Amber, Ivy, and Coach Jonathan discuss what HRV is, how it’s used in endurance sports, what it means if your HRV is low or high, what your HRV should be, the objective of threshold training and pro tips on how to get better at it, how to have productive conversations on sensitive nutrition issues with endurance athletes and much more. Join us live on YouTube for Episode 354 of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast and share this episode with your friends!

TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE

  • 0:00 Welcome!
  • 0:15 Intro
  • 05:24 What is the point of over-unders?
  • Why threshold training is crucial for cyclists
  • Pro tips on how to get better at threshold training
  • 37:33 What is HRV?
  • How Heart Rate Variability is used in endurance training
  • What does it mean if your HRV is too low or too high?
  • What should your HRV be?
  • 01:33:30 How to have a conversation about food with endurance athletes you care about

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE

Threshold Intervals for Cyclists: Benefits, Examples, and Tips for Success

What Is Lactate Threshold and How To Train It

Functional Threshold Power: What FTP Means to Cyclists

Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

Successful Athletes Podcast

Science of Getting Faster Podcast

For more cycling training knowledge, listen to the Ask a Cycling Coach — the only podcast dedicated to making you a faster cyclist. New episodes are released weekly.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Jonathan Lee: Welcome to the podcast is dedicated to making you a faster cyclist. The ask a cycling coach podcast presented by trainer road and coach Jonathan Lee. I’m joined by two awesome women on the week of international women’s day. Uh, we have trained road in Cannondale’s, Amber Pierce. Hello everybody. And we also have, and up plus the black bibs racing’s IVF.

[00:00:33] Jonathan Lee: Hey, everyone. I nailed. I know

[00:00:37] Amber Pierce: I need to make you practice.

[00:00:40] Jonathan Lee: Well, you know, maybe I did that in front of the mirror for an hour this morning. So maybe not, you know, this is where we answer the questions that you submit a train road.com/podcast. And you know what, if you’re listening to this right now, share it with your friends.

[00:00:52] Jonathan Lee: That’s the best way you can help us. It would be fantastic and shared trainer road with your friends. It makes them faster, which will then make you faster. It makes the world faster. It’s the best. So, and that’s really how we grow is by you sharing. So continue to do that. Please share train a road with your friends.

[00:01:07] Jonathan Lee: I’ve been thinking about adaptive training right now. A lot of people listening to this podcast likely have big events coming up, something. Sign up for training road and try it for, we have a 30 day money back guarantee and try it. So in, in give it a shot, see if it makes you fitter for your big events in the spring or summer, like four to six weeks, something like that.

[00:01:25] Jonathan Lee: Give it after training a shot. And it’s going to, I promise you, you’re going to be wowed by the experience. It’s super cool. You won’t even have to do a test in most cases, like yeah, thanks to Amber and her team. You won’t even have to do that. So go and sign up for trainer. I’ll give it a shot. It’s awesome.

[00:01:42] Jonathan Lee: Uh, first things first, we just have to cover next week. Do you know what starts? Which is weird because of the weird schedule that happened last year and everything else, but what starts next week? Do you two know daylight savings? Oh, I, it does that start next week? Oh my goodness. Hey Bevin, first, next week.

[00:02:02] Jonathan Lee: Oh, I can’t believe we’re not Amber. Do you want to go race it? You and I had a team that. No. Yeah.

[00:02:11] Amber Pierce: Yeah. It might be a little tough, but not at the last second completely

[00:02:15] Jonathan Lee: unprepared. Yeah, no doubt. Um, so, but we do have two great friends racing it this time. So Sophia is back. Uh, so they’re leaving, I think tomorrow, uh, she’s leaving.

[00:02:28] Jonathan Lee: She’s going to be racing with, um, oh my gosh. Why am I blanking on this? It’s not Hannifin champ. Hannah auto is on our podcast. Of course, all the time. Uh, oh my goodness. I gotta look this up now. I don’t know. I’m I apologize. Um, but she’s going to be the lead rider on specialized factory racing. So Sophia went from being a coed team and then she ended up having to ride solo, right.

[00:02:53] Jonathan Lee: Because of Nate’s crash and now she’s going back and she is the number one bet for specialized factory racing with Haley Baton. And like, that is so cool. So her and Haley Haley’s from park city. So if he has lived in park city for years too, or that region. It’s super cool. They’re going to go up against, like, I think a really strong team is going to be Pauline for M Provo and, uh, Robin DeGroote.

[00:03:16] Jonathan Lee: Um, Robin I believe is from South Africa. It could be wrong, but, um, she’s incredibly strong, uh, really, really good athlete and obviously pulling for him. Provo’s kind of good too, on a bike, um, a world champion at the same time. Like no one’s ever done that. So, uh, so that’ll be super interesting. I’m so excited for Sophia to do well.

[00:03:38] Jonathan Lee: She’s like raced it before, even though the course is different every year, but I just want to encourage everybody listening to this podcast to watch the live streams and watch the recaps next week and then send Sophia messages of support. Uh, so then she can feel everybody’s momentum behind her. That would be awesome.

[00:03:55] Jonathan Lee: Uh, you know, last time it was almost like a Mulligan in a way where she had to, like she was racing, but she couldn’t really be scored anymore. So she was just out. And I think it’s really cool if we all put our rushing it. And by out there, I mean, passing everybody still, um, uh, totally alone, but I think it’d be really cool if we rallied behind her and showed her a bunch of support.

[00:04:15] Jonathan Lee: I know she’s confident, she’s super excited, so it’s not like we need to buoy her up or anything, but we all know it helps when we have a bunch of people pushing for us. So we should all do that. Yep. And then also Keegan is going to Cape epic and he’s racing with Maxine Murat. So the French incredibly talented and incredibly skilled and fit and just awesome cross country racer that they have.

[00:04:38] Jonathan Lee: They’re both on Santa Cruz bikes. So they were able to make this one work. So they’re going to be racing and they’re going to be going up against Nino and baby Lars, I think is Nino’s companion or Nino’s teammate. I can’t remember. And a whole bunch of other really fast and strong people, but. That’ll be interesting.

[00:04:55] Jonathan Lee: Cause I, that stuff fits Keegan to a T like he’s just going to get more and more happy as everything goes on. And I think that by the end of it, it’ll probably be as long as 24 hours in the old Pueblo. And he did it all at once. So in this case, it’ll be easy. He’s done that, you know, all at once and he up between them.

[00:05:17] Jonathan Lee: So go cheer them on friends of the podcast. We’re excited to have them in that race. It’s going to be fantastic. Um, okay. Let’s get into some. Once again, you submit these@trainerroad.com slash podcast. So thanks everybody for doing that. Jamie has a question about over unders and he doesn’t like them, so let’s get into it.

[00:05:33] Jonathan Lee: He says, what place do over under is having my training? Yes. I low them and he says low than all caps. So I may be seeking justification for my bias, but I’m questioning whether I should find a similar. And he says in quotes, productive, workout in the catalog and said, uh, Amber, can you explain like really quickly.

[00:05:51] Jonathan Lee: At those workouts, uh, oh my gosh. My brain is not working the levels. Difficulty levels. Yes. The difficulty levels that we have for our workouts. So what productive, I’m saying in air quotes here means yeah. So

[00:06:03] Amber Pierce: in adaptive training, we look at your capacity to do work in each of the training zone. So we’ll look at what’s your capacity to do work and threshold.

[00:06:12] Amber Pierce: What’s your capacity to work and endurance, or what’s your capacity to work and be able to max for example, at a given FTP. So once you’ve bumped your FTP up, we watch and see how you’re progressing in each of those zones, according to your training and how you’ve been doing. So based on what your current capacity is in.

[00:06:28] Amber Pierce: Training zone at a given FTP. We can look at the workouts in our catalog and say whether or not this workout would be achievable, productive, a stretch, or a breakthrough for you. And that’s part of how we adapt your training plan to where you are in your training. So if that workout is targeting your threshold and it’s a productive workout, that means that it will be a tough and challenging workout, but very manageable for you.

[00:06:54] Amber Pierce: So you should be able to nail that workout, but it’s going to increase your capacity in that training zone, as opposed to achievable workout, which is something we absolutely know you can nail, but it’s not really going to challenge you in the same way that a productive workout would.

[00:07:08] Jonathan Lee: Incredible nailed it.

[00:07:09] Jonathan Lee: So in this case, Jamie is thinking I have over unders I don’t like over unders maybe I can just look for a similar, productive workout, but not over unders that’s still threshold and do that. So that’s what he’s asking. He says I’m currently in the sustained power build phase of training. Hey, me too. And he says in most weeks, adaptive training has me doing some sort of over, under workout for my threshold.

[00:07:31] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, me too. He says sometimes it ramps. Sometimes it has more over some days more under, I do get through the workouts and I rate them hard because they don’t smash me. But in the moment they are so uncomfortable, especially when settling into an under right after an over that’s super relatable. Right.

[00:07:51] Jonathan Lee: It’s like one of the most familiar. Yeah, exactly. Um, he also, I think it’s interesting. So I want to go over this cause I get personally just some questions every once in a while from people, but how do I rate the workouts? Cause it says, how did this workout feel? And it says easy, moderate, hard, very hard.

[00:08:08] Jonathan Lee: And then it has different options as well. And a lot of us cyclist, I don’t want to offend anybody cause I am chief offender of this, but we overthink everything and we overthink that survey a lot. So it really, it just says, how did that work out feel? And that’s all you got to answer. So in this case, I really like to see how Jamie’s answering it in this.

[00:08:31] Jonathan Lee: They aren’t smashing him. He says, and it seems like he still can do the workouts that come the next day. He can still do that. It’s not like it’s diff like deflating him. He’s just talking about in the moment. It feels so hard. But then after the workout, he’s like, yeah. Okay. That was hard, but I got it done and it didn’t destroy me.

[00:08:47] Jonathan Lee: So once again, just rate how it felt. That’s it, uh, people ask me if I raise my intensity, how should I rate it? Then once again, just rate it how it feels. If you lowered your intensity, how should you rate it once again? Just answer the question of how did it feel our system can figure it out the rest. So, yeah, we tried to make it as simple on you as possible.

[00:09:06] Jonathan Lee: We definitely thought through the overthinking options and we had a lot of different choices of the surveys, and then we realized no, it’s best if we don’t overthink and instead build it into the system. So then that way all you have to do is read the question and answer, so, okay. All right. He says, I must admit that they don’t seem to derail my training or stand as a physical roadblock to my progression, great points and really good observations that you have Jamie on that.

[00:09:31] Jonathan Lee: But mentally speaking, I just dread them for some reason, and it’s hard to get excited for those workouts. So my question really has two parts. Number one, do I need to do over unders or can I just do standard threshold interval workouts? And number two, if I do need them and should do them, what tips do you have for me to find joy in doing these workouts?

[00:09:52] Jonathan Lee: So I figured we can all have like a kumbaya around the campfire about how we all dread over under is a little bit on this, but first I want to just share three articles that are fantastic for this that we have on our blog. First one is threshold intervals for cyclists benefits, examples, and tips for success.

[00:10:08] Jonathan Lee: Then we have what is lactate threshold and how to train it. And then the final one functional threshold power. What FTP means to cyclists. All of these things, we’ll cover the points, the objective of threshold training and give you the. Uh, great guidance on all of it. Um, so those are written by Sean, Megan and Jesse are awesome copywriters here at trainer road.

[00:10:27] Jonathan Lee: And we will have links to those down in the description below whether you’re on YouTube and when joining us now, or whether you are on the podcast and on YouTube, by the way, give us a thumbs up. Okay. With that said, what’s the purpose of over unders and the basics on this, uh, the point of threshold training is to increase your aerobic capacity.

[00:10:46] Jonathan Lee: And it does. So kind of like at the upper limits of where you can increase your robot capacity, right? Like you’re pushing toward the top, not quite the top, but close to it and then build muscular endurance because typically threshold intervals, it’s not like VO two max where VO two max, uh, even though Amber and I feel like it should not last five minutes, but that’s, it should last significantly less.

[00:11:07] Jonathan Lee: Um, but it that’s kind of the most you can do, uh, with Truvia to max work at that point, after that, you can go a little bit more, but it starts to taper off, whereas threshold you could ride for theoretically up to an hour, but most of us don’t actually. Right. Our threshold for an hour. Yeah, exactly. Unless, you know, or Alex Dowsett going for an hour record.

[00:11:27] Jonathan Lee: So, um, and then the final thing is also increasing mental stamina and we’re going to hit on this later, but that is a huge goal of training and a huge goal of threshold training because boy, it, it is tough big time. Um, yeah. And, and over, under, as being unique, uh, they increase your ability to be able to shuttle and reprocess.

[00:11:45] Jonathan Lee: Uh, the way I like to think of this is like, imagine you have a bunch of little car motors in your legs and those are mitochondria and those are working away. Right? And as you start to do work and process, they have little exhaust pipes and they push exhaust out into your muscles. And that exhausted is not great just to keep there.

[00:12:02] Jonathan Lee: So your body has a process to reuse it. So imagine like if you were a car and you had a tube from your exhaust pipe back to your gas tank, and you could use that to actually keep going, that’s pretty cool. And that’s what our body does, but it’s a certain point. It starts to produce so much exhaust it.

[00:12:17] Jonathan Lee: Can’t reprocess it. And that’s that metabolic byproduct, uh, part of which is lactate. And once it starts to build up, uh, our body needs to get really good at understanding. Okay, now that it’s here in great quantity, what do I do with it? How do I reprocess it? How do I use it for jet fuel? That lactate is, and then how do I get rid of all the bads.

[00:12:36] Jonathan Lee: And that’s what you train your body to do. It produces lactate, especially at you’re producing more and more and more, but then as you go over your threshold, you start to breathe pretty significantly more. That’s the over porch portion. And then on the under you drop down just below. So then that gives your body a chance to catch up and your body actually does get better at reprocessing lactate threshold work, particularly through over unders it’s really good and important for doing that.

[00:13:01] Jonathan Lee: And now it’s, but I think over under is for me personally, it might be one of the best ways to build mental stamina out of any sort of like workout format. You know, it doesn’t matter if they step a ramp. Those are two just different ways to be able to, and perhaps two different ways for you to approach it mentally and to go through it.

[00:13:19] Jonathan Lee: Really, the goal is just to, once again, put you around threshold and then increase in produce too much metabolic BrightTALK byproduct, and then allow you to reprocess to do an over and over, um, Let’s have a discussion now about it now that we have those basics out of the way of why they exist and what they do.

[00:13:36] Jonathan Lee: Do you hate over under Ivy? How do you feel about over

[00:13:41] Ivy Audrain: everyone hates them? Right. That’s kind of, I think, uh, yeah, I mean, they’re uncomfortable for everyone. And I feel like one of the misconceptions that we’ve all mentioned on the podcast before is that any of this starts to feel better at some point it won’t, and it doesn’t, and you’ll just start getting better at it and getting stronger and going a little faster, but it’s never going to be fun or feel

[00:14:08] Amber Pierce: good.

[00:14:10] Jonathan Lee: That’s typically when you need to use AI FTP detection, or you just need to have adaptive training guide your training. Cause then it’ll give you the over unders that still hurt just right. You know, Amber, uh, how about you? I mean, I don’t know, across your career, if you like use these free key sessions or if you found that even like over unders had a lot of like real world application outside of training once you were racing.

[00:14:33] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I think

[00:14:34] Amber Pierce: that for me, the most challenging thing about the over-under is, is you’re over. And you’re like, man, this hurts so bad, but if I just get, you know, five more seconds, so I’ll have my under and you’re looking forward to that under like, oh yeah, this is just like, it hurts so bad right now. But I, you know, I’m about to drop down and power and then you drop down and you realize.

[00:14:52] Amber Pierce: It’s not actually a recovery and it actually hurts so much more than what you were looking forward to in a minute visioning on your mind. And for some reason, it’s really hard to re like wrap my head around that. So next over I’m like, okay, five more seconds in this one. And then I’m back in the under, and then I get an Android.

[00:15:09] Amber Pierce: I’m like, oh yeah, no, this really still doesn’t feel it is very much a mental game. And it is really good as you said for mental stamina, but it does also emulate a lot of other real role real-world situations. Um, one of the, one of the things in the notes here is undulations of the road. So if you’re doing a time trial, you’re not going to be able to put out perfect power output within a watt of your threshold.

[00:15:34] Amber Pierce: Chances are you’re going to be going a little bit over when the road’s going up hill and a little bit under when the road’s coming downhill. And one of the things you want to be able to do with that is as you come back under threshold, not drop the power off to. And that’s what Overlanders help you feel.

[00:15:48] Amber Pierce: And it helps train that sensation of, okay, I can back off, but I don’t have to back off 30 Watts. I can back off five Watts. I can back off 10 Watts and still hold it. And that’s a really hard thing to do mentally. And that’s something that’s really important to be able to do when you’re, when you’re actually racing a time trial outside in the real world.

[00:16:07] Amber Pierce: Um, another thing that this really helps with is pace lines. So if you’re doing a team time trial or you’re in a breakaway or you’re in a chase group, um, yes, you take your pool on the front, it’s going to feel hard, but then you’re going to have to jump back in the line. And even though you’ll be getting a draft, it’s not necessarily going to be easy.

[00:16:26] Amber Pierce: You’re not going to be soft peddling back there because you got to keep pace with what everyone else is doing. So that can feel like an over-under. Um, there’s a lot of situations where this comes into play and I think. To the mental stamina point. Um, again, it goes back to oftentimes when you have that moment where, you know, you can come off the gas a little bit, most of us tend to come off the gas too much, and this helps you learn how to come off the gas, but not, not too much.

[00:16:53] Amber Pierce: You can come off the gas a little bit and do it in a really controlled manner. So you don’t give up too much.

[00:16:59] Jonathan Lee: That’s one of the biggest differences I see between pros and Joes and Janes, if you will, in the sense that like we ease up too much, just like you said, Amber and where that really starts to make a difference though, is on the downhill.

[00:17:13] Jonathan Lee: If you can bike. So let’s say you’re going up the uphill and that’s your over. And then you go on a downhill, it’s tempted to really just let that downhill create your speed for you. But the best riders stay on the gas. They might even continue they’re over in that situation. And then start there under once they hit the flats, or if they go back to they’re under, they’re just going down a bit.

[00:17:33] Jonathan Lee: They’re not going down really far. And the speed potential you have when you’re going downhill. So as soon as you start to go downhill and you’re staying on the gas, you will get up to. Really really quickly and that they so separate that let’s just call it 50 meters of road that you’re riding on or trail over those 50 meters.

[00:17:55] Jonathan Lee: It’s a chance for you to gain 10 bike lengths possibly on somebody that, that 10 bike lakes then has to be made up later on in the flats or some other points. And if you can just hold on a little bit more, it’s not like you’re still going extremely hard. You’re just settling in just below that threshold.

[00:18:11] Jonathan Lee: And if he can do it, that’s how you create this death by a thousand cuts scenario where it’s just like, every time you’re wondering how in the world are they going this fast? How in the world is that breakaway sticking? How has that one solo rider managing to stay away from the field? And it’s because they are keeping on the gas like that because they’re, well-trained at being able to deal with those relations.

[00:18:34] Jonathan Lee: Same thing for mountain bikers too. Right? Ivy like trails. Don’t just give you consistent stuff to deal with. It’s always giving you undulations across to.

[00:18:44] Amber Pierce: Totally,

[00:18:44] Ivy Audrain: um, especially climbing, having to deal with like really steep pitches or switchbacks and having to really give her you don’t if, if we didn’t train those systems and train ourselves, you know, both in that zone and mentally to understand that the heart effort’s not over and we can’t just like coast, now you have to like, keep going to some degree, then make climbing and XC so tough.

[00:19:08] Ivy Audrain: Um, we never prepared for that. No. And only did like on, off, um, man, that would suck. That would make those

[00:19:16] Amber Pierce: climbs really tough. So yeah. Speaking of climbing. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, no, that’s it. I was going to say speaking of climbing, that’s a really good example and this is one of the ways that climbers kill everybody else on a climb is they’ll stand up and accelerate just over their threshold.

[00:19:31] Amber Pierce: And then they’ll sit down and they’ll stick it, you know, just below her at three. And so what the Peloton feels is like, okay, there’s this, there’s this acceleration. And oftentimes in your head, you’re thinking, okay, well, the pace is going to have to ease up at some point, but then when it does, it’s not easing up as much as you had hoped to get a recovery and doing that over and over on a long climb is one of the ways that climbers can really shell people in a race.

[00:19:57] Amber Pierce: And that’s one of the things where me not being a climber is something that really helped me from doing over unders was recognizing when, okay, I can’t go with that acceleration, but if I back off by maybe five Watts, I can hold a steady pace. And it’s really tempting in that moment to think, oh, you know, I can’t hang, I might as well just sit up and drop 30, 50 Watts instead to say, okay, I know I can sustain five Watts less.

[00:20:28] Amber Pierce: And if I stick it there, maybe I can. Mitigate my losses. And so the gap doesn’t open up as much, or maybe I can play a little bit of a mind game and I’m not as shakeable as they thought I was, but to do that, you have to be able to dial it back just a little bit and then hold it. And that’s, what’s really hard.

[00:20:46] Amber Pierce: And that’s what those unders do for you is they, they teach you, okay, you can dial it back a little bit and hold it and it is uncomfortable, but you can do this. And that’s, that’s a really, really important skill

[00:20:57] Jonathan Lee: to have. It builds like a level of, oh, sorry.

[00:21:00] Ivy Audrain: Go ahead. Would just, when I think of over-under is I think of climbing, like, I don’t think of anything.

[00:21:04] Ivy Audrain: Yes. And for Jenny, like, I don’t know what their discipline is. Um, I assume you can’t just avoid climbing forever, but you shouldn’t do over under is if you want to be a better climber and go faster and feel better in those situations.

[00:21:21] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, no problem. That’s a, it’s a great point. Like in other words, don’t avoid them, Jamie, uh, because the fact is it’s inherent to cycling.

[00:21:30] Jonathan Lee: Like we’re going to come across them. One of the things that I do, I want to talk about the mentality side of things. And really, I want to go back to like what you were talking about at Amber when you drop back down to the under, it’s always so like, it’s so betraying because you, you see it drop lower and you’re like, okay, it should be easy, but this actually feels worse than the.

[00:21:51] Jonathan Lee: And I think it’s because in our minds there’s dissonance right. In the sense that like, well, I was expecting it to be easy and it still hurts just the same. So it’s actually worse because my expectations don’t align with what I’m feeling in the moment. And as a result, I’ve actually kind of set a rule for myself with over unders that I continue pedaling.

[00:22:11] Jonathan Lee: And I continue doing this for 90 seconds. Now, if you have over unders that are less than that, like in terms of your under period, if it’s less than 90 seconds, then adjust as you need to. But the reason I do that is because typically after about 90 seconds or so then I’m like, oh, okay, I’m reaching status again.

[00:22:26] Jonathan Lee: And then usually it’s time to go back up right then. But it it’s like that initial, it takes a while for my expectations to align and for my body to also reprocess lactate, to get to the point where it can feel like it can continue to work. So. There’s like I that’s one tip that I’ve found that’s helped me is to give yourself time before you make any decisions to pull the plug or to adjust, give yourself time at that intensity.

[00:22:54] Jonathan Lee: It’s it’s still going to be uncomfortable, but it won’t be as uncomfortable. Have you found any other tips that have helped with whether it’s over unders or threshold training? It could be efforts in a race when you’re having to do this or in training, we’re keen to say, I’m not sure we could actually put that out on the air

[00:23:18] Jonathan Lee: and nobody cares work harder. I think that’s tattooed on his arm. So, um, I’ve really thought

[00:23:22] Amber Pierce: about

[00:23:22] Ivy Audrain: that this week when I was, or last week when I was doing, um, an uncomfortable set of intervals and wanted to be a baby about it. And I was like, what would Keegan say?

[00:23:33] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a, it’s a good way to approach it.

[00:23:38] Jonathan Lee: Any other tips though, that you’ve, that you’ve found, whether it’s mental tips, physical tips with the way you peddle or something else during threshold work that have helped you do it more successfully, make it feel more manageable, anything.

[00:23:53] Amber Pierce: I like the commitment idea where you’re just committing to something, you know, whether that’s 90 seconds, um, maybe it’s committing to, you know, the first set of over unders I know in general, regardless of whether it’s over unders or another hard interval set, I usually feel the worst on the first set or the first effort that’s usually at, in that first effort.

[00:24:14] Amber Pierce: Or first set always makes me question the rest of the workout, but usually by the second or third effort. And it’s usually the third effort that feels the best for me. It’s different for everybody. But if you can commit to the first two or the first three, whether that’s a set of shorter intervals or the first set of overruns, If you can commit to that, usually you can kind of get past that first part where it feels the worst and then kind of get to a point where your body’s like, oh, this is what we’re doing.

[00:24:38] Amber Pierce: Okay. I got ya. Um, so that commitment can help a lot on different timescales, whether that’s within an interval or over the course of a workout. Um, I know that this has helped me in races too, for furnaces, for example, racing criteriums. Usually the first few laps are really wild and really fast, and it hurts a lot because usually you’ve been staging for a while to have a good start position.

[00:25:05] Amber Pierce: And you might’ve been baking in this, on there for a while. Mentally preparing an absolutely committing to, okay. I’m just going to go flat out for the first three laps and I’m going to do that, knowing that that’s not going to have to be the case for the entire race, but I’m mentally prepared. I’ve set my expectation that this is just, this is going to be super uncomfortable.

[00:25:24] Amber Pierce: I know it, but I know it’s temporary and I’ll be able to settle into rhythm after that. And that helps a ton because then it’s like, I can go in and I can be flat out in those first couple of laps, get myself in a good position. And by the time the pack kind of settles into a rhythm, I’ve found good position because I was able to put that effort out in those first laps.

[00:25:42] Amber Pierce: And it’s not violating that mental expectation. Like you said, you’re not creating cognitive dissonance because you’re setting that expectation from the outset. So when you start to feel uncomfortable, you can just remind yourself, yep. This is exactly what I need to be doing right now. This is exactly how it should feel.

[00:25:56] Amber Pierce: And I know that within a lap or two, I’ll be able to tuck in and recover a little bit. So, um, that commitment and setting expectation, I think really helps a lot in a lot of cases.

[00:26:07] Jonathan Lee: Those are great.

[00:26:08] Amber Pierce: I have

[00:26:08] Ivy Audrain: a brick one too. It’s like a little, they don’t know. I know this hack

[00:26:16] Ivy Audrain: into the under I’m changing up my cadence a little bit helps me like getting into a little bit of a lower cadence and tricking myself, like just trying to keep it smooth and, and a little bit slower and pretending like it’s recovery, even though it’s not in your, you know, meeting your power target to just slow it down a little bit.

[00:26:33] Ivy Audrain: It makes me mentally feel like I’m chilling out a little bit and recovering, even though I’m not,

[00:26:39] Amber Pierce: that sounds that’s a good one. And I think that applies a lot to almost any threshold type effort or steady state effort. And. Steady state in a way, but he’s sustained effort like that.

[00:26:51] Jonathan Lee: Don’t tell they’re steady when I’m in the moment.

[00:26:53] Jonathan Lee: I know that violating

[00:26:56] Amber Pierce: expectations, um, it is a fun and very useful skill is to learn how to make the same power with different muscles. And that sounds like a weird thing to say, but you can emphasize different muscle groups and maintain the same cadence and the same power. Um, so you can really focus on your glutes.

[00:27:15] Amber Pierce: You can really focus on your quads. You can really focus on your hamstrings, and that can be a really handy thing. If you’re out in the middle of a race, um, mentally breaking that up and saying, okay, like I am really dying here. My quads are burning. Can I start relying a little bit more on my hamstrings for awhile?

[00:27:32] Amber Pierce: And it will, that enabled me to continue to put out this power, um, without completely imploding. And that’s a really great skill to train, uh, especially on something like over unders cause you can really, you can make it a game in your head. It’s not going to be a comfortable game, but it might, it might give you a little something to focus on.

[00:27:53] Jonathan Lee: And if you, if you have a hard time like activating one muscle group or another, during an effort, a great way you can start with this is by focusing on different portions of the quadrant of your pedal stroke. So you can focus on like one to three o’clock and then you can focus on three to six and then six to nine and then nine to 12.

[00:28:11] Jonathan Lee: And if you do that, that will actually cause you to peddle with different muscles, primarily like the, the emphasis will shift. You’re still using all of them, but the emphasis was. It’s such a good tip from Amber. And you’ll actually see that in a lot of coach Chad’s workout texts where you’ll be in the middle of an effort and Chad will be distracting.

[00:28:29] Jonathan Lee: You he’s like, look over here, like, forget the pain. You’re in, look over here. And he’d say, now we’re going to focus on this portion of the pedal stroke. And now we’re going to up our cadence or decrease our cadence. I TA I train almost. I’m always training in resistance mode when I’m training indoors, uh, before the questions roll in.

[00:28:46] Jonathan Lee: It’s not for any other reason than I just simply prefer it. I’ve done so many workouts and earn loads. So many workouts in resistance mode. It’s just something that I enjoy. I don’t think he gives me a better workout. I don’t think he gives me a worst workout. When I look at the, after the all the years of training, my precision is spot on.

[00:29:02] Jonathan Lee: Like I can, I can nail workouts. And my average power at the end is the same exact, no matter what I can do that. So, but when I do that and I’m doing over unders in most cases, I don’t. So I, I make my overs a little bit faster and then I make my unders a little bit slower in terms of cadence. And then the next time when I go through the next week, I’ll flip the script and I will shift and I’ll make it so that my overs are the ones where I’m peddling slower.

[00:29:30] Jonathan Lee: And then my underwear am peddling faster. And we have, I’ve talked about this a lot. I think it’s really important for us cyclists, to be very well versed at different cadences at different effort levels and the reason. And that’s the cool thing about Eric mode is you can just do that and you can make it work.

[00:29:46] Jonathan Lee: Um, so you don’t have to worry about the shifting part, but I think that it’s important because especially with like mountain bike or gravel bike gearing, where you have bigger jumps in between gears, you’re always going to be in situations where, or I shouldn’t say always, but very commonly going to be in situations where you’re not in your perfect gear and it’s going to be difficult to find that perfect gear to settle in at a perfect cadence.

[00:30:07] Jonathan Lee: So. You know, broaden your skillset in terms of what you can tolerate with cadence, especially those crucial intensities where race decisions are being made for you, right. Where it’s like you either hold onto this or you do not, when it’s on, when you’re on the gas, on the, on a climb, riding at threshold, doing that sort of stuff, just really helpful to have for sure.

[00:30:28] Jonathan Lee: Um, one thing that I think shouldn’t be overlooked too with over unders is that we don’t underestimate them from a preparation perspective. Like, um, don’t treat them like an endurance workout, right? Like they’re more demanding than that. You have to go into this and you have to think, okay, Am I hydrated effectively.

[00:30:45] Jonathan Lee: Have I been eating well? And what’s my plan to eat on the bike? Um, what, what’s my cooling situation? Like, do I have enough fans pointing at me? Are they pointing in the right directions? Am I wearing a Jersey? And nobody’s going to see, so maybe I don’t need to wear a Jersey right now. Right? Like, think of all these things, because when we’re talking about just floating on the limit between blowing up and not blowing up, which is effectively what over unders do, the last thing you need is a bit of, you know, uh, I guess.

[00:31:13] Jonathan Lee: The metaphorical headwind, so to speak, to be able to push that, push you over the edge and make your unders harder than they should be, or make your overs harder than they should be. So feelings just huge, like you burned so many calories when you’re working at threshold like that. It’s just tough.

[00:31:29] Ivy Audrain: Not beyond a calorie deficit of any kind for over.

[00:31:33] Ivy Audrain: How about just ever, just like, don’t go to a workout.

[00:31:37] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. It’s not the way to do it for sure. Um, any other thoughts on over unders or threshold work for Jamie? I mean, we’ve told them that don’t avoid them. We’ve given them some great tips and we’ve also explained why they exist. Is there anything else you want to cover?

[00:31:52] Amber Pierce: I want to touch back on the question that was relating to joy. Like how do I find joy in these workouts? And it’s really hard to tap into joy when you’re. Seriously uncomfortable.

[00:32:06] Amber Pierce: That’s just a reality. Um, but I do think it’s, it’s important to step back and like bigger. One of the biggest things that builds confidence is success, right? So when you have success, you feel really confident and finding ways to have success in your training, builds your confidence as you go into a race.

[00:32:28] Amber Pierce: And I’m assuming, I’m assuming they’re training for an event, maybe not, but even if you’re not training for an event, just feeling confident that your body is capable of doing these things that you can choose to challenge yourself like this and meet the challenge successfully. You really can’t, you can’t under, if you can’t over state the value of that for, for anybody.

[00:32:51] Amber Pierce: And so I think it’s important to step back and say, okay, there may be workouts in your plan that you dread. And it might be because they are extremely challenging specifically for you. I definitely had those workouts that I dreaded over the years, but I will say I felt so good and so proud of myself when I completed those.

[00:33:11] Amber Pierce: And when I stack those up week over week through a season, and the next time I hit a race, all of that has built my confidence. And I will say that mailing a workout like that, that is one of those kind of like mental challenges for you is so much more satisfying and so much more confidence building the nailing, a workout that isn’t as challenging for you.

[00:33:34] Amber Pierce: So it’s not, you know, this is an advice to say like, oh, here’s how you don’t dread these and make them fun and joyful. And it will be rainbows and puffy clouds. Like this is not that kind of advice. But to say that. When you have workouts like that in your plan, there is a lot of value to be had there and to folk, you know, to, to maybe free frame it like that, like, okay, here is an opportunity for me to see just how you know, let’s go see what I can do today.

[00:34:03] Amber Pierce: And then when you nail it, like don’t, don’t just sit back and be, oh, thank God that’s done, you know, actually stop and take some time and reflect on. Wow. You know, that was really hard. And I didn’t give up in this instance where I was really feeling uncomfortable. And at this point in the workout, I was really, I had some negative self-talk and I caught myself and I was able to turn that around or, wow.

[00:34:25] Amber Pierce: You know, when I started really focusing on my hamstrings and changed up my cadence, that really helped give yourself credit for all of those moments in the workout where you actually did something that enabled you to meet the challenge. Take. I mean, it doesn’t have to take long, maybe 30 seconds to a minute at the end of that workout.

[00:34:41] Amber Pierce: But if you do that after every workout, it’s really going to solidify that success in the competence that you can do this, that you can meet challenges like this, and you give yourself that credit, right? Because I mean, man, this stuff is not easy. It is worthwhile to take time out, to give yourself credit for that.

[00:34:58] Amber Pierce: And then that over time, day over day, week over week, it’ll turn into months, it’ll turn into a season. It will all build your confidence and that mental state that you’ll carry into a race is probably as valuable as the fitness that you carry into the race. So don’t, don’t leave

[00:35:16] Jonathan Lee: that part out. Oh, great advice.

[00:35:19] Jonathan Lee: I don’t know if this is bad. So if you’re a psychologist and listening to this, man, don’t let their couch or something. But like, I, I feel like I build up like a giant bank vault full of kudos and I, I give them to my. At different periods of time with workouts in particular. And when I finished, uh, uh, an over under workout, I opened that vault.

[00:35:44] Jonathan Lee: Like I, that door is wide open and I give myself all the credit. Like I celebrate those things, like when I finished over under workout and I nail it, oh, I celebrate, I pat myself on the back. I give myself motivation. I tell myself because I did this, I can do so much more later on, on race day in, further training.

[00:36:02] Jonathan Lee: I can get further. Yeah, it is super important. Cause it’s easy with over unders to look back at them and be like, well, that was a horror show, you know? Like, but instead look back and be like, like Amber said, find the good things that you did. And look at that and think, why did this really well this week?

[00:36:20] Jonathan Lee: Hey, next week is another chance for me and maybe for you over undeserved relatively easy. And maybe they’re not as tough for you. If so, I want to, I want to meet you, but maybe it’s like VO two. Max is your hard thing or sweet-spot is your hard thing, something else? I think this advice applies across the board to whatever thing is difficult for you to find enjoyment from you don’t necessarily need to find joy for me personally, I don’t need to find joy in all of my workouts, but I do like finding accomplishment in them and that is adjacent and very close to joy for me.

[00:36:54] Jonathan Lee: So, um, accomplishments, a big thing for me. Yeah. Ivy, do you have anything else before we move into David’s. Good job guys was a great

[00:37:07] Jonathan Lee: internet fives. First of all, thanks everybody for joining us in the live chat, which that’s why you should join us Thursdays at 8:00 AM Pacific on YouTube. It’s fantastic. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. We have amazing content that every day we have plans for doing a whole lot more content that we’re working on right now, which is really exciting, possible return of race analysis, where we want you to submit your videos and then we’ll analyze them.

[00:37:27] Jonathan Lee: Maybe even some old characters coming back for that one. I’m just going to say, we’ll see who knows. Um, uh, but then also it fantastic discussion going on here in the live chat. So thank you. Um, all right. David’s question. This is the headline for this episode of HRV heart rate variability. So David says I’m 35 previously.

[00:37:46] Jonathan Lee: I raced for five years, but I’m trying to get back into cycling after a four year. Mentions that he’s been back training for six months, two months using trainer road. Now in my mid thirties, I appreciate recovery and nutrition are more key now. And as such, I’ve also been running, uh, he’s been collecting HRV data with an app and a strap.

[00:38:05] Jonathan Lee: It says my question revolves around HRV and recovery due to work and family, I train mostly in the evenings between six to 9:00 PM and go to bed around 10 to 11:00 PM. Especially during training days. My HRV sits between 30 to 45, maybe going up to 50 after rest days. And for those of you that don’t know what HRV is and everything else, don’t worry.

[00:38:24] Jonathan Lee: We’re going to break it all down. So sorry if this seems like, you know, it seems foreign at first year, but it’ll be. I’ve read 60 to 70 is average for my age. So do you have any tips for what I can do new recovery or nutrition-wise to boost my HRV? Or is this purely a personal number and not something I should worry about too much?

[00:38:42] Jonathan Lee: You mentioned that in comparison, my resting heart rate is usually high forties to low fifties. Apologies for the long question. Thanks in advance. Not too long. David, a great question. So we haven’t covered HRV before. And the reason that we haven’t covered HR-V before is because it’s still relatively speaking, like an emerging space.

[00:38:59] Jonathan Lee: Like we’re learning more and more about it, particularly as it relates to endurance training. Um, but HRV, you know, has been something that’s been used for morbidity, uh, as a predictor of that, one of many predictors that are cross-referenced and double checked and everything else in situations like in ICU rooms and in many other cases, um, in fact, Uh, at one point, I think it was going over to EUROBIKE.

[00:39:21] Jonathan Lee: Uh, I sat next to a Stanford researcher, Stanford, uh, Amber, um, uh, sat next to a Stanford researcher and her entire career had been devoted to studying HRV. So we had a long flight all the way over to Germany or Switzerland, something like that. And it was a fantastic opportunity to just talk all about it.

[00:39:39] Jonathan Lee: Um, it’s a really interesting metric that has a much, it has much more life in the medical side of things and the, the its application endurance training is rather fresh. So comparatively speaking to what we’re dealing with here, um, Amber, maybe before we get into HRV, you’ve mentioned your autonomic nervous system.

[00:39:58] Jonathan Lee: Can you kind of describe. Parasympathetic and sympathetic you’ve. Can you describe that portion of the autonomic nervous system and

[00:40:05] Amber Pierce: for us? Yeah, I think we’ve definitely had episodes in the past where people decided autonomic nervous system was the drinking game word. So I’m just giggling because I’ve definitely talked to her nervous system in the past.

[00:40:19] Amber Pierce: Um, so yeah, autonomic nervous system. This is kind of what people might refer to as like the involuntary side of your nervous system. Uh, but it breaks down in very simple terms to two, and this is an oversimplification, but your autonomic nervous system breaks down into two components, your parasympathetic and your sympathetic.

[00:40:37] Amber Pierce: So sympathetic is what most people know as your fight or flight response. Um, so that’s when your, your systems are activated and ready to go. Whereas parasympathetic is your rest and digest. So that’s when you’re feeling very safe and secure, you don’t need to activate the systems to be all systems go that’s when you need to recover, eat digest, rest.

[00:41:01] Amber Pierce: So parasympathetic and sympathetic, um, are two aspects of the autonomic nervous system and they both play a significant role in HIV.

[00:41:11] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, absolutely. And when we talk about HRV, I would too. So it’s heart rate variability. That’s the, and then the, the acronym HRV. And it’s a very clear definition is it’s the variation in duration between the beats of your heart.

[00:41:25] Jonathan Lee: So let’s say your heart beats at like a, you’re doing a over-under workout. Like we were talking about before, and you’re at 170 beats per minute. It doesn’t mean that it’s perfectly split so that every heart rate has an even interval in between the or every heartbeat has an even interval in between that it will vary.

[00:41:42] Jonathan Lee: One heartbeat will be further away from another heartbeat while others will be closer. That’s how our body works. Now, we’re talking about that in the context of a workout, but this happens throughout your entire life at all times around the clock, 24 7, cause your heart keeps going. So HRV is a measurement of the various.

[00:42:01] Jonathan Lee: Over time that you have. So basically if it fluctuates a lot, it’ll be a high number. So this is very like, this is purely for illustrating context. This is not scientific, but if you have half a second between one beat and then you had 0.2, five between another one, then your measurement, the variability between that would be 0.2, five.

[00:42:20] Jonathan Lee: But if it’s larger than that, then it gets bigger. If it’s smaller than that, it gets smaller. So that’s what it is. It’s measured in military. Um, and the, and the important thing to keep in mind with this, I think is that in most cases, what you want to see is you want to see this, this variability almost like free expression of your autonomic nervous system to work in tandem and to be able to handle things like, Hey, start digesting, cool.

[00:42:44] Jonathan Lee: Get excited because you’re going to go upstairs. Cool. Now you can rest, you got up the stairs. Now you can go to bed. So it’s going to be sending these different commands, so to speak in an automating itself. And every everything is working well, the assumption is that your HRV would have a higher number, and if it’s not working well and there’s crosstalk or one’s depressed, and one is a one is oh, pressed.

[00:43:07] Jonathan Lee: And then one, another one is overly enabled. Then the thought is that once again, your HRV in that case would actually be a smaller number, less variance because they aren’t working well together in tandem like that.

[00:43:18] Amber Pierce: And when you say that they aren’t working well together, you’re referring to parasympathetic and sympathetic autonomic nervous systems.

[00:43:23] Jonathan Lee: Yep. Yes, exactly. Um, and so there’s now that’s what that’s where that’s at. You can see where in like a medical context when we’re talking about it for person. And once again, this is like a, one of the indicators. One of many indicators that medical professionals may look at for a morbidity to recognize how a person is progressing along a path, whether that’s, uh, a regression or a progression.

[00:43:48] Jonathan Lee: And you can see that if your body is failing, the autonomic nervous system is not able to operate as a result, you know, that would drop in that’s how that’s used. So it’s, it’s, um, I think it is fair to say that it’s almost being extrapolated out to then have implications for athletes and it could be that case.

[00:44:06] Jonathan Lee: But the tricky thing is, is once again, we’re still learning what this all means, because it’s really tricky. We’ve talked about this and maybe even more than the autonomic nervous system, right. There are. So they’re infinite mechanisms that exist in our body where like this one thing will happen in your body.

[00:44:22] Jonathan Lee: And then it’s really easy for our minds to be like, oh, well then that must mean this. And then those logic leaps, we can definitely make some assumptions and it can be tricky to track things, but perhaps maybe the most important thing to keep in mind with HRV is that it’s heavily dependent on the measurement.

[00:44:39] Jonathan Lee: Right? If you get bad data, then it doesn’t have its meaning. So we’re talking about heart rate and all of us know how much heart rate or heart rate readings are affected for any number of reasons, whether it’s at the device level or whether it’s at the input level that we all have. Coffee, sleep, hydration, nutrition, stress.

[00:44:59] Jonathan Lee: There’s so many different things. Elevation. All these things affect our bodies in different ways and affect the data that we get from, uh, from heart rate straps or whatever it may be. Then you have like, I’m wearing like a garment watch right now. And there are times when I get very bad heart rate data because it’s loose or it’s shifted, or it’s really strange.

[00:45:17] Jonathan Lee: So there’s one thing to keep in mind with this is that the data is only as good as the measurement and it also needs to be consistently measured at the right time. And over time it needs to be measured at that time with consistency, you know, like there’s a lot to keep in mind with this. And there’s a lot of, like, you kind of have to do that Mario, like jumping through that level with the swinging bars and dodging through every possible thing to get reliable data every time.

[00:45:42] Jonathan Lee: And that’s the, that’s one of the trickiest parts of HRV. So that like, there’s an idea. There’s an aspiration. State with HRV in the sense that it would tell us when we’re ready to train or when we’re ready to rest. Right. And that’s what we’re shooting for. That’s the concept of HRP of where it’s going.

[00:46:00] Jonathan Lee: Um, all of us have used HRV tracking in one way or another with various different products, I assume. Yeah. For limited,

[00:46:10] Ivy Audrain: uh, when we were planning this podcast and I realized that I had access to HIV and I hadn’t used it. So for the past week, I’m in a

[00:46:18] Amber Pierce: hurry, you gotta use it, make it

[00:46:23] Ivy Audrain: so super limited experience.

[00:46:25] Ivy Audrain: Um, and for me it was nothing that I didn’t already know. Like you’re tired. Yeah. No kidding. Thank you. Uh, and you know, just looking at that number, those numbers, it was, you know, like, oh, cool. Like that’s a cool number. Okay. Like I already knew that I already know what that I had arrested. I feel great today, or I know that I got nine hours of sleep and I feel awesome.

[00:46:54] Ivy Audrain: Or like, I know that I feel like crap so I can see why people are into it. Um, I don’t feel like it was telling me anything that I didn’t already know about my body and how I was feeling. Um, I think that it could be useful. Like, yeah, I get it. I get why some people are super into it. There could be a time where I don’t exactly know what’s going on and I’m not feeling great and it could provide some insight.

[00:47:20] Ivy Audrain: But as of right now, it’s not telling me in my week experience anything

[00:47:26] Amber Pierce: that I didn’t already know.

[00:47:28] Jonathan Lee: How about you? Uh, Amber, what is your experience been like? I

[00:47:32] Amber Pierce: used it years and years ago. So I have a feeling that all of the devices and products now in the market are in a very different state than they were when I was using it.

[00:47:41] Amber Pierce: Um, but I had a similar experience to Ivy. Like at first it was really fun cause it was kind of like, oh cool. This is really jiving with how I feel. And then after a while it was. This is really driving with how I feel

[00:47:55] Jonathan Lee: like I,

[00:47:56] Amber Pierce: I, you know, but, but the point there, I want a big caveat with that, that I want to point out is by the time I was using this, I was many, many years into a career where my whole job was to be aware of my body, to cultivate body awareness, to pay attention to all of the signs accused about, you know, um, whether or not I was fatigued or rested and what say my body was in.

[00:48:21] Amber Pierce: So I think that that is, you know, it’s not, it’s not necessarily a basis, a good basis for comparison. Um, for some folks who might be new to this. And I think one of the harder things to capture for most of us is to recognize when. Non-training stresses, creeping into our lives. Um, because oftentimes non-training stress because it’s not something that is scheduled on your calendar that has some kind of quantitative metric associated with.

[00:48:50] Amber Pierce: It can become like white noise and we can lose sight of the fact that, Hey, actually, you know, it might be work or family or relationships. There’s just been like an increasing stress load there. But I haven’t really noticed because it’s just been a gradual accumulation and that might be someplace where it’s harder for people to tease out, you know, what’s contributing to a sense of fatigue or a sense of malaise or a lower motivation.

[00:49:17] Amber Pierce: Um, but yeah, I will say for me it was more validating just cause it was validating. Of how I was actually feeling. And it made me feel really confident that I could wake up in the morning and say, yeah, I’m pretty tired, but I know that I’m still ready to train today or, wow. I’m really tired. And today needs to be a rest day.

[00:49:36] Amber Pierce: Um, that was, it was more just a validation of that.

[00:49:41] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. In my case, uh, much the same as both of you. However, I didn’t find it to be a perfect validation of that. There were some days where my HIV was indicating that like, you are ready to go and it’s like, uh, I can’t even get out of bed because I’m sick.

[00:49:55] Jonathan Lee: And then there are other days and it’s like, you are absolutely destroyed. And, and on those days I had some of the best days. The tricky part with it is that I haven’t found it to be perfect yet. The implications for how you know, how it’s being purported, I guess in this, in the endurance training space are pretty severe where it’s like you today, you train today, you don’t train, or today you do more or today you do less.

[00:50:21] Jonathan Lee: And, and if it was like a perfect measurement and it was able to track all the time, because I assumed that the situations that I had that was because of bad readings with it. Um, that’s my assumption. I have no clue if that’s actually the case, but. If it isn’t perfect data, but it has, it’s weighted so heavily in my decision-making, you know, my triaging to decide if I’m going to do a workout or not, that’s tricky.

[00:50:44] Jonathan Lee: I don’t want to put so much reliance on something that, that could lead me astray. Right. Whereas it can be helpful, you know, here at train road, we absolutely would love to have data like this feeding into and working in conjunction in concert with adaptive training. Right. Um, we would just want to make sure that it’s making the right decisions for athletes and it’s backing that up.

[00:51:05] Jonathan Lee: So for us, like all internally and everything else, we think it’s good data to beat, to, to collect and to have, and, and at some point we may increase it or may bring it into the system and be using it. Um, so we’re interested in everything that we can get that gets athletes faster. Right. So, but the one thing I think of with this is a great example.

[00:51:25] Jonathan Lee: I talked about the different factors that basically inform you, if you want to train or not, like, could you get out of bed that day? Like, do you feel well? Like there’s so many different things that we have. And one thing that I really want to mention with this, or like an example, uh, Elon Musk, like in Teslas, they got rid of radar and they got rid of LIDAR and they instead, they just are focusing on cameras and the world was like, you are crazy getting rid of those other like metrics or those other ways to be able to measure and look around the car and make sure it’s safe.

[00:51:55] Jonathan Lee: But what he ended up saying with that is like, well, what happens at those? When all three of those systems tell you something different and disagree, like, you know, how do you trust that? And in that situation, like the consequences are really severe. Cause it’s like, well, you got to make a decision to brake or swerve or do something like that right at that time.

[00:52:11] Jonathan Lee: So if there’s indecision, what do you do? And which one do you trust? That’s like a really good metaphor for all of us is we should look at the different things that are guiding our training and we should say, okay, which one. Are prone to error, which ones are less prone to error, which ones have led us in the right paths in the past, which ones going forward will lead us in the right ways and then weight them appropriately to make sure because there are so many different ways that we can attract some sort of fatigue or some sort of indicator of like, you know, that you’re ready to go and you’re ready to train.

[00:52:45] Jonathan Lee: Right. Um, and even in this question alone, David mentioned his resting heart rate. A lot of people use that. It’s tricky. It’s not going to be a perfect indicator. Every time you can talk about using like waking RPE scales that people use. I’ve had days where I wake up and feel terrible. And then later on, I feel fantastic and I’m able to do the work.

[00:53:03] Jonathan Lee: Um, there are also days where like you look at, like, if people look at hydration levels and use color to be able to engage that there’s that then there’s any number of different things where you can measure biometrics, like HRV to try to figure out if you’re ready or not. And if you just have all of these different inputs, it can be really difficult to filter signal from the.

[00:53:24] Jonathan Lee: So that’s like, uh, there’s value in distilling when you’re talking about all the information that you have and understanding as an athlete, what I should do right now. So one of the reasons why we’ve spent so long training, adaptive training and formatting our data too. So then that way we can make sure that we have reliable, you know, decision-making to be able to drive all of this.

[00:53:46] Jonathan Lee: Um, and that’s why when we feed in data, uh, now we have something constant and then we can feed in data to that. And then it allows us to see if, oh, this is a good metric, and this does jive with that, and this could be helpful. So it’s exciting for sure. Um, and it’s something that, uh, yeah, we, we are not quite yet using it, but it’s something that we are interested in looking at for sure.

[00:54:09] Jonathan Lee: No. Um, okay. Can we talk about just some other ways, like some specific questions for us that David had, and then if we have any, anything else in terms of like how we measure our fatigue individually, um, David’s asked is HRV a personal number. Yeah. A hundred percent younger athletes might have, uh, a lower HRV than older athletes, but that doesn’t track perfectly, uh, across the board.

[00:54:33] Jonathan Lee: Um, it’s also just not useful to compare it to other athletes. Yeah. I think he

[00:54:37] Amber Pierce: meant younger athletes have a slightly higher HRV,

[00:54:39] Jonathan Lee: so yes. Um, but they’re, it’s not useful to compare it to others. So it’s, it’s just, it’s just not, um, what ambers is and what mine, ah, who cares. It’s kind of like a heart rate max in that regard, you know, or even resting heart rate for that matter.

[00:54:55] Jonathan Lee: Um, and yes, you can watch trends with it as well. I get, like Amber said, it can be helpful to pick up on the stress if you don’t pick up on that, like, you know, stress is building in other aspects of your. But boy, I would recommend, instead of trying to get a device in a number to do that, I would recommend having some sort of a routine in your life where you can reflect on your day.

[00:55:15] Jonathan Lee: And then as you reflect on your day, then you can figure that stuff out. I see you nodding your head. Yes.

[00:55:21] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. Will you just said about filtering out that information too is so important because we as athletes wish that there was some metric or some device or something that could tell us everything about how we were going to train and feel that day or everything about how ready we were going to be on race day.

[00:55:39] Ivy Audrain: And it just doesn’t exist. Like are how hard my heart is beating. When I wake up, isn’t going to account for any like off the bike life, stress, work, stress, anything that’s going on in my heart, how I’ve been eating, uh, you know, how much I’ve slept in relation to how much I’ve training isn’t going to speak to.

[00:56:04] Ivy Audrain: If I’m over-caffeinated, um, if I’m feeling blue and just don’t want to, you know, like there’s so many of those factors off the bike that have to do with our training, that you, as an athlete, have to do some work and take some time learning about yourself and how you perform, and there’s no metric or device that’s going to tell you that.

[00:56:27] Ivy Audrain: And that’s where things like a training journal become really, really important and finding a healthy way to keep track of what you’re eating. Um, you know, not like that doesn’t work for everyone. Getting down to the calories can sometimes be kind of harmful. So just keeping track of how much you’re eating and when to try to correlate when you’re feeling good.

[00:56:50] Ivy Audrain: And when you’re not, um, and journaling, you know, how much you’re sleeping through your training, progression, all that stuff together will give you a better full scope picture. How ready you are and how recovered you are in the full context of your HRV and your training load and your sleep and your rest and your nutrition.

[00:57:08] Amber Pierce: Yeah. I think that kind of goes back to this idea that it’s, it’s another tool in your toolbox. It doesn’t, it’s not the silver bullet thing. That’s going to tell you everything. Um, and I think what Ivy’s saying is so true and there’s always, uh, and the same thing goes for power meters, right? So what I’m about to say is that there’s two sides to this coin.

[00:57:28] Amber Pierce: Like one side is this could be really powerful and valuable information. On the other side, it could be limiting because maybe you wake up on race day and your HRV. Isn’t very good. What’s that going to do to your mindset? And, and when I say power, meters, same thing, you get into the race and maybe your power is a little bit low and you’re like, well, wait a minute.

[00:57:48] Amber Pierce: But if you didn’t know that and it didn’t enter your mind and it didn’t cause you to second guess yourself, or question your confidence. You might not be having the best day physically, but maybe if you’re on fire mentally, you could still pull out an amazing result. Um, so it’s, it’s important not to put too much stock in any one thing.

[00:58:11] Amber Pierce: And just recognize that these, each of these things is a tool that is useful in some instances, but most tools are limited. There’s not going to be one silver bullet tool. That’s going to tell you everything. So you, you know, take all of it. All of the numbers are interesting as long as you’re taking them into context.

[00:58:29] Amber Pierce: And as long as you’re accounting for the broader context of your life, like Ivy said in a lot of that is really qualitative stuff. That’s hard to nail down with a number, but as just as important to, um, to adopt as a lens when you’re interpreting the numbers. Either on your power meter or on your watch or, you know, whatever it happens to be that you’re tracking and just keep those things in mind.

[00:58:51] Amber Pierce: Because I think the most important thing is that you trust yourself, right? If you get up in the morning and you’re like, I am going to nail this race and your power meters off your numbers are not what you’d like them to be. It doesn’t mean that you can’t go out and actually nail that race and trust yourself to be able to do that because you have other, you have other tools in your toolkit, right?

[00:59:12] Amber Pierce: You have tactics, you have mentality, you ha I mean, you have perished and there’s a whole host of other things that you can bring to bear in order to go after a result or meet a goal that aren’t necessarily going to depend on those numbers. So it’s really valuable. It’s used it’s full, but just be mindful about how, um, how you apply it.

[00:59:34] Amber Pierce: And when, and like Ivy said, you know, take into account that context because trusting yourself is probably the most important. We’re learning to trust yourself. It’s a process.

[00:59:44] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I have somebody in the chat mentioning the fact that like, well, you just don’t look at it on those important days into to that.

[00:59:49] Jonathan Lee: I go, well then why the heck are you even doing like, like, uh, there’s

[00:59:56] Amber Pierce: that’s a good, oh, sorry, go ahead. And you can do that.

[01:00:00] Jonathan Lee: That works. Yeah. You can have it so that like you track it and you have it in place, but then at the same time you can, uh, the point is, remember that we’re speaking to so many people here, right?

[01:00:11] Jonathan Lee: So like, if you’re listening to this and you’re taking one perspective or speaking to, you know, hundreds of thousands of people on this. So when we’re speaking to these people, There’s a temptation, like Ivy said to try to find the holy grail is just going to perfectly dictate everything to find one. And, and Chan and chances are, we probably will never get to a point where we have a holy grail where it’s just like, everything is dialed down because we’re simply too complex.

[01:00:35] Jonathan Lee: Like our understanding of how our body works. It seems vast, but I bet where we aren’t even a fraction of a percent of getting to the point where we actually understand how our body truly works. Right. Like we can learn forever on this. So, uh, it’s, it’s one thing of many, it can get too complicated as, uh, you know, if you’re looking at it and you’re letting it guide too much, just like anything else.

[01:00:56] Jonathan Lee: I went through an experimental period with like resting heart rate. And it was interesting because I didn’t realize until like three weeks later that I was drinking a ton of water and actually over drinking water because it was driving down my resting heart rate. And I was like, that’s good, lower resting heart rates.

[01:01:09] Jonathan Lee: Good. And then I was getting to the point where my resting heart rate was getting lower and lower. So I was training more and doing more and doing more. And then I actually realized later on a correlation for me personally, If I am, overtraining my resting heart rate actually in the morning is depressed.

[01:01:24] Jonathan Lee: It gets even lower. It doesn’t just go higher. Whereas throughout the rest of the day, it actually is higher. So there’s like so many complexities and also for what it’s worth that resting heart rate thing. Like I just laid out principles. They transgress all the time. They don’t follow that, that pattern and that applies to everything.

[01:01:40] Jonathan Lee: So it’s just tricky. Data can be helpful, but it should always inform perception. Like perception is key. Um, you are absolutely the driver in the driver’s seat of your body and you have intuition that no device can ever deliver. And it’s super important to build a strong relationship with intuition. Uh, data can help back that up.

[01:02:02] Jonathan Lee: But I think that the biggest thing with this is that it is super helpful to build awareness and to pay attention to what your body is feeling and what you’re going through. Um, and, and HRV can be a good way to do that. Just as many other metrics can, uh, A couple of things, uh, what’s stressing

[01:02:18] Amber Pierce: them about that.

[01:02:19] Amber Pierce: It’s maybe too low or, you know, it’s, it’s a data point. It’s a data point that’s useful in context of other things. So, um, making that a point of stress, making it too much of a point of stress and concern that in of itself can drive your recovery down. So, um,

[01:02:35] Jonathan Lee: take that one off.

[01:02:38] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. Wait. Oh, is it was David to Jamie?

[01:02:41] Ivy Audrain: I don’t know her saying David or Jamie. Yeah, no, that’s

[01:02:45] Jonathan Lee: all right.

[01:02:45] Amber Pierce: I just got confused

[01:02:46] Ivy Audrain: for a second, but I don’t think David actually said that they were actually struggling with recovery or felt like they weren’t doing well, just that they were kind of wrapped up in this HRV number and wondering if it was not good, you know, so maybe.

[01:03:02] Ivy Audrain: Maybe they’re killing it,

[01:03:03] Amber Pierce: getting enough, right. That’s a very real, yeah,

[01:03:07] Jonathan Lee: it is possible. But I’m going to make an assumption and say the fact that if he has all this going on and he’s training around six to 9:00 PM, then going to bed at 10 to 11, it’s hard. And there’s a reason that he’s trying to get data to be able to back up how hard is hard.

[01:03:19] Jonathan Lee: Right. So I assume so first, like some, some things that I would say David is you’re training at a time. That’s close to dinner. Maybe after dinner. I don’t know if you’re having dinner with like family and then you’re going into your training. If so, then that can be tricky because you know, if you have something that’s going to digest really slowly, then that’s going to make it uncomfortable during workouts.

[01:03:43] Jonathan Lee: So if you’re trained doing that, then you probably have to push your training later. If you are instead training and then eating. Uh, then that can make things a whole lot easier. However, there’s a big risk there. If you’ve had a long day at work and you haven’t eaten since lunch, and then you go straight into your workout like that, you’re going to be relatively depleted.

[01:04:00] Jonathan Lee: It can be really helpful to take in some fast processing carbohydrate before then. Whether that’s simple things like toast with honey or jam, something like that, uh, taking in something that’s just not a lot of fat, not a lot of protein beforehand is going to really help you. Um, I feel like you’re charged up and ready for the workout, but then also eat and drink during your workouts.

[01:04:22] Jonathan Lee: That’s another big temptation temptation I see from people. If you’re training close to a meal, it’s like, well, I’m going to eat later or I just ate. So I don’t need to worry about it, but build the habit of feeling your work. Uh, when you’re talking about going to bed thereafter, this is extremely important because depending on your FTP, especially if you’re a high FTP athlete, oh, you’ll be burning a lot of calories and you won’t be able to replenish them.

[01:04:44] Jonathan Lee: And as a result, you could be going to bed in a relative deficit. You know, we’re not talking daily deficit, but in that moment, your body is going to be deprived. So it can be really tricky. So make sure that you’re drinking a lot of recovery or drinking a lot of electrolytes as well. When you’re training, um, you sweat a bunch in your workout and then you go straight to it.

[01:05:02] Jonathan Lee: And once again, if you have a lot of fans on you, it won’t feel like you’re sweating. You’re still losing a lot of fluid. So if you go to bed dehydrated, that’s going to make it really tough to get good sleep. Um, so just training in close proximity to sleep is complicated, but the best ways to arm against it are making sure that you’re adequately field and that’s from a nutrition and hydration perspective, making sure that you take in a recovery drink thereafter.

[01:05:24] Jonathan Lee: Even if you’re going to have dinner, I would still recommend recovery drink, then dinner like it’s yes. Going to bed on a full stomach. Isn’t great. Yes. Eat timing your meals. It would be ideal not to have a meal before you like right before you go to the. But you also have to be realistic. And in this case it might be much more damaging to go to bed depleted right then to go to bed and have some food in your system.

[01:05:49] Jonathan Lee: So it can kind of recover. Um, and with that too, I think a wind down routine, making sure that after this workout, you have it and maybe involved in that is a cold shower. I’m not saying like ice bath stuff. I don’t understand why it seems like middle-aged men in particular loves sitting in ice baths, but, um, the it’s really important to get your core temperature.

[01:06:08] Jonathan Lee: So if when you work out, you raise that core temperature and it makes it oh, so hard to sleep. Um, so a cold shower can really help you drop that core temperature quite a lot. Um, maybe even when you have your recovery drink, maybe you have it with the ice and you have some other things cause ingesting very cold things also can help drop your core temperature.

[01:06:28] Jonathan Lee: So those would be my tips. All this stuff is so

[01:06:31] Ivy Audrain: important in not making David go to sleep earlier because it’s not like they’re going to finish their workout at nine and then be able to do their recovery and eat and

[01:06:41] Amber Pierce: go to sleep at nine 15.

[01:06:44] Ivy Audrain: All those things you just mentioned will seriously impact the quality of the sleep and rest that they get.

[01:06:50] Ivy Audrain: If they, you know, work on that, those things. And it’s not like we can create more hours in the night to get David more rest with their family and training and life and everything,

[01:07:04] Jonathan Lee: but I

[01:07:04] Amber Pierce: will seriously help. That’s good. Yeah. I particularly like the wind down routine. I think that’s an important one. And that that’s one that anybody can do, even if, regardless of what time of day you train, um, shifting from that sympathetic into more of a parasympathetic state after a workout is a really good thing.

[01:07:21] Amber Pierce: And, uh, one thing I tried to help a lot with that was I picked a song that really was just very soothing and relaxing to me. And I listened to the same one after every workout. So I do my workout and I do like, you know, a little bit of post-workout stretching and have my recovery shake and I might either do some stretching or.

[01:07:42] Amber Pierce: Sit and reflect on the workout. Like I mentioned earlier, um, as I’m having my recovery shake and actually playing that song, every time started to create kind of a Pavlovian response. So that the second I started hearing the same song, it was like a cue to my body. Like, oh, we can chill out now. And it actually helped a lot.

[01:07:57] Amber Pierce: It took a while to start developing that automatic response to that song. But by using the same music piece over and over, it actually became a consistent cue. So, um, might help. So worth trying if you, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t mind repetition and music, or maybe it’s a particular artist.

[01:08:14] Amber Pierce: Um, but yeah, that, that can help kind of accelerate the

[01:08:18] Jonathan Lee: transition. Yeah, absolutely. That’s a cool point. Uh, and in this case, David, you mentioned family. I assume that you’re talking about having children. It’s nine to 11:00 PM. Maybe the kids are in bed. Cause I was just thinking of this Amber. I wish that after my workouts, I could do that and drop down.

[01:08:34] Jonathan Lee: But then typically I open the door and my son’s in like a Batman costume and he jumps in and wants to sword fight. I’m like, all right, so long parasympathetic, it’s time for more sympathetic, you know? Like, but, um, uh, so that’s, you know, maybe if it’s later you can actually own that space. Oh, that would be so cool.

[01:08:52] Jonathan Lee: Right. To just be able to say yes, this is my time to relax and to do that super cool point. Um, what do you say? We go into some live questions and then we jumped back up to question three. What do you say cohost? Cool. Great. Okay. Uh, so Becky says, and she’s joining us live and if you’re live and you have some questions, dump them in there.

[01:09:13] Jonathan Lee: Uh, Jesse and Maxine producer, Maxine they’re in the live chat. They’re helping drop them in. We appreciate you too, by the way. Thanks for doing that. Um, so Becky says I raised Tucson bicycle classic last weekend. It’s a three-day stage race way to go. Uh, that’s always like, that’s like a, that’s a fun dare.

[01:09:29] Jonathan Lee: I say, like a cult classic race almost, right. Like, uh, it’s pretty cool. And Tucson, like at any given point has just insane. The average, like what kg of Tucson is very high, like at any point, like just with the amazing athletes they have there. Um, as she says, I have a question about Aja. I raised a few of the days at 0.9, nine for 90 minutes.

[01:09:52] Jonathan Lee: Does this mean my FTP is actually higher? I have an answer for this one. Do you want to, you want to jump. Okay, Jonathan. Cool. So I F I believe is normalized power divided by threshold. Um, I could be wrong on that. Um, thinking on air is always tough. Um, but, uh, and as a result, it, if it’s like a crit or if it’s a very surgy race, your normalized power can be pretty darn high.

[01:10:19] Jonathan Lee: Um, that said, if you’re at 0.9, nine for 90 minutes, in most cases, we call it, sometimes you can really go like, extremely, like, like Pete has created what we call NP busters before, where it’s like, Pete has a weird ability to just be able to hit a huge amount of power, a huge amount of power, and just like over and over and over and over.

[01:10:41] Jonathan Lee: And in those cases, you can see the normalized power, the bath do some weird stuff. Right. But in this case for 90 minutes, in most cases, you have enough time for that to normalize out. And I would assume Becky that, yes, it’s, uh, it’s too low. Um, If you can ride at 0.99, I think about this. If he could ride, do you think he could ride at that threshold for 90 minutes?

[01:11:02] Jonathan Lee: Whatever your threshold is, if that’s the case, then it’s too low. Like there’s low-hanging fruit there. You can bump it up. Um, I’d recommend now, Becky, I don’t know if you use. You totally should use Trainor road, uh, cause you could use AI, FTP, FTP detection, and you could be able to figure this out and it would be fantastic.

[01:11:21] Jonathan Lee: And there’s no stress with it. There’s no like this protocol versus this protocol, it just gives you the good training. Yes. It’s the best test ever pushing a button and that’s it. Um, so that’s what I would say I had as last night I did a short track race and just got completely destroyed by our local juniors who like they’re no longer juniors.

[01:11:41] Jonathan Lee: They showed up on the line, they have like facial hair and they’re big and buff. And they’re like, Hey, we’re like little kids. Like last year I feel like it was crazy and they smoked me. Um, but I had like a, I had 0.9, nine for 40 minutes in my race, uh, for my IIF. Right. Which, uh, for that race. You know, uh, I think it was about right.

[01:12:03] Jonathan Lee: I could have done more, I think, on a better day for sure. Um, certainly wasn’t going to catch it, any of the kids, but in terms of the numbers, uh, I could have, uh, done a bit more, but I would not expect to see 0.9, nine for 90 minutes. Uh, okay. Theater says, do we need a recovery week before using the new FTP calculation?

[01:12:23] Jonathan Lee: So that’s AI FTP detection, by the way, the coolest feature ever. Like I can take a test with a button instead of actually working hard. So, uh, and he says like, you would need for a ramp test first. Maybe we should talk about needing a recovery week before a ramp test. That’s not necessarily the case, right.

[01:12:38] Jonathan Lee: Uh, right. It’s

[01:12:40] Amber Pierce: not. Um, we generally, uh, we like to schedule the way that we schedule our plans is when you begin a new block, we like to check in on your FTP. Cause chances are it’s changed since you’ve done a lot of work in the last block. Um, and, but we like to have those recovery weeks in there not to rest you for the ran tests, but because just generally we need to dump some fatigue before you start building again.

[01:13:00] Amber Pierce: And then before you start building again, we want to check in and see where your fitness is. Um, so the way that we built the current version of AI FTP, and this is obviously going to iterate and become better, um, cause we love constant improvement. We would, what I would recommend is that you use AI FTP on the days that you have a scheduled ramp test in your plan.

[01:13:21] Amber Pierce: So you don’t necessarily need to go and add a ramp test. You can, if you want, and it will work. But the way that we intend this is to be used in the same way as you would use a ramp test. So at those points, in your plan where it makes sense to check in on your fitness, um, check in with FTP, and you can use that instead of doing the ramp test.

[01:13:41] Amber Pierce: So I’m not saying that you need to have a rest week before you check your AI FTP. That’s not the case, but that’s how it lands in a lot of the plans. Um, and that’s what I would recommend doing for the, for the time being so no need to check your FTP every week, just check it, you know, at the beginning of each flock in your plan, the way that we, we originally intended it, and that may change in the future, um, with how we iterate on this feature.

[01:14:06] Amber Pierce: But for now, that would be the best.

[01:14:08] Jonathan Lee: Yep. Nice, great guidance. Uh, another one, uh, question on HRV. I feel great. I’ve been training well, making good improvements, eating healthy, et cetera. In my HRV range is what would be considered exceptionally low for my age and fitness. Should that be considered concerning I’m 25 to 29 for reference?

[01:14:24] Jonathan Lee: Uh, or that’s the HRV and then 46 year old male cat, three Curt racer. Uh, uh, it’s all relative to you. So, you know, if you see a huge drop in that and it’s really changed then yeah, that would be something that I would be concerned about. But in terms of you looking at it and just saying, well, I’m blow compared to purport it averages for my area.

[01:14:46] Jonathan Lee: I was, I was extremely low, uh, for the averages, uh, when I was tracking HRV daily all the time. And I was, I was extremely raw. It doesn’t matter if you’re concerned about it though. Talk to your doctor about it. That would be a better way than just asking us about it. We are not doctors. So, um, and, and even then, uh, it’d be great to get your doctor’s perspective on HIV and the value behind it.

[01:15:07] Jonathan Lee: So, um, if they don’t know what it is, then, uh, he may be up for a wild ride, but, but if your doctor doesn’t know what it is, then they can be really helpful. So, um, I

[01:15:18] Amber Pierce: mean, to your point, Jonathan, I’m looking for a significant change in yours because it is so individual is really important, but it’s, if you haven’t been tracking it for the last 20 years, you may have just started tracking it after there was a drop, but you wouldn’t have caught that because of the timing of when you started tracking it.

[01:15:36] Amber Pierce: So that’s, that’s a possibility in that’s worth checking with the doctor.

[01:15:40] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Just like, if, for example, while you’re training and you’re like, why is my HR max 240 beats per minute? And everybody else’s seems to be a lot lower, uh, in that case, everybody is different, but yeah. Check with your doctor.

[01:15:52] Jonathan Lee: There’s no reason not to write, um, Chad’s heart rate. I don’t think it ever goes above like one 40. It’s just like, that’s just the way Chad’s always been too. I think that he said that his peak was like 160 something. Um, and I’m not. I’m not even at threshold at that point. Right? So Nate, like he’s practically dead.

[01:16:09] Jonathan Lee: Cause Nate has like plus 200 or something like that. So it’s all variable. Uh, one from Jeff says off topic, maybe someone in the chat can give some feedback. Maybe we can too. It says, if I’m borderline on bikes, I should, I size up or size down. I’m six, four. So the top of the range for a large, but bottom of the range for the XL and gravel bike that I planned to use with road tire, or this is for a gravel bike that I planned to use with road tires, a fair amount.

[01:16:32] Jonathan Lee: What would you use say IB on like sizing? Um, because I actually assume that you are pretty close to being in-between sizing like this, just knowing your height, what do you usually pick? What would you say? Okay,

[01:16:42] Ivy Audrain: this is complicated because if definitely it depends on your proportions too. Right? So if you have a really short reach.

[01:16:52] Ivy Audrain: You know, just because you’re top at the top of the range, if you’re all legs, if you’re a giraffe,

[01:17:01] Ivy Audrain: you just because you’re at the top of the range for your overall height, doesn’t necessarily mean that sizing up would work for you. If you, you know, for a size large only have, let’s say if a red bike for all intensive purposes, um, if you’re already on a size large, and you you’re like maxing out the seat post where you have an 80 millimeter stem don’t size up, because then you would have to have an even shorter, like, is that possible, like a little

[01:17:28] Amber Pierce: tiny

[01:17:33] Jonathan Lee: totally

[01:17:35] Ivy Audrain: make a bike handle, weird. You’d you’d have, you know, less taller the seat post, but that would be a pretty weird feel. Um, but if you’re riding like an XC bike or an Enduro bike, those stems are so short already and, um, you know, having more of a reach and a more. Relaxed, uh, fit and set up is advantageous in a lot of settings for off-road stuff.

[01:17:58] Ivy Audrain: So go size up. Um, but yeah, it depends on Jeff’s proportions. Like if, if they’re a size large and they know that they’ll already need, um, like a 110 millimeter stem, um, size on.

[01:18:14] Jonathan Lee: That’s right. Bikes. Yeah. Bikes. Yeah. Great advice. Ivy bikes used to be more stylized based on like the seat tube length, and that’s really changed.

[01:18:22] Jonathan Lee: Uh, bike sizes are now the more impactful metric is going to be the reach that you have with the frame. So really like we talked about overall height and Ivy said, it’s so well, we should really be looking at our torso length and our leg length. Yes. But even secondary or the leg length would be secondary.

[01:18:40] Jonathan Lee: The torso length is really important. So, um, where you figure out where you need to fall on that is definitely going to be individual, but on a gravel bike, I would say that if you’ve got 120 mil stem, it’s a little too long and the bikes can handle really poorly. You really want to be somewhere in that sweet spot of like 80 to a hundred probably is where you want to be 80 to

[01:19:00] Ivy Audrain: 90 and then see that.

[01:19:02] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s, I think that’s like, uh, when you’re talking about like a mountain bike, yeah. You’re going to want to have a stem that somewhere like 80, all the way down, if you’re cross-country, some of these are going to be like 90 to 70, and then if you’re a trail, you want to be somewhere around 70 to 50, and then if you are in Duro, you want to be 50 to 35.

[01:19:23] Jonathan Lee: Um, uh, 35 is, is what a lot of those bikes are designed for, but all of you are going to be different. Somebody is listening to this right now and they ride a 35 mil stem on the road and that’s what works for them. And that’s important that that works for you. And that’s what you’ve found that works well.

[01:19:37] Jonathan Lee: So

[01:19:37] Ivy Audrain: yeah, Jeff find the, you, or use a bike that you’d like that fits well, measure the reach. Then look at the manufacturer of the bike that you’re interested in. Look at their specs and their reach, and then make it as.

[01:19:50] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, I think there’s a website called 99 spokes, and then there’s another one called geometry geek, stop bike.

[01:19:55] Jonathan Lee: And both of those are really great ways for you to be able to select different bikes and then it will compare all of the different geometry data. Right. They’re really good, really helpful websites. I, I recommend them. Uh, okay. This one’s from Kevin says I’m struggling with altitude after moving, not with sickness, but with power, you and all of us.

[01:20:14] Jonathan Lee: Um, but, uh, so it seems like the lactic acid curve at a hundred percent FTP is much more extreme. Should I train more VOT to raise it up? Tips on acclimate. Um, Kevin. So first of all, uh, as there’s less pressure, so then as a result, you’re going to be getting less oxygen per breath, because think of it like this is pseudo-scientific what less of it is being packed into your lungs with every breath, right?

[01:20:38] Jonathan Lee: So since you have less oxygen, less readily available oxygen, I should say that means it’s going to impact your ability to be able to uptake oxygen. So your threshold drops your ability to produce power aerobically, wherever your aerobic power was, that’s going to drop. That’s just what it is. So first things first, you would want to figure out what your FTP is at that level or that elevation.

[01:20:59] Jonathan Lee: If you’ve been doing workouts with AI FTP detection, or if you’ve been doing workouts with train road for awhile, now you may be able to use AI, FTP detection and get a good fix on that. Um, now in terms of filling that, that lactate inflection point where you hit it, it goes up quite a lot. Once again, that’s probably just because you’re training at old numbers and it makes it really tough.

[01:21:20] Jonathan Lee: So tips on acclimation. Really there’s you hear pros talk about going easy at elevation for the first little bit for their first few days, but it sounds like you’re past that point. Um, really it’s just resetting expectations. I know that sounds silly, but you just have to reset them. Um, and you’re not as fast, like my numbers up here.

[01:21:41] Jonathan Lee: I know that I’m never going to have vanity metrics of sea level. When I go to sea level, I feel like Superman it’s pretty cool. Um, but then it becomes normal to if I spend too much time there. So I kind of like going back up to altitude and having numbers, but not caring about it, then going to sea level and getting like a little placebo boost every time I’m down there.

[01:22:00] Jonathan Lee: Cause I see big number, big number mean fast. So, um, I that’s the, I dunno. Does anybody else have any tips for Kevin there other than resetting expectations and FTP?

[01:22:10] Amber Pierce: There’s nothing wrong with you. This is just, this is just how our bodies work. Um, when you’re at sea level, Every time you inhale all of the hemoglobin in your red blood cells are saturated with oxygen.

[01:22:21] Amber Pierce: So your limiter is how fast you can breathe off carbon dioxide and replace that with oxygen. Whereas when you’re at altitude, it’s the it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not the same thing because there’s so much less oxygen in the air. You’re not necessarily saturating those hemoglobin in your red blood cells. So oxygen is a limiter.

[01:22:39] Amber Pierce: It’s not just how fast you can breathe off the CO2. One thing that can help a little bit, and this is not going to affect your FTP, but breathing at a slightly higher rate at altitude can be useful because every time you inhale, you’re getting more oxygen, even if it’s not saturated. And you’re not limited by breathing off that CO2 in the same way you are at sea level.

[01:22:59] Amber Pierce: So increasing your ventilation rate can help. That kind of happens naturally. It’s going to

[01:23:05] Jonathan Lee: say that’s called riding hard,

[01:23:09] Amber Pierce: but, uh, oftentimes what’ll happen is when we’re at sea level, we intuitively understand that breathing off carbon dioxide makes us feel better. So we train ourselves, um, even unintentionally to breathe slower, really emphasize that exhale at sea level.

[01:23:22] Amber Pierce: And then when you try to do that at altitude, it doesn’t work as well. So notice if you are doing that, um, that might be something to be aware of, but otherwise it’s really, it’s just time. It’ll take time for your body to acclimate. And even when you are acclimated, it’s not going to feel the same as it does at sea level.

[01:23:36] Amber Pierce: It’s not like you get to a point where it feels like sea level. Cause you’re acclimated to altitude. Doesn’t work like that. Um, but don’t worry. This is normal. You’ll be fine. Your body knows what to do and it’s gonna handle.

[01:23:48] Jonathan Lee: Taking Ivy’s approach of what would Keegan say? And he said just says, altitude.

[01:23:51] Jonathan Lee: Isn’t real. So here we go. And that could work. Uh, Kirk has a great question. He says Ivy I’m from Montana, uh, Malta too. And he says, so you should be partial to my question. Give us the background on racing with your mom and who would be stronger in their prime is a good question because your mom was a racer as well.

[01:24:12] Jonathan Lee: Right? So she raised pro and then at one point you actually overlapped is that. Oh, totally. Yeah. We

[01:24:19] Ivy Audrain: know the answer to this question because Tam would roll me. And I, I know that the only times in which she did, uh, or I did beat her is because she was actually part of my lead out. So a lot of people don’t like notice about me.

[01:24:36] Ivy Audrain: Um, but my, my grandma, my mom and myself have all been national champions at different times. And, uh, when I got into racing, my mom was, um, she might disagree and say that she was in her prime when she was younger, but that’s absolutely not true. She was in her prime when she was 40, 45. And when the Pacific Northwest racing was popping off, these Canadian hit squads would come down and do these state races.

[01:25:07] Ivy Audrain: And, you know, eight or nine years ago, the pro one to women’s field would be. Huge like between 40 and 60 writers and super competitive and super tough. And, um, yeah, Tam would in her forties be my lead out person, um, in a crit. And, um, I had to tell her to chill out, like one of the strongest rides

[01:25:35] Amber Pierce: she had, she did

[01:25:37] Ivy Audrain: a, um, almost an entire lap lead out just by herself for me.

[01:25:42] Ivy Audrain: And I had to tell her steady chill out more than once she was riding her sprinter off of her wheel. And

[01:25:49] Amber Pierce: it was just so

[01:25:50] Ivy Audrain: bonkers. And when she was done leading me out and pulled off and I started sprinting and she turned around and had completely shattered a.

[01:26:03] Amber Pierce: and there was a one

[01:26:05] Ivy Audrain: which was sick and we finished.

[01:26:07] Ivy Audrain: And then there was, um, an actual, uh, time gap in the results. That’s how much between the only other two sprinters that were able to follow her with the rest of the field? There was this like, um, like five or six seconds. Cause she just as a 45 year old or something just absolutely broke the profield. And I know that if she wasn’t racing for me, there’s no way I could have beat her that day

[01:26:33] Amber Pierce: has sick.

[01:26:35] Amber Pierce: Wow.

[01:26:36] Jonathan Lee: That’s cool. Yeah. The cool story. I didn’t know that your grandmother too. That is how neat. Yeah.

[01:26:43] Ivy Audrain: I think a lot of people get to ride with their family members or some people get to race with their folks or their kids. That’s super cool. But to like execute. Tactic at an elite level with your mom? It’s

[01:27:00] Amber Pierce: pretty.

[01:27:01] Amber Pierce: Oh, that’s amazing.

[01:27:02] Jonathan Lee: Cool. So cool. Um, Rashaun says, he says, uh, Unbound question help. How can a mid volume plan prepare me for a 12 plus hour race getting super nervous as we approach July. I’m going to flip the script on you. Nishant can you do more than mid volume? Maybe not. And that’s probably why you picked it so you can do as much as he can.

[01:27:24] Jonathan Lee: So like, this is the big question we always put pressure on ourselves. Before big events to be able to be like, all right. So I have to be perfectly prepared for this thing and I have to be able to execute it perfectly. And if it’s, and we’re picking longer and longer events as, as just average cyclist, and as a result, you’ll be tempted to feel like you have to do the exact thing beforehand.

[01:27:43] Jonathan Lee: We’ve mentioned this on the podcast many times that you do not have to emulate the event beforehand, you can swap out a weekend ride with a longer ride. I would recommend that Nishant um, so do you want, and if you can do them outside, uh, use outside workouts with trainer road and do a workout outside.

[01:28:01] Jonathan Lee: So then you can, and on gravel, that sort of stuff, because that’s what you’d really be getting from this. But aerobically speaking, doing a 12 hour ride or doing six hour rides regularly, that sort of thing is probably going to not allow you to build the sort of aerobic fitness that you want. If you are in a point right now where you’re doing a mid volume plan and building up those things are tough on your body to do that long of a ride.

[01:28:24] Jonathan Lee: And if you want to build a robot fit. Then there’s strategic ways to go about it. It’s working higher up within the aerobic fitness realm, so to speak so sweet spot or tempo, sweet spot and threshold. It’s giving yourself that sort of adaptation because on race day, you’re using that aerobic system. And if you execute well in terms of pacing, well, you’ll be adequately prepared for the, your abilities.

[01:28:49] Jonathan Lee: And that’s the important thing to remember. Like, I wish that I could train to do Unbound too, and be perfectly set up for Unbound, um, in meaning that like, oh yeah, I can do a 12 hour ride at a hard level and no, no problems whatsoever. My life won’t support that. I can’t like I can’t go out and do that.

[01:29:06] Jonathan Lee: And nobody else on that starting line, except for maybe the best pro that’s there that day is perfectly prepared to execute a 12 hour race at full capacity. We’re all doing the best that we can and it’s our lives that limit us. So really the question you should be asking Nishant is what’s the best way I can get the most of the available time that I have.

[01:29:25] Jonathan Lee: And that’s why you’re following train road. Yeah,

[01:29:28] Amber Pierce: I think it’s important to remember that preparing for a 12 hour race is about preparing the systems that are going to support that effort and the systems that are going to support that effort are going to be, you know, your, your electrical, your plumbing, right?

[01:29:41] Amber Pierce: So your circulation, your mitochondria, um, your digestion system, your mental focus, all of those things are going to be supported by the training stress and recovery patterns in a training plan. So if you go out and you want to do it might seem logical that going out and doing 12 hour rides over and over would prepare you best for a 12 hour event.

[01:30:05] Amber Pierce: But that’s not true because number one, if you jump in and start doing that, it’s going to. It’s going to put your body in a hole really fast, that then you’re going to have to spend so much time recovering from one 12 hour ride that you’re gonna miss out on an opportunity to initiate the adaptations in your plumbing and your electrical that are gonna support that kind of an event.

[01:30:25] Amber Pierce: So just remember that training isn’t necessarily about recreating all of the race conditions. Um, it’s about supporting the systems that will enable you to complete that event and to do so at to the best of your ability. Now, there are other things involved that can help, you know, like figuring out your equipment, your position, your saddle, um, some of the mental focus that might be required over a longer period of time, but that’s like Jonathan said, those are things that you can work on on a longer weekend ride, but I would not recommend going out and doing a 12 hour ride on the weekend just because that’s what the event’s going to be, trust that you’re building the basis and the foundation for what you’re going to need on that.

[01:31:04] Jonathan Lee: Um, a friend of mine, uh, a bit of a rant. So I apologize, but I think it will be helpful. A friend of mine he started this was years ago, started using trainer road. And he was like, he was super skeptical at first of just training in general, because he had just written before and he was like, oh, I sure hope this thing works.

[01:31:22] Jonathan Lee: And he was training for a mountain bike race, and he was following the plan. Follow the plan really well. And was way faster, like across the board. And then he went to go do the same race that he had done in years past. And he sprinted as hard as he possibly could out of the gate for like the first, like two minutes.

[01:31:39] Jonathan Lee: And then after that tried to go as hard as he possibly could on the first few climbs. And then he just completely exploded. And afterward he was like, love training sucks. And I’m like, your execution sucks. Like it wasn’t the training. So like

[01:31:50] Amber Pierce: never pacing strategy.

[01:31:53] Jonathan Lee: Yes. And that’s super important to remember, especially on a race like Unbound, like it’s so long.

[01:31:59] Jonathan Lee: So there’s so many more opportunities for you to make good choices or bad choices. So it’s really about like at the end of the day, the way you’re going to have the best experience of that race is by looking at every decision point and saying what’s the most conservative and best decision I can make.

[01:32:14] Jonathan Lee: Cause conservative pacing is going to be the best way to make it through the day. Conservative nutrition, strategy, conservative, everything. That’s going to get you across the line faster because there are other people that are going to lose their cool and lose their ability to make those good decisions far earlier than you.

[01:32:31] Jonathan Lee: If you’re making that your focus and that’s how you beat people on that sort of a day, it’s attrition, and that’s how you rise above attrition. So, um, so yeah, don’t undo all the amazing training that you’ve done with bad execution. Everybody that’s listening to this. Um, okay. Let’s have a, let’s go to the number three question that we wanted to do.

[01:32:52] Jonathan Lee: This is one, that’s more like a general discussion for us. Don’t have it, don’t have a listener question in place with this, but I think it’s an important one that we have, and it represents listener questions that we get not infrequently. Uh, I want to have a question about how you have conversations about food with endurance athletes that you care about.

[01:33:09] Jonathan Lee: So, uh, cause so I’m going to lay out some like basic context for you, right? So like your friend, uh, that you absolutely love, you see them going through a period of time where they’re not nourishing themselves effectively. A cyclist feel immense pressure because power to weight is like the governing principle and the sickle that like re let’s just rest over our head in our minds all the time where it’s like power and weight is my power going up, is my weight going down?

[01:33:35] Jonathan Lee: If not, then I’m doing something wrong. So you have a friend and your friend you find is not nourishing themselves. Or maybe it’s your partner, or maybe it’s a member of your family or member of your team, something like that. And you care about this person. So how do you have conversations with them about that over a topic that might be deeply personal or sensitive, and then also culturally stereotypes, uh, making it even more complicated, Ivy, like you’ve mentioned on this podcast that you went through a period, I guess it was a year or two ago where you just realized that you weren’t nourishing your.

[01:34:09] Jonathan Lee: Um, I try for the

[01:34:10] Amber Pierce: past, like

[01:34:11] Ivy Audrain: decade John, but

[01:34:13] Amber Pierce: close. Yeah.

[01:34:16] Jonathan Lee: Well, did people have conversations that were not productive with you and did people have conversations that were productive?

[01:34:22] Ivy Audrain: Yes. Um, both. Um, this question also should just be reframed as how to have hard conversations with endurance athletes you care about, or just with people that you care about when you see them engaging in like behavior or a habit that’s ultimately not helping them be healthy and their best self.

[01:34:44] Ivy Audrain: Those are really hard conversations and I’ve had really good ones from people. I really care about me that were really well-intentioned and ultimately just wanted to see me be healthy and perform better and be happier and feel better. Okay. The execution was so poor and it didn’t land. Um, and with specifically food stuff that can look like someone being, seeing you have, uh, some sort

[01:35:14] Amber Pierce: of mood episode

[01:35:18] Ivy Audrain: or, uh, some sort of emotional outburst or the seeing some sort of behavior they don’t like and being like, Hm you’re you must not be eating enough.

[01:35:27] Ivy Audrain: Um, must be food. Yeah. Food is sometimes not the cause of, of those, uh, symptoms, I guess, that we sometimes associate with food. And that was, um, for sure, during one of those times where I was eating enough and it felt made me feel so, like not seen by that person. And they were just trying to tell me that they care about me and they want me to be happier and healthier.

[01:35:51] Ivy Audrain: And they just like tried to point to. Something that was the easy fix or that they, in their limited scope of vision, that was the problem. And it wasn’t, and I’ve had really good conversations with people that do really care about me. That I spent a lot of time with that when I went to them and said, yikes, this just isn’t working.

[01:36:12] Ivy Audrain: Like my engine is running hot. I don’t feel good. Not excited about training. I don’t know if I want to go to this race with you this weekend. I just don’t feel good. I don’t like this. And they were like, can we like look at this together? What’s this, what’s the full scope of how much you’re sleeping. What does work look like?

[01:36:29] Ivy Audrain: What’s going on in your relationship? Um, why don’t you feel good? How much you’re eating? And then, you know, they waited until I told them that I needed help and I didn’t feel good and I didn’t even ask them for help. I was just telling them, just airing it out that like, yikes, this isn’t working for me with training and racing and how I feel.

[01:36:49] Ivy Audrain: Then that person helped me look at the full scope of what was going on and it turned out to be food. I was like, so undernourished and, and so, yeah, it’s hard to look at the people we love and the endurance athletes in our lives and see them not perform well and want to have conversations with food with them.

[01:37:08] Ivy Audrain: And food is so sensitive and all of those hard conversations that we have with athletes about, you know, how they’re not, might be engaging in something that’s not helping them perform. We also have to look at where that can come from. Um, if there is an issue with food, we have to be really sensitive about where it could come from and how to address it in a way that makes that person feel not attacked.

[01:37:34] Ivy Audrain: Um, you know, makes them feel like they’re not, uh, doing something wrong and further complicating their relationship with food. You have to be super sensitive about how you approach it. And you have to make sure that your intent is that you’re coming from a place of caring about them and wanting to see them.

[01:37:49] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, Amber, um, what thoughts do you have on this? And then I think I want to drive the question or drive the discussion toward finding like a recommendations of what to do or steps or principles that can guide us. But what thoughts do you have on this? I mean, people should listen back to your podcast too, because, and Ivy’s point, not just keeping this with food, but keeping this about hard conversations in general, and you, uh, you shared in that podcast of the successful athletes podcast, plenty of details on this.

[01:38:19] Jonathan Lee: So it’s fantastic. But what have you learned about this to, what would you say? Uh,

[01:38:24] Amber Pierce: I want to echo what Ivy said. It’s really hard to be on the receiving end of unsolicited advice in general, especially when it’s regarding something that’s that could be deeply sensitive and might be more deeply sensitive than somebody on the outside looking in, might be aware.

[01:38:45] Amber Pierce: So. IB, you know, we were talking about food as an example, someone might struggle with fueling themselves in nourishing themselves. Not because food is the problem necessarily, but that might be a symptom of something else that’s going on. And it’s really hard being on the outside, looking in to know what the full picture is.

[01:39:04] Amber Pierce: I mean, frankly, you never will, unless that person decides to open up and really share about that.

[01:39:10] Jonathan Lee: So I don’t even really know what’s going on with ourselves. Right. So how could somebody else be a perfect judge of what’s going on?

[01:39:17] Amber Pierce: Exactly. So it’s important to keep in mind that as good as your intentions might be, and as much as you might be coming from a place of love, you are also coming from a place of limited information and perspective and probably a place of a lot of assumptions, which may or may not be correct.

[01:39:36] Amber Pierce: And one of the hardest things I think to learn in life is to understand that regardless of your intent with saying something, you don’t always have control about how it’s going to land and it might not land in the way that you intend. And that can be really frustrating when we’re just trying to communicate human to human.

[01:39:56] Amber Pierce: Um, so I think a good, a good guideline for this is to understand that everybody is doing the best they can with the information and the resources that they have. And the same goes for somebody that you see that might be struggling, they are doing the best that they can, and they may not be in a position where they can be receptive to that kind of advice.

[01:40:17] Amber Pierce: And as hard as it can be to be somebody who cares about somebody who is obviously struggling, the best thing that you can do in. And, you know, so take this with a grain of salt, but this is based on just my experience. Just be a nonjudgmental supporter of that person, support them in the way that they need to be supported.

[01:40:39] Amber Pierce: And sometimes that means not giving unsolicited advice and just, you know, hyping them up when you see them moving in a good direction and not judging them when you see them moving in a bad direction. And that keeps the line of communication open because they know that you’re a person who’s not going to judge them.

[01:40:58] Amber Pierce: And that makes it easier for them to come to you when they are ready to talk about, Hey, I’ve really been struggling with this thing. I think I need a little bit more support than I’ve been getting. Can we talk about this? That’s when that’s, when you, when they opened the door for you to come in and have that conversation, that’s when you step in and you have that conversation, but they’re going to be less likely to open that door for you.

[01:41:20] Amber Pierce: If they think that you’re judging them and. Again, as much as your intent might be to express care, if your ex your intent is to express care, but you’re coming in with all kinds of assumptions, it’s going to sound like, and land like judgment, and that’s going to make it so much harder for that person to want to open up to you.

[01:41:40] Amber Pierce: Um, so I, as hard as it can be, be patient, be supportive and try to try to be supporting that person in the way that they need to be supported, not in the way that you think they should be supported. And that can be really hard to do.

[01:41:56] Jonathan Lee: I think part of that. So in a prerequisite to that, like you’re talking about is being constant.

[01:42:03] Jonathan Lee: Um, so, and that’s, that’s the, that can be really hard, particularly if you have somebody that’s going through something and they don’t really want to address it right now, and they don’t want to go through with that, then it’s really hard to be present because what you have to do is you have to be a witness to something that’s hurting a person that you’re caring about or holding them back in some way.

[01:42:22] Jonathan Lee: That’s really hard. But the one thing I can say is that if you are not constant with being present with being there, that doesn’t mean like Amber said that you’re constantly giving advice and sharing and sharing what’s on your mind, but instead just being there for them, if you’re not there, then they’re no, without a doubt, they’re going to be worse off the people that we care about.

[01:42:41] Jonathan Lee: So it is important for us to be there and be present and constant for those people. It’s like, I think what a great principle to say that like chances are, whatever my assumption is is, is my assumption, rather than a fact, that’s a great way to approach things. Then also I need to think about not just what I want to communicate, but I need to think about how it will be received because there is no excuse to say, well, that wasn’t my intention, uh, that that’s never an excuse.

[01:43:09] Jonathan Lee: It’s our ability or it’s our responsibility to think about the intention. And what we’re really getting at here is like, you know, disordered eating a comes in many, many different forms and it’s really common, but then there’s also plenty of different other issues that stem from this. I think that one of the best ways to look at this too, if you have an athlete or a friend, a person that you care about that is, um, that’s compromising health because of the sport, there’s also a temptation to just remove the sport.

[01:43:40] Jonathan Lee: But that sport may also be a beneficial thing. Like it’s interesting. Amber shared in her story. Like swimming. She had a breakup with swimming right after her career at Stanford with it. And, but she didn’t have a breakup with competitive drive in that arena of sport. And she was able to find it elsewhere.

[01:44:00] Jonathan Lee: And there are a lot of athletes that you may be dealing with that may find that drive in cycling in a different way, or may find it in the same exact sport or may find it in a different sport. Um, but it’s important that we don’t just jump to conclusions. Cause if somebody had told Amber, well, like you’re just not a racer and you’re just not this, which, uh, you know, more or less, she shares a different examples where that did happen because of that.

[01:44:20] Jonathan Lee: And that was her identity. It can be really tricky. So yeah. I want to step back and get into like some like, uh, some productive things and some good guidelines to, to give people, um, Ivy having, uh, what, what would you say to somebody in terms of when they want to share something? What rules should they follow or what guidelines should they follow?

[01:44:40] Jonathan Lee: I

[01:44:40] Ivy Audrain: was just thinking of a moment. Um, a great girlfriend, Coleen, who is not a bike racer at all. She was, um, I go super bad-ass, uh, three-day inventor like horse, horse, girl, super great. And one of my dearest friends, she’s awesome. And, but had a really deep understanding of being a competitive athlete and saw me going through this.

[01:45:05] Ivy Audrain: And I was thinking about what led me to tell her this isn’t working. I don’t feel good. What do I do? Um, and I know that she took a lot of responsibility in thinking about how she talked about her relationship with food around me, which as someone, you know, when you’re really close in close proximity enough with someone that you care about that you’re worried about, you have to take some responsibility to wonder, like, what could, what role could I be playing in making this worse for them?

[01:45:39] Ivy Audrain: And how can I make this better? And she really worked to before I said anything really frame her relationship with food to celebrate food and like, well, look what are, look at these amazing things that our bodies can do when we eat this food before I ever had that conversation with her about what we can do.

[01:46:01] Ivy Audrain: And so that was really impactful for me to, you know, calling didn’t talk about the way that she looked and, and how food was something that was a reward and how, you know, we needed to earn our calories that day and how we shouldn’t eat this because, or that, because it’s bad and makes us fat. She was really careful not to do that because she believed in because she knew that I needed it.

[01:46:26] Ivy Audrain: So that’s an actual item that, that really

[01:46:29] Jonathan Lee: helped. That’s great advice, uh, to, so for us to be conscious of what we say, but then also to not treat food, like reward, to not talk about, you know, the effects on appearance, but rather celebrate food as a, as an enabling option to enable our bodies to do amazing things.

[01:46:47] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. How many, how many folks that write in there? Like how do I talk to my partner about not eating enough? How many of them have looked inwardly at how they talk about food to, and about how they talk about their portions and their caloric intake versus what they did and you know, how vocal are they about it to their partner that may be making the situation

[01:47:06] Jonathan Lee: worse?

[01:47:07] Jonathan Lee: Great point unintentionally perhaps, but no doubt effectively, right? Amber, uh, any other specific guidelines or advice you’d give us on this?

[01:47:18] Amber Pierce: Uh, this is, I mean, this is just a hefty topic and it’s a, it’s a tough one. Um, I really like what Ivy was saying and I, I think another good thing to do is to normalize, asking for.

[01:47:29] Amber Pierce: You know, and not tell somebody that they should be asking for help, but normalize it by doing it yourself. Right. Um, so for those who listened to my, uh, successful athletes podcast, um, this was a huge thing that I learned in swimming was after I stopped swimming and I was more open about some of the mental health struggles that I was having at that time, my being open about it made other people feel safe, opening up about their struggles to me.

[01:47:58] Amber Pierce: And because they knew that I wasn’t somebody who was going to judge that because I was going through something similar and I could empathize. And so I think that this is a really wonderful gift. I think oftentimes we feel. Sharing our problems or asking for help is a sign of weakness or be, um, placing a burden on someone else.

[01:48:20] Amber Pierce: And I think it’s important to remember that when you ask for help or you share that you did ask for help, that can actually be a gift to somebody because it can give them the assurance that it’s okay to do this and allow them to get over that, you know, whatever potential shame that they might feel around the need to ask for help.

[01:48:38] Amber Pierce: Cause it’s not shameful, it’s not a weakness. Um, we all struggle with these things and the more that we can open up about those things and be open with the people in our lives about them, the easier it makes it for other people to do the same. Um, so, you know, Just being open about, you know, Hey, I, I see a therapist every week and it’s been super helpful and talking about that in normal conversation, like it’s no big deal, you know, just, it’s just a normal thing and dropping a conversation, you know, the same way I would talk about what I had for breakfast that can help somebody feel like, oh, this is not a big deal.

[01:49:14] Amber Pierce: And maybe it’s okay for me to reach out and get that kind of support too. And it’s, that’s a normal thing that people do. It’s not something I need to be ashamed of. So normalizing asking for help, normalizing sharing our struggles and understanding that sharing something that you’re struggling with, isn’t going to make you appear weak.

[01:49:30] Amber Pierce: It’s not gonna like make you lose your edge. And being able to show that through example for others is really, really

[01:49:36] Jonathan Lee: powerful. Yeah, great points. Uh, I kind of relate to this even just with my son, um, because when you, so when you have a child that you get to build this fresh perspective on what food is, right.

[01:49:52] Jonathan Lee: And boy, it’s so easy to be like, uh, to build a pretty unhealthy relationship with food, which typically all of us parents can relate to this. It’s just like, eat your darn vegetables, eat, not just dyno nuggets every night for dinner. Um, so like, uh, I, I know, I’m sorry I’ve been personally attacked

[01:50:15] Jonathan Lee: um, but like it’s tough and. Yeah, but all these principles apply. And we in my, my son, no matter how good of a job we do, he will develop, uh, his, his relationship with food with food will change just like all of us, no matter how we were raised with food and everything else, it will change. And especially if you’re new to like competitive sport, endurance sport, and everything else getting into it, it can seem really overwhelming.

[01:50:41] Jonathan Lee: And that overwhelming narrative is pretty negative with food, right? It’s uh, you know, if eating’s cheating and that sort of narrative that exists with that, it’s all the other ones that exist where it’s really about depriving yourself. And it’s unfortunate that those are so dominant in terms of being circulated.

[01:50:58] Jonathan Lee: However, they are dominant also in terms of creating negative issues with food and our bodies and our ability to perform. So really it goes back to the basics. And one of the things that we do with our son over and over is when he doesn’t want to eat something, or he doesn’t want to do that, or he wants to skip a meal.

[01:51:16] Jonathan Lee: We always remind him the fact that. You know how fast you’re going to get, you know, high you’ll be able to jump when you eat these things. I know it sounds silly, but it’s, it’s helping. We have to do the same thing. We have to monitor, you know, how good you’re going to feel, you know, how great you’re going to be able to ride your bike.

[01:51:31] Jonathan Lee: You know, how great you’re going to feel when you’re in school. And you’re taking those tests when you give your body the healthy stuff that it needs, you know, um, it’s, it is really powerful. I don’t have any other actual actionable tips to really bring in here other than just to reinforce the fact that, uh, food is our friend.

[01:51:49] Jonathan Lee: And it’s an extremely helpful thing. As a, as endurance athletes, your body composition will be what your body composition needs to be as you train. And as you nourish yourself, it will become what it needs to be. There’s no need to short, short, tried to shortcut things. There’s no need to do anything else.

[01:52:05] Jonathan Lee: It will be what it needs to be. And that’s pretty cool. Your body is like pre-programmed to find out that find that stasis. So chase health, don’t chase, you know, deprivation. Um, and if you chase health, it will be better. And for those that you care. Be considerate and be supportive and supportive. Doesn’t look like pushing your ideas.

[01:52:23] Jonathan Lee: It just means like supporting them as silly as that sounds. So, um, this has been a fantastic podcast. Thanks to both of you. We’ve covered HRV, we’ve covered over and unders and we’ve covered this discussion on nutrition. Chances are one of those three topics resonated with you listening to this. And if so, please rate the app, go to Spotify.

[01:52:44] Jonathan Lee: Uh, rating’s pretty new there. So we need all of you listening to this, to go to Spotify and rate the podcast five stars that would be fantastically helpful. Also, you should listen to the podcast on Spotify, if you’re using a different podcast app or anything else, give it a shot because it’s got a lot of great things we can put in timestamps there, and we can’t put them in on other podcast apps.

[01:53:02] Jonathan Lee: So that makes it really easy. Also there’s potential to have the video podcasts on Spotify in the future, as they start to roll that out as well, which would be really great. So you could watch it and listen to it simultaneously and go back and forth between the two very seamlessly. It could be very easy, but go and rate it.

[01:53:17] Jonathan Lee: Uh, that would be hugely helpful and share this podcast. There’s also in Spotify, a share function, and it will go straight to your Instagram stories. That would be great. So if you liked one of these questions, share that you can even share your to specific timestamps. So go in there, share it on Instagram, share it on whatever other platform use direct message to your friends.

[01:53:35] Jonathan Lee: That’s how you get faster and help us. So go sign up for training road. Thanks everybody for listening. Submit your questions@trainroad.com slash podcast. We’ll talk to you about. Thanks. Thanks everyone.

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