How much of your “race fitness” is due to improvements in capacity and how much of it comes from pain tolerance? We’ll cover this and how should average athletes and pro athletes fuel differently, get into cyclocross season and much more in Episode 339 of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast!

More show notes and discussion in the TrainerRoad Forum.

Topics covered in this episode

Resources mentioned in this episode

Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Jonathan Lee: Welcome to the podcast is dedicated to making you a faster cyclist to ask a cycling coach podcast presented by trainer road. I’m coach Jonathan Lee. We have our head coach, Chad Timmerman with us, everybody. We also have, oh goodness. I’m going to read off the name because I’m going to mess it up hand up plus plus the black bibs racing’s IVL drain.

[00:00:28] Jonathan Lee: Good to have you back Ivy. Thanks. Yeah, it’s been a minute. Glad to be back. So IVs joining us on the road. Uh, she’s in the middle of, uh, her cyclocross season. So her audio is going to sound different than normal. We tried getting a microphone in time and then shipping happened and it got, it got delayed.

[00:00:45] Jonathan Lee: So, uh, but so bear with us with that. And then with chat, for some reason, Chad, we started a little bit late today. Chad’s internet is just giving him fits today. So, uh, let’s hope everybody listens. Say prayers, do whatever else you do. Knock on wood, uh, to, to keep Chad with us. Cause Chad might end up cutting out part way through.

[00:01:04] Jonathan Lee: We’ve got a great deep dive and we want to cover it. And Ivy and I are not going to fill those shoes. So

[00:01:14] Jonathan Lee: don’t worry if Chad drops off deep dive to be continued at another date, Ivy and I are just going to talk about cyclocross and that’ll be great. Um, a couple of things though, first of all, this is episode 3 30, 9 crazy. Um, lots of episodes, uh, pretty cool. Since 2015, we’ve been going with this podcast, helping people and, uh, we love it.

[00:01:33] Jonathan Lee: And if you find value in this podcast, the best thing you could do is share this podcast with others and go check out trainer road.com. So please do that. Adaptive training is now live. A lot of people are using it. They’re already seeing benefits, even though it’s only been a little over two weeks now, since people have seen it, they’re already seeing their training adapt and they’re getting those adaptations to work out failures or decreasing.

[00:01:55] Jonathan Lee: It’s fantastic. So super exciting times. Go check it out. Everybody. Whenever you sign up for training road, there’s no extra costs with it or anything. It’s just how trainer road works. Now you have adaptive training. You can use train. Now, if you don’t want to commit to a plan where you can just look at the workouts with a whole lot more context because of adaptive training.

[00:02:11] Jonathan Lee: Now it’s really good stuff. So check it out and then listen to our successful athletes podcast. Uh, we have one coming up next week with an athlete. Uh, his name is Rodney scripture. He’s based out of Washington. Fantastic guy who talks about how this is a super, this is probably relatable to a lot of listeners from 2015, basically until now he’s had the same two main goals every year, and he’s just chipped away at getting better at them every year.

[00:02:36] Jonathan Lee: Uh, he got second last year in his category at loaded. And the first time he did it, he was like, I wonder if I can even finish it. That’s a 200 mile race that we’ve talked about. Plenty of times in the podcast from Logan, Utah, Jackson, Wyoming, and then a T T series. That’s a super cool and innovative.

[00:02:51] Jonathan Lee: Anyways, it’s a really interesting, interesting discussion because we talked about how we improved week after week. And prior to that Connor, Wilson, the episode we did the prior week, we’re getting a ton of feedback on that one. He’s at 5.2 Watts per kilogram. And I don’t think his ceiling is anywhere near insight.

[00:03:05] Jonathan Lee: He’s just raising up even more, a really exciting episode talking with him. So check that out. Successful athletes, podcasts, there’s links down below, share the podcast with your friends and go check out train road.com.

What has Ivy learned during her CX season so far?

Okay. With that Ivy, let’s talk about your cyclocross season, cause you’re kind of like you’ve been on the opposite schedule as so many of us were in the summer.

[00:03:25] Jonathan Lee: You weren’t racing. You’re at the, that wasn’t the peak of your season and said now is the peak of your season. So, um, first of all, have you met podcast listeners? Yes.

[00:03:34] Ivy Audrain: Quite a few. Well, uh, I hear a lot of them on the sidelines and then, uh, but like, say like, oh, they’ll be on the podcast and they’re cheering and it’s great.

[00:03:44] Ivy Audrain: And then I’m like, Aw, man, I hope they come say, Hey, after the race and then they disappear. I don’t know. So I’ve only met a couple and I love meeting podcasts listeners. So if you are at any of the races, the rest of the season, please don’t be afraid to come and say, I’m nice. I’m not like who hurt you?

[00:04:01] Ivy Audrain: Like who is traumatized beans with podcasts listeners. Don’t be afraid to come say, Hey, um, please come say, Hey, it’s awesome meeting you

[00:04:08] Jonathan Lee: guys. Yeah, Ivy. Um, Ivy is one of the more approachable pro athletes and that you’ll find in the paddock. She’s just Ivy likes to have a good time. Um, so, and, and good chats.

[00:04:20] Jonathan Lee: She won’t say no to a bubbly water after the race. Good times. So, um, uh, all right. I want to talk about this. So early in the season, you were struggling. You weren’t satisfied with your results because building up to the races, you were like flying and you were doing really well. Your training was going fantastic.

[00:04:37] Jonathan Lee: You were nailing your marks. How do you, how’d you handle that? Like going to those first few, cause this is relatable for a lot of listeners. You go into the season and then you’re struggling more than you thought. So how’d you, how did you mentally

[00:04:52] Ivy Audrain: not? Well, uh, at first it was, yeah, it was really bad. Um, to be honest, I, I think the biggest struggle was just.

[00:05:01] Ivy Audrain: Being kind to myself. And, um, the reality was I’m, I’m the kind of racer that really needs to race into fitness. Um, and those kinds of race efforts, especially with cross, like, are really hard to duplicate outside of, um, like a controlled race setting, um, with other racers, like with, you know, 40, some other bike racers, um, and like starting at the back and you just can’t emulate it, especially like the mental aspect of having to be like, all right, it’s random call up some at the back, like got to try to get up there.

[00:05:34] Ivy Audrain: Like you can’t, it’s, it’s hard to practice that, um, until race day. Um, and, uh, so I, wasn’t very kind to myself for the first, um, few blocks. First few races in the block. Um, and I luckily have a lot of great peers that I raced with and a lot of good mentors that helped me focus on some process goals, uh, less results-based goals that have kind of helped me change my perspective a little bit.

[00:06:03] Ivy Audrain: And, um, as a result, having more fun and getting better results and feeling better about it.

[00:06:08] Jonathan Lee: Awesome. Yeah. It kind of funny, right. Chad, how fun always tends to coincide with improvement. And I know it’s like a chicken or egg sort of thing, but if you can adopt that mindset beforehand, it seems to really better your odds, right?

[00:06:22] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. It’s pretty hard to enjoy race when you’re just struggling or you don’t have confidence in your capabilities or

[00:06:28] Jonathan Lee: yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, can we talk about like mud and cause you had some really muddy races. And you live in Montana. You’re from Montana that’s and I don’t know if you have, like, for us, we just don’t ride in the mud here, whether it was his words, because the clay is just so bad in our region that you, you really can’t ride in it.

[00:06:48] Jonathan Lee: If it’s wet. Do you have a lot of experience riding in the mud and did that catch you off guard or because you’ve done well, actually in some of the mud races. Yeah.

[00:06:58] Ivy Audrain: And especially coming from my road background, I didn’t think that riding in the mud was my time to shine and I don’t know, but, um, yeah, like the other racers and I were talking about, like, those conditions are making possible to emulate as well.

[00:07:14] Ivy Audrain: You can’t just go find like, especially once it gets started, starts getting written in and like a big part of those courses is not just. Riding on a wet course. It’s how the course rides after like all of the other hundreds of racers have written on it all day and like how it gets packed in and you, um, you can’t practice those things, you know?

[00:07:35] Ivy Audrain: Um, so I think riding in the mud a little bit for me, uh, I think practicing writing in the sand helped me a lot. Um, once you like, make that connection of, um, finding the balance of like letting go of your bike and letting it steer itself a little bit while also being in control. So much of that is writing in sand and I think it applies pretty directly to writing in mud.

[00:07:59] Ivy Audrain: Um, so I think that’s why I did well on those days. Um, because I practiced writing in the sand quite a bit, being in Sacramento and that’s like one of the more easily, um, find-able features to practice. Um, So, I mean, it also, part of it was just being fed up with not doing well and just being like, all right, today’s we gotta do it.

[00:08:20] Ivy Audrain: Like, I just kinda got a combination of those things. Um, and yeah, I think a good part of writing in mud too, is like, um, I’m not, uh, not very prideful in knowing like when I’m going to, so it’s just time to get off and run. Um, you know, I don’t like muscle things out just for the sake of being like what you can, right.

[00:08:39] Ivy Audrain: It doesn’t mean that you should, like, you’re still moving slowly, um, or not as quickly as you should. And momentum when you’re writing in my understand or technical conditions is so important in cyclocross. And I think I did a pretty good job of knowing when to call it and just get up my bike. And there was a lot of running in those races, but, um, it worked

[00:09:00] Jonathan Lee: out.

[00:09:02] Jonathan Lee: Can we also cover a bit of like the, uh, the dissonance that exists between. A lot of us assume cyclocross pacing is like, versus what it is like. And this might vary for you. I’m just speaking with like Tobin, Orton blot and speaking with other like cyclocross racers that are really good. Courtney McFadden is another example of one that we’ve spoken with that they, they say that it’s less punch all out coast, punch all out coasts.

[00:09:28] Jonathan Lee: And it’s more like the beginning of the race. Yes. It can be like that. But then it kind of settles in at like a constant pace. Is it less stochastic like that? Ivy. And is it more stable than we might think in terms of what your pacing is like throughout a race?

[00:09:45] Ivy Audrain: I think that completely depends upon the course.

[00:09:49] Ivy Audrain: What kind of writer you are, what you’re starting like for someone like Tobin or someone that’s starting on the front row and you’re never racing around more than like three or four people at a given time because you have a really good start and you’re on the front row. And once that age group goes, like they’re just gone.

[00:10:04] Ivy Audrain: It’s just a few of them. Of course, it’s more like even, you know, and you’re just like racing a few people, you guys are the front of the race. You don’t have any like real ground to make up. You’re watching each other, like staying smooth is the most, or like the most advantageous way for them to ride versus someone that’s like starting at the back and seeing all these disconnected groups of three and four riders ahead of you.

[00:10:28] Ivy Audrain: You oftentimes have to decide when to like get out of the saddle and when to punch it. And then when to chill in order to make up ground, if you’re just like writing study, you can end up dragging a whole bunch of people around, um, that other, the group will get away from you. It totally depends upon what kind of rider you are, where you’re positioned in the race and how to capitalize on those things.

[00:10:51] Jonathan Lee: So the majority of racers are not in that position that you talked about where. Cool. I’m going to be one of the writers that dictates the pace at the front of a small group. Uh, the majority of us are the ones that are, that are part of the fragmented shrapnel behind them

[00:11:06] Ivy Audrain: fighting for our lives.

[00:11:10] Jonathan Lee: And that’s why you have to train that ability in cyclocross.

[00:11:13] Jonathan Lee: Right. That’s why you have to be able to do often on also like a lot of courses, depending on your threshold and depending on your skills and ability to maintain speed, a lot of courses are simply going to force you to go really hard for like repeated times over the course of the lab.

[00:11:29] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the course features too.

[00:11:31] Ivy Audrain: Don’t really allow you to like stay stable and mellow. Like these, the folks who are making the courses are getting creative and it’s like pretty cruel actually. Yeah. Uh, that’s a big part of it too, is it’s sometimes impossible just to like. Keep it steady. You just have to expend more energy and be able to react and settle in and not, um, not let it impact your race too much when you have to burn a big match.

[00:12:00] Jonathan Lee: Hmm. So something I’ve found during Cape epic, I’m such a creature of habit. And we had to like move accommodations and, and it really like, uh, it was chaotic and they weren’t in place and then they were in place and then they weren’t in place and we had to find a plan B and that sort of stuff really throws me off.

[00:12:17] Jonathan Lee: Now I look at your situation though. And actually I did this during that time and I was like, oh wow. Like I need to not complain. Cause I’ve just been on the road for a long time, living in post housing and, and then joining up with certain riders and then joining up with other riders depending on the race.

[00:12:32] Jonathan Lee: And who’s going to be there. How do you not let all that stuff affect you in terms of just like, cause your circumstances are constantly changing it you’re, you’re expecting yourself. You’re hoping at least that you can perform consistently. And all these races, but everything else is changing. Is there anything that you’ve found to help kind of help you perform on race day in a consistent manner, even though everything else is changing?

[00:12:56] Ivy Audrain: Um, I’m still figuring that out to be honest, it’s, uh, yeah. Being, um, like a cyclocross orphan and, um, I don’t know if like, I really like traveling and having multiple bikes and like multiple sets of wheels and all this equipment. Like, it’s not like rolling up to a summer crit or like traveling to like a crate in the summer where you could travel with a backpack.

[00:13:25] Ivy Audrain: Like it’s crazy, although it just sticks surrounding it. And there’s so many of us racing this year that like, we have our sponsors and we’re professionals, but we’re on our own. And, um, having to like work together and team together to. Travel to, and from all these races across the country, and it’s tricky and complicated and feeling displaced and trying to like work on my hotspot in a van, um, on a weekly basis, like all of it really takes a toll and I’m, I’m still trying to figure out how to not let that stuff get to me too much and how to still prioritize, taking care of myself, making sure that I’m eating and sleeping when I should.

[00:14:09] Ivy Audrain: And, um, yeah, I still haven’t figured out completely how to not take it all into, into the race day. Um, yeah. Yeah. You know, those tips on my way.

[00:14:25] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I don’t have any tips for Chad. Have you, I mean, you, you did plenty of racing where you were, you know, traveling around to different races and doing that sort of stuff with teams.

[00:14:33] Jonathan Lee: I don’t know if you have any tips, do you found over the. No, we

[00:14:37] Chad Timmerman: always had pretty Kush accommodations and everything was structured pretty nicely. I had the good fortune of racing on teams that they were masters teams, almost always. In fact, they always were. So they had the benefit of experience, uh, connections.

[00:14:51] Chad Timmerman: So most things went smoothly. It was, it was quite nice, but this does remind me, I would often watch Jeremy Powers and. Um, trying to think of Tim, Tim Johnson, and even Steven Hyde, the guys who are super strong in the United States and they travel over to Europe and they kind of get spanked. And a lot of the times I would hear them in interviews, talk about how difficult it was to manage all the unfamiliarity and all these logistical challenges that Ivy’s describing and then still have to put their game faces on and be completely ready to give a hundred percent, went a hundred percent just isn’t available.

[00:15:27] Chad Timmerman: I mean, it’s 110, 15% of it, whatever it is, has been siphoned off by these minor challenges that don’t really even have anything to do with bike racing.

[00:15:37] Jonathan Lee: Um, yeah, it’s, it’s a big challenge. I think that’s, um, you know, that, that might be why you see the loving or the playing field a bit more leveled when, uh, cross-country Olympic rounds come over to the U S um, the, it doesn’t seem like they’re quite as they still dominate in most cases, but they’re not quite as dominant perhaps.

[00:15:57] Jonathan Lee: As other ones like that, I don’t know. Yeah. It is tough. It’s absolutely something to consider that, you know, Brandon, you should talk to Brandon and Sophia. They were, they seemed like they were completely unbothered by the entire situation. When we were at Cape epic, like Brandon could just do anything. Uh, it doesn’t matter if he is, if they told him that he had to sleep, even without a tent that night he’d, he’d figure it out.

[00:16:17] Jonathan Lee: It would work just fine. Climbing it like five and a half Watts per kilos. So, uh, yeah. I need

[00:16:23] Ivy Audrain: to figure out how to just be like generally more unbothered, I think is the choice. Yeah.

[00:16:30] Jonathan Lee: But like, I was talking to some

[00:16:31] Ivy Audrain: folks about like process goals in cross and like trying to have fun and you should have fun, like with any discipline of racing, like you should try to have fun, but you still have to care a little bit, like obviously like, cause you’re still there to, you’re still a competitor and you’re still there to compete.

[00:16:48] Ivy Audrain: And so it’s like with all this stuff about like being in transit and being displaced and not being able to like sleep well and like eat enough and like, you still have to care about that stuff because it’s still really matters. Um, so you can’t like totally disassociate and pretend that it doesn’t matter because it does.

[00:17:08] Ivy Audrain: And so maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time is because, um, those things do matter. But how do I be Zen and chill about it in time? I can find that I don’t have better

[00:17:20] Jonathan Lee: advice. Hey, transparency is extremely valuable too, because somebody else is thinking that they’re the only ones that struggle with this.

[00:17:28] Jonathan Lee: And this is helping somebody when they traveled to that one big race that they did this year. And they just didn’t feel like they had everything in place and they didn’t perform well. Well, you’re not the only one. Like it, it happens to Ivy. It happens to everybody at the highest levels, down to the lowest levels of the sport.

[00:17:42] Jonathan Lee: It’s what it is, what it is. It’s a struggle. So I’m just excited to have you racing the season that like, uh, it’s just fun. I love seeing your stuff on Instagram. You should follow Ivy on Instagram, by the way, uh, go check her out. Cindy, you can cheer her on throughout her, uh, cyclocross race season is your goal to go to, I mean, we have worlds over here this year.

[00:18:03] Jonathan Lee: Um, or I should say next year. Um, so, uh, is your goal to try to qualify for, for that? I don’t know how many riders are fielding and even what that process is like.

[00:18:13] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. Uh, that’s law. That was a little out of reach for me, John that’s. Okay. Yeah. Um, uh, for the world cups do, um, as us, as the host, we could have 12 writers.

[00:18:26] Ivy Audrain: And so that was a early season goal for me to be in the top 12, um, in the U S to be able to go to those. But it’s a crazy fast year, like we’re, um, talking about it the other day, but like any position of writers between like fifth place and 25th place can change in any which direction, like on the same weekend, like between two days, like it’s just a really fast year and everyone’s really.

[00:18:54] Ivy Audrain: Really capable. Um, so yeah, uh, worlds is not a goal and I’d be sick to go. I might go in and drink beer and high five people, but that’s probably it.

[00:19:07] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. Part of me wants to go to that too. Uh, that will be fun to go see cycling. I mean, when a world championship comes to your country, I know the U S is a big country, but still it’d be, it’d be cool to go for sure.

Deep dive on pain tolerance and endurance training

[00:19:17] Jonathan Lee: Um, Chad, let’s get into your deep dive. What do you say? It’s a, it really kind of comes from a question from drew. You get with that one. Oh yeah. Chatting and chats. Having a lot of, a lot of technical difficulties,

[00:19:31] Chad Timmerman: I think from what, uh, from what it sounds like it might be going around. So are we going to deal with this now?

[00:19:35] Chad Timmerman: Or should I launch into.

[00:19:37] Jonathan Lee: Let’s just try to launch in and let’s see what we can do. Let’s let’s drop the clutch and go wide open. I’m going to read Drew’s close Drew’s question. He says, uh, what’s coach Chad’s experience around exercise induced hyperalgesia. I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. I apologize if I’m not sure.

[00:19:54] Jonathan Lee: I know he’s not a doctor and he has a little trademark thing after that. Trademark for chat from Chad Zimmerman says, uh, but I’m curious about his thoughts and feel like he’d appreciate the topic after even a single hard FTP interval. I feel a very distinct internal, and he says this in quotes, blanket of numbness under my skin that can persist for up to two hours after a ride concludes no sensation is diminished, but pain as a chronic pain suffer.

[00:20:21] Jonathan Lee: Could this mean, or could this reaction mean incorporating 10 minutes at threshold might actually give me an advantage in punchier more painful races. This is a really interesting question that could go a lot of different directions. Chad, in which direction has the research.

[00:20:38] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. So it’s an interesting question and it’s kind of a layered one and what’s especially interesting is how astute trues observations are.

[00:20:44] Chad Timmerman: I don’t, I don’t know if he’s dug into the research literature at all, but somehow he says is so in line with what the literature has as sussed out that it makes me wonder if he’s, I think he’s speaking from a place of knowledge, otherwise he’s just really good at guessing. So, um, what I’m going to do is to try to cover a broach three topics there first is our influence over pain is multifaceted.

[00:21:07] Chad Timmerman: Uh, secondly, I want to look at suffers of chronic pain and make it clear that they commonly utilized exercise to manage pain. This is nothing new. And then thirdly, just discuss the multiple types of exercise that can lead to reductions in pain, because there are a few kinds and it’s probably limited to just those.

[00:21:23] Chad Timmerman: So to begin, uh, let’s just talk about pain, pain, pain in general, and, and you’ve probably heard the term pain is in the brain and then that’s, it’s accurate and. Because it’s him. The brain means we have the potential to steer into very, very deep waters here. And I want to manage that depth because this is a huge topic and I can’t possibly do it justice with the pamphlet days I devoted to researching it.

[00:21:49] Chad Timmerman: And the time that we’re going to spend on it just now. So I’m going to try to keep it all endurance sport relevant, and then I’ll also limit it or include a bit with regards to chronic pain. It, in terms of pain itself, I did read a particular paper on the topic and I highly recommend it because I think it was the most interesting paper I read.

[00:22:08] Chad Timmerman: Uh, just in a general sense of general pain sense from 2007 by Irene Tracy and Patrick manta. And it was in the journal neuron and, and in a nutshell, they tout or they make clear. Impactful neuro imaging’s inception was on granting us insights into pain perception. I mean, everything prior to that had to be somewhat, if not entirely theoretical, and now can actually do things to people.

[00:22:34] Chad Timmerman: Look at imaging, see what’s happening to different parts of the brain, how much activity is going on, et cetera. So that in and of itself is interesting, but what’s a special interest. Uh, a number of points were actually actually kind of stood out within this paper, first of which is, is pretty basic. And it’s just a differentiation between chronic pain and acute pain, chronic being at least by European definition, pain that persists for more than three months.

[00:22:59] Chad Timmerman: And this being a European paper, they brought up that roughly 20% of European adult population is affected by some form of chronic pain. Coincidentally, I was reading an article this morning that talked about chronic pain in the United States and said one in five people are affected. So that number seems to carry across the pond, given that as you know, 15 years ago, I don’t know if it still stands up, but it probably hasn’t improved.

[00:23:21] Chad Timmerman: I would guess. That’s on the chronic side of thing on the, on the acute side of things, uh, it’s more quick onset and then quick relief, right? It comes and it goes, and it’s just, it is what it is. So you can almost see these two things as the difference between disease versus symptom disease and chronic pain, I believe is considered widely a disease.

[00:23:42] Chad Timmerman: Whereas acute pain is just symptomatic, some underlying issue or pathology or injury, whatever it may be. Uh, another point that was interesting from this paper. Pain is not necessarily linearly related to its cause. And the cause is term to no susceptive input. So, so pain perception input, and to further that the response to pain is affected by what’s appropriate or possible was the term they use, which already shines a light on the fact that there’s some subjectivity to this, right.

[00:24:11] Chad Timmerman: We can decide what’s appropriate. We can, within our own context, determine what’s possible and move forward accordingly, or deal with the pain accordingly. There was a figure in it that I found, especially interesting because it described. Pain with factors that amplify attenuate and color the pain experience, which again, points to the subjectivity of this, that this is something we can effect.

[00:24:35] Chad Timmerman: So then the question becomes how, and there really are a number of ways on the behavioral side, anything from anxiety, such as anxiety, in a general sense, you know, if you’re, if you’re already anxious, for whatever reason, it can increase your hyper sensitivity, your sensitivity to pain, and then there’s pain sensitivity, or I’m sorry, paintings.

[00:24:53] Chad Timmerman: It pain-related. So just the idea of the pain that’s coming creates its own anxiety. You know, we we’ve all gotten, or, you know, for those of us who have gotten COVID vaccinations, just knowing I’m going into, someone’s going to put a needle in my arm, can create some pain related anxiety that might influence your perception of that painful experience.

[00:25:11] Chad Timmerman: Right? Your your mental state. So depression has an impact on how we feel pain, cognition, you know, how sharp are you today? How well are you thinking? And, and in terms of cognition, I think of how my RPE is on workout. That I’ve done a hundred times. You know, how well did I sleep last night? How cognitively functional am I today?

[00:25:29] Chad Timmerman: Because the sharper, I am the easier it is for me to deal with that workouts, discomfort, and then your personal beliefs can also influence it. And all of this, I kind of encapsulate into just the single more general word, your disposition, what’s your disposition. And all of these things can alter this pain experience.

[00:25:47] Chad Timmerman: And then I came across a paper from, uh, just last year by Buckingham and Richardson that talked about optimism and grit as moderators moderators of what resilience, because they saw resilience as, as a positive mechanism in managing this pain experience. And I think all of us can agree on that and what I found, especially interesting as they described it as an adaptive trait.

[00:26:10] Chad Timmerman: And that that word is what stood out to me because it’s something that changes with time and experience and adaptive trait that results in an ability to sustain effective physical and psychological functioning during stressful events, such as experiencing pain. Right? So again, something that’s a bit within our control, a pilot study back in 2017, looked at ultra marathoners and noted that they by and large have super normal pain tolerance.

[00:26:38] Chad Timmerman: And, and that in and of itself is interesting. And Durance athletes being tough is news to nobody, but it’s nice to see a study that shines a light. But they attributed it to some especially interesting things. One is that they experienced less pain-related anxiety. So they’re already good with it. They know it’s going to hurt.

[00:26:53] Chad Timmerman: And all of us as bike racers can, can actually, should totally be able to relate to this too. We know going into it, this isn’t going to be walking in the park. I mean, unless you’re me and you decide, you’re going to just get there when you get there and you’re not racing it, you know, it’s going to hurt that.

[00:27:10] Chad Timmerman: The second thing they attributed to have a few things was elevated pain, pain tolerance due in part to the reduced avoidance of pain. So they’re not seeking to avoid it. Rather. It’s more of an accepting attitude than an avoiding one. And that’s terribly interesting problem is, and they point this out is it’s kind of a chicken or the egg scenario, is it.

[00:27:30] Chad Timmerman: Endurance, you know, ultra marathoners cultivate a high pain tolerance through their training, or do people with high pain tolerance gravitate towards challenges like ultra marathons, who knows? I don’t know how you would even determine that. And then as drew pointed out, he used the term hyper well, geez.

[00:27:47] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. Which let’s break that down really quickly. Hypo being low sensitivity to pain. So we’re talking about low sensitivity to pain and this can be brought on in a number of ways, obviously through drugs and painkillers, analgesics, and familiarity with stress. And that’s an interesting one. I mean, it’s just having experienced something one time can alter your perception of it the next time placebo, which is always fun to talk about.

[00:28:13] Chad Timmerman: But in this case it really makes it clear pain is where it’s in the brain. I mean, if we can just take a sugar pill and decide that it’s a painkiller and feel better because of it. Well, it’s obviously there’s some sense for me, the Asian go on and on there. An exercise and, and anyways can actually affect the pain experience.

[00:28:34] Chad Timmerman: So I’ve used the term pain experience a couple of times. So let’s, let’s discuss it in particular, but in doing so, I want to look at a couple of the more endurance sport, relevant aspects of the pain experience. The first of which is a term I saw quite a lot. And man, I’ve linked to, I don’t know how many studies over the course of this deep dive.

[00:28:55] Chad Timmerman: And there are tens, if not hundreds more, this is a huge topic. And this term in particular condition pain, modulation, cropped up a lot. And basically it’s just the diminishing of the perception of pain, intensity following some form of conditioning. Okay. So to put that another way you expose yourself to some form of pain, you do something, and then you repeat that exposure and there’s change in your perception of the pain that second time around.

[00:29:20] Chad Timmerman: Okay. Inline with that is something term descending pain modulation. And this is just the pathway starting from the brain. Translating to, to, and through the spinal cord onto what’s called your tread germinal sensory system. And to say that the pain is in the brain is obviously simplistic, but it might be a little more accurate.

[00:29:39] Chad Timmerman: It’s still simplistic to say that pain is interpreted in the brain because at some point. I have to have sensory input, right? We have to get it from somewhere. Whether we feel it, see it, smell it, taste it. I mean, we have to get, and I say this, not knowing there may be something that’s fully contained in the brain.

[00:29:54] Chad Timmerman: I can speak to that, but by and large, we need sensory input in order to respond to it. So this trigeminal perception helps us interpret all, all forms of input, warm, cold, intensity pain. It’s the pathway that allows us to alter our perception of sensory stimuli. It allows us to kind of define, is this less painful?

[00:30:14] Chad Timmerman: Is this more painful? And this brings us to what all of this is building towards so far, two terms, facilitation and inhibition. Now facilitation is pro-Nazi susceptive. It leads to the perception of pain. Whereas inhibition is antinociceptive leads to the blocking of the detection of pain. Okay. So hope you see where I’m going with this before I continue though.

[00:30:36] Chad Timmerman: Into the research. I want to talk about how researchers and us can quantify pain. We can quantify pain. So let’s, let’s call it pain metrics. I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re in the, the business of performance metrics. Now we’re going to look at pain metrics for a short while. Um, the, there are different types of, of, uh, pain basically.

[00:30:57] Chad Timmerman: Are there different sensations that can be associated with pain? So we can look at heat for instance, coal, for instance, pressure. And that’s the deep, muscular tissue sensitivity. So by and large us on the bike pressure is what we’re describing is pain in the muscles IES. We deal with heat. That’s more on the thermal side of things.

[00:31:14] Chad Timmerman: I can’t even wrap my brain around that. So we’re just going to look at pressure pain, pain pressure, which brings us to pain thresholds. So you may have heard the term pain pressure threshold. This is one, this is the pain threshold that relates the pressure and the pain threshold is simply the lowest intensity that’s perceived as painful.

[00:31:33] Chad Timmerman: So you feel pressure to a point where eventually it registers is painful. And this is generally, it has, there’s a good consensus across individuals. So where one person agrees, you know, that they do Colt, uh, what’s it called pressor? I’m not sure if that’s what it’s called, but basically they submerge their hands in cold water and, and until they, they perceive that.

[00:31:56] Chad Timmerman: Just painful. So when one person puts their hand in cold water, it’s pretty much a consistent temperature across individuals that says, yep, that’s that’s painfully cold now. So, so that’s, that’s more on the objective side pain tolerance, however, is more on the subjective side. It has to deal with how much you can stand.

[00:32:13] Chad Timmerman: So put your hand in that same cold water. How long can you tolerate it? What is your, your interpretation of the situation? How miserable is it for you? And what’s even more interesting about this is how very malleable our interpretation of pain it’s and, and, and why, again, because it’s in the brain and this brings me back to just a minor anecdote here, a little diversion, so much of us in our youths and even.

[00:32:39] Chad Timmerman: Later in life, go through a martial arts face. And I went through mine in the nineties and I had a couple of buddies. Uh, one friend of a friend was actually the, the sensei. He was the guy who was the black belt in TaeKwonDo, the black belt in jujitsu and worth community center. And we’re taking classes from him, but we’re also buddies.

[00:32:57] Chad Timmerman: So we also hang out on the weekends and no alcohol involved, just some, some, some nights we just decided submission wrestling is the thing that we’re going to do. So basically it’s MMA, but well, before MMA was as popular, prevalent as it is these days. And we would wrestle until basically either major buddy pass out or tap out.

[00:33:16] Chad Timmerman: Right. I mean, that’s, that’s just the nature of it. No punching or anything just wrestling, but I would get pat, he was the sensei, the. The the bad mofo, I would get him in a headlock and I know he was fading and I would just have to hope, wait it out. And he would grab my rib cage, grabbed the flesh on my rib cage and just dig his fingers into it.

[00:33:37] Chad Timmerman: And it worked like a charm every time he would do that, I’m I’m off him. I mean, it was extremely painful, but he had done that enough times. And I had employed my, my same headlock tactic enough times that I knew it was coming this last time. And I said, Nope, I’m going to work through it. And I held that headline headlock, and he grabbed onto me just like I knew he was going to do.

[00:33:57] Chad Timmerman: But I decided in that instance, I’m not going to let this be as painful as I’ve perceived it. The past few times and I held on sure enough, he had to tap out. So there’s a

[00:34:08] Jonathan Lee: true,

[00:34:14] Chad Timmerman: but I think about it when I say, how can I tolerate this situation when I’m on the bike and I’m falling apart. And I think, oh, I can’t possibly do another interval. And it’s experiences like that. That tell me, yeah, you can, you can decide right now I can do this. Your body’s not going to quit. You’re not going to run out of oxygen.

[00:34:30] Chad Timmerman: You’ve got enough glycogen in your muscles. You’ve got a gel sitting right there. All the excuses don’t really hold up. So you’re, you’re choosing. To quit, you know, that you can tough this out. Okay. So back on track, um, one more metric there’s, there’s a pain intensity rating, and this is really quite simple.

[00:34:47] Chad Timmerman: It’s just, you know, rate your pain on a one to 10, one to 21 to a hundred scale. And what’s interesting about this is that it not only differs across subjects, but it differs within them. So one person may rate that cold water as a six and another person may re rate it as a four or an eight, whatever. And then that same person under different circumstances could rate it differently.

[00:35:07] Chad Timmerman: Right? So that all of these things are important because they indicate that we have some level of influence on how we perceive. Okay, so all of this, there’s this to the question, what causes reductions in paint. And I’m just going to look at this briefly from two perspectives one’s physiologically and one psychologically.

[00:35:27] Chad Timmerman: So physiologically, we have an endogenous opioid system, which is responsible for the release of beta endorphins. And we did talk about this on the podcast though. Jesus had to be quite a long time ago. I don’t even know if we into the hundreds at that point, but it is out there. Alternatively, there are non opioid systems within our body.

[00:35:45] Chad Timmerman: Specifically, one of them is endocannabinoids. Then there are neurotransmitters like serotonin and norepinephrine and. Uh, things of that nature. And it looks like based on what I’ve read, that the exercise parameters kind of determine which system is tapped, for instance, the duration of the workout, the intensity of the work you’re doing.

[00:36:04] Chad Timmerman: Is it continuous? Is it intermittent, et cetera, frankly, I’m not sure it matters which system is activated. The fact that. Something brings us pain relief and it happens physiologically psychologically. This is where I’m especially interested is there’s something called the, uh, attention and distraction modulation.

[00:36:24] Chad Timmerman: So we can effectively direct our focus. And if you think I I’ve heard this a number of times, I’m suspecting it’s it’s out in the wild. It’s not just something that I’m privy to, but elite athletes focus on the pain, whereas a neat elite, sorry. Non-elite athletes focus on anything. And I don’t know if that stands up.

[00:36:43] Chad Timmerman: I’m sure there’s plenty of middle ground there. And I’m sure there’s plenty of time where elite athletes are focusing on anything. But, so I don’t know that that’s the strongest of statements, but it conveys the idea. You can focus on the pain or you can try to distract yourself from the pain. And if you’ve done any of the workouts with the workout text on, I mentioned this a lot.

[00:36:59] Chad Timmerman: I say, you know, there are instances where focus on the pain, focus on getting through this last 30 seconds, embrace how this feels right now versus other times where I try to suggest what I term productive distractions, you know, focused on something that takes your mind off the pain, but it’s still productive to what you’re doing.

[00:37:15] Chad Timmerman: You know, monitor your pedal, stroke, your position on the bike or your eyes on the horizon, et cetera, that sort of thing. So, you know, grant your tech attention or try to distract yourself from the pain or don’t you either. And just let the workout take the reins because. Exercise can in fact reduce the perception of pain and w when it comes to chronic pain, this is something that is not news and any respect this has been happening for, I was looking at articles from this.

[00:37:44] Chad Timmerman: So this is, this has been a known thing for quite a long time. So let, let’s kind of dive into how exercise can affect how we perceive pain. First, first of which one interesting aspect is that there’s general versus specific effects. And as you might expect, it’s more pronounced in the exercising muscles than the non exercising muscles.

[00:38:04] Chad Timmerman: But there are studies that have shown effects on the painful muscle when a distant muscle is exercised. And this is important because it suggests that there’s a peripheral as well as a central pain inhibitory processes in place. So there’s stuff going on in the muscle, but there’s also things that are mediated by the brain that can affect the body in a more general.

[00:38:26] Chad Timmerman: Then when it comes to the types of exercise that can induce this, this hyperalgesic response, the research liens specifically are quite often on three types. Robic exercise, isometric exercise, which is where you hold the contraction. But the angle of the joint doesn’t change. So just like a plank. And then dynamic resistance is it’s a, it’s a whole lot of movement without movement.

[00:38:50] Chad Timmerman: So the joint angle doesn’t change, but there’s all sorts of muscular activity. So it’s like a standing on a Bosu ball or an air ex-pat or something where you’re holding your balance and your body’s pretty static, but there’s quite a lot of activity taking place. So I’m only gonna look at isometric and aerobic.

[00:39:03] Chad Timmerman: First off isometric across the board seems to elicit large, moderate to large effect sizes. And it does so through low to moderate intensity leaning toward longer durations. And the point here is that they try to. The muscles close to, or actually to fatigue in order to elicit the greatest exercise induced hyperalgesic response, the greatest reduction in pain and thanks to exercise.

[00:39:28] Chad Timmerman: And it looks like according to most of what I read it, that there’s no apparent dose response relationship. It’s not as simple as just doing something high intensity and kicking back and waiting for the pain relief that should follow rather is attributed to recruitment of high threshold muscle, muscle units, motor units.

[00:39:46] Chad Timmerman: So basically we have to get those fast Twitch fibers and you can do that through high intensity, but you can also do it through low intensity with long duration. So you just wait, you just do it long enough. Hold that plank long enough. So where your slow Twitch muscles are fatigued, they tap out and your fast Twitch muscle.

[00:40:02] Chad Timmerman: Start to be recruited. And this is what apparently increases the level of exercise-induced type while Jesus LGS. And this may not seem terribly relevant in our context, but it’s certainly relevant when it comes to chronic pain suffers. And true did ask the question with regards to this specific type of pain, these, these, these specific, uh, people this, and as I mentioned earlier, exercise is widely considered important and important component of effective chronic pain management.

[00:40:31] Chad Timmerman: This is again, not news at all, and isometrics might be the most beneficial way of going about it. So whether you suffer from, uh, just some, some examples, fibromyalgia syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic opioids. Chronic musculoskeletal pain shoulder myalgia list goes on. It appears that engaging in moderate to high intensity aerobic work and actually push you to the other side of things toward hyperalgesia.

[00:40:58] Chad Timmerman: So it can actually increase your pain. Not so at least not as commonly with the isometrics. And two studies that I looked at, one looked at fibromyalgia suffered, suffers, and note noted that they preferred low intensity work. They worked at 45% versus 60 to 75% of max heart rate and had greater pain reduction at that lower end of things.

[00:41:21] Chad Timmerman: They also had, uh, increased or improved this, a better facts in terms of exercise induced hyperalgesia, hyper hypo, Algea, winter prescribed, moderate intensity level. So the point is lower side of things. Now let’s talk about endurance. Athletes and look at the aerobic side of things, aerobic exercise side of things.

[00:41:46] Chad Timmerman: And specifically, almost every study I looked at was either cycling or running. And they noted that intensity has definitely has an effect. Whereas duration effect is equivocal. So first with respect to duration, one study did one by 10 versus two by 10 at about threshold and notice that there was no difference in the, in the diminishment of pain between those two, but the same effect after two, by 10 as one by 10, uh, another study looked at 10 minutes versus 30 minutes and they noticed no difference in the pain reduction with the 10 minute effort, but when they extended it to 30 minutes, significant difference.

[00:42:21] Chad Timmerman: So again, kind of a clinical when it comes to duration. So I’m not sure there’s a heck of a lot of value in focusing specifically on the duration of your aerobic work. Rather on the intensity side of things, there is a clear dose response relationship across a lot of different studies and he lean toward the moderate to high intensity.

[00:42:38] Chad Timmerman: Noting that they have listed the greater exercise-induced hyperalgesic response. The largest effect sizes seem to happen right around 75% of the two max, which we equate that to FTP it’s in the ballpark of 90%. So we’re pushing and we’re in sweet spot pushing towards threshold much like drew mentioned and has to be carried out 10 plus minutes, much like drew mentioned.

[00:43:01] Chad Timmerman: So there’s, that’s the be the sweet spot. And I’ll come back to that. When the, when they work with low intensity cycling, 10 minutes at 50% of threshold, or sorry, the automatics, which put us, you know, 60, 65% of FTP. So endurance work, no significant change in pain ratings, 30 minutes at that same, same effort, level, moderate effects as eliminated 10 minutes of high intensity training, small effect size.

[00:43:26] Chad Timmerman: So the high intensity stuff, if not given enough quantity, didn’t seem that. Facts. So all this another way, the most consistently reliable exercise form for exercise induced hyperalgesia seems to be in that moderately painful region. So basically what drew said, threshold territory, but the one study pointed out that there is a larger hyperalgesic response after painful versus non painful, which I find pretty ironic, and that you have to experience pain in order to lessen it.

[00:43:55] Chad Timmerman: So you have to give a bit, uh, and I guess I can make sense. I mean, you can’t lessen pain and it’s not there in the first place, but the fact is you got hurt a bit for your body to wrong and make it hurt a little less. So what this shows us is that X as induced, the most pain may be tied to food of the, of the exercise induced hyperalgesia, but it’s not likely the primary mechanism.

[00:44:20] Chad Timmerman: And I say that because of another study that I came across that used non-painful exercise and still achieve some hypoallergenic. Response in particular, walking, walking seems to be widely and especially for chronic pain suffers, it is one of the most popular or effective ways to go. And then finally, let’s just look at the post effects.

[00:44:41] Chad Timmerman: Cause drew mentioned that he has his blanket of pain that lasts for up to two hours after exercise. Couldn’t really find anything to support. That doesn’t mean it’s not real, but most things look that can the effects lasting maybe 15 minutes post as long as 30 minutes. But when you start pushing up toward 30 minutes, it’s a real trivial effect.

[00:44:57] Chad Timmerman: Uh, and then another study looked at the reduction in pain, sensitivity lasting about five to 10 minutes post. So it doesn’t seem to be a heck of a lot for the idea that work really hard. Get these, this, this pain reduction flowing in. It’s going to carry well past your workout. It’s not. True. There’s just, I couldn’t come across any evidence of it.

[00:45:16] Chad Timmerman: Scientific evidence. So the overall overall takeaway here is that all three types of this exercise have demonstrated, can demonstrate arch effect sizes. Of course it’s transient, but they’re all effective ways of going about it. And then finally, just to close out, there are a number of studies, five going to be super quick with them, but they were all interesting.

[00:45:36] Chad Timmerman: And I think pertinent there there’s some, some utility to this first off exercise induced hyperalgesia appears to favor, at least in some studies. So more in one study, I’d linked to touts more hyperalgesia in response to exercise for females, which you know, whether it’s real, not placebo is real. So if you just believe I’m a woman, I get more pain relief from exercise.

[00:46:01] Chad Timmerman: Yay for you that there might be. Secondly age has illustrated it and the impact on the, the condition pain modulation. So, so as we age kind of tough guy syndrome, right? Are we talking about masters athletes being, being tougher, old guy strength, all that stuff. Well, maybe that has something to do with it, but fortunately there’s no change in exercise induced hyperalgesia.

[00:46:22] Chad Timmerman: So a lot literature pointed to the fact that that doesn’t decrease. You still get the full one. Very interesting study was a comp that one on competition induced analgesia. And this was, it kind of pointed out the difference between men and women. But I think more pointed out the difference between psychological engagement, because they used the video game and experienced some level of hyperalgesia on the men’s side women’s side, not so much, but they reasoned that the women particularly interested in playing video games so they didn’t get as competitively involved in it.

[00:46:55] Chad Timmerman: What was interesting about this is it kind of shines a light on the fact that there might be a psychological end of things too. So psychological stress can actually bring about peak response. And, and one talked about mirthful laughter, but you know, we’re not talking to chuckle or a file we’re talking full on laughing.

[00:47:11] Chad Timmerman: They had people watch a comedy versus a documentary for 30 minutes left very hard and inserted favor, favorable influences on pain tolerance, which I can’t help. But think when I sit on for my longer sometimes sweet spot, sometimes VO two max and I’m reading and it’s that, that’s the documentary side of things.

[00:47:33] Chad Timmerman: So I’m probably making things quite a bit more unenjoyable than they can be. Whereas if I just sat and watched episodes of the office, maybe I’d have a better workout. And then finally even getting on the bike just to spin your legs carries benefits. We’ve talked about this before the, uh, the, the lymphatic drainage, but one study that used manual lymphatic drainage.

[00:47:51] Chad Timmerman: So I think massage actually increased pain, threshold and pain tolerance, which leads me to posit that may be exercise induced, lymphatic drainage, spinning your legs is likely to have a similar effect.

[00:48:02] Jonathan Lee: Hmm, Chad, fantastic job to you and your internet. It made it through somehow there were some rough patches, but we made it through.

[00:48:12] Jonathan Lee: I was trying to not like, just stop talking. I was trying to not intervene at all because I didn’t want to throw you off and it was working. Um, fantastic. So I do have one question here, Chad, um, based on the, the research that you’ve done has your perspective shifted at all, or where do you stand on the common assumption that, uh, kind of like what we talked about with Ivy in the sense that you kind of need to race yourself into that ability to be able to express your full fitness, right?

[00:48:43] Jonathan Lee: Uh, you show up the first race and it can be really tough. And it’s this question of whether it’s the fitness that you gain through that, or if it’s your ability to be able to deal with that level of discomfort that’s novel from the racing experience. Yeah.

[00:48:59] Chad Timmerman: I really wanted to have a good answer for this.

[00:49:02] Chad Timmerman: So to be able to say, here’s what to do to make that first right of the season, less painful or to be more competitive or, and honestly, everything I read makes me think there’s still some fitness limitation there. You just haven’t had to work as hard as you have to work when you’re the one being when you’re following and not, you know, not directing so to speak.

[00:49:27] Chad Timmerman: There’s just nothing that I was hoping that the aftereffects would be like day’s worth having some exposure to this means that next time that your perception of the pain associated with it is diminished. And maybe there’s something to that. But try as I might, I couldn’t really find anything that backed up with research.

[00:49:45] Chad Timmerman: The point I really hoped to make. So I can’t, I can’t, I can’t

[00:49:49] Jonathan Lee: tell you. Yeah, it’d be really tough to prove that I bet within, in like a research sort of context,

[00:49:55] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. I don’t even know what you’d measure, because if it is, I’ve seen articles that claim that it’s this, uh, the Russia of endocannabinoids, uh, or, uh, what’s the other side that the opioid system, whatever that it stays kind of at a, at a higher baseline level.

[00:50:11] Chad Timmerman: And then it’s easier to ramp it back up. But again, I, I tried to dig into that a bit with the time that I had, and I couldn’t find anything that made it a clear cut. Yeah.

[00:50:22] Jonathan Lee: I, uh, have you considered that very thing before too is like, maybe I’m just better at hurting now rather than fit or like, you know? Oh

[00:50:30] Ivy Audrain: yeah, definitely.

[00:50:31] Ivy Audrain: But I just can’t like, let go of the fact that Chad just said he reads on the

[00:50:35] Jonathan Lee: trainer. Yeah. And listening to the classical music during the intervals. Yes. Honestly,

[00:50:43] Chad Timmerman: that, that nothing passes time. Like reading the, the engagement I get by reading something that’s mildly, intellectually challenging. It can’t be too difficult.

[00:50:51] Chad Timmerman: It makes the time just fly more than anything else. More than music, more than documentaries, more than comedies, whatever I

[00:50:58] Jonathan Lee: haven’t pressed.

[00:51:03] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. This is something that, so whether w another chicken or egg thing, uh, I may create this every year going into the race season, but I have noticed that once I get, and it’s even so. It’s even if I race a totally different type of racing, it’s just getting used to that sort of pain and intensity because my interval workouts are plenty hard, but racing is a unique type of pain because, uh, you know, it’s unexpected, it’s novel, it’s catching you off guard.

[00:51:35] Jonathan Lee: There’s a lot of different aspects to the discomfort that you’re experiencing, because so much of it

[00:51:40] Chad Timmerman: as well, relevant to this conversation. I do think that stands up. So when we think about that condition pain modulation, that is that, but when you experience it in a. Uh, very controlled, uh, I won’t say comfortable, but a very controlled environment on the trainer.

[00:51:57] Chad Timmerman: You know what power you have to put out, you know, how long you have to hang on to it, you know, when recovery comes and then you have to go out and you have to do all of those things that, you know, you’re not armed with any of that information. I think you have to have some exposure to that in order to condition that response.

[00:52:13] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. And even to believe that you can do it, that you’ll make it through. All right. Since you don’t know what’s coming up. Sorry, Ivy. I enter. No, that’s okay.

[00:52:20] Ivy Audrain: We, I think you’ve talked about this in prior episodes, too. When talking about the confidence you carry, when, I mean, we’ve talked about your. Needing the ability to suffer in order to get faster and, um, like enjoying that process a little bit, but you’ve talked about like the competency carry from completing a really difficult workout or, um, like in a specific zone that’s really hard for you and how that confidence can help you then in now maybe what we know is condensed conditioned pain modulation,

[00:52:54] Jonathan Lee: you know?

[00:52:55] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super interesting stuff. Um, and at the very least one thing that, you know, whether endurance athletes already have this preconditioning onboard or these increased capacities to be able to tolerate pain or whether it just comes about from it, no doubt endurance athletes have a unique relationship with pain, um, in the sense that, you know, it’s, you get long periods of exposure to it for extended, you know, for quite a high percentage of your time.

Rapid fire questions

[00:53:22] Jonathan Lee: Relatively speaking to, to average folks, thanks for doing all their research, Chad, um, let’s jump into some rapid fire stuff. Sam says quick, rapid fire question, who is the rider on the app loading page and the pocket Aero helmet would be nice to put a name to the face. Seeing as I see the guy three or four times a week, you’re looking at him it’s me.

[00:53:40] Jonathan Lee: So yeah. Yeah. That’s me. Uh, we try to not use pictures of me because I’m kind of like a recognizable face on trainer. But in that one you can’t tell because all you see is a big old egg shaped Aero helmet. So yeah, that’s me. That’s me on there. A good Easter egg. All right. Tom says I’m 33 years old, have a resting heart rate of 44 and a max of 1 99.

[00:54:00] Jonathan Lee: I trained regularly in a race at a reasonable level. Should I be worried about how high the max is for context? I recently hit 198 for a minute on a ramp test. And I hit those numbers while training and racing fairly often. And I’ve been in this range forever since I started cycling seriously, six to seven years ago.

[00:54:15] Jonathan Lee: He mentioned also in this question that everyone around him is like, you’re crazy. I can’t believe your heart rates that high, but not, you shouldn’t be worried about it. If that’s something that he regularly hits and he feels like there’s no discomfort or anything else, right. Yet, that’s just the way it is.

[00:54:28] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. I mean, and the fact that he can hold 1 98 for a minute, says that’s not as max. I mean, he could probably touch even higher than that, which just stall points to the fact that he’s got a really high heart rate reserve. So if you’ve seen that term HRR, it’s the difference between your resting heart rate and your maximum heart rate.

[00:54:43] Chad Timmerman: And his is massive, which says it according to some that he has the potential for, or has very high cardiovascular fitness. So it’s not a bad thing. And frankly, if you is nothing to fear, I mean, you’re not going to, well, I don’t, I don’t want to say any more than that. It’s nothing I’d worry about.

[00:55:00] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. And it’s always important to remember the relationship between heart rate and stroke volume.

[00:55:05] Jonathan Lee: Right. And that those two things work together to deliver a certain amount of blood to your body. So, uh, you know, it’s, it’s, if a person has an extremely low heart rate and is listening to this and suddenly they’re concerned because they’re not high, well, maybe you have really high stroke volume. Right.

[00:55:18] Jonathan Lee: And so your heart doesn’t have to beat like a little hummingbird. It can beat less just because it’s putting more blood or beat, uh, with higher stroke volume. Okay.

[00:55:27] Chad Timmerman: Yeah, I’ve been at points in my cycling career where I can sit at 150 BPM and crank out 350 Watts so that that’s not a whole lot of heart rate heartbeats going on for that much power, which says my stroke volume at that point in time was obviously pretty massive.

[00:55:41] Chad Timmerman: I can only imagine what would that show volume in 198 BPM

[00:55:48] Jonathan Lee: speedy business. No doubt. All right. Uh, let’s get into some fun ones. Okay. Phil says advice for a roadie transitioning to mountain biking. Ivy, can you take this one being, having a passes as a pro roadie and doing mountain bike races and stuff these days? Yeah,

[00:56:03] Ivy Audrain: for sure. Um, I wonder what kind of mountain biking Phil wants to do just like recreational or if they want to like race XC or something.

[00:56:11] Ivy Audrain: I think it’s, you know, common for rodeos to want to get into ECC right away. Um, because they like climbing and they want to, they want to race and stuff. Um, and so I have seen a lot of rodeos. Get short travel, XC bikes right away. And those bikes are hard to ride man, like, or like a hardtail 29. Yeah, yeah.

[00:56:35] Ivy Audrain: To be like pretty tactful and thoughtful about the way you ride you. Can’t just like be a dumb Cannonball at the time.

[00:56:43] Jonathan Lee: Um, and technically sound, it requires your technique to be perfect. Anytime that it is not, it is punished because there’s less of a buffer between you and chaos. Right.

[00:56:52] Ivy Audrain: Right. And we’re not talking about like being punished, like not going as fast as you want to be going.

[00:56:58] Ivy Audrain: We’re talking about like crashing and potentially injuring yourself or those. So that said, I would advise to start with a, something like an Enduro bikes, and there’s a lot of travels so that you have plenty of cushion to learn those really fundamental off-road skills before you decide what you want to do with mom biking and like maybe get fast bike, maybe get a hard tail, something that requires more skill you want to, you want to have, um, like a gentle buffer while you’re learning those off-road skills and something with a lot of travels.

[00:57:30] Ivy Audrain: Great.

[00:57:32] Jonathan Lee: Within the next five to 10 years, all of us will look at racing, cross country stuff on a hard tail is just crazy. So I’ll be on 120 mil traveler more, and that will be what it is. So, so don’t think that you need to go with the most like rough, abusive and Uber efficient in terms of what you think it will be bike go for one that will, and it’s all about strengths and weaknesses, right?

[00:57:58] Jonathan Lee: You already have a ton of fitness, probably. So you’re coming over to this side where you have a probably relative weakness of bike handling. So why not get a bike that really helps you figure out your weakness without punishing you so much that you’re not even physically capable to do the activity AKA injured.

[00:58:15] Jonathan Lee: Uh, and then that way you’ll be able to build up on those strengths over time. I think it’s, uh, yeah. It’s sound advice. Ivy. Good stuff, Thomas. Uh, Chad, you’ll take this one first. If he could choose to win Kona or Cape epic, which would you pick?

[00:58:30] Chad Timmerman: Um, Cape epic. I think it’s a bigger affair having to, having to go hard for eight days in a row.

[00:58:36] Chad Timmerman: To me is more impressive than bearing yourself for a single day.

[00:58:40] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. I, I V w what would you say? Oh,

[00:58:44] Ivy Audrain: man, both of these just sounded horrible

[00:58:47] Jonathan Lee: to me. I go cross racer.

[00:58:51] Ivy Audrain: It was, I got run like swim. I’m not very buoyant. I’m going to say Cape epic.

[00:59:01] Jonathan Lee: Do the lack of buoyancy. Do risk of death. I would say Kona, because that seems like, I think it’s just because I’ve done Cape epic and whenever I’m at Kona, I’m just, I’m literally star struck by all of the athletes that are doing that.

[00:59:17] Jonathan Lee: It’s so hard. Like those conditions like Chad, Chad and I, one year we were having a pizza party in an air conditioned house, watching the live stream with occasional bouts of jumping out into a pool. And back we sacrificed ourselves by driving down in an air conditioned car to the course. And we stood at the turnaround on the run course on elite.

[00:59:38] Jonathan Lee: You drive for like 30 minutes and both of us were like, I’m sweating so much. This is so hot. I can’t handle this. And we were just clapping for people and we got back in the car and went back to the house. So like, it’s so hard. Uh, I would say Kona to me is, is just such an impressive feat either one or like, you know, just look at Jordan.

[00:59:57] Jonathan Lee: I have no clue if Jordan’s through, like what sort of level of fitness he carried into Cape epic, but he was buckled day after day after day, you looked at that finish line. He was destroyed. Like, and so that just shows that like that level of athlete, how hard that is, what they. Also at the after party, we were at the after party celebration for specialized destroyed it, and they have a huge HQ there.

[01:00:22] Jonathan Lee: So we went there for this after party. And I think Jordan wait like six entrees while he was there. Um, he was just trying to make up for all that lost, uh, lost carbohydrate, I guess, over the whole course. So either one, but I would pick Kona, uh, how much Shammy cream is too much Shammy cream. This is another question we got Annie, you’re fine with anything.

[01:00:44] Jonathan Lee: Right. Chad, whole bottle. Still read a book.

[01:00:53] Chad Timmerman: unnecessary.

[01:00:55] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I, I, I don’t use Shammy cream unless it’s raining. So, and actually I didn’t use Shammy cream or Cape epic when it was raining. And I kind of wish I did because I finished two days where my Shammy, which is usually bright, green was 100%. And the, and it’s from the mud I promise. And like that thing through multiple washes has not changed.

[01:01:20] Jonathan Lee: It was that much permeation of like mud and water and nastiness. So I don’t use Shammy cream typically, but I should have on those days. Cause I was pretty sore after that. But not a lot. You don’t need a lot, a little bit goes a long way. Right? Like I dunno, Ivy like a nickel

[01:01:37] Ivy Audrain: size.

[01:01:39] Jonathan Lee: Yes.

[01:01:40] Ivy Audrain: Yeah, yeah. It’s okay.

[01:01:41] Ivy Audrain: You shaving cream cheese. He’s more, he’s more of your, if

[01:01:45] Jonathan Lee: you needed, I’ve seen people just like put the bottle in the bibs and just dump that bottle in there and squeeze the whole thing out. And I can’t imagine that that would be comfortable or,

[01:01:57] Ivy Audrain: or if you like have, um, and Fenty teammates you like on a really bad saddle sore day, we’ll just like, um, take their, like put their Shammy inside out and just.

[01:02:09] Ivy Audrain: Do we get a scoop and start just like painting it on their Shammy. And I’m

[01:02:13] Jonathan Lee: like butter on toast.

[01:02:14] Ivy Audrain: Like this ain’t gonna only, God can help you. Now, this isn’t gonna help you.

[01:02:20] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I hide the squirt barrier bomb I found is that the favorite Shamie cream that I’ve used? Um, it has nothing to do with their chain loop.

[01:02:28] Jonathan Lee: It’s just like, it’s, it’s almost a, it’s more similar to like a bag ball, but even then it’s a little bit different, but a little bit goes a really long way. And that stuff does great with, um, persisting through rainy nasty conditions that you might be riding. Cause some Shammy cream, if it gets wet, it just kind of goes away.

[01:02:45] Jonathan Lee: So that’s one way they can help. Okay. From Tobias, what job would each of you have if you never rode a bike, but here’s the stipulation the other hosts have to answer for you. So we don’t have to go for everybody. Just something comes to mind. So if we never go bikes, Ivy, what would be our job? And, but you have to answer.

[01:03:10] Ivy Audrain: I, so I, I didn’t want to read the rapid fire before the podcast so that my responses were genuine, but now I’m getting caught off guard.

[01:03:18] Chad Timmerman: Okay. I’ll buy you time, Ivy. Okay. Jonathan, you’re going to, you’re going to be a social influencer. That’s clear. That’s the profession these days and Ivy, I, I don’t know that don’t take this wrong way, but I think you’re going to be my favorite barista of all time.

[01:03:35] Chad Timmerman: I just coffee shop happy to be there. And someone, I look forward to talking to him.

[01:03:40] Jonathan Lee: I mean,

[01:03:41] Ivy Audrain: it’s, I didn’t work in the service industry. I waited tables, um, for like almost 10 years. So I, it makes sense. Actually,

[01:03:50] Jonathan Lee: I got one for Ivy. You’re a director of a nonprofit and that nonprofit focuses on helping people that are disadvantaged.

[01:03:58] Jonathan Lee: Get access to something. I don’t know. That’s just, Ivy’s got, Ivy’s got big heart. It doesn’t fit in the frame that we have here on zoom. So I’d say that’s where Ivy is. Um, Chad would be a veterinarian just like his fiance is, uh, because Chad has a profound love for animals, if you don’t know. Um, and he is a caring and kind guy and also is fascinated with how we as Cree, you know, as, as living organisms work.

[01:04:24] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I think you’d be a vet Chad. So I think, okay.

[01:04:28] Ivy Audrain: I think, uh, John would be a therapist, uh, or would make a great therapist. At least he already like, kind of is for me

[01:04:40] Ivy Audrain: and Chad, I would for sure, put you in some sort of like high level college athletics coaching position, for sure. As someone that’s been in, like, you know, traditional sport college athletics before. Big good coach fives.

[01:04:58] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Awesome. Let’s continue more of the good vibes. Michael asks your favorite cycling memory.

[01:05:09] Jonathan Lee: I’ve got, yeah, got what you go for.

[01:05:13] Chad Timmerman: So I don’t, I don’t have a favorite, but I have favorites and one of them was a local race series. It was the last race in the series. There was a close points race between me and second place. And I came into it needing to win all three premiums and the victory and, and I managed to do it.

[01:05:34] Chad Timmerman: And I got w w what made it so special is I got support from people. I wouldn’t have expected it. No, no reason for them to help me out, not teammates. Uh, but for whatever reason, they liked me more than this other writer or just, I don’t know why, but it was support. Unexpected places. And I delivered on something that seemed a very tall order at the start of the race.

[01:05:57] Ivy Audrain: I think a minus probably when I was still racing road and my mom was still, uh, account one. We’re doing pretty, pretty big regional stage race. And she led me out to win the cricket and, um, pretty much broke the entire women’s pro field in the last lap too. It was my lead out person. I had to keep telling her.

[01:06:21] Ivy Audrain: Tobacco off like easy. Cause she was riding me off her wheel and she wrote the only there like myself and like three or four other sprinters that were able to hold a reel. And then there was like a time gap, like 10 seconds to the rest of the field or something. She was incredible. Um, it was that’s my favorite cycling memory,

[01:06:39] Jonathan Lee: I think.

[01:06:40] Jonathan Lee: Well, that’s amazing. Yeah. How, oh, that would be, that’s like a life goal right there. Um, I think I have two that I want to separate. One of them is, uh, went to north star and uh, I don’t know if this was legal, so take this for what it is, but went to north star with my, uh, with, uh, like one of those kids ride shotgun or Mac ride, more bike seats on my Enduro bike with Simon and we rode flow trails all day, uh, with my son and he was.

[01:07:09] Jonathan Lee: Just over three years old at that point. Uh, and we just ripped bike park laps all day and he was just hooting and hollering as he went around awesome berms and went over jumps and stuff. And he was so happy. We didn’t do anything bigger, crazy don’t call CPS on me, um, is small stuff, super fun. Just enough to give him that weightlessness feeling.

[01:07:27] Jonathan Lee: And that was like, I taught an entire day of your kid, just like grinning ear to ear and laughing while he’s riding a bike with you. Yeah. It doesn’t really get better than that. It was pretty amazing. Um, and then the other one, even though it’s, uh, I dunno, I, I would say when I ever stayed with, uh, with a group of close friends and like a really strong group of people that we all suffered really deeply, and it was terrible weather and everything else.

[01:07:52] Jonathan Lee: And it was over 24 hours because of just many circumstances. And that one, I feel like we, like there was a lot of bonding that went on on a bike and I recognized at that point, I think the power for the bike to be like this cool vehicle for bonding that could never happen other than. Uh, it was really cool.

[01:08:10] Jonathan Lee: It’s fantastic. I look back fondly at that, so, okay. Favorite film with a bike in it? It doesn’t have to be a bike movie just with a bike in it.

[01:08:23] Jonathan Lee: Nailed it. Amazing.

[01:08:28] Chad Timmerman: Mine would be. It’s always a toss up between American fliers and, uh, breaking away. However, gotta give an honorable mention to Quicksilver. Kevin bacon in his heyday is so horribly cheesy, but I can’t not watch that movie if I come across it.

[01:08:45] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. And if you’re listening to this Chris record, Chris record Kevin bacon, the same exact thing, actually not separable.

[01:08:51] Jonathan Lee: So, um, okay. Uh, I, mine is going to, I’m just going to pick a fringe one for you all. So rad, absolutely has to be up there and I’m sure Chad is going, oh yeah, rad, probably as high up on the list. Maybe I’ll be too. Yeah. While you were sleeping with Sandra Bullock way back in the day. If you ever watched that movie, uh, that one has one clip where a kid is riding a BMX bike and poor kids, but the kids riding a BMX bike, he’s thrown out papers.

[01:09:17] Jonathan Lee: And he, I don’t know if he hits a patch of vice or something, but he has the most spectacularly hilarious crash I think I’ve ever seen. So that one always sticks out in my mind. So go watch that one. You’ll enjoy it. Um, okay. Go-to cake choice at a cafe stop. And I assume cake is like just whatever baked.

[01:09:34] Jonathan Lee: Good. They have

[01:09:36] Chad Timmerman: lemon bar.

[01:09:39] Jonathan Lee: Ooh,

[01:09:41] Ivy Audrain: that’s good. Sometimes little key line pies.

[01:09:46] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. If they have them, I would go with, uh, some sort of like a custard croissant, like something that like a croissant with that’s really good with good. Cross-sell with custard, possum, possum. I have no clue. Is that how a French people actually pronounce it?

[01:10:01] Jonathan Lee: We all totally like that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We don’t want to make assumptions here. Okay. Is it acceptable to wear legwarmers without wearing our Mormon? Absolutely not. Okay, good. I’m not alone. I can’t imagine doing that. I would feel like on dressed at Chad’s Chad’s video’s frozen and he just looks at

[01:10:29] Jonathan Lee: Chad, can you do, I dunno if you’ve officially dropped off in forever? We might. Yeah. He’s back. I can

[01:10:36] Chad Timmerman: hear you guys. Can you hear me?

[01:10:40] Jonathan Lee: What are you feeling?

[01:10:41] Chad Timmerman: I was echoing, I E I was echoing IVs. She said, absolutely not. No world. Does that make sense? But would you layer up your low body before your upper body?

[01:10:52] Chad Timmerman: Not to mention just slightly

[01:10:54] Jonathan Lee: Riddick. Yeah. Here I am in pants and a t-shirt and I do that regularly. So now I’m questioning myself, I guess it’s different on bikes. Um, yeah. Um, this next one and I forgot to add in one word on it. Is it okay to do workouts with mismatched socks? Sure. Yeah, it’s fine. It’s what it, you know, if it’s indoors, whatever, right?

[01:11:17] Jonathan Lee: Yeah.

[01:11:21] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I’m, I’m physically incapable of doing this. The socks have to be matching. They have to be perfectly at the right height. Everything else. I personally, can’t not do that, but you know, whatever. Okay. Meg says what proteins love the best kits in 2022. Oh,

[01:11:37] Ivy Audrain: oh,

[01:11:40] Jonathan Lee: oh, they were cool this year. Right? I like the, um, the, I saw that canyons, Kenyan SRAM is no longer going to be with Rafa.

[01:11:49] Jonathan Lee: So I don’t know what that means for their kids, but they’ve always had, I think the coolest kids, the women’s Kenyan team, I think they’ve been the best kits out of the entire men’s and women’s pro Peloton. So I don’t know, now that they’re gone with him, who’s Rafa going to be with, I guess, just the F.

[01:12:08] Jonathan Lee: Ah, there we go. Just Teagan. Chad, do you have any strong thoughts on this? Either way?

[01:12:14] Chad Timmerman: I just looked, he has to be the ones who push the envelope. It’s either horribly ugly or horribly good looking, but definitely is a noteworthy.

[01:12:24] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. EMF usually is the one that drives it. I like their black multi-colored kit.

[01:12:29] Jonathan Lee: They have this year, like predominantly black with lots of other matters on it. Yeah, that was good. Okay. Uh, from wobbly, moose says your favorite saddle Ivy.

[01:12:39] Ivy Audrain: Uh, I definitely have a favorite saddle. My dear friend in Missoula Montana makes my saddles for me. Um, they’re called ergonomics. Yeah. Um, they’re incredible and pretty unlike, uh, a lot of the satellite, if you’re like me.

[01:12:56] Ivy Audrain: Like every saddle that’s been made ever. And these ones seem to work for me. Um, like the cutout is just right, like the slip, the nose, just right. The, with, um, the pubic bones is just right. Which is hard to get. And, um, yeah, I’m obsessed with them. He’s going to be mad too, that I’m saying this because he’s also my friend, Brian, that makes them is also, um, a trailer builder and works for our, uh, local mountain bike association and is already really busy.

[01:13:26] Ivy Audrain: And so he gets really upset when I tell people about the saddles. Cause then he’s like doing more work for me, but they’re really that

[01:13:33] Jonathan Lee: great. Yeah. Nice chat. What’s your favorite saddle?

[01:13:41] Jonathan Lee: I can’t think of what

[01:13:42] Chad Timmerman: it’s called. It’s a specialized saddle. They have so many models, but it’s the one that’s obscenely pricey. It’s like four and $50 made out of a honeycomb and a mesh. I can’t remember what it’s called, but that thing has been the single best saddle I’ve ever seen.

[01:13:55] Jonathan Lee: Specialized mirror, saddle, I think it’s called.

[01:13:57] Jonathan Lee: Yep. Yep. Yeah. And mine’s pro logo dimension. The 1 43. That’s the, yeah, that’s a, that’s the jam. I don’t like the thicker one that’s made for mountain biking. I don’t know why you’d need a thicker set up for mountain biking. Like you have suspension and big old bumpy or big old balloon tires to help with that sort of stuff.

Physical vs. psychological benefits of drafting

[01:14:16] Jonathan Lee: I don’t know. Um, yeah, that’s what I like. Okay. Let’s get into some listener questions from rose. She says, Hey, train a road crew. I really enjoyed following the team’s progress at Cape epic as my husband and I had prepared to do a stage race as a team watching the Cape epic coverage has me wondering about the benefits of drafting or working with the team on a mountain bike.

[01:14:33] Jonathan Lee: Sophia spoke about the advantages of being able to draft off of others in the race. The pro leaders seem to rely on this quite a bit, but I’m wondering how much of this is applicable to the average mountain biker such as myself, the pro racers are obviously going at much faster speeds where drafting will actually come into effect, but also wonder how much of this is just a mental effect of trying to stay with the group or the true aerodynamic.

[01:14:55] Jonathan Lee: The race that we’re working towards is the Pisco stage race. There are plenty of gravel roads, but most of these gravel sections, there are steep and rough. I average about six to eight miles an hour on these climbs. I also generally like to lead, I feel like I can ride more efficiently when I can set my own pace and see what’s ahead of me clearly.

[01:15:11] Jonathan Lee: But as the smaller rider of my team, I’ve heard plenty of people advise me to have my husband poll me whenever possible. And she says, pull in quotes. Since she’s watched Cape Patrick, she probably saw people literally like holding onto Jersey pockets and getting pulled along and pulling someone along.

[01:15:27] Jonathan Lee: And in this case, she’s just talking about, you know, you pull up the front, which means you ride at the front. She isn’t talking about the actual polling. So as a non roadie that hates to ride behind others, is this a skill I should develop to work more effectively as a team? Ivy? What would you say to this one being in cyclocross?

[01:15:42] Jonathan Lee: Like, you know, cyclocross is higher speed typically than mountain biking in terms of average speed. Uh, it, depending on the course, but it’s still not road racing. So how do you view drafting.

[01:15:53] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. Uh, I think I should cover that there are advantages and disadvantages, um, to drafting both on the physical and the psychological side of being able to draft.

[01:16:05] Ivy Audrain: So like, um, I mean, physically, there’s obviously an advantage to drafting because you’re saving energy, but, um, also it depends upon like where you are in the race, like rose, if you’re faster than your partner, but you decide to draft to save some energy, the leaders ahead of you could be getting away or like, you know, increasing their, um, their advantage on you and your partner or, um, you know, drafting into a technical section might not be the best movie either.

[01:16:37] Ivy Audrain: Um, and there’s a lot of tact in that with cyclocross, with other off-road disciplines where timing your draft and then passing in, like before a technical section can be a huge advantage for you depending on. Where you are with your technical skills. Um, so yes, there’s a physical advantage drafting, but it can also be a detriment if you’re not going to the pace that you need to, for the sake of drafting and conserving some energy and then, um, psychologically as well.

[01:17:06] Ivy Audrain: Um, I know you might be okay just being on the front, it sounds like you’re okay. Just setting your pace, but there’s also something very mentally restful about giving yourself a little break and, um, letting someone else lead that makes you feel a little bit more recharged and gives you a little more energy for a technical section later on.

[01:17:29] Ivy Audrain: Um, and just makes you feel like you’re not doing the brunt of the work for the entire stage of the race. Um, but there can be pitfalls there too, again, with letting like a group ahead of you gain momentum, or if your partner isn’t pulling in the way that you like, uh, it can, it can kill some of your

[01:17:48] Jonathan Lee: momentum.

[01:17:49] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, I think it is totally an important skill to develop, right. Ivy, like if you’re gonna race as a team, be comfortable riding behind somebody and the best cross-country racers are incredible to watch with this. And I bet it’s the same as cyclocross racers. I just have never written with like, you know, the best of the best in that field, but it’s incredible how they can ride so close through technical winding terrain and everything else.

[01:18:12] Jonathan Lee: And they just are able to maintain it’s really, really impressive. It’s a skill that has a lot of it just has to do with trust. And, uh, the second guessing just has you drag your brakes a little bit more, a little bit more frequently, you touch them or you hesitate coming into a section rather than just being able to fully trust and you can’t trust somebody.

[01:18:31] Jonathan Lee: You don’t know that’s, that’s tough. So I don’t expect you to go into this and to just say like, yeah. Okay. Just ride behind somebody and have it be perfect. So it does take time to build. The Brandon and I were constantly trying to find somebody to ride behind, but then in spots where we felt like we needed to take advantage of strengths that we had, we would go to the front.

[01:18:54] Jonathan Lee: And I assume in the physical stage race, it will be the same thing, but boy, what a technical race that will be. So I would think that you would want to play this so that depending on where you’re at in the field, I mean, if you’re at the front, you’re all set, you don’t have to worry about it, but depending on where you’re at in the field, when you get onto those fire roads, that’s when you’ll want to allow yourself to kind of settle in.

[01:19:14] Jonathan Lee: And if you have technical strengths, that’s when you’re going to want to get into position, to be able to leverage those technical strengths later. But, um, yeah, it takes a lot of time and Brandon and I, I became much more trusting of Brandon’s wheel over the course of that race. I bet he became more trustful of my wheel over the course of the race as well.

[01:19:31] Jonathan Lee: It’s just the more you ride with specific people that happens. Like when I ride rode with. I just feel like I never have to offset from his wheel. He now, when you don’t fully trust a person, you might don’t, you don’t overlap wheels, but you kind of sit a few inches to the left or right. Of their tire. And I’m a chat.

Examining how a specific pro athlete should manage their nutrition

[01:19:48] Jonathan Lee: I just know. Oh no, no. I’m just right where it needs to be. He’s not going to make any dumb moves. He’s not going to hit anything bad, you know? Uh, we all have those riders. So yeah, it takes time. Uh, Damien says, good day. I I’m just going to say that I’m not going to try to emulate an accent. Damien. He says, my name is Damien and I’m a professional triathlete who has been doing sports for only three years.

[01:20:10] Jonathan Lee: And at that time received my license. My question today is about weight management and eating. I roughly trained for 26 to 30 hours per week, including three gym, three gym sessions. I assume those gym sessions are probably not longer than an hour. Um, but I may be wrong there. My disciplines are Xterra and long course triathlon with four, uh, with a 4.8 Watts per kilogram, for insight, if it helps.

[01:20:31] Jonathan Lee: And it absolutely will. Damien cause I’m going to get into a lot of numbers later on. Damien says I’ve stayed roughly around the 71 to 72 kilogram weight mark for the past 18 months. No matter how much I eat, I’ve been attempting to put myself into a surplus and push to 75 kilograms for the past eight months with little gain, if anything, I’ve lost a kilo or so he says I’m six one.

[01:20:51] Jonathan Lee: So a rather thin athlete. My average diet for a day would consist of breakfast being a large bowl of muesli and two bananas with a black coffee morning snack of are any says black coffee in the morning snack of the salad normally consisting of mainly greens and about 500 grams. Total lunch would be another large serving of vegetables, such as sweet potato or rice or pasta with a protein shake with nuts, berries and other fruits.

[01:21:14] Jonathan Lee: So it sounds like he’s getting good macro nutrients. So that’s. He says after snack would usually be two slices of toast with honey and peanut butter and dinner being another large meal carbohydrate-based meal, lasagna, pasta bake, or a noodle based dish, again, with a large quantity of vegetables. Then throughout the day, consuming carbs and training, which can range from 300 to 400 per day.

[01:21:33] Jonathan Lee: I assume he’s talking about grams of carbs. He says I would eat more than any of the other. I typically more than any of the other people I train with and yet have no movement in my weight, even with the added strength program. So any tips on successfully adding mass that can contribute to being a more powerful athlete would be great.

[01:21:50] Jonathan Lee: I always love hearing the podcast and can’t wait for international travel to open up to shred the trails. Uh, Damien, thanks for sending in this question. Lots of detail, which is great in this case. Um, so I want to get into the main goal of your question. Any tips on successfully adding mass that can contribute to being a more powerful athlete would be great.

[01:22:08] Jonathan Lee: So we’ll get to that, but first we need to lay out some context, actually look at the numbers. Uh, because it’s really easy to undernourished when you’re an athlete, that’s training at the levels that you are training at. So, uh, look, let’s look at like physiological or physical demands, just from a very basic general perspective.

[01:22:26] Jonathan Lee: You’re at four point Watts per kilogram, and you are at 72 kilograms or 158 pounds. And you have roughly that would, should put you at like a 350 watt FTP. So let’s assume that you have 15 hours on the bike and then about 12 hours split between run and swim. And then you make up the rest with your gym work, typical training intensity of a pro athlete with an FTP of about 350 Watts means you’re likely burning somewhere around 4,000 calories a day from all three disciplines in your training.

[01:22:56] Jonathan Lee: So, and that’s just looking at basically the kilojoules that you would expend on a bike and then thinking of what you’re probably doing on the running the bike is where you’re going to probably be burning more calories, uh, especially with the 350 watt FTP. So 4,000 calories a day. That’s just from the training.

[01:23:11] Jonathan Lee: Then let’s add into your BME. Uh, so if you look at that and assuming that you have a heightened metabolism of a professional athlete, like we’re assuming, uh, it’s likely that you’re averaging somewhere around 6,000 calories burned each day. So if you’re feeling at 90 grams an hour, while you’re training, that still requires you to take in about 4,200 calories through food, outside of training.

[01:23:33] Jonathan Lee: So that’s four meals of just over a thousand calories each, and that’s hard to do, like try to eat four meals of a thousand calories every day when you’re eating like you are. And you know, my nutrients are micro, nutrient dense foods and you’re going to plants and you’re going to all those things. Now, if you’re just eating Oreos and everything else, you can probably knock that out with relative ease.

[01:23:51] Jonathan Lee: Right. But if you’re trying to eat four meals of over a thousand calories a day, that’s pretty tough. So you can see how easy it is to under nourish. And you can get really specific on macros, but you can also just step back and look at the, how much are you taking in and how much is coming out. And if you’re not putting enough.

[01:24:10] Jonathan Lee: That means that it’s going to be really tough for you to actually gain weights on, put on desirable mask. That’s going to help you go faster on the bike. So with that in mind, keep in mind that if you’re listening to this and you have a lower FTP, you probably won’t be taking in that much. If you are not training almost 30 hours a week, you’re probably not going to be needing to take in that much.

[01:24:29] Jonathan Lee: Right. So it’s really different. But in this case, you can see you’re burning. Um, Chad, I don’t know if you have any thoughts before we get into the tips on the nutrition and other stuff for him, but on any thoughts on anything that I’ve mentioned there?

[01:24:42] Chad Timmerman: Sure. I have a couple of simple ones, but two things stand out first year, comparing yourself to other endurance athletes.

[01:24:48] Chad Timmerman: Don’t do that because that, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s assuming that they’re nourishing well, and my guess is they aren’t at least not sufficiently. Uh, secondly, if you’re looking to add mass, that’s done through protein, plain and simple, it doesn’t matter how many carbohydrates. You’re not going to add muscle mass if you’re not ingesting enough protein.

[01:25:03] Chad Timmerman: So if everything that you described in your caloric data, caloric intake doesn’t seem heavy on the. And I don’t know what your protein shake consists of, but that’s one bolus of protein. I would want to see more protein in not only each meal of the day, but in both of your snacks so that you’re getting anywhere between 20 to 30, maybe even on the higher side, you’re not that big of a big guy.

[01:25:27] Chad Timmerman: So probably 30 grams of protein, 3, 4, 5 times a day. If that doesn’t add a little more mass to your frame, uh, I don’t know, uh, contact me and I will personally sit down and figure this out. And I, I’m not a nutritionist. I’m not a dietician, but you are protein deficient based on what you’ve

[01:25:44] Jonathan Lee: provided. Yeah.

[01:25:46] Jonathan Lee: It sure seems that way. Right? That’s like number one, that you want to make sure that you’re getting enough protein. If you want to add mass and you simply can’t seem to do so. It’s also worth stating that if you’re depriving yourself of carbohydrate on the bike, which you say that you’re feeling, it’s somewhere, um, you know, if you’re feeling it’s somewhere around like 70 grams per hour, I would actually call that under fueling for the year threshold being at 350 Watts.

[01:26:09] Jonathan Lee: That’s, you’re, you’re outputting a lot of power. So if you are depriving yourself on the bike and then depriving yourself of carbohydrate later on, which it doesn’t seem like you are, but if you are, this is a common thing, then that’s only compounding the effect that so you want to be taking in that carbohydrate to make sure you’re not just completely running yourself down and metabolizing.

[01:26:27] Jonathan Lee: And then you also want to make sure that you’re, um, uh, taking in that sort of protein that you need. Um, And if you’re trying to gain weight too, I would try to look if you’re really going to measure things. I’d be looking at adding in some merging of two 50 to 350 calorie surplus that you’re maintaining, uh, try to get that from healthy food.

[01:26:46] Jonathan Lee: Right. Don’t try to be getting that from, you know, don’t pop a couple Oreos to hit that instead, look at, uh, what you’re doing and just to increase portions or, um, you know, increase, uh, add in another small meal. Where are you going to take something in, uh, make sure you’re taking in recovery nutrition right after your trainer, after your sessions, because with triathlon and going from one to the next, if you’re doing a brick, obviously don’t take in a protein shake and then go run, but, uh, make sure that you’re getting in, uh, everything right after as well to make sure that happens hydration as well.

[01:27:16] Jonathan Lee: Like if you’re just profoundly dehydrated, while you’re going through this, it’s going to be tough for your body to build anything useful. Um, so just basic principle there. Creating can absolutely help you add mass later on. It will add initial mass, but don’t think that that’s the sort of mass that’s going to stick around after you stop using creatine.

[01:27:35] Jonathan Lee: Uh, it can just allow yourself to carry a bit more water on board, um, and increase storage capacities that you can, uh, build more muscle mass. Um, and then also don’t go to bed hungry. Uh, if you find yourself, if you choose to not measure because measuring can make all of us go a little bit crazy. Uh, so if you’re not measuring, just don’t go to bed hungry.

[01:27:53] Jonathan Lee: Um, that would be a really basic kind of simple thing to make sure that you’re topped off enough. You know, that’s a super

[01:28:00] Chad Timmerman: easy time to last little injection of protein, too.

[01:28:04] Jonathan Lee: Yes, exactly. Um, also increase your sleep quantity and quality, uh, get at least eight hours. If you’re not sleeping enough, your body, once again, doesn’t have much to be able to build with it.

[01:28:14] Jonathan Lee: Doesn’t have a long time to be able to make. Those changes that it needs to as you’re sleeping. Um, and then also as long as it doesn’t compromise your performance on the bike, as long as you’re checking all these other boxes, you can lift heavier too. Um, right. Chat. I mean, you don’t necessarily need to be some sort of power lifter athlete as a triathlete, but at the same time, if you’re just doing body weight sort of stuff, and you want to add muscle mass, I mean, lift heavier.

[01:28:39] Jonathan Lee: Yeah,

[01:28:39] Chad Timmerman: definitely lift heavier than, than body weight. If you’re looking to add muscle mass, then I would bear more towards adding greater volume. So more repetitions, more sets, just more, more weight lifted over the course of the workout. Not necessarily in individual lifts.

[01:28:57] Jonathan Lee: IVD. You have anything that you’d want to add on this one?

[01:29:00] Jonathan Lee: Okay. Oh yeah. I

[01:29:01] Ivy Audrain: miss Pete. Uh, this is, um, yeah, reminiscent of some conversations that he and I had, um, about proteins specifically and. Kind of reading what Damien described eating throughout their day. Like they may be vegan or vegetarian. Um, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a lot of there aren’t a lot of, yeah, there are plenty of places to get your protein that aren’t from meat.

[01:29:30] Ivy Audrain: Um, you know, like nuts and cheapies. I’m just remembering conversations with Pete about how important it is to get your protein from different sources, to like a solution to this. Isn’t for Damien to slam six weird protein drinks a day, you know, um, like snacks can consist of more nuts and beans and chickpeas and, um, can incorporate like more tofu into, into your dinners and things.

[01:29:59] Ivy Audrain: But yeah, I think that variety for me, variety in protein sources helps, um, what I considered to be better absorption.

[01:30:09] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, it’s a super, uh, having a varied Mike, uh, micronutrient profile. It goes a long way to helping you out, uh, macros get all the attention, but micros are extremely important. So, uh, Simon’s question.

How average athletes should manage their nutrition

[01:30:22] Jonathan Lee: This kind of dovetails what we just talked about a pro athlete and what they should be taking in. And it’s a very different scale than a lot of us need to be worried about. Right? Simon says over the last 18 months, like many others I’ve been working from home and have just changed jobs, which means I’ll be working from home indefinitely.

[01:30:38] Jonathan Lee: This is great is no more commute, but I have worked out that. I now walk about 10,000 steps less per day than I used to when I was in the office that changes, upset the fragile equilibrium. That is my poor diet versus being reasonably active. And the waistline has started to. I’ve worked out by Googling.

[01:30:54] Jonathan Lee: He mentioned that 10,000 steps is about 350 calories per day. And roughly 30 minutes at 160 Watts on the bike is also about 350 calories. So I’ve decided to start doing this on a daily basis to make up for the loss steps, unless I have a workout plan. Is this the best way to make up this deficit or does walking bring different benefits?

[01:31:16] Jonathan Lee: Even if I do go walking, it would be one, it would be in one longer rock longer walk. Forgive me. Talk as hard. Even if I did go walking, it would be in one longer walk rather than little and often throughout the day as before, for me 160 Watts is currently in IVF of about 0.6, five, and it doesn’t impact other work on the bike.

[01:31:34] Jonathan Lee: So let me know what you think from Simon. Uh, Chad, what do you think, uh, about this approach of him trying to kind of make up for those last steps, that last level of, of like base level of activity with just doing a 30 minute easy.

[01:31:51] Chad Timmerman: I think it’s a good approach. I mean, how you incur your caloric deficit. I’m not too concerned about. The fact is that the math at the end of the day needs to be in the negative column in order for you to, you know, start to shed. Some of that weight do recognize that as we’ve said, I’ve said a number of times, this is a lifestyle change.

[01:32:11] Chad Timmerman: This isn’t a temporary change. If, if the changes you make now get you the body that you want, you can’t go back to the way you were prior to that. So anything you’re going to add or reductions you’re going to make in your diet, kind of have to stick based on what it is you eventually achieve. If that in fact is exactly what you want.

[01:32:27] Chad Timmerman: So you do this for the period of time that you do it. But if it’s just this a stop gap measure that helps you get there. And then once you get there, you return to old habits, you’re going to be right back where you were. So my advice is simply that make sure this is something that you can maintain a level of permanence.

[01:32:45] Chad Timmerman: It has to, it has to be part of who you are now. Uh, so whether or not you get it on the bike, whether or not you get it, maybe something changes and you can walk more. Maybe you decide you’re a, I don’t know, some other form of activity is going to enter your lifestyle or you recognize that you’re putting too much butter on your toast and that’s an easy, a hundred calories to cut out, whatever it may be.

[01:33:06] Chad Timmerman: Just make sure it’s something you’ll be able to maintain.

[01:33:10] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Good advice. I think it’s, it’s not like a bad solution, right? Um, timing matters too. You can get more out of this sort of stuff. If you do it after meals, if it’s like a light, you know, spin, something like that, you can get more out of that. Um, just decreasing that sort of the initial insulin response that you get, that it’s going to pack a lot of that away, um, by introducing some lower level of activity right after you eat, that can be helpful.

[01:33:34] Jonathan Lee: I really love like after meals, I love taking a walk. Um, that’s just kind of like a, a short, even if it’s just 10 minutes, just a quick walk, uh, can really help, um, just helps throughout the day too. So I could see that. Also looking at this, if you can fit in 30 minutes a day doing this, why not just look at extending the quality work that you’re doing for 30 minutes?

[01:33:56] Jonathan Lee: Like if you have 60 minute workout scheduled, why not look at use workout, alternates and trainer road and pick a 90 minute workout. And instead do that doing 90 minutes of quality work, like, uh, you know, within that 90 minute extension, that might mean that you do a portion of that extra 30 minutes at like a higher quality and higher level of intensity.

[01:34:16] Jonathan Lee: But, uh, Simon, if your goal is just to, to drop the weight or to do all that stuff, it’s doesn’t mean that you have to take an entirely different approach. You could just do longer workouts as long as your schedule allows for that. And that could be. Um, I don’t know if it would be necessarily beneficial for you to, if you’re like rolling out of bed and doing this to pick like a really intense 30 minute workout that you’re going to do, uh, that can be tricky depending on who you are and your schedule.

[01:34:42] Jonathan Lee: But if you can shift that 30 minutes around, I would just make my other workouts a bit longer. That’s what I would do. You’re probably, you’re going to burn more calories that way as well, if that’s your goal, um, and, uh, your, your body will just become what your body, what it needs to be. So, uh, and, and trust that your body knows the best path to that, as long as you’re guiding it with the right stuff.

[01:35:04] Ivy Audrain: And that might be the best way to kind of fit into Chan’s recommendation of doing something that’s sustainable. Um, you know, just like finding a workout that looks right and is accomplishing what you want and not thinking about, well, how many minutes do I have to do with this Watson? And like, that’s not a sustainable approach, or, I mean, for me, it wouldn’t be, it would be exhausting.

[01:35:29] Ivy Audrain: Kind of yeah. Emotionally draining to, to be constantly or on a daily basis. Like wondering how I can, uh, make everything even out versus, um, just doing the kind of work that makes me feel good that I want to do, you know, um, so finding sustainable workouts to do might be a better, more sustainable approach than, you know, doing this kind of math and deciding how much you can eat and how much you have to ride to make up or walk, you

[01:36:00] Jonathan Lee: know?

[01:36:01] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. And don’t fall into the trap of malnutrition either. Like there’s a lot of situations where a lot of athletes have been in this spot and they say, okay, so I’m just not going to eat that lunch, or I’m not going to do this. And it’s really easy to do that. Um, uh, don’t do that, uh, give your body what it needs if obviously if it’s, you know, if it’s extreme, excess or anything else like that, you know, that’s probably not healthy for us.

[01:36:25] Jonathan Lee: Um, but, uh, don’t just starve yourself to try to make up for this difference. You can probably introduce that level of activity in some way, as long as it doesn’t cause other forms of stress across the board with scheduling and everything else, that would be good. So Simon make those workouts long or if you can’t, that’s probably the best solution that you can do and make it sustainable for sure.

[01:36:45] Jonathan Lee: A Chad, I don’t know how in the world we made it through this episode with you still with us by the end. That was incredible. But the internet yeah. Made it through, um, uh, we’re going to cover just one quick comment and then, uh, I wish that we could cover live questions today, but I’m going to keep it here because I feel like we’ve gotten lucky with having Chad with us this far, so we’ll keep it there.

[01:37:04] Jonathan Lee: Um, somebody says there was an episode about epoch recently, which Chad, can you define what epoch is really quick for folks?

[01:37:11] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. Post-exercise oxygen consumption. So that bumping your oxygen consumption that comes after you’ve done some form of.

[01:37:20] Jonathan Lee: Yep. Typically also comes with an increased amount of calories that your body is using, right.

[01:37:25] Jonathan Lee: To be able to consume that oxygen and to be able to use it. So it’s like an after-burn is similar to what, uh, it’s it’s referred to and, and, and more, I guess, broader, more recognizable terms in that regard. He says, I think in the case of such a high training load, like this athlete that we were talking about, Damien in this case, iPad calculations should really be added to the daily calories, especially if weight gain is difficult.

[01:37:47] Jonathan Lee: So yeah, absolutely. I mean, but the hard thing is epoch is pretty tough to measure, uh, is interesting. Dr. was just saying last week, uh, Dr. Tim public are a great follow on Instagram that. You know, being able to actually measure gas exchange rates and then extrapolate that out to BMR, like, you know, your, your basal metabolic rate or like a really a true level of calorie burn, he said is just problematic in terms of when you’re talking about calorie, precision, it’s really tough.

[01:38:15] Jonathan Lee: Uh, we can estimate, and we can see that certain markers are changing in the body. And that probably means that you’re burning more at this time, but it’s really tough to be able to actually measure true calorie burn. Um, Tim, I believe was saying, or Dr. Public art was saying that I think there was only one place that he knew of in the world, one lab that could actually get you close to that.

[01:38:33] Jonathan Lee: And even then he didn’t know if it was perfect. So yes, while in an ideal world, we could say I’m doing this and then my epoch should increase it by this much. That’s really tough to be able to measure. Um, and once again, measuring is not for everybody. And I know a lot of people probably assume that we would suggest that being so dated.

[01:38:53] Jonathan Lee: That everybody measured everything and get it down to a T, but I don’t, um, that’s a very individual thing and it can cause a huge complex with food and it can become, it can make an unhealthy thing, become profoundly more unhealthy. So, uh, measuring is something that works for some people doesn’t work for all.

[01:39:12] Jonathan Lee: And it’s always, we’re using a lot of guesswork when you guess that that Chipotle label is something that it is. So, uh, all right. Thanks so much for joining us. Uh, if you are listening to this now, please share this podcast with your friends. Go to trainer road.com and go sign up for it after training.

[01:39:27] Jonathan Lee: It’s awesome. It’s going to give you the best season yet. I’m confident in that. If it doesn’t come to talk to me and I will, I will, we can sort it all out, but please go check it out. It’s awesome. So many people are getting faster. It’s fantastic. Uh, it’s cool. We’re digging into a lot of data behind this and we’ll be watching the data over the course of the year.

[01:39:44] Jonathan Lee: So then we can get some better, more solid, reliable insights to share with you all about how it helps improve athlete. It’s uh, yeah, it’s profoundly impactful. Reduces, worked, or failed workouts by over 54%. But we’ll see how that happens. Once we get into the real training season that a lot of people have might even go down more.

[01:40:02] Jonathan Lee: So, uh, with all that said, thanks everybody for joining us. Go follow us on Instagram. Subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on the podcast, share it with everybody. We’ll talk to you next week.