Break | Stronger Cyclist

Summer Break 2!

posted on June 30th, 2010 in Cycling, Cycling Tips, Strength Training by Stephen

In the last post we were talking about the ‘why’ of taking a summer break . Hopefully, you realize that if you are struggling to A) ride in the summer heat B) suffer from burnout and lack of desire to race in the late fall then, a mid-summer break can be just the thing to refresh your mind and body so that you can train and race at your optimal level.

Tired as a Dog!

The first thing is obviously to take a full hiatus from cycling for at least 2 full weeks. It may seem that you will loose everything you have worked for – BUT you will not if you bring your body back up to speed before testing yourself. Remember, you only get stronger when you rest! So give your mind and body some R&R and you will notice an increased ability to push yourself more!

After the 2 weeks off, we are going to ramp you back up to speed with intervals. To do this, the first week you should do 3 days of 60 minutes of 80% max efforts. For example, my max is about 190 – so I would go out and do these efforts at 150-155 HR. Since this is slightly lower HR I usually break this effort into 15 minute blocks and do 4 of these efforts. Hopefully you recognize these efforts from your early season training! Find an area with minimal traffic that you can do these efforts with little interruption. Just go out and put in solid efforts at the prescribed HR. Use good form and a good aero position on the bike. For the rest of the ride keep the HR under 140!

The second week of training (same 3x this week) you will need to bump up the HR a little more and lower the amount of time in that zone. We should still keep the total time at 60 minutes of total efforts, but I break these into 10 minute efforts at the prescribed HR. The HR will now be 85% of Max HR. So in the same example of 190 max, I would do these efforts at about 160-165 range, and I would do 6 (ten) minute efforts to equal 60 minutes of total time in the prescribed HR zone.

By taking your time and doing these efforts you ramp the body back up to speed rather than just jolting it. And re-visiting the lower and longer efforts is always a good thing for your training, esp. your sustained or Time Trial abilities!

Summer Break

posted on June 16th, 2010 in Cycling, Cycling Tips, Strength Training by Stephen

It’s that time of year when it is Humid, Hot & Muggy! I did a short option ride Saturday that started at 9am, and by 11am I had chill bumps and a calf muscle that was ‘wanting’ to cramp. Ok, so I did have a few beers the night before, but still….. the weather and heat index in Atlanta, Ga so far is High! 95 degrees F. this week.

For those of you that are racing and training hard, take a look at your upcoming schedules and decide if now is a great time to take a mid-summer break! Sounds backwards I know. But how did you feel last October/September? If you were tired, and burnt out – maybe it was from riding too much in the summer heat.

Why go to races and events mid-summer that the finishers make it too the finish line through attrition rather than fitness? I can remember racing at Fort Gordon in Augusta, GA a few years back. I think the thermometers were reading 98 degrees, add to that a lack of shade along this course. It was one of those days where you didn’t feel you needed to warm-up b/c you were already sweating before you were finished getting dressed. On each lap of this road course we would pass the parking lot where everyone had parked their vehicles. On the 2nd lap about 10-15 riders just pulled off from the main group and headed to their cars. It wasn’t like we were single file and these guys were dangling off the back – they were IN the pack. But the heat & humidity was too much and they didn’t want to do another lap.

When you take a break, you must remember why you are taking a break. People may attempt to distract your season plans, but you must stick to the plan, even though that is tough sometimes. A good cycling plan will set you up to be in your best shape for your most important races.

Taking a break from hard efforts this time of year maybe a safer thing to do and a scheduled, 2 week summer break can be a great thing for your cycling season (and maybe other areas of your life). Even though it may seem like you will loose fitness, the benefits that your mind and body get from a break will far exceed any loss of fitness you think you will loose.

I had a friend that got married a few years back during the summer and was concerned about loosing fitness while on his honeymoon. I told not to be concerned about it & that he would come back with re-newed energy and desire for racing – he had a Great end to his racing season, and wasn’t burned out mentally through the fall races!

Some other activities to keep you active and/or refreshed:
*Indoor rock climbing
*Massage
*working out
*swimming – even out those tan lines a little?
*hiking
*indoor racquetball/squash
*another idea is to get dirty:

Try taking a summer break and I bet you will gain an appreciation for this experience. It gives you a chance to unwind, change your current schedule of doing things, and re-fresh the mind and body. However, keep in mind that along with taking a break, how you bring the body back into form is important also, and I will get to that in another post.

How to tell if your shifter cable is going to break

posted on January 20th, 2010 in Cycling, Cycling Tips, Reviews by Stephen

It happens fairly often…. you are out on a ride and you or a friend has a cable that snaps & all of a sudden you are riding home in the smallest cog you have.

I went out for a couple hour ride last week, but it got cut really short. Luckily, I noticed the signs of what was about to happen and I was able to pedal back to the house before it actually did. As I opened up my rear shifter, I could see that about half the cable was frayed. Several more shifts and it would have snapped, leaving me riding home in the 39/11.

Cable fray

My bike had been shifting nearly flawless for many rides. Suddenly on a ride, I am having to over-shift to get into gear. The gears were requiring a little extra input from me….. so I stopped made a slight barrel adjustment to the rear derailleur. That seemed to fix it for the rest of the ride. Next ride, I noticed that once again, the rear shifter was requiring more input, and the gears were ‘ghost shifting’ or wanting to shift with out any input from me. This was happening in several different gears, so I knew this was no coincidence. I stopped at the top of the next climb, grabbed the rear brake level and held it all the way open, looking into the small hole that the shifter cable gets installed through. Sure enough, I was able to see a several strands of cable that were fraying. Being only about 4 miles from the house, I turned around and headed back.

Getting the rest of the cable end & cable out of the shifter is not a task for most – take it too your local bike shop. I spent about 30 minutes getting that sucker out of there, then luckily I had a spare cable (well, I usually do for races and trips) and I re-installed and pre-stretched the new cable. Once again, I head out the door for my ride.

If a cable does break, another way to get home is to adjust the limit screw of the rear derailleur so that the chain lines up a couple of gears higher on the cog. If you know how, you can set the limit screws so that you can be a couple of gears higher than the smallest. Usually on road bikes it is on the very back of the derailleur, and if you tighten the bottom 1, it will push the chain higher on the cog (rear gears). Each cog higher it can be adjusted the easier it will be to spin the gear it is in. This will at least give you 2 gears to ride back with. However, if you know the signs, this can be avoided!