overall with ~30 minutes to go. I had no idea how far up the road #2 and #1 were, but just kept working hard trying to maintain pace. I ate another gel and went into my 2nd to last 15 minutes. It’s a gradual uphill all the way back out to Negro bar, so my same pace required a little more effort, but I hung on well. I knew if I could make it to the little downhill by the lake, I’d roll down that and would be home free! There would only be one more flat section and then the small hill to the finish. My legs were really fatigued by this point and I knew I’d put forth a hard effort, but was hanging on really well. My HR was also very steady and didn’t come up much at all. I got to 2:45, hit lap on my watch and kept going, staying on pace as best I could. I wasn’t able to up it much at all, but did at least maintain it in spite of the rolling hills. After a couple more minutes, I switched my watch over to the overall time and figured I’d be finishing soon anyway, before the next “lap” expired. I was still running ~6:45 and felt OK. I focused on my mantra – “relaxed, calm, focused, strong” and tried not to think about the finish yet. A few more minutes and the end would be here!

I approached the small hill near the end and my watch read 2:57… I gave it what I had in the hopes of getting under 2:58. I rolled up the hill and rounded the corner to the finish and saw the clock ticking towards 2:58. I finished hard and came across in what I found out later to be 2:57:59 - almost exactly right on my 6:48 pace and just a hair under. My legs were completely cooked, but I was very satisfied with the hard effort. Plus, I had run my way from 6th to 3rd in the last 15 miles and from 5th to 3rd in the last 10K. My race plan worked great and I executed it well - can’t ask for more than that.

Above is a plot of my pace (blue), HR (red), and the elevation (yellow) of the course. Very even pace and HR, which I was quite happy with.

I ran the first 20 miles in 2:15:54 at an average pace of 6:48 and change and average HR of 161. I ran the last ~10K in 42:29 at an average pace of 6:48 and average HR of 164. My run fitness is coming along nicely. About 75 runs of 30 minutes or more and 500+ miles since 12/15/2010. The frequency has worked well and the key long runs built my confidence. I had been running big chunks of those long runs a few seconds slower than race pace and heart rates in the low 150s – a solid zone 2 effort for most of them.

Lots of things went well in this race:

1) Race plan – breaking it up mentally was great. I really had no idea what mile I was at most of the time.

2) Fueling plan – gel every 30 minutes at that pace kept me going.

3) Negative split (first 13.1 in 1:29:12 and 2nd 13.1 in 1:28:47)

I seriously can’t think of much I would have done differently. Had I gone out much faster, I don’t think I would’ve finished as well (duh). All of this bodes well for the tri-season ahead. Now it’s time to go swim and bike.

Race Report - Davis Stampede

I did my first “race” of the year and boy was it a nice day to run! Love early spring in Northern California. After a season last year of two Ironman distance races and no events less than 4-5 hours, a race where you are pushing your limits for about an hour and 20 minutes is somewhat painful (but in a good way). I hadn’t been running much after last season and then started ramping it up recently again around mid-December and then even more when I added a March marathon to my 2011 schedule. In addition, I hadn’t done an open half-marathon for two years and didn’t really know what to expect. My PR for the distance was 1:22:15 and I did that on a flat, fast course (Shamrock'n) in West Sacramento in 2009. This course in Davis was also supposed to be flat and fast, so I figured I could come close to that. The X-factor was how I would respond after a couple of heavier weeks of running and a very short taper / recovery leading into the race.

Warmup consisted of a few dynamic stretches and a light jog with my friend Bernhard, who was also running. My strategy for the day was to go out at about 6:20 per mile and then try to bring it into the 6:10-6:15 range for the last 7-8 miles and see how that felt. Then in the last 2, I was hoping to really push. I really wanted to focus on learning how to run with discomfort, stay inside my own head, not focus on how long till I can stop, and not let any negative thoughts take over. The power of positive thinking can go a long way and I wanted to make sure I stayed on top of the mental game this time around. Push myself into discomfort and then hold it there and learn to deal with it. From a nutrition standpoint, my intention was to have a gel about 20-30 minutes before start and then have another gel about half way. At each aid station, I would attempt to get a swig or two of water or Gatorade down. For a race that’s less than an hour and a half, you can get away with less. Plus, I had recently had some metabolic testing done and know that at this approximate pace I burn 18-20 calories per minute with about 5 of those calories being from fat and ~15 of those calories being from CHO. At 15 calories per minute and 80 minutes, I knew I would burn through about 1200 calories of CHO. I should have plenty of “juice” for that effort, especially with a gel 20 minutes before hand and a good breakfast 2-3 hours before the race.

I lined up with my friend about 3-4 people back from the front line and we waited for just a few minutes to the start. At the start, I took it out fairly hard to try to get around some people and then tried to find a groove. The first time I looked at my watch, I was around a 6 minute pace – a touch fast, so I needed to settle in to a steadier effort. I started early on with my internal dialogue (“relaxed, calm, focused, strong”) and tried to focus on that for a while and just run at a “comfortably uncomfortable” pace. It was a bit windy, but the course has a lot of turns so sometimes you were going with a nice tail wind and sometimes you were right into a stiff headwind. For the hard sections into the wind, I was trying to get behind people as best as possible. But the 10k’ers turned off pretty early and the race thinned out. There wasn’t really anywhere to hide, so I just rolled along. I didn’t get passed in the 2nd half of the race, which was nice, and I gradually creeped up on and passed about 3-4 more guys in the 2nd half.

Mile splits are below. I'm pretty frustrated with the HR data from my Garmin – I thought I had that fixed, but I still get junk HR data, even after changing the battery. I think my HR was in the high 160s through most of it and then raised into the 172-175 range by the end. From a pacing standpoint, mile 2 was my slowest, and miles 3, 4, 5, and 6 I tried to remain steady in my 6:20-ish pace. According to my watch, I was a little fast, but the mile markers didn’t match my watch exactly, there seemed to be about a 5 second discrepancy. Mile 8 was slower mostly because it was windy and I was on my own and it was getting hard to maintain that pace.

1 00:06:06
2 00:06:21
3 00:06:16
4 00:06:12
5 00:06:16
6 00:06:11
7 00:06:09
8 00:06:18
9 00:06:12
10 00:06:11
11 00:06:05
12 00:06:14
13 00:06:11
14 00:01:22

Around miles 7 and 8, I was working pretty hard to NOT think about the finish and how long I had left… staying focused on the internal self-talk and staying positive about being “relaxed, calm, focused, and strong.” It worked pretty well and I maintained a steady pace. Around mile 10 and 11, I started heading back towards town and passed 1 or 2 more people. The last two miles were tough; I was breathing harder (although still mostly in an every two step pattern), my legs were starting to really fatigue, but I still hung onto a <6:15 pace. Last time I ran a hard half-marathon, I was doing about 6:20-6:25 at the end so I really wanted to hang tough those last 2 miles. I rolled back into town and a guy told me he thought I was about 9th or 10th overall (it turned out he missed a few people). I made the last two turns, continued to push hard, and rolled to the finish in what I thought was a little under 1:22. Turns out they had me at 1:22:05 for a 10 second PR (3rd AG and 13th OA). My watch had me at 6:10/mile and a 13.22 mile run so it is either a little off or the course was a touch long. Regardless, I was satisfied with how the race went – I think I dealt with the discomfort better than I had before and next time around I can build on this... In summary, a good experience racing on a beautiful day with a good result.

Metabolic efficiency - are we sugar burners?

Disclaimer: I am not a sports nutritionist.

I first heard about the concept of metabolic efficiency when I went to the USAT coaching certification clinic. One of the speakers there was a sports nutritionist named Bob Seebohar who talked about this concept of how we can potentially manipulate our bodies into burning more fat during exercise. Why would you want to do this? Well, for anyone who has done a long (3+ hours) event, like a long-course triathlon or a century ride or something else where you are exercising for a long time, you may be familiar with the idea that your digestive system gets to the point where it decides it’s not happy with anything you ingest. When we exercise, our body shunts blood to our active muscles so they have the nutrients and fuel they need to keep working. However, this means we are getting less blood to our digestive system and our digestive system cannot process what we take in (very well, unless we stay at a low-enough intensity). So as our long event goes on and we take in more and more sports nutrition products, gel, sports drink, etc., the concentration of stuff in our gut just keeps going up and up while our body continues to shunt blood to our other muscles to keep powering our bodies forward. This is when things start to go south. For anybody who has done a long event, you’ve probably seen somebody doubled over along the course (particularly rampant at Ironman events) and unfortunately their nutrition is now coming back up (literally) because their body has decided to shut down. It goes like this: no fuel getting absorbed because we are exercising and taking in too much too fast resulting in a high concentration in our gut -> we feel worse and worse because no fuel is getting absorbed -> we take in more and more gel, etc. thinking that will solve the problem -> body shuts down and eventually forces contents of gut back up. Not pretty. What’s the answer? Burn more fat during exercise. Even a well-trained athlete only has maybe 2,000 calories of glycogen in their muscles and liver ready to act as fuel for exercise. However, even the leanest person has 80,000+ calories of fat to use to fuel exercise. You can see how 2K calories won’t last long if you are burning only sugar.

So how do we change all this? How can we make our bodies better “fat-burners?” In Bob Seebohar’s book, he suggests, and presents a fair amount of evidence that you can do this by:

1) Training at an aerobic intensity

2) Manipulating the macronutrients of your daily nutrition

Item number 1 is fairly straightforward – most of your training should be at an easy/moderate intensity. Do the hard stuff sparingly (for lots of reasons). Because of this, it may be easier to try improving your metabolic efficiency during a time of year when you are not racing as much and concentrating on building a big aerobic engine. Item #2 is about what you eat on a day-to-day basis MOST of the time. I say MOST of the time because I believe that if we are too black-and-white about anything, it can backfire. This is why most “diets” don’t work. If you completely cut stuff out, then it’s no good and our nature is to end up “falling off the wagon.” What you do on a consistent basis 90% of the time is key - keeping things simple and doing everything in moderation. In Bob’s book, he describes a periodized nutrition plan where the focus most of the year is on eating fruits and vegetables, low-fat protein, and healthy fats. You don’t need as much whole grain as you think. Sufficient carbs to support your training come from the fruits and vegetables (and other sources, dairy, etc.). Only when you are in a heavy period of training you supplement with some whole grains. This flies in the face of most of what has been preached to us endurance athletes for a LONG time. The entire sports-nutrition-product industry has been created to “fuel” our workouts. However, what do you think people ate prior to Gatorade and prior to Gu? Real food. Simply eat a well-balanced snack prior to your training sessions and then do the same immediately after. This is enough. During training, particularly if it’s easy/moderate intensity, we don’t need all the extra sugar. It teaches our body to be more efficient at burning sugar. And we know that burning sugar can only last so long. If we can be more metabolically efficient, we can go longer with a lot less risk of any GI distress.

Me on the treadmill (note the mask measuring RQ).

How do we know or measure any of this? Do we have to just guess? I am fortunate to have a friend who actually IS a sports nutritionist and has the equipment and capability to do metabolic efficiency testing. Sheila Leard (www. MyNutritionZone.com) is a registered sports dietician and can perform this kind of testing. By analyzing the content of what you breathe in and out, you can understand the blend of carbohydrate (CHO) and fat you are burning at different exercise intensities. This is VERY powerful information. For example, with a marathon on the horizon, using this data, I can understand EXACTLY what intensity (for running pace and HR) I can shoot for and be confident how much carbohydrate I am going to burn through the duration of the event. I now know what intensity to run for whatever duration I am interested in. I can also devise a fueling strategy based on this and practice it in training. The test is not complex or intimidating. You can do it either on the bike or on the treadmill and simply involves wearing a mask while you ride or run. Here’s a link to a video of me on the treadmill during the test: http://qik.ly/BE8pH3Nk3uESI5yqf4KsQsJ. You do an easy warm-up and then progressively increase the treadmill speed at set intervals, all the while, monitoring what’s called the Respiratory Quotient (RQ) via the mask and your heart rate via a heart rate strap/monitor. The RQ is the ratio of CO2 expired to O2 inspired and tells us how our body is handling the exercise intensity, by either burning mostly fat, some of both fat and CHO, or mostly CHO. The point where it changes to mostly CHO is called the crossover point. Ideally, you want to stay below this for much of your training, and combining that with daily dietary manipulations, you can teach your body to be more metabolically efficient.

My results, zoomed in to see the range of interest.

My results were very informative. In the plot, you can see I was burning a decent mix of fat and CHO up until we took it from 8 (~7:30 min/mile) to 8.5 mph (~7:00 minutes per mile) at which point my body transitioned to burning mostly CHO. Not only that, now I KNOW how many calories I burn per minute and what the blend is between fat/CHO at each intensity. Perfect. I can come up with training and fueling plans optimized for my upcoming races! It takes out the guesswork and makes me confident I can achieve the goals and performance targets I have set for myself! I am very excited about this concept and continue to work on the dietary changes myself. With two toddlers at home and a busy life, I will admit, it is tough, but like I said, I try to do well MOST of the time. I am also very excited about this concept and using the metabolic information with the athletes I coach. Fueling in endurance sports is definitely a trial-and-error process, but this testing helps take the guesswork out of it and the athlete and I can work together to come up with a fueling strategy more specific to their race circumstances and goals.

PowerCranks - do they make you a better cyclist?

There was a study that came out recently in regards to PowerCranks (abstracts below) and it created some very interesting threads on the SlowTwitch forum. Actually, PowerCranks have always been a lightning rod on the forum with lively debates on whether or not they can make you a faster cyclist. I had read about them a few years ago and after my 2008 season, I decided to try to find a set on eBay. They are not cheap, but I managed to get a used pair for around $400 in August of 2008. I started using them in September on the trainer and gradually built up to where I could ride on the roads for 3+ hours with big hills. Now I use them primarily on my road bike in the off-season and occasionally mix in a ride in the season. It has now been 2.5 years or so and with this study coming out, I wanted to reflect a bit on whether these PowerCranks have made a difference. A little n=1 analysis of my own, if you will. I also started using a power meter at approximately the same time, so I have a decent quantitative assessment of my progress, including some tests and rough guesses at my FTP on the bike and some decent race comparisons.

In February of 2008, I had a threshold test done on a CompuTrainer and they put my FTP at 240 watts at the time. Given that I weighed about 78 kg at the time, my power/weight ratio was ~3.08, not exactly world class. In February of 2010, I was tested again on a CompuTrainer and my FTP at the time was estimated at 280 watts. My weight at that time was 72.3 kg so my power/weight ratio was ~3.83. Getting better. By that time, I got pretty good at judging where my approximate FTP was based on just riding with the power meter, and this seemed a touch low. The next interesting data point was early June of 2010, which was right after a BIG month of riding and IM training and starting to taper for IM Coeur d’Alene. I did a 10 mile TT and averaged 328 watts. This was outside on my tri bike (incidentally, the previous 2 tests were on tri bikes with the one in 2/10 being on the same bike). 328 watts over 23+ minutes equates to about an FTP of 310 watts. And I weighed about 72 kg at the time, so my power/weight ratio was 4.3. Now we’re getting somewhere.

If you look at a race I did in ’08 and ’09 (unfortunately I didn’t do it in ’10), my bike split went from 2:40 to 2:28. I didn’t have the PowerTap for the race in ’08, so I don’t know what power improvement there was to cause this improvement. I was probably also lighter in ’09, but my guess is, the power improvement made the biggest difference in the time on the bike. I was using PowerCranks a lot starting after the ’08 race through the off-season and into pre-season for 2009. Interestingly, my run split went from 1:39 to 1:31 over that same time, likely a byproduct of being stronger on the bike, but perhaps also from some work on the PowerCranks?

So, over the time I’ve been using PowerCranks in general, I’ve had an increase in FTP of about 70 watts or about 30% of where it was initially in roughly 2 years. However, PowerCranks are not the only thing that changed. Over that same time, I also started doing different kinds of bike workouts. A main addition to my workout repertoire was mixing in some strength. Hard intervals on the bike on my trainer in my garage (“man-cave” or “pain-cave”) mixed with strength exercises, including squats, jumps, step-ups with weights, etc. In addition, I did some work in the gym on the leg press machine, etc. Out on the roads, I also did a lot more work at threshold on the bike. I was used to this in running, but needed to work a lot harder on the bike.

And I was doing long hill repeats on the weekend (e.g. 5x the climb out of the confluence) to build more strength. So, there are a lot of variables here.

If you look at the two studies, they try to isolate out the PowerCranks as the independent variable, but that’s tough. In the Luttrell study (which is a little old now), they found an improvement in efficiency and reduction in O2 consumption at a given intensity. In the Sperlich study, they found no significant difference in any of the measurements. I haven’t read the entire studies so I don’t know what else may be different, but obviously, the Sperlich study suggests PowerCranks (or separating the cranks so you are forced to pedal each leg independently) will not make you a better cyclist - or at least not PowerCranks alone. In my case, far too many variables changed to know what made the largest contribution. My feeling is that the PowerCranks may have been part of the overall puzzle, for both the bike and the run, but the take-home message for me is that there is no substitute for some good, old-fashioned hard work.

Newest study:

Eur J Appl Physiol. 2010 Dec 31. [Epub ahead of print]

The effects of 6-week-decoupled bi-pedal cycling on submaximal and high intensity performance in competitive cyclists and triathletes.

Sperlich B, Zelle S, Kleinöder H, Lochmann M, Zinner C, Holmberg HC, Mester J.

Institute of Training Science and Sport Informatics, German Sport University Cologne, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf, 50933, Cologne, Germany, sperlich@dshs-koeln.de.

Abstract

Aim of this work was to examine the effects of decoupled two-legged cycling on (1) submaximal and maximal oxygen uptake, (2) power output at 4 mmol L(-1) blood lactate concentration, (3) mean and peak power output during high intensity cycling (30 s sprint) and (4) isometric and dynamic force production of the knee extensor and flexor muscles. 18 highly trained male competitive male cyclists and triathletes (age 24 ± 3 years; body height 179 ± 11 cm; body mass 78 ± 8 kg; peak oxygen uptake 5,070 ± 680 mL min(-1)) were equally randomized to exercise on a stationary cycle equipped either with decoupled or with traditional crank system. The intervention involved 1 h training sessions, 5 times per week for 6 weeks at a heart rate corresponding to 70% of VO(2peak). VO(2) at 100, 140, 180, 220 and 260 and power output at 4 mmol L(-1) blood lactate were determined during an incremental test. VO(2peak) was recorded during a ramp protocol. Mean and peak power output were assessed during a 30 s cycle sprint. The maximal voluntary isometric strength of the quadriceps and biceps femoris muscles was obtained using a training machine equipped with a force sensor. No differences were observed between the groups for changes in any variable (P = 0.15-0.90; effect size = 0.00-0.30). Our results demonstrate that a 6 week (30 sessions) training block using decoupled crank systems does not result in changes in any physiological or performance variables in highly trained competitive cyclists.

First study:

J Strength Cond Res. 2003 Nov;17(4):785-91.

Effects of short-term training using powercranks on cardiovascular fitness and cycling efficiency.

Luttrell MD, Potteiger JA.

Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Science, University of Kansas, Lawrence 66045, USA.

Abstract

Powercranks use a specially designed clutch to promote independent pedal work by each leg during cycling. We examined the effects of 6 wk of training on cyclists using Powercranks (n=6) or normal cranks (n=6) on maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max) and anaerobic threshold (AT) during a graded exercise test (GXT), and heart rate (HR), oxygen consumption (VO2), respiratory exchange ration (RER), and gross efficiency (GE) during a 1-hour submaximal ride at a constant load. Subjects trained at 70% of VO2max for 1 h.d(-1), 3 d.wk(-1), for 6 weeks. The GXT and 1-hour submaximal ride were performed using normal cranks pretraining and posttraining. The 1-hour submaximal ride was performed at an intensity equal to approximately 69% of pretraining VO2max with VO2, RER, GE, and HR determined at 15-minute intervals during the ride. No differences were observed between or within groups for VO2max or AT during the GXT. The Powercranks group had significantly higher GE values than the normal cranks group (23.6 +/- 1.3% versus 21.3 +/- 1.7%, and 23.9 +/- 1.4% versus 21.0 +/- 1.9% at 45 and 60 min, respectively), and significantly lower HR at 30, 45, and 60 minutes and VO2 at 45 and 60 minutes during the 1-hour submaximal ride posttraining. It appears that 6 weeks of training with Powercranks induced physiological adaptations that reduced energy expenditure during a 1-hour submaximal ride.

Race Report - Resolution Run

The first race of the year for me was one of my favorites - the Resolution Run in Auburn, CA. They have a 5K, a 10K, and a 10M race and the trails are always like slip-n-slide's because of the weather. This year was particularly wet and muddy since we have had a large amount of rain in December. I've done the 10K a few times and last year I tried the 10M for the first time. I decided to do that one again this year.

However, for a little extra challenge this year, I worked in an interesting "warmup" ...

The last 3 years, a group from Team Revolutions (a cycling group I am involved in) has done 10+ repeats of a notorious local hill up Beatty drive. It's a pretty tough little climb that takes me about 7-8 minutes to get up and tops out at around 15% I think. To kick-start 2011, I did 11 repeats. And to top it off, it was raining the whole time. The profile of my ride looks like this:

It's hard to see in the image, but the climb is less than a mile, but goes up about 380-400 feet in about three-quarters of a mile. About a 10% average for about 7 minutes. I was averaging about 280-300 watts for the climbs so it equated to about 75 minutes at just below threshold. The TSS for the ride was 130 - a nice little "warmup" for a hard, hilly, 10-mile trail running race!

The run was fun. The first 2 miles are basically downhill into the canyon, mostly on access roads. Then you hit a trail and turn around to climb right back up a bit. I was running in about 10th overall going down the hill, but had 3 guys ahead of me to chase. I caught the first one and passed easily. The next 2 I caught on the uphill portion of the access roads before you go down even further into the canyon. One guy stuck with me and we dropped the other guy easily. The one who was running with me was strong with a very quick turnover... he was just behind me until about mile 5 and then passed me on an uphill portion of trail. My legs were feeling the effort by this time and I couldn't go with him. The next part of the race goes on another out-and-back section of trial with lots of up and down and one really big climb on the return part of the loop. The guy I had been running with slowly pulled away, but we both gained ground on another guy. Approaching the turn-around point at mile ~7.5 I started seeing the 10-mile runners headed back the other way and could count to see what place I was in. At the time, I was in 8th and had 7th in my sights. I caught him at the turn-around, but from there, he put on the gas and I just didn't have a lot left for the final climb up to the finish. The last mile is on really sloppy, wet, muddy single track and mostly uphill. Profile of the race looks like this:

I just couldn't catch that last guy and finished in 8th overall and 3rd in my AG. I did it in 1:10:05, which is about 45 seconds or so slower than last year, when I was 7th overall and 4th AG. However, last year I did it fresh. So I was happy with the effort after the ride on Beatty and the legs were cooked the rest of the day for sure. A great kick start to 2011!!

Emily ran the race, too, and improved on her 10K time by 3+ minutes over last year. She won her AG last year, but got 2nd this year with a significantly faster time. Here's Emily on the trail:

And here's me on the trail:

I don't have any better pictures of us after the race, which is too bad, because you get pretty dirty. It's a really fun race and a great way to start the year.

Next up will be a half-marathon in early February. Bring on 2011.