Amber and Nate are back! Join us for a discussion on what muscular endurance actually is, how to train it, and how it makes you a faster and more capable athlete, as well as discussions on time-crunched training, avoiding blowing up at the beginning of rides and much more.

More show notes and discussion in the TrainerRoad Forum.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Jonathan Lee: Welcome to the podcast is dedicated to making you a faster cyclist.

[00:00:18] Nate Pearson: Wait, do you hear that laugh? Yeah, that means you someone else’s back

[00:00:22] Jonathan Lee: to

[00:00:25] Nate Pearson: it’s Amber, back to sorry, John. We’re so excited. Cause it’s been a while for both of

[00:00:29] Jonathan Lee: us. We’ve done it exactly the same every episode. I think it’s okay. We interrupted

[00:00:33] Nate Pearson: every once in a while we have IVR drain from hand-up gloves plus black BIP racing.

Nailed it.

[00:00:41] Jonathan Lee: Maybe Nate should just be though

[00:00:44] Nate Pearson: coach Jonathan Lee of training road and Amber as a candidate and train a road.

Updates from Nate and Amber

[00:00:49] Jonathan Lee: Yes. Okay. Nailed it. It’s going to be temporary. Here in Reno right now, family. Yes. Your close. At some point we are going to, we’ll do some rapid tests and we’ll get the three of us here.

Ivy, if you want to come to Reno to you’re welcome to, and we’ll do one in this studio. So then it’s not just me in here. We’ll we’ll actually do an in-person one. That’ll be fun. It’s been so long since we’ve done that. So, uh, well, it’s good to have everybody for joining us on YouTube. Give it a thumbs up that will help other cyclists find it.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel. I don’t know why people you haven’t subscribed yet. If you’re listening to this, you absolutely should. New cycling content all the time. Uh, before we get any further though, Amber updates, maternity, leave how to go. I’ve got a baby. Nice

[00:01:38] Amber Pierce: completed my bodybuilding program.

Have a little tiny body to show for it now. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, no, everything’s good. It was, it was amazing. It was a really special, important time. And, um, it’s just, I’m, I’m really grateful to be working in a place where, and I know this is going to sound like a shameless plug, but I mean, it very sincerely a place that genuinely values and takes care of the employees and walks the walk on that.

So, um, thanks to the whole crew here for making that possible for me. Cause it was, uh, it was really amazing, but I’m also really happy to be back cause I missed everybody. So it’s great to see all

[00:02:15] Jonathan Lee: of you again, we missed you too. Yeah, yeah. A whole lot. Amber, um, people are gonna ask on the training thing.

Hey, have you, you’ve got so much more, so many more important things to focus on right now with your child and now you’re getting back to work and all this stuff, but did you do any training during this time? Did you think about that? Did you wrestle with that because you were a professional athlete and did you feel like, oh, I need to train.

Um, or did you just completely shift your. Totally

[00:02:43] Amber Pierce: shifted my focus. I did, I did train, but I wouldn’t even call it training. It was really just, I wanted to move in my body in a way that felt good. And I was really focused on that. Like just doing the things that really felt rejuvenating and felt like they were adding to my wellbeing at the time, as opposed to having any kind of a fitness target or a goal.

Um, we always talk about controlling the controllables and there are a lot of things in pregnancy and birth that are beyond your control. So I really was letting go of outcomes and just trying to be present a lot. Um, and I, I, haven’t done a lot of writing and I’m really looking forward to getting back to it, but it’s been a very much a process of listening to my body.

And I also feel at this point, I, I don’t have anything to prove right now. So I’m really comfortable focusing in on, you know, when it feels right to move and do something I do. And when it. It’s okay. It’s really okay. And I’m looking forward to getting back to a more regular cadence of training, but it, um, I really needed some time.

I really needed some time and listening to that was really good and helpful. So it was good to have the time and the Headspace to be able to

[00:03:53] Jonathan Lee: do that.

[00:03:54] Nate Pearson: That’s Amber, but people don’t know a boy girl name like,

[00:04:00] Amber Pierce: yeah, well, yeah, that’s true. I’ve posted a couple of things on social media, but um, Berkeley, Virgin Pierce, she was born September 2nd, seven pounds, six ounces.

And, um, she’s a lot of fun. She’s, she’s starting to actually laugh out loud, which is hysterical and we’re all like desperately trying to figure out what it is that is funny to her. So we can do it over and over and make her laugh over and over.

[00:04:22] Jonathan Lee: Oh, that’s awesome. So cool. Uh, Nate, you’re back, uh, concussion.

How are you feeling? Uh, how’s everything

[00:04:30] Nate Pearson: going. It was lane. So Cape epic was lane. So everyone knows what a let down train so hard for that. Um, leading into it, I was going through a bad relationship issue and like, I didn’t talk about on the podcast, but I lost 10 pounds. I wasn’t training. I wasn’t eating very stressful time.

That’s not what you want going into Cape epic. No doubt. And then I got the concussion and I came out and I broke up with my girlfriend and then I got like depressed and it was bad. I didn’t even know I was depressed. Actually. What would happen is I’d ruminate. So I’d like, think about the same thoughts over and over and over again.

And I couldn’t get out of my head, had problems sleeping and kind of go to sleep and sleep for like four hours and just be up. I didn’t realize that that was depression until the therapist told me, I took a Wellbutrin 150 milligrams, which is an antidepressant. It’s not an SSRI. It’s a, a different one.

But anyways, I feel like 10 days I started feeling back like myself. So I had something like, knock me down, took any depressants, came back all beyond them before. Um, at least six months, maybe a year and then decide if I want to go off them or something like that. But, um, the reason why I bring this up is that concussions can be linked.

They are linked to depression. Right. And like crazy things would happen to be way more emotional. I hadn’t cried in like 15 years. And I cried, I think every day for 50 days, which is crazy even like during Cape epic. I know. Wow. Um, and then what else? Just that, like, to be aware that if you have a concussion, I was also forgetting things, but that, that stuff, it feels real to you because it is real because these things are like happening in your brain.

So anyone who has a cyclist, it has these things, you should be aware, um, you know, talk to a doctor and therapist and stuff too. And I’ll also, I don’t mention it because I want sympathy, but just like, there’s a stigma against antidepressants inside of our society. And. The ones that I took her out rad, like it’s dead.

So everyone reacts differently. There are no side effects. And I went from being, feeling, not like myself to back like myself. And I think a lot of people think that you take antidepressants, you’re going to be like the zombie and you don’t feel anything, not like that at all. I just feel regular again. So that is truly grateful for that.

And I know, yeah, that’s, there’s alternative treatments and stuff. And I looked in all of those, but this one for me,

[00:06:44] Jonathan Lee: I’m glad you shared on that. Like, like you said, concussions are linked to it. Cyclists, do you experience that? But just in general, uh, it’s good normalize that sort of discussion. Um, and for people to talk about it openly, uh, when they feel comfortable about it.

So, yeah. Yeah. And, and that, um, also, I just want to call attention to the concussion thing a little bit more. Um, oh, oh no. Well, you’re back. Okay. Here we go. Uh, air pop life. It happens at times. Um, The concussion thing, Nate, you did not say, we don’t think you slammed your head onto the earth and broke a helmet.

And you did like to a story. Yeah. Let’s, let’s cover that because he never got to share it on the, on the podcast. And I think that it could be surprising to some people in terms of the concussion part, considering

[00:07:34] Nate Pearson: your couch. This is going to be awful. I’m not gonna able to hear you first buckets.

[00:07:41] Jonathan Lee: If you need to date, by the way, you can just take your, and when we can make do with the audio, you can take them out and then just make it come out of your computer if you want.

[00:07:48] Nate Pearson: Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about amongst yourselves as I fix

[00:07:50] Jonathan Lee: this. Yeah. So here’s the thing about the concussions. If you just had a panic look on her face. The thing about concussions is I think that people are like, oh, you got a concussion. Yeah. Well, did you break your helmet? I hear that all the time from athletes.

Yeah. And th there’s like a prerequisite in order you to have a concussion, you need to destroy your head, like on an impact. Your head has to take the impact. That kind of wasn’t the case for now. And it isn’t, it depends

[00:08:17] Nate Pearson: who you talk to. Uh, there we are, uh, Sophia and I just, right then I was like, what was her name again?

And I couldn’t remember Sophia’s name, which is crazy. That’s like the concussion stuff, but we’re there and we are racing. It was stage one. The first day we almost got on the podium so close and I wish we would have, if I had just a little more in the mud, we could have done it. Yeah. Uh, definitely me holding us back, but we were going and it, the race started out so, so hard, like so hard.

I’m like, it’s got to slow down. It did not slow down. It was like a crit. It was like a crit. That’s what it was like. Um, and then we were going and, uh, the second place team. So it was a first place team that are just amazing. They’re way far ahead. We’re not going to catch them. They beat John and Brandon, like they are fast.

Uh, the second place team were climbing and the German girl like tries to push me off the trail while passing me. Uh, yeah, she was like, she tried to go between Sophia and I and like push me. And I was like, I don’t think so. I just held my ground and she went around. They

[00:09:18] Jonathan Lee: pass to someone in particular was very intense in that regard, like the start.

Pushing shoving, bumping, cutting lines off. It was a Creek.

[00:09:28] Nate Pearson: Um, and then, um, so then we’re going and we’re settling in and people have spread out and we are in third place and I’m like life goal podium at Cape epic, please. Right. We can do this. And there is, I can see a German team behind us. And, uh, when it is a fire road, the man can push the woman behind us and they’re catching us.

But if it’s single track or on the flats we gained, we gained time on them. So I’m watching it as we go through there. And on my bike, I started with two bottles. It was cold. Right. I had two large bottles. It was like shivering cold, and we’re going, but

[00:10:06] Jonathan Lee: it starts to get the river right at the beginning of the race too.

So freezing cold, we did go through or whatever.

[00:10:12] Nate Pearson: Um, it starts to get really hot and, uh, I don’t know how, I mean, I did not expect to get that hot so fast. I should have brought a hydration pack, but we’re climbing well and we’re doing a good job, but then I like start to feel cramps in my body. And I didn’t have like, all the water was gone and we get to the top of the, uh, land Rover technical section.

And it is not, this section was definitely technical, but it wasn’t like black diamond technical we’re going down and my triceps are starting to cramp and then my hands, and then my back as we’re descending and the, uh, the German team passes us and I’m like, oh, shoot, okay. This is, I just got to get in or maybe another day, but then they.

Uh, they’re pushing too hard and they flat it and I’m like, oh, this is it. So we’re going as hard as we could. And I’m also cramping, like full body cramps. And it’s just an easy, left-hand turn with some sand and flat, nothing really technical. And my front tire slipped out and I went to down in my head, whipped down and hit the ground at the same moment.

My whole body cramped, like every bit of my body cramped. And I’m like on their trail, uh, cramped up. And, uh, I R I’m not IVF. Um, Sophia is like, you’re okay. You’re okay. Okay. Just get up. And I’m like, can’t move. I’m like Clifton still. Um, I get up and I’m like, I hit my head really hard. She’s like, no, you didn’t, let’s go.

And, um, wait a second. And the German team past us again, they’re nice. They asked us, you know, are you guys okay? And we’re like, okay, we keep going. And, uh, I try to drink some more water at the aid station. And then I’m just like, not being able to stay on the trail, like riding and I get off the bike and I’m like, Kind of the thing where you stand up and then you’re like, let’s like, you’re drunk and you’re walking backwards, but you’re not meaning to walk backwards because you’re trying to stay upright.

I was dry heaving. So those are all signs of concussion, like dry heaving and stuff. And then we’re going some more. And I was like, started to go really slow, like walking pace, slow. Um, I get off the bike and we’re just like, we’re just gonna walk in until we find some. And there’s a paramedic law, king, the trail.

And, uh, he was someone else broke their arm, so he’s going to go find them, but he comes to me and he does like, these, this I concussion thing and is like the eye test and stuff. And Sophia is like, his helmet’s fine. He’s okay. Don’t worry. Like it’s not bad. And he turns around and goes, he has a concussion.

Cause my eyes doing like, like not responding to light and like doing the weird eye tracking thing. Uh, so I was like, well, that’s, as we know from this podcast, even if you have one concussion and you’re fine, but if you get another one on top of it, they stack and you can get what’s called the TBI traumatic brain injury.

That is when you become like vegetable, right? So whenever you have a concussion, even if you think it’s not that bad, you really, really, really don’t want to get hit again. And I guarantee you over Cape epic. I would’ve crashed again right over what I hit my head, but I would have crashed again a hundred percent.

Uh, so the end of the race then for me, and went in the ambulance and that was a very sad and. I’ve hyped this race up a little bit on the podcast. And I trained so many hours for it and spent a lot of money in time, you know, time away from your family and stuff to do this, but think about kids and stuff.

And what if you did get a traumatic brain injury, would you trade that for a Cape epic finish? Like would you flip a coin? One is traumatic brain injury. One is just finishing Cape epic. I think we’d all just pick or, yeah, just not to flip the coin in your pocket. So another thing I’m doing this this season, I was going to ski with my kids a bunch of this year, not skiing, skiing.

You might not think it’s concussion sport. For those who don’t know, put come skiing is a total concussion sport. The snow is not. Soft. And what happens is other people will hit you. And that, that, especially where I am, I’m not a really a fast, good skier. There’s people behind me going faster than me. Um, I might do things that are not predictable.

There are trees too. You can just catch a lip and like put

[00:14:13] Jonathan Lee: over. Yeah. Catching edges is the really tough part because it can take you cause like concussions, remember it’s brain making impact with skull it’s floating in fluid, inside your head. And it would, it makes impact. So really all you have to have is really rapid deceleration and you can catch an edge so easily on snowboards or skis.

And then when your body slams down, that’s why you don’t necessarily need to hit your head when your body slams down. And like you said, Nate, like you kinda got that whiplash movement. When you went into that Sandy dirt, it wasn’t that you hit your head on a rock or anything like that, but that’s enough to cause a concussion.

It’s just tricky because everyone thinks that where you knocked out. Oh, okay. Then you didn’t have a concussion. That’s false. That’s not true. Another one. Uh, do you remember it? And if you remember it, okay, then he didn’t have a concussion. That’s also false. That’s not, that’s not the case. There’s like a lot of, there’s so much misinformation that exists about it.

Uh, and Nate, what you’re talking about is real and it’s something that’s really scary too, in the sense that if you get something like that yet suddenly like. Goes away. And instead you’re talking about something much more important than dizzy your health. So you do have to prioritize it. Um, and, and longterm it, they stack up to that, like you said, if you get one and then get another in close proximity, it’s very dangerous.

But even over the longterm, if you just continually accumulate concussion, speaking from firsthand experience, it has like a profound effect. It’s really tough. Um, I have to live live, live by calendars, lists, everything else. I have them everywhere around me because I simply just don’t have my, my memory is a net and it’s a poorest one.

Right. So just doesn’t hold on to things anymore. So it is really dangerous. Um, I think you made the right choice. Had to have been really hard to like, yeah, because sometimes when we just go to a local race and we’re like, oh my Pride’s on the line. Or I want to do this with my friends or I spent money to get here.

This is. And then when you’re flown halfway around the world, and then you also have, you’ve gotten other people to do this race with you and they’re there. And every, you know, it’s, there’s a podcast about it. There’s everyone knows about it. Um, your company’s brand also is associated with it. There’s so much pressure depressing me, sorry.

But what I’m saying is that you made the right choice, the hard choice, but the right choice, because there was a lot of perceptions. But you chose the right, I think. Um, so thanks for doing

[00:16:38] Nate Pearson: that. It wasn’t a hard choice. It was just, it like, I was accepting really fast. Like as soon as I hit my head and I was like, oh, like I saw the blinding lights and I knew what it was, but then you just get disappointed in the fact that it was the choice.

It’s like, if you break your leg, you’re not like, oh, I’m not like, yes. You know, you broke your leg, right. Yeah. You don’t, you don’t have to, not, hopefully you don’t deny it. You can see the bone. You’re just like, I don’t want to. I’m fine.

[00:17:04] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Just to just disappointed. Yeah. Nate, I want to ask you about Cape epic really quick.

So stage one was probably one of the more smooth ish stages that we had. Uh, did it surprise you like it was not the fire road race that a lot of people anticipated that it surprised you? Uh,

[00:17:23] Nate Pearson: no, it wasn’t. Um, it was more single track than I expected, but it wasn’t a technical single. And it was actually was better than I thought it would be.

Uh, it was super fun actually. Like until I cramped in like dry Haven and hit my head, like, it was really fun.

[00:17:42] Jonathan Lee: Did you get to the point where it was just like you’re riding on solid rock? Like almost like Moab style stuff in that stage? I don’t know if you remember. Don’t remember dude. Yeah, man got to a point where it was just like solid rock and it was really cool.

It was, we talked all about it. Obviously we had episodes every single day, uh, coming from it, but it was incredible. One thing I realized, and I’ve gotten a few people asking you about this, we didn’t really talk about the last day. We were all like really relieved to have done the race and had it over. So when we recorded the final stage podcast, it was like, okay, so what’s our takeaways from the race.

And we didn’t really talk about the last day. And the only thing I want to say is that I think I had my best day of the entire race on the last day. It wasn’t because my power was extraordinary. It was okay. But it was because. Got to the point where I feel like I was managing things mentally really well boy, with like really hard stage races.

Amber is probably has so much experience with this, but, uh, that’s why doing it, getting experience with that and understanding where your Headspace is going to be when you’re just getting boxed into the ground every single day, uh, metaphorically speaking, uh, throughout this race, it’s really tough to be able to believe in, to get the most out of yourself, but some point we’ll talk more about it.

Update from Ivy on her Singlespeed podium at CX Nats!

It was incredible. That last stage was something special, always cherish that memory. So Ivy, we have something else. Cyclocross national championships. You got fourth place in single-speed. Yeah, it is

[00:19:08] Ivy Audrain: though. And I feel bad talking about it. I’m like, yeah, it was great.

[00:19:11] Amber Pierce: Everything was awesome.

[00:19:15] Jonathan Lee: That’s amazing. I’ve got a weird question. Do you think that single speeds were favored compared to gear bikes? Because the next day, I don’t know if the conditions changed, but so many people you included how to mechanicals because of just the sticky, nasty. Yeah.

[00:19:30] Ivy Audrain: And I think a little bit of those mechanical issues also had to do with the nature of the mud.

That was where that was there. Like Monday’s not mine, it’s not all the same. Some of it is really tacky and picks up more easily than other kinds of like slick surfacing mud and whatever

[00:19:51] Amber Pierce: Chicago area

[00:19:52] Ivy Audrain: mud is. It just picks up really well. Stuff was getting caught in people’s drive trains and a tire clearance issue

[00:19:59] Amber Pierce: was

[00:20:00] Ivy Audrain: a problem for like everyone.

Um, one of the times that

[00:20:03] Jonathan Lee: I,

[00:20:04] Ivy Audrain: right, one of the times that I ran into the pit, um, uh, in the elite race, um, my, I was just dragging my bag, like the wheels wouldn’t spin and I’ve carried it way like 30 pounds, because they’re so packed with mud and I ran forever and then finally got to the pit and it was just, uh, dragging it.

The wheels would not turn. And you hear all the mechanics go like

[00:20:26] Amber Pierce: you

[00:20:31] Jonathan Lee: did. Yeah,

[00:20:32] Nate Pearson: I did. Yeah. Um, did you bring four bikes? I two bikes, which the drive train. Right? Cool. Wow. Yeah. In the mud, uh,

[00:20:43] Ivy Audrain: I have IRC slop tops, which are like super heavy mud tire.

[00:20:48] Nate Pearson: My tire, when you’re in the mud, Ivy, do you like a wider tire, a thinner tire like that? Thinner,

[00:20:55] Ivy Audrain: like I like to run small, like, um, it means that you don’t have as much surface area, but that’s okay.

That’s a good thing. Um, especially if you know how to steer and handle in the mud, you don’t need as much of a blanket to have a bigger tire and more surface area. You just gotta kind of roll fast and try to pick up as little mud as you can.

[00:21:15] Nate Pearson: Yeah. So why is it better to have, I think you just said, but explain more of why is it better to have a thin tire and how thin was your title?

Uh,

[00:21:22] Amber Pierce: well, I don’t know

[00:21:25] Ivy Audrain: I’m going to get dragged cause I’m not like I’m not an expert, but this is just how I feel. And I, I do things. I acknowledge that I make choices that not every other cyclecross professional does. Like I ran, filed treads for most of the season and, um, almost everyone else had mint, mid treads.

Um, and that’s just a choice. Like I just really like them. Not a lot of people were comfortable on them or.

[00:21:52] Jonathan Lee: Ivy strategy.

[00:21:54] Ivy Audrain: I like it. I really like it. Yeah. So I acknowledged that I don’t make choices that everyone else makes, but, um, I run 28 C tires. Um, that’s the maximum that you could do for cross anyways.

That’s like,

[00:22:07] Jonathan Lee: is it, or is it 32? Yeah.

[00:22:11] Nate Pearson: I was like, well, I can go pick the tires.

[00:22:21] Ivy Audrain: yeah. So, um, I mean, there’s a limit. You can’t go like put forties on for a muddy race because you want to refer a hard race.

[00:22:29] Nate Pearson: So what about pressure? So 28, what kind of pressure would you put on those in a huge mud race like that?

[00:22:34] Ivy Audrain: I was running, um, 19 PSI in the front 20 in the rear and I

[00:22:38] Jonathan Lee: run tubeless.

Yeah, that’s a, so that’s way lower than what most people would expect for narrow tires like that. Right. Um, and you’re running that because you want to cut into the mud, right. With that tire. Like you want to get down to something that’s a bit more solid. Is that the point with throwing the skinnier tire?

Yes. And,

[00:22:56] Ivy Audrain: um, with the tire pressure too, it’s not a Rocky course. There weren’t like tree branches. Um, I think there was one tiny gravel section, but there’s really nothing that you can like if you run a lower tire pressure, nothing that you can really flat on. So,

[00:23:13] Nate Pearson: yeah, I see you talk in a picture, like in a hand up of alcohol,

[00:23:21] Jonathan Lee: hot chocolate.

Yeah.

[00:23:27] Nate Pearson: You get forth

[00:23:27] Ivy Audrain: drinking. I took a jello shot and his name was to be braced. Um, because I really probably shouldn’t have to like fifth place

[00:23:36] Amber Pierce: was,

[00:23:36] Ivy Audrain: uh, chasing me down. But in the nature you have to as single speed, you have to like, you will be disqualified. If you do not drink alcohol in your bike race in this

[00:23:45] Nate Pearson: race, John.

No wonder.

[00:23:48] Jonathan Lee: I’m sorry. I don’t see the speed. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the only reason I haven’t won everybody. Yeah. But it was, there’s a really good video on Instagram. Uh, I’m going to find it. People should find IVs, Instagram, IVF. I hopefully, hopefully this isn’t making you uncomfortable, but it’s awesome. It’s cool.

Covers her face

[00:24:09] Nate Pearson: going.

[00:24:11] Jonathan Lee: I don’t know. I thought it was a great video, but that was when your bike, it was in the geared race and your bike was just completely beyond repair wheels. Not spinning. I ran for like

[00:24:19] Ivy Audrain: 25 minutes, I think. And I just, I like had it and I was pretty bummed out because I was, um, writing within the top 10 in the first lap when stuff started to go sideways.

And that’s for sure. One of the best rides for me all year. Like I do well in the mud. I was hyped. And so I got really sad. And then it was like, well, I’m not going to be able to make fans or homeys based upon a result in this bike race. So I’d better make fans and other way. And. Make my sponsor’s proud and they know exactly who I am and why I am this way.

So I knew they wouldn’t be found out at,

[00:25:00] Amber Pierce: I don’t know, endearing herself to all of us. It’s awesome.

[00:25:06] Jonathan Lee: What’s the video. Oh, I just,

[00:25:09] Amber Pierce: I just got

[00:25:09] Ivy Audrain: caught in 4k, just drinking profusely course in multiple areas like whiskey flasks and, and people’s beers and jello

[00:25:20] Jonathan Lee: shots and pretty great to hear commentators, uh, commentating it’s.

It’s awesome. It’s a good clip.

[00:25:26] Nate Pearson: So I thought first, first, Ivy, like that was in the same race as when you got fourth. I’m like, she’s an animal.

fourth place. Like what if she didn’t drink? She went to one. That’s crazy. Yeah. Ivy, what’s your Instagram.

[00:25:43] Ivy Audrain: Oh,

[00:25:45] Nate Pearson: How do you spell our drain for those listening? A U

[00:25:48] Ivy Audrain: D R a I N I forget that sometimes people don’t much this on YouTube where we have our little Instagram handles. Some people

[00:25:55] Nate Pearson: it’s on Spotify, way more people listen to the podcast and see us on YouTube.

[00:25:59] Jonathan Lee: That’s the truth. Yeah. Well, that’s awesome. I thought it was cool. It’s the spirit of cyclocross too. Like, uh, that’s one of the cool parts about cyclocross is it does have like a really participatory fan experience and it’s more fun. Like there’s a fun atmosphere around it, you know, like it’s super cool, but like contrast that with like a, you know, uh, road racing or anything else like that, or, you know, mountain bike, national championships, for example, it feels very different.

So it’s pretty cool. Honestly,

[00:26:26] Nate Pearson: it’s like, For bike racing it’s unless I know really know the people racing. It’s the only race like I like to go to before. I don’t know anybody besides like a really huge crit, a lot of other races, just, aren’t fun to show up to where they’re like you go to, and there’s like two trucks and everyone’s kind of partying.

And you can like when you’re inside the race, when you see so much race coverage, and then there’s races back to back, you’re running around the course.

[00:26:49] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. There’s so many features too. Like it’s cool. And it’s like, you go to the sand pit, go to the run-up, go to, you know, whatever else it is. It’s super fun.

[00:26:56] Nate Pearson: And you can see the attacks and stuff. And especially, uh, when, how it was at a Reno and the international is here, the course was laid out where you could kind of see almost the whole course. So as you’re in, they did a cross Vegas to where you could see attacks and like watch people the whole time, which is very unique because even in a crit, like they go around the corner and you’re like, okay, I’m going to wait three, four minutes before they come back again.

And they come back by at 30 miles per hour. But across race, you can almost sometimes like run with them. Right? Some of them are running some of the run for 25 minutes. Then you can also feel them or you can hydrate them on the course too, which is, which is nice. Yes.

[00:27:32] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, sports drinks. I think that’s what

[00:27:34] Amber Pierce: the

[00:27:34] Ivy Audrain: commentators said.

It was a replay to be it wasn’t just on the live feed. They like did a replay of it trying to expose me out here.

[00:27:44] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. It just makes sure everyone’s fam fan favorite Ivy. That’s what was happening. So it’s, it is a

[00:27:50] Amber Pierce: UCI rule to not

[00:27:52] Ivy Audrain: do

[00:27:52] Amber Pierce: that. Um, some and the

[00:27:55] Ivy Audrain: UCI rules apply, uh, national championships. I’m pretty surprised I didn’t get served a DQ,

[00:27:59] Jonathan Lee: but that’s, uh, I would have been proud of that

at that point, when you’re running for 25 minutes with the mud clogged bike, what’s the difference? Right. So, um, next week, uh, there’s going to be a special episode of the podcast is going to be an episode that are recorded with, uh, the most successful, I would say probably the most experienced, uh, coach in the U S right now he’s brought athletes to 14.

Oh, gosh, I’m going to mess it up. Jim Miller. He’s the director of, of, I think high-performance and also another title at USA cycling. We talked all about traits that he recognizes in successful athletes. So he coaches, Kate, Courtney, Christopher Blevins, a bunch of stuff. It’s a really interesting podcast.

So stay tuned for that one. And while that’s airing, I will be getting my legs torn off. Uh, cause I’m doing a training camp with Keegan in Tucson, Arizona. So I’m going to throw myself into the ground, uh, trying to hold onto his wheel while he’s probably just chatting the whole time. So, uh, thoughts and prayers.

Thank you. We’ll need that. Yeah. Uh, Nate, uh, you shared this on your Instagram. It’s FTP estimation. It’s something we’ve been working on. You may have even hinted at it on the podcast before. Do you want to chat a little bit about it now? Do you want to chat a little bit about that? Like anything you want to share?

Guide to using TrainerRoad to plan a season of training

Cause it’s a future thing that we’re working on now. Um, but yeah,

[00:29:22] Nate Pearson: about before, about our FTP prediction stuff that we’ve been working on, that’s the very beginning of. When we first talked about adaptive training and that has a whole bunch of data in it with a whole bunch of features. And what we do is there’s, there’s different ways to predict your FTP or estimate your FTP and all I’m gonna describe Bolton.

You’ll kind of get an idea of what it is in the end. There are ways where you could take a ramp test, right? So you take a ramp test and then we do a formula based on what your result is. And then what that gets an estimation of your FTP. There are ways where you might look at past, um, what your recent PRS are, right?

How long you did and different stuff. And that could estimate your FTP. A bunch of different ways. Um, some software do other ways. There’s a 20 minute tests that could estimate it. Some people say you need to ride for 60 minutes all out. That gets your FTP. Uh, personally, the people who say that on the internet, I don’t, it is so hard to do that.

Like so hard to do that, that you will likely because of motivation, not be able to hit what actually you could do for 60 minutes. Like twice a year, I think is, would be tough to do that really, really well to go all out for an hour. He had John.

[00:30:30] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I want to just bring something up. Uh, all of these are different ways to estimate your FTP, like even riding at an hour, you’re still estimating it because good luck actually find being able to ride there for an hour.

It’s really tough. That’s why the hour records heart. Otherwise the hour record would just be like, cool. My FTP is this and I can break the record and it would just be really straightforward, I guess it’s probably that way for , but for everyone else who knows. Um, but it’s, it’s all estimation. There’s different ways to test.

That that’s like, and, and it’s important to keep in mind that FTP also isn’t a physiological, like exact measurement as much as it is an estimation. So it’s, um, it’s interesting. It’s good to keep that in mind.

[00:31:11] Nate Pearson: So the, into the thing that we’ve mentioned before is when you go for those longer intervals, especially like the 20 minute or an hour hour at the most, you have to settle in at the correct average power, like the correct Watts.

You have to know what kind of, what your, to be able to hold. Because if you hold five Watts too high for an hour, you will drastically drastically like die. Like as you go through, because if your five Watts above your FTP and you go, you can do it on train road, do a a hundred percent, have to be in a roll, then do at a hundred, a hundred percent plus five Watts.

The time that you can hold, that goes a lot less. And the opposite is true too. If you’re below you a lot longer, uh, 95%, man, I can do it for a long time or used to. I can still, uh, so they, they go, uh, Those it just the longer ones you kind of have to know ahead of time. And that’s part of it. And if you’re a very high athlete and you’re like world champion, you do all these things and you got blood lactate maybe, but we liked the ramp test because it is capacitive effort and it steps you up.

And it doesn’t take as much grit because you really only go hard for two and a half, three minutes. Right? Those last ones are really hard. Um, even that is an estimation and there’s, life’s a bell curve, right? So we aim for the middle. And then after that, what we do is adapt to training, takes that information, looks at past training and then puts you in the right workouts for different, um, training zones.

So VO two max threshold, sweet spot and all of that adjust. So that makes it so the ramp test doesn’t have to be a hundred percent perfect for you. If you go, even if you don’t go all the way out, I’d have to train, going to catch you and fix you and center you in. So we’ve got the system to estimate your FTP and then adaptive training adjusts.

So what we’ve done is we’ve got, you know, I think 125 million rides in our system. I think that’s a lot of rides, right? So we built these features and what the features are for machine learning is a ways to categorize riding riders. So there’s different things that we built into this, both indoor and outdoor.

And then what we’ve done is we’ve trained that against ramp test results. So w we took all that data and say, okay, if this data happened, here’s the ramp test result. If this data happens, here’s the ramp test result. And we do that for, you know, I want to say, I don’t mean to say millions of thousands, like many, many, many, um, ones going through this.

Yeah. I’m definitely a hundreds of thousands. Millions, probably. So this goes through and, uh, what happens is we can get a prediction of where your FTP is. One based on the future of what you’re going to do, which that one is coming and we’re working on that. And that’s also in like internal data, but also this is the cool one, predictive what your FTP is on that day.

So what we are, uh, working on to launch, um, hopefully in the next couple of months, I posted this on my Instagram. It was a story. So you can’t see anymore, but it is on your amp test day. You have an option, take the ramp test or let us estimate your FTP for you. You click it, you see the results, your levels will adjust and then you can go forward.

And if you don’t like it, you can still take the ramp test if you want. Or if you want to confirm it somehow like that, now the more you train, the more accurate this is going to be. If you haven’t trained in six weeks, the range of what it could be will be pretty big and what that you could still use it though.

And then as you go forward, adapter trainee will zero in, right. Some people just hate testing and it’s actually, it can be a huge stress for people. Um, we know this right, and there’s a. About 30% of our customers who just do not want to test. Um, and there’s probably another 30 or 40% of it, that tests, but don’t like it.

And then there’s people that just love to test it. We’re going to leave the test for you so you can still do it. But the ability is where we want to go to a world where you never have to test. You just hit your amp test day. We’ll tell you when you FTP is your levels will adjust. And then as you go through all your workouts will adjust and be appropriate and still zero you into what it is.

This is the world we want to go in, no more testing. See your FTP, just go forward, use the data. And you’re still, um, instead of people will say, well, you’re not tough because you can’t do that ramp test. You don’t get the day off right now. Instead of doing the ramp test, you can get an interval workout and I push those on a higher volume, a 90 minute interval workout.

Probably long-term going to be better than a ramp test for you. Uh, so you can add that extra volume on that day. You don’t have to have the mental aspect of it. You can still have a hard day. How many people to, um, this is just more about the mental aspect. You’ve had a workout that feels just as hard as the ramp test, right?

That can happen. But because of the ramp test assesses, you, there can be an extra mental issue with it where you just feel amazing because you went through, it

[00:35:58] Jonathan Lee: probably has something to do with like doing a lot, doing a live ramp test in front of, you know, thousands and thousands of people and trying to manage a live stream and everything else.

But we have a very broken relationship, the ramp test, and I it’s, it’s bad to take it again. It’s unhealthy. Yeah. I want to mention something, Nate. Uh, cause you mentioned that we were able to look at ramp tests and use that in training all of this, we have really cool ways of validating that a person’s achieved or scored FTP is actually representative of what they should be at.

So, uh, This is a, and this is actually kind of going down a different rabbit hole, but let’s talk about this, cause this is important responsibility with data and doing things right and honest with data because, uh, some of you and I’m included in this, sometimes you just guessed or FTP and like, yeah, I feel like I’m three 15 and then, and we’re probably not.

So if we were to just take everybody’s whatever their walk kg is or whatever their FTP is, when we look at data and take that at face value, we could be having really bad data going into everything that we’re looking at. So instead we we’ve built up these different, basically these different things that we do that allow us to double-check to see if, is that person doing training that backs up that FTP?

Or is it indicating that it’s lower than that? Or is it indicating that that’s too low for them? So when we’re looking at this, it’s not just taking it purely based on what people are saying or purely based on ramp test or anything else. We’re also looking at subsequent workouts to validate that it’s so important and.

Let me tell you it’s so hard. Um, one of all Han he’s one of our fantastic team members here. He and I look at the data a ton and we’re looking at different things and we’re trying to answer questions. That would be really interesting for all of you. And it is so much harder to answer those questions than you think.

Not because we can’t get the data it’s to responsibly filter that data so that you’re really getting good data. There’s lots of it, but it really takes a lot of work. Um, so that’s why you can always have confidence that if we release something, we are confident that that is honest data. Um, and it’s something that, but still feel free to, to come at us with skepticism on that.

I think that’s healthy to question how we went about getting that data and you should do that to everybody. Never just take anything at face value. That’s why you don’t read abstracts of studies. You actually look into them and see what they did. It’s super important.

[00:38:20] Nate Pearson: Some people don’t that’s true. What John said is really important is the.

We’re not just the ramp test, but we also looked at subsequent workouts. I did not mention that to be able to validate it. Uh, two, I want to be very clear on this. We’re not trying to do is estimate what your 60 minute power output is. Um, even cognit himself talks about it. It’s it’s any FTDs between 40 and 70 minutes, and you might not even be able to do 40 depending on your training history and stuff.

Um, what the goal is, and please hear me on this is to make it so that you get into productive workouts, interval workouts for trainer road. And that is so that’s what we train on. What, what’s your data history and what is the FTP that you’re going to get that you can then do these interval workouts build up and get.

Um, there’s so many aspects inside of the, like holding it for that amount of time that is different. And what we know with our data is if you do these interval workouts, if you come into the system and do these things and we progress you, you will get faster at a very, at a, at a good rate. Um, depending on where your trading history is like top hammer probably wouldn’t get, you know, isn’t going to get 40 Watts faster.

Uh, but maybe hammer now. Yeah. We can make you 40 Watts faster for sure.

[00:39:34] Jonathan Lee: No problem. That’s like, that would be fun

[00:39:37] Nate Pearson: and how she’s doing Amber. Uh, but that’s that’s cause what will happen, I know will happen with those is people go on the forum and they will debate. And honestly, like I hold her, I held her for 37 minutes.

Therefore the algorithms offer a by this much percent and blah, blah, blah. And I did this and, but it is again to get you into the right spot, to do this system of workouts and an adaptive training. We’ll adjust after that. So even with the levels, the levels give you so much cushion that even if it is five Watts too high or too low, Uh, effectively with the level system, you can, it like down adjust or up adjust your FTP because there is that room.

So instead of doing 102%, you’re doing a hundred percent, and that is the difference in five Watts. But the system, instead of like having your FTP update every day and always doing the same intervals, you’re doing different intervals in the back end. We’re seeing the FTP change. Right. That’s kind of hard conceptually to get it, but, uh, I don’t want to just say trust the system, but yeah, trust the system that it works and to, uh, we have, sorry, one more thing.

Uh, we, we just have like a national champion. Oh, yeah. Adaptive training, like, uh, the

[00:40:44] Jonathan Lee: he’s actually on the successful athletes podcasts, uh, and you can check it out. It’s amazing. His name’s Jim Mueller and he is 74 years old. He won cyclocross. National championships has been as gold for a long time. He thought that he had plateaued two or three years, and three years ago, he thought he had plateaued at two 50 and he was like, well, I’m, you know, I’m 72.

Like that’s to be expected. Uh, I guess I’m just going to be stuck here at two 50. Then he started using adaptive training and then he saw a huge progress and went up to two 70. Um, it’s, it’s incredible. And it’s not just him. Like, this is I’m going to, I may be wrong here, Nate, correct me if I am. But I feel like adaptive training is across the board.

The most successful feature launch we’ve had in terms of accomplishing the goal of making people faster. It’s like it’s massively effective. It’s so cool to

[00:41:33] Nate Pearson: see. That’s what I want to. So this is specifically related to. Some people on the internet who will write about this as they will say, this, I’m just going to preempt this.

They will say, because you aren’t doing 60 minute power. You can not get effective training on that. And what I say to that is one where you can just see people’s activities go up, but to successful athlete, how do we get so many national champions, uh, and world next

[00:41:57] Jonathan Lee: week as a world champion Xterra world champ, next week I’m interviewing and then Brandon, our COO, how do

[00:42:03] Nate Pearson: we get so many of those, if this is ineffective training, like what is the, what is the one that is so effective?

That’s even better than that, that beats all these national champions.

[00:42:12] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, 69 episodes of successful athletes. So you can go listen to and how they use trainer road and to accomplish something awesome. Something meaningful though. So

[00:42:20] Nate Pearson: they can argue that it’s like, well, if they didn’t do that, they would’ve won national champs by four minutes instead of 30 minutes.

[00:42:30] Amber Pierce: just kidding.

[00:42:32] Nate Pearson: Sorry. There’s my little soapbox here, but I’m blessed. I’m even less filtered now, John, which is

[00:42:41] Jonathan Lee: probably keep a mute button. Go ahead and bring,

[00:42:44] Amber Pierce: oh, I was just going to touch back. Um, I don’t want to derail us at all, but I just was going to touch back on the concept of using capacitive efforts.

Like I think there’s a bit of a miss, um, Or, or a misconception that the more experienced you are the more truly, I mean, the better you get those capacitive efforts, but honestly, like even the top athletes who are a time trial specialists or even pursuit specialists on the track, they will spend an entire career figuring out how much they can get out of their body over a given period of time.

And probably never arrive at the perfect answer. Like it’s a, it’s a constant process of improvement and learning and nobody ever, you know, it was like, oh finally, got it. I know how to do it. I’m going to nail it every time. It just doesn’t work like that. So, especially for, and again, I’m talking about, you know, really top level athletes who.

Are going to continue to learn how to pace a 20 minute effort going to continue to learn how to pace a one hour effort over the course of an entire career and continue to get better at that. So it is, um, it is a learning curve. And so it is, again like John was saying, like Nate was saying, it is still going to be an estimation.

If you’re doing that. Even if it feels like you got everything out of yourself, you probably learned something in the process about how you could do it better next time. And that never goes away

[00:44:05] Jonathan Lee: for sure.

[00:44:06] Nate Pearson: But the nice part of it is even if you do that kind of testing with our system because of adaptor training, we’ll zero you in after that.

Exactly. Which is so cool. This

[00:44:15] Jonathan Lee: abilities key right from day to day. And Amber knows this. I mean, didn’t we see this? I don’t know. They’d gone to win the world championship again this year. I don’t think he did. I could be wrong, but like Amber, you, you rode with Amber Neven and all of these, like, and he wrote with hallmark cos and all these like incredible time.

They still didn’t have it dialed every day. Like your ability to, to perform to your potential varies from day to day. And that’s why something like this is so important to keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be so strict.

[00:44:47] Nate Pearson: Eli has a good question. Will you be showing the arrow bars on the thing right now?

No. Um, there are, I understand there’s like 2% of you who are like, I want the actual like write down the stats. Cause I want to know. And our assistant, we have aerobars and we have confidence of like low, medium and high for the FTP estimation. And basically if you haven’t been training, it’s going to be low and it could be training a lot.

It’s going to be high. Uh, and we decided, um, that for, for the vast majority of people, that level of detail will just be confusing. And even if we are like on a medium or even low, because we have adaptive training afterwards, It’s good to just go with it. And we will then zero in after that and learn more than to skip the ramp test or not want to do it, or be like, oh, it’s low.

So I’m gonna push this ramp test off. Um, we’re not gonna do that. Um, I don’t, I don’t, we have no plans to do it. We’ll see how the whole, the general market does it, but I know there’s going to be people on our forum, forum.trainer.com who are going to be like, I need the exact stats and stuff. Maybe we’ll do a blog post about how it works.

I’m not sure. Yeah,

What is muscular endurance and how does it make you more capable?

[00:45:55] Jonathan Lee: we have that. Maybe you could help. Yep. Yeah, we have that plan. So let’s get into some questions. This one is from John. He says we are here a lot about how workouts should be targeting specific energy systems, that there are only three energy systems, aerobic, anaerobic, and neuromuscular.

Yeah. A lot of the train road workouts, especially threshold and sweet-spot workout seem to focus on developing. And he says in quotes, muscular endurance, while this is a seemingly intuitive term, you want the needed muscles to be able to do what is needed for longer. And while it’s just as clear why this is something that cyclist and most disciplines would cover improvements in.

Could you please explain one, what physiological adaptations are targeted or achieved in these muscular endurance focused workouts and two, what types of race day improvements we might hope to obtain from them? Thank you from John. So I’ll just explain muscular endurance really, basically. Typically muscular endurance is referred to when you’re talking about writing it, uh, high percentages of your threshold, but not exceeding your threshold.

Right? So just like John pointed out, we’re talking tempo, sweet spot into just the lower portions of threshold before you get to actually your threshold. And really all you’re trying to do is you’re trying to make it so that your body can process more sugar, right? It’s trying to process more glycogen.

And if you can do more of that, you can create more for, you can have more fuel, create more energy and put out more power. That’s like the very basics of what you’re trying to do. So what that looks like down at the small level is more mitochondria, more efficient mitochondria, whether that means more muscle fibers or mother, that, whether that means that they’re more dense with mitochondria, but the point is, you’re just trying to make your body be really good at turning glycogen into energy like that and push the pedals.

So that’s kind of the basics of what’s going on down in the body now, in terms of how you go about this. That’s like a bit of a different discussion and we can talk about how it’s applicable and all this other stuff. But I, Amber, we talked about this before, when we were planning this podcast. Maybe isn’t a separate meeting, but I feel like in a race, if you were to like draw a suspension bridge and as like a visualization of your graph, you have towers, then you have the cables connecting them.

And we look back at the race. We think that the decisive moments where those towers and while they may be decisive, they were entirely bridged together. And they’re, they’re connected and dependent on that cable in between. So it’s all the time in between those really exciting moments of a race that really matter.

And isn’t that where like this sort of stuff, the muscular endurance really matters and long road races in particular, but all sorts of racing. Yeah,

[00:48:30] Amber Pierce: exactly because what happens, but you know, between one major selection moment in the race and the next is, you know, the first selection moment is going to be hard.

It’s going to take something out of you. And then if you are more efficient in the time until you have the next selection moment, you’re going to be better prepared and fresher for that next selection moment. And that’s really the piece that is important to remember because when we are reflecting back on a race, it’s usually those moments of selection that are under the most emotionally charged and the most.

Painful. So we tend to remember those the most, um, and think that, oh, that was where I lost the wheel, or that was where I couldn’t hang with the group. So that was where the problem was. But in fact, it’s all the things that led up to that moment. How, you know, what were all the small things that you did leading up to that moment that may have either increased or decreased your ability to express your fitness in that moment?

So that’s things like fueling and being really efficient at lower power levels. Um, so that when you have to hit those higher power targets, you really, you know, you’re just that little bit fresher than everybody else around you. That’s it, it’s those small changes that make a really big difference. So, like John saying, that’s that suspension cable between the bridges.

If you think about it in that visual

[00:49:49] Jonathan Lee: for Ivy. Sorry, Nate, go ahead.

[00:49:51] Nate Pearson: Yeah. This, uh, so the, the statement is true, but how you improve those systems? Uh, There’s many ways to do it. And there’s many things that in fact, impact how well you, you, uh, how much power you can put on each one of those systems and what you, you might want to, what I hear on the internet a lot is people focus on one thing and ignore everything else.

And then they kind of like try to especially try to sell you that one specific thing and then try to, you know, poop. We want other people to rest. Yeah. So the, the best, the best way to see this, and this is a chart you couldn’t Google it. Uh, Yeah, you type in Coggin expected physiological adaptions from training zones and it Joe’s training zones one through seven, and I’m gonna name, um, all of the things that improve.

And depending on what zone you are through a seven zone model, they influenced different things differently. And all of this data has come from research where people have specifically they’ve measured specific things based on time and training and these zones. And, uh, well, I read these, just know that I cannot read or pronounce things.

Okay. So just keep that in mind, uh, increased plasma volume, increased mitochondrial enzymes, increased lactic threshold increase, Micheal muscle glycogen storage, uh, hypertrophy of slow Twitch muscle fibers, increase muscle, uh, capitalization, Capitola. I can’t say that word

[00:51:20] Jonathan Lee: capitalism. Yeah,

[00:51:23] Nate Pearson: internet version of fast Twitch muscle fibers type two B to type two, a increase stroke volume, maximum cardio output increase VO two max increased muscle, a high energy ATP PCR stores increased anaerobic capacity, hypertrophy of fast Twitch muscles and increase neuromuscular power.

So on this chart, what you will see is he puts Xs about each one of these zones. They changed. So like, um, uh, VO two max increases, plasma volume a lot. And, uh, and, but as reactive recovery does not. Right. I think we all know that that’s true, but it goes through all of it. And this chart also shows sweet spot where inside of that, you get a lot of benefits.

Um, of both a tempo and threshold, but you get to be able to recover more than threshold or do it longer and you get more benefits than tempo. And this is why he’s talked about sweet-spot in, this is why we do it too. Is this a time it helps for time crunch to athletes, which is the vast majority of people can’t do the 20, 30 hours a week that Amber was doing.

I’ve even how much do your pro, but how much do you train per week? You’re doing 30 hours,

[00:52:32] Amber Pierce: but your raises are a lot shorter too. So it’s a totally different.

[00:52:36] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. And I work and I’m a plant mom, I’m busy,

[00:52:40] Nate Pearson: but I bet you like pole does 20 to 30 hours. Right. Even on his short hour stuff, because he, he doesn’t have work or plants to take

[00:52:49] Jonathan Lee: care of people to, I need squirrel at the window. Oh. I use Instagram for more on that,

[00:52:56] Nate Pearson: but that’s, that’s why.

And then you talk about the principle of specificity. So if you are in a cyclocross race or crit, or you’re going to have a long climb and you really, uh, you know, you’re going to be on off, or, you know, you need to be able to, to go up Alpe d’Huez and have this really strong, maintained power. That is where in our system with a specialty, you really focus on the type of stuff you do inside of those races.

And I think again, with our level system, especially on offs, that’s the easiest way to see it. You might do on offs and do, I don’t know, 10 of them, like in a row and the next week you can do 12 next week and do 15, where the first time you did it, 10 was horrible. And how many times in a crit I’ve had it where there’s just like, it there’s that last on officer’s that happens.

And everyone goes away and you’re like, no. Yeah. And then, you know, the, you see the field. Yeah, funny. Right? So you keep the same, like the same distance that you just can’t catch them. It just because of one interval. Right. And this is why we, we train this way is that hopefully you get better at it. You’ve got like five, six extra matches that you can then use later to attack.

Um, and in this other system, we’ll a, there’s only anaerobic, uh, neuromuscular and, uh, aerobic, why would I train this on, off kind of stuff? Or why would I train right around threshold? That doesn’t make sense. Um, this is why we do it.

[00:54:22] Jonathan Lee: Yeah.

[00:54:23] Nate Pearson: We’re going to get so attacked for that statement. Like

[00:54:28] Jonathan Lee: on the note of muscular endurance, I want to ask you Ivy, because a cyclocross is known for being like super, super, super duper punchy.

With how you race it, it’s not always punchy. Right. And it’s like, you have plenty. Do you spend time in sweet spot around that range tempo when you’re racing? Oh yeah,

[00:54:48] Ivy Audrain: for sure. And even while they’re there, while there are features in a course that kind of demand for you to ride. You know, punchy style. And for me, my strength is, um, like accelerating on the corners and that’s the kind of writer I am.

Um, you can’t necessarily maintain a good pace if you’re just on and off the gas all the time. Um, especially in cyclocross. So maintain that city effort is super important and, um, conserving energy and carrying momentum is so important in cyclocross. Do, um, carrying speed into those features. Um, and muscular endurance is one of those things that I don’t think about, uh, have no mental, like no brain space to think about this kind of stuff, uh, until I am in a race.

And all of a sudden that kind of effort that felt bad two months ago, all of a sudden isn’t making me tired. I’m not fatiguing in the same way in that same system. And then it makes

[00:55:45] Jonathan Lee: sense. Yeah. It’s, uh, I feel like the. Nate mentioned the matches thing, right. And when you run out of that one match and it’s just painful because they’re just there, you cannot close that gap no matter what you do.

It’s that sort of stuff back to like what Amber said when you’ve built up the muscular endurance that you need. You’ve just spent the rest of the time outside of those surges and those efforts where he got dropped, it was so much easier for you. You were just able to maintain you. Weren’t wasting all that energy.

It makes such a huge difference. And that’s one of the biggest things that I notice when you talk about from the base, from not being well trained with base training, and then actually having a lot of base training. Man, you see a huge difference in that. And sweet spot in particular is so productive and working on muscular endurance.

Um, one little like extra tip that I’ve found for me is that I’m doing my sweet spot work. I try to vary cadence cause I’m a mountain biker and sometimes it just gets stuck at a really low cadence cause that’s, it’s steep and that’s what you have road racing. This happens too, right? Um, it might also be in the opposite, but when you’re working on this more steady state work, that’s really productive at building muscular endurance in particular, very cadence and try to be race specific with it.

Um, I even dropped far below that and I feel like it provides quite a lot of benefit, um, for, for this sort of work. Uh, you’re going to notice the fact that attacks will hurt less. Not because you’re better at attacking, but you’re better at everything else beside the attack, which is awesome. You also notice the fact that you’ll be.

Probably more efficient at utilizing energy across the whole spectrum of your ability to put out power. Um, it’s just going to make everything else easier. And it’s funny, it’s, it’s kind of like, that sounds like everybody says I suck at client. I mean, cause I get dropped on climbs and we always tell them to look at everything else that they’re doing in that race.

And then if you make that better than the climb, won’t be as bad. So it’s like a unsung hero, muscular endurance. It’s never the thing that you’re like I won today because of my fantastic muscular endurance. No, you say it’s your sprint or it’s your ability to climb? I’m going to make

[00:57:45] Nate Pearson: it the gravel races or rolling road races like those like four or five hour road races.

It’s like muscular endurance. Yes. The repeated 20 minute efforts that are.

[00:57:55] Jonathan Lee: And I even told, I even feel it in cross country races. Like after you hit, can you settle back in at like a pace that doesn’t get you dropped off right. And that makes a huge difference, a massive difference. So it’s why we recommend base training and why, if you use plan builder and I mean, uh, nearly every case, you’re going to get some form of base, even if it’s touching up in between specialty phases.

And you’re just going into a, to a race plan builder, we’ll still focus on base because it’s, well, even

[00:58:24] Amber Pierce: in those long, like really long gravel races, for example, where you would assume that it’s mostly steady state, a lot of it’s going to be steady state, but there are still moments of selection where you’re hitting really intense power numbers.

And again, it’s not necessarily going to be your power output in that moment. So much as what you were doing for the 30 miles before that selection moment. Um, a lot of the, the gravel razors that you see being successful now and talk about really it’s the people who have the ability to dig deep and hit really intense power at the end of five hours, six hours, eight hours, 10 hours.

Um, and all of that is less than. You’re absolute power in that moment and more about what’s been happening for those many hours ahead of that. That’s a

[00:59:07] Ivy Audrain: teaser into a future

[00:59:08] Jonathan Lee: question neighbor. Ooh, very good. It’s like, Jesus, like she’s a pro at this. I’m a suspense

[00:59:13] Nate Pearson: too. Cause I didn’t read this thing at a time,

[00:59:16] Jonathan Lee: the sea, but that’s how we get good.

That’s how we get the best out of Nate. Is there Nate comes in blind? Yeah. Well, she

[00:59:21] Nate Pearson: had been late for the podcast. I just got to like slide in like

How to train as a new parent and/or with limited time

[00:59:26] Jonathan Lee: it’s the way to go. Yep. Dylan says my wife and I are a couple of weeks away from having our first child. I understand sleep may be hard to come by in the coming months.

What do you say about that? Emory? What do you mean maybe? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I’ve had a super productive off season, thus far, 15% FTP bump using adaptive training. Boom, 15%. That is huge way to go Dylan. And he says, am I training? Motivation is high. And this scenario having a newborn or any other situation where, you know, you’re sleeping, recovery is going to be hindered.

Would it be best to either alter your training to just one hour endurance rides that require less recovery or having fewer rides per week? But with a bit more intensity. Thanks guys. And gals for all the hard work you put into the podcast.

[01:00:10] Nate Pearson: I think what he should do is three workouts a day. Hey, get

[01:00:14] Jonathan Lee: outta here.

Date based attack, new

[01:00:18] Nate Pearson: listeners. Can you please describe this? We should. I wish we could just, I wish we had the staff where we could just cut back and forth, like live to your quotes. Yeah.

[01:00:26] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I’ve said a lot of dumb things. I eat a lot of words. Um, uh, yeah, I thought, well, we’re when we had our first, our little guy, Simon, I was like, yeah.

Okay. Um, I’m just going to split up my workouts into three times. He takes a little naps. So when he takes a nap, I’ll just jump in. I’ll get in some intervals and then I’ll just kind of piece it together. And by the end of the day, I’ll have the workout done, but I think. I think it might have happened one day,

just

[01:00:54] Amber Pierce: hanging

[01:00:55] Ivy Audrain: out in your Shammy all day, too.

[01:00:59] Jonathan Lee: I experienced the plan. It was gross. Clammy Shammy is the worst. Uh, I, I took it off and then I’ve put it back on. And that’s Chad level. Chad doesn’t mind though. That’s the terrible thing. I don’t know how it’s doing so we can, we can roast chat as much as we want. He’s not on here. So he’s here too. Yeah, that’s true.

Yeah. But, uh, Amber, this is well within your wheelhouse. Uh, what’s my reality to Dylan. Like, do you want to just do all endurance work because then it’s not as strenuous on your. Although, if you’re doing a lot of it, it’s still pretty strenuous or do you do less rides and keep them more intense? What would, what would you say?

[01:01:42] Amber Pierce: Well, first thing is, it obviously depends on your goal, but if you’re all answered this with the assumption that the goal is just to maximize general overall fitness, um, and in that case, you know, I would, I would suggest sticking with a training plan because it’ll end up being a mix of different, uh, training zones and you’ll hit those different energy systems.

And I think that that would be the best use of your time is to mix it up a little bit. But I want to break this down a little bit further into two parts. So one is the planning that’s going to be required for this. And then the execution and the planning is tricky because there’s a lot that you can’t plan for.

So right now with our little one. When she goes down for nap, it could be 10 minutes or three hours. We don’t know. It’s really hard to plan. So when I say planning, and then this instance, what I, what I really mean is talk with your partner about how you want to support each other, to continue, um, to include these essential elements of what maintaining your own wellbeing in this time, right?

Because it’s going to be really important that you each take care of yourselves. And in order to do that, now you’re really going to need to lean on each other for that support to make space for that. Um, it will not all be sunshine and puffy clouds, but I think it is really important for people to remember that as much as you’re going to be there caring for this new little one, you need to continue to invest in your capacity.

To care for that little one. And that gets harder and harder as you start losing sleep, um, and becoming more and more sleep deprived. That’s, that’s the big one that people talk about, but there’s a lot of other stressors that come with it. I mean, this is a new human being that is a hundred percent dependent.

And so the amount of time and attention that it takes is really hard to wrap your mind around even as it’s happening. And it’s even harder to do that before it happens. So it’s really good to have these conversations with your partner headed. At least establish some expectations, so that you’re really on the same page together about how you want to approach it, pretty flexible about that.

But the communication piece is really important. And it’s good to start opening that line of dialogue ahead of time. As far as getting specific about training recommendations and planning the specific training. Again, I would highly recommend going with some kind of a training plan, but really dial back that volume, go to the lowest volume possible plan.

Um, as a starting point, if you can add more, that would be great, right. But start with the lowest volume stick with a plan so that you have that mix of different energies zones that you’re touching. That would probably be the most effective thing for your fitness. Um, and that’s kind of what I would recommend in terms of planning.

And then when it comes to the execution, I’m a little bit partial. I would recommend letting adaptive training manager, misses and account for different disruptions that come up that are unplanned. Um, The take home here is that you need to be very, very flexible. And I want to share somebody. It’s something that somebody shared with me recently that was very valuable.

And it’s something that I want to share because I think it would be a really good way to frame this for you going forward when it comes to being a new parent, and this might apply to a lot of other life situations, too, you have to earn your training, which sounds really weird to say, but what she meant by that is in order to train, you have to make sure that you’ve gotten enough sleep first.

So did you earn your training by getting enough sleep? Did you earn your training by feeding yourself and nourishing your body? You have to be well-resourced to execute a training plan. And if you’re not well-resourced you need to focus on that first before. Adding training to the mix. So if you’re struggling to keep yourself well-resourced with sleep and food to very basic essential ingredients to your well-being focus there first get a handle on that first and then add the training in.

So flip it on its head a little bit and start thinking about how you need to earn your training with sleep. You need to earn your training with making sure that you’re eating consistently and getting the nutrition. You need to earn your sleep with making sure that you’re managing your capacity to keep caring for this little new human and, uh, make sure that you you’re well-resourced to do the training that you want to do before you start doing that training.

So the biggest take home here I would say is to adopt the mentality that you will need to earn your training from now on as you enter this new

[01:05:53] Jonathan Lee: chapter. So what a cool perspective, I really like. That’s cool. Hey,

[01:05:59] Nate Pearson: yes. I’m going to disagree with Amber.

[01:06:01] Amber Pierce: I love it. You to do this, let’s do it.

[01:06:04] Nate Pearson: I think Dylan don’t do a training plan.

What you should do is train now. And I agree with Amber. There’s two things you should do. You so train now, we’re going to be three workouts, endurance, uh, climbing or attacky workout, and you can then choose the time. So what you should do is you, when you have the time you look at it and you think just when Amber said, did I sleep last night?

How do I feel today? I’m okay. I kind of want to do intervals, but I don’t have an hour or I’m tired. So you do 30 minutes. And instead of maybe productive workout your new achievable workout. And just during this time, don’t have the stress of a training plan or missing days, just however you feel, and then choose those workouts.

Hey, only 30 minutes spin today. Like real easy endurance stuff. That’s perfectly fine too. And you had a 15% bump, which is gigantic doing some of these intervals. And even just three days a week of some minerals is going to maintain a lot of that. And then when you do come back and your kid does sleep, um, which by the way, they’ll, they’ll always sleep.

And then they get. And then you’ve regressed. It’s the whole, that’s the new parents are like, they’re finally sleeping. And then like a week later they get teeth. So cherish those moments. But, um, that’s, that’s how I would do it is not have the stress of it. Know that this is like a, like a bridge time and you can get a lot of, uh, what you don’t want to do is load up like two hour interval workouts.

And cause you’re not going to have two hours, unless what Amber says very, very key is you talk, you communicate with your partner and say, Hey, a priority for me, the time that I want by myself during this time is I want to have the time to do X amount of training. So I might want to do our workouts, but I’m actually going to need about an hour and a half for my getting dressed posts after maybe I take a shower.

So when I start that time, can you just handle a hundred percent of the kid? And I don’t have to worry and having that like communication and you know what, there’s gonna be a time where it’s going to be opposite. What, what would you like to have this alone time? Because when it’s always kind of, you don’t have that.

And there’s always like both parents, but, oh, it’s my turn, your turn. That also is stressful inside of that. And just knowing when it’s one person’s term versus another person, even like at night, like I’m gonna get up tonight and gonna get up tomorrow night. That is also super awesome. Um, I had something else, but I forgot.

[01:08:16] Jonathan Lee: I have nothing else to add on the parenting side. Um, Amber, if you have some.

[01:08:22] Amber Pierce: Yeah, I just want to say, I agree with Nate about train now. And I think the part where our two perspectives are overlapping is that you definitely want to mix of intensity and endurance. Like it’s not one or the other here. It’s you want to have a mix of both and then whatever is going to feel most manageable for you.

If you’re the type of person who’s going to stress out over, missing a workout on a plan, digital plan, go with train now and train now is really nice because you can dial in different durations and it will just, boom, you don’t have to scroll through library workouts. It’ll just tell you here’s a great suggestion.

You click it, you go and you’re, you are making the most of those precious minutes that you do

[01:08:56] Nate Pearson: have. Two to three 30 minute workouts per week. And that’s fine. That’s great. Like I said, they’re two they’re, they’re short and they’re intense, but it’ll probably help your mental state you’ll feel great.

You’ll maintain a lot of stuff. I remember the other one, I was going to say, make your bottles ahead of time. Like make your bottles and put them in there, set up everything as, uh, like put your shoes there. Always put a clean bib after you wash them, just hanging out on your bike. So you can go in that room.

You can change right there and you eliminate that time and don’t miss another thing that I’ve done. Have you ever like procrastinated so much of getting on the bike where you like, look at something that you look at the time you’d be like, I’d be done with my workout or almost done with my workout. If I just would’ve started right away.

And as soon as you start, it’s easy. And as soon as you clip in, you start going and you’re in that warmup. It’s like, oh, it’s not so bad. I’ll try to eliminate. It’s like getting out of bed in the morning, right? It’s like try to eliminate that. I’ve I definitely sit in bed for 20 minutes and then I’m like, I have no time.

I wish I had 20 more minutes. Like you did have 20 more minutes. You just were on Tik TOK. That’s a horrible,

[01:10:00] Jonathan Lee: no, it’s

[01:10:01] Amber Pierce: great. We’d

[01:10:02] Jonathan Lee: love to shop

[01:10:05] Nate Pearson: Tik TOK fans, but it’s not a good way to start your morning on Tik TOK.

[01:10:09] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. I want to, uh, pull this away. Cause I dunno, Ivy, do you have anything out on the parenthood side?

I don’t. Uh, so I’m an expert. Let’s go. Here we go. That’s over interrupt you. Yeah. What

[01:10:25] Amber Pierce: age are

[01:10:26] Ivy Audrain: kids okay. To put in a Burley trailer.

[01:10:28] Amber Pierce: Yeah. Cause

[01:10:30] Jonathan Lee: the bike trailer, many of

[01:10:31] Amber Pierce: my

[01:10:32] Ivy Audrain: childhood. Memories where, like, I can guarantee you that my dad kept training and would just put my brother and I in a Burley. And I, I love to sleep in it.

And just a couple hours later, I’d wake up and we were home and I guarantee you, it was doing intervals with us in a Burley

[01:10:49] Amber Pierce: trailer. Like, absolutely.

[01:10:51] Nate Pearson: It was like six months or something, but there’s also, there’s ones are like, uh, keep the kids head up because at first, like they’re floppy, right. They can do it themselves and they’re bouncing around.

And, uh, other ones have like, uh, the chariot has like a, uh, a hammock almost. So you can put the kid in to go earlier inside of it. It there’s a whole, there’s a huge market for that, but I personally would not recommend to do intervals with your kids, uh, in the bike and

[01:11:16] Jonathan Lee: be like,

[01:11:19] Nate Pearson: that is a good, Hey, I’m going to be on some bike trails and be recovery riding and just enjoy it and how my kids look at.

That’s probably the end stop and we go to the park. That’s probably better than, yeah. I

[01:11:31] Jonathan Lee: do want to bring this outside of the context of parenthood and talk to people because that was one of the things that Dylan kind of mentioned, just people that are time poor in general. And I do think these principles still apply.

And I think that endurance athletes being type a individuals often find themselves in positions of overcommitment and then fretting about not being able to fulfill on that commitment. And then it just adds an additional layer of success or a, sorry, I’ve stressed, not success, stress, and that can just make things even tougher for me personally.

I really think that it’s important for you to just try to do something rather than nothing. It’s a great principle to follow and to start your way from the beginning, rather than where you were when you weren’t time. Don’t jump into it with the same expectations, start really low and get easy wins there, and then slowly work your way up until you find that you are achieving balance.

Rapid Fire questions

Uh, don’t go over the point where training starts to throw everything else out of whack. That’s really tough. So I have nothing else to add. We do have rapid fire questions. Let’s get into them. Uh, some of these we asked before and Ivy was on with me, but I feel like we have to ask them now that we have Nate and, uh, Amber with us.

So, uh, some of these are submitted from Rachel. I also submitted a couple, but first question, is it wrong for a vegetarian to eat animal crackers? Yes. Next

[01:12:49] Nate Pearson: question,

[01:12:51] Jonathan Lee: Amber. I’m

[01:12:53] Amber Pierce: all right with

[01:12:54] Jonathan Lee: it. I’ll allow it. Oh, and Ivy. Okay. You

[01:12:57] Ivy Audrain: said vegan or vegetarian has to like look in the eye of the animal character cracker and see, okay.

Eating it

[01:13:04] Jonathan Lee: before they sit them individually

[01:13:07] Amber Pierce: to face

[01:13:08] Ivy Audrain: to face animal and decided it’s hot. It’s.

[01:13:11] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, way too symbolic for me. They can’t do it. It’s not. Okay. So fill in the blank. Taylor swift is brilliant. Wonderful. And I said a genius marketer is what I said last time, a celebrity crush as a teenager.

[01:13:28] Nate Pearson: So mine, I don’t know if she was even acting, but I just think of Jessica Alba.

She’s like my age, but for me, Jessica Alba. Yeah.

[01:13:37] Jonathan Lee: But you

[01:13:37] Ivy Audrain: know, it’s not adult crush.

[01:13:47] Jonathan Lee: uh, that’s awesome. Ivy. Uh, yeah. Uh, Amber, how about you? I said, Brittany, I feel

[01:13:54] Amber Pierce: really prepared here. I don’t have one off the top of my head. I’d have to think really hard on this one. So maybe we’ll have to ask me on another one,

[01:14:00] Jonathan Lee: Zach, from saved by the bill. Oh, for sure. No. Okay. No, no, no. Slater from Satan screen.

fill in the blank. The song Africa by Toto is

[01:14:22] Nate Pearson: super fun. Amazing chefs, Kansas

[01:14:29] Amber Pierce: work

[01:14:30] Jonathan Lee: of art. I’ll go with that one. I can’t hear it. It hurts my ears. The only time I really liked it was when we were in South Africa, we landed, it was raining and Nate made a tic talk about it. We’ll find you a pop

[01:14:43] Amber Pierce: punk cover of,

[01:14:45] Jonathan Lee: yeah, I’m all in. Then give me a me first and the gimme gimmes cover and I’m all there.

And those that are

[01:14:50] Nate Pearson: entrepreneurs conference and there was a party going on and people from all around the world and the live band started to play that song. And everyone from South Africa, Flipped out. Like it was like, they were happy to have people play like journey and everyone gets into it. That’s what it was like for this.

They, they came to the front, there was like a mob of like 12 of them singing every word dancing together.

[01:15:12] Jonathan Lee: It was fun. That song is the universal language. Um, okay. Next one, Mario or Zelda.

[01:15:19] Amber Pierce: I was a Mario Mario brothers kid.

[01:15:22] Nate Pearson: Oh, it was a Sega kid. So Sonic, I never had an Nintendo ever,

[01:15:27] Ivy Audrain: uh, Zelda Ocarina of time on N 64.

Almost ruined my life in high

[01:15:33] Amber Pierce: school.

[01:15:39] Jonathan Lee: story there for sure. I mean, I just

[01:15:42] Ivy Audrain: was obsessed and I have a player’s guide. I might still have the player’s guide. Like I just loved that game and I can still probably like hum the tunes of all of the songs you can play on the Oak renos that like. Yeah, do the actions of whatever I was obsessed with that game and almost failed a couple of classes and yikes.

[01:16:02] Amber Pierce: I’m just super

[01:16:03] Jonathan Lee: into it. A terrible movie or show that I love is I break. That’s a good pole. That’s a good one. Yeah.

[01:16:15] Nate Pearson: Uh, for me, I it’s so bad and I’ve stopped watching it, but the flash on CW, like seem that I’ve never

[01:16:22] Jonathan Lee: even heard of it. Yeah, exactly.

[01:16:25] Nate Pearson: It’s so formulaic and the same each time, there’s like five minutes of each episode that I like.

And then you just sit through the rest of it. I’m like, why are they doing the same thing every time? But yeah. Yeah. The flash.

[01:16:35] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. I

[01:16:38] Ivy Audrain: love horror movies. And one of my favorites, I now believe is a terrible movie, which is mid-size. I love that movie. I love horror movies and it’s like, I want, I ask other people to watch it with me or get my friends to watch it to me with me.

And they’re just like, have you, what the hell are you okay, what’s wrong with you? I’m like, I’m on

[01:17:00] Jonathan Lee: it. I don’t know. I said burn notice. It’s like the worst show. It has like, it’s terrible, but it’s you can’t stop watching it. So, yeah. Um, okay. And then last one, Netflix is doing a biopic on your life, which actor, actress stars, as you, Steve, you

[01:17:18] Amber Pierce: want to say who?

[01:17:19] Ivy Audrain: I didn’t have to think about that for a single man.

[01:17:26] Jonathan Lee: That’s amazing. It’s harder. It’s harder to decide who will play me, but I feel like Freddie Prinze Jr. Would play Nate. Anybody else agree? Do you know, do you remember who that guy is? Yeah. Remember, remember? Yeah, we just don’t agree. Nobody agrees. Okay.

[01:17:45] Amber Pierce: I know who should play. I have my picks on who should play all three of you though.

I think for Ivy it would be Margot Robbie or a young Jodie foster.

[01:17:54] Jonathan Lee: Whoa. I hate

[01:17:56] Amber Pierce: Lee pace. We have to have a tall guy

[01:17:59] Nate Pearson: who’s

[01:18:01] Jonathan Lee: and Googling this right now. Oh,

[01:18:03] Amber Pierce: for Jonathan. I would say James Marston.

[01:18:06] Jonathan Lee: I don’t know who that is, right?

[01:18:09] Amber Pierce: Yeah, definitely the hair. I mean, come on

[01:18:12] Jonathan Lee: hair. Totally. Oh, that’s quite a compliment.

I’ve seen mates. I have no clue. I’ve never seen John’s James Marsden,

[01:18:21] Amber Pierce: James Marsden and yearly

[01:18:22] Jonathan Lee: pace. Did your guy is Jack’s Nate. He’s got some big muscles. Yeah. He’s also very

[01:18:31] Nate Pearson: tall. So I know who Amber would have. I

[01:18:35] Amber Pierce: don’t see it. I just, I picked for you guys. I don’t know who, I

[01:18:38] Jonathan Lee: don’t know. Sandra Bullock would play Amber.

Oh, that’s so good.

[01:18:42] Nate Pearson: Wow. I’m going to say for me, it’s going to be Owen Wilson. Not because we look the same, but he’s always like right on his movies, like that has always happened to him. And he’s like, oh yeah, just kind of go through it. Like crazy. Just like he doesn’t really get super mad. I’m just kind of rolls with it and all of his movies,

[01:19:02] Jonathan Lee: he seems very easygoing.

That’s true. Yeah.

[01:19:05] Nate Pearson: I think that’s, that’s how I feel. Who would play me?

[01:19:08] Jonathan Lee: Hmm. Yeah. I have no inner spirit.

I like that. That’s good. Bravo, Amber, I’m being like super prepared on this one and being able to nail it and I was prepared for

[01:19:22] Amber Pierce: you, John, who would you choose

[01:19:23] Ivy Audrain: to portray yourself?

[01:19:25] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I don’t even know that. See, that’s an interesting one. There’s like some sort of a leather couch thing here, right? Like this is like a, there’s some sort of deep psychology at an ability to be able to say who would play you?

I don’t know. I feel, yeah.

[01:19:41] Nate Pearson: The LDS stuff, but go way over. So who plays someone? Who’s just like super squeaky clean, like exaggerated.

[01:19:47] Jonathan Lee: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[01:19:50] Nate Pearson: I can’t think of it now. I can think of faces, but not

[01:19:54] Jonathan Lee: names. Yeah. And we all know it’s Brad Pitt. We can come out and say it. It’s okay. If it’s Brad Pitt let’s move on.

Okay. Bianca’s question. At what age will you retire and what sort of writing will you be doing? Most? I think she means retire, like retire from work. And then w w will we, because Ivy’s got a career Amber at a career, Nate and Nate and I do not have a cycling careers. So at what age will we retire from work?

And what sort of writing will we be doing?

[01:20:27] Nate Pearson: Uh, so I don’t think I will retire.

[01:20:33] Jonathan Lee: It sucks

[01:20:34] Nate Pearson: to imagine that taking time off just as lime, it seems like super awesome. Uh, but it’s not,

[01:20:40] Jonathan Lee: so yeah. Do something well. Yeah, but if. Oh, I

[01:20:46] Ivy Audrain: think I’m going to pay student loans in time. Like

[01:20:51] Amber Pierce: the retiring,

[01:20:55] Jonathan Lee: your screen just froze with the grim his face while you said student loans. And it was perfect. It was wonderful. So yeah, it was a meme in and of itself. All I know is that I’m going to have like a gorgeous titanium bike bike road bike, and I will just do like a fun, like I’ll basically live the Marin county life.

That’s the dream, right? Like go to above category cycling, have a Baume and just ride up Mount Tam every day. That would be dream would love that. Yeah. But I don’t think I’m ever going to retire. So I think retirement is a boomer thing that doesn’t exist anymore. So. Okay. Uh, this one I really quickly want to.

It’s just, we got a lot of athletes cause tons of you have big goals for next year. You’re signing up for training road and checking things out. So I want to answer this in a rapid fire fashion, but what plan to pick and how to adjust the answer is adaptive training and plan builder. Boom. Uh, it’s done.

Um, but a bit more deep, but honestly it really is like, you don’t have to worry about what plan to pick. It’s done the only time, if you do have a question where you’re like, well, this event’s like a mountain bike, gravel hybrid, sort of a thing. Uh, if you have questions like that, then you can always ask our support agents and there’ll be awesome and able to help you, uh, kind of navigate to see which discipline you should select.

But the number of you are asking, what if I have both play events, if they’re more than six weeks between that’s fine. Uh, plan builder will trend your fitness appropriately in between those events. So you just put them on your calendar and you’re set. If you have less than six weeks before. Then you have to pick and choose, and that’s good.

You should pick and choose. Anyway, don’t fill your season with like six, eight races that are just like perfectly spaced out. Instead, pick one that you really want to go for. Maybe two, uh, when you get to three, it gets pretty tricky. Chances are, you’re not going to get like, you know, true peak fitness out of yourself three times.

That might be pretty tough. Um, then if it’s a season or a race, you’ve had a season of races that you want to do versus one single race. One single race is easy. We’ve already talked about that. If it’s a season, once again, pick and choose, uh, don’t peak for the whole 14 weeks season that doesn’t exist. Uh, doesn’t work.

That’s like saying I jumped negative three feet high. It just doesn’t work. So, uh, but in this. Uh, pick one and I would not pick the first race, unless there’s some sort of strategy to this that you have. Instead, I would pick something that’s somewhere around the halfway to the two-thirds the way through.

So that way you can finish strong when other people probably peak too early and are going to fizzle. So you can capitalize on that. Uh, okay. Last rapid fire question. Casey says, going off of last week’s rapid fire question about the hardest events you do again, which of the past podcast races slash challenges, would you be most and least excited to do again?

And I have a list of these and some of you haven’t done them, but just the same, which ones you’d be least or most excited about doing there’s everything. Single track, 6 24 hours in the old Pueblo, Mount of chaos. That’s the highest mountain in the world for that you can climb on a bike continuously, I guess, 40 kilometer time trial.

Uh, the road stage race. I assume that one is going to be valley of the sun that we did. And then Cape epic who’s ever stood. Well, I can let y’all know. Just follow me on Instagram. You can check

Yeah,

[01:24:06] Nate Pearson: I know it’s last for me. Single-track six terrifying, terrifying term. It

[01:24:13] Jonathan Lee: was gnarly. Yeah. Yeah. Which ones are you most excited to do, Nate?

[01:24:19] Nate Pearson: Uh, I like road stage race. That’s the one that I like that the variety that that’s super fun. And if you don’t hit it one day, you can hit it the next day. Uh, I think that would be the top one.

And then the other ones that I liked to do, I mean, Monica 40 K TT, um, Cape epic for sure. And the grueling 24 hours and ever seen is those are just. Grueling. I don’t like 24 hours in old Provo, just because of not being able to sleep. Um, that’s the only of course was awesome. If I could do an, a team where I, where I would do it all during the day for a few hours and sleep all night and do it in the morning, I guess you can do that.

[01:24:57] Jonathan Lee: We’re dealing with this year, I’m going to drink

[01:25:00] Ivy Audrain: four Loco all night up all night and

[01:25:04] Jonathan Lee: I’m ready. We’re we’re doing that. I, I want a team. And, uh, it’s like my brother that a bunch of like, uh, cyclists people, Sophia is on the team handful of other people. And I’m trying to pack the team as full as possible.

So then I don’t have to do a night lab.

So

[01:25:21] Nate Pearson: that’s my hope. They’re all gonna get like Sophia and Keegan to do all at night.

[01:25:25] Jonathan Lee: Keegan’s doing it solo. He wants to do the record. I’ll he’ll do it. Yeah. So he wants to,

[01:25:32] Nate Pearson: oh, you know what I’ll do. Yeah. Wait, when is this? I’ll just come

[01:25:37] Jonathan Lee: it’s February

[01:25:37] Nate Pearson: 5th. Yeah. I should not do this right now because of my concussion.

Yeah. But if my schedule works out, I’ll come and just hang out.

[01:25:45] Jonathan Lee: It’s just going to be a good time. And it’s cool because you know how we were like, we kind of, we wanted to do well. And then we had to pivot our plans because Chad didn’t do it. And then Brandon crashed and all of us were just like, this is rough.

Our team does not care. Like if, if we have a rider not out on course, like, no, one’s gonna care. Everyone’s gonna be like, how’s the pizza. Like, that’s what we’re more focused on. Like, and so it’s going to be, and I think that that’s kind of the general vibe of the event and we’re matching that vibe. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

So Ricky, road’s on the team. So it’s going to be fun. Yeah. Uh, well, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll post plenty of stuff on Instagram and tech talk for you. It’ll be good times. Uh, Amber, which one would you be most and least excited about?

[01:26:26] Amber Pierce: Rose stagers is probably low on the list because that’s like I’ve been there, done that situation.

Although 40 K TT and EverString are also pretty low on the list. Those might all three be tied for like, absolutely. No, thank you. Um, have not experienced the single tracks six or 20 hours. but now that you’re describing 24 hours, it sounds pretty good. Oh, it’s six single track six, huh? Um, so maybe Monica and Cape epic are the ones that are the most intriguing to me.

[01:26:57] Nate Pearson: Okay. I just want to say two single track. Six setup was awesome. If you’re a mountain biker, if you like our drink with your skills, it’s amazing. Beautiful.

[01:27:05] Jonathan Lee: Oh, my gosh. So cool. Like the coolest you have, if you’re

[01:27:08] Nate Pearson: not comfortable with your skills, it’s like what you what’s that snowbird place where it’s like people were giving one stars, Johnny, to tell

[01:27:15] Jonathan Lee: that story.

Yeah. My friend Dave actually came up with a marketing thing, the marketing campaign for this, but, uh, people were leaving one-star reviews and they were like, this place is terrible. Do they even grew many of the runs, it was all steep and Rocky and filled with shoots and amazing drops. Like they didn’t say amazing.

They’re like this resort sucks. So then he turned it into one star reviews that came into a huge advertising campaign where he was like, check it out. This place is way too hardcore and amazing. It turns out, you know, that actually worked really well. It was like one of the best advertising. A lot

[01:27:44] Nate Pearson: of people love it.

So want to say, we want the rough stuff, single track, sick, amazing race. If you’re a mountain biker.

[01:27:51] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, one star. This place is just that this race is just way too incredible as way too many Carly trails, the job, the drops were awesome. The flow was great. Yeah. That’s basically what it is. It’s like, yeah, Ivy, we should have probably put cross Vegas or cross nets on here, but

[01:28:09] Ivy Audrain: yeah, I think any

[01:28:09] Jonathan Lee: of these, do you not want to do any of them?

[01:28:14] Ivy Audrain: Uh, I really, I don’t want to do ever sing ever. Um, and I actually, I don’t want to do Cape epic to

[01:28:21] Amber Pierce: be

[01:28:21] Jonathan Lee: honest,

[01:28:24] Ivy Audrain: like I’m really interested in single track six and 24, but

[01:28:29] Jonathan Lee: I don’t know. Single-track stakes would be amazing. You would love it. Just don’t bring your heart to Ben’s question top of that

[01:28:36] Nate Pearson: list.

Sorry. Would be across Vegas,

[01:28:40] Jonathan Lee: Las Vegas. Yeah. Yeah. That was a sweet race. It was fun. Yeah. So much fun. They have like a mini golf features that you like that cool huge wall ride and stuff. And like, it was cool. It was super fun vibe too. Okay.

How to avoid blowing up at the beginning of rides and races

Ben says, I knew to train around and love the product. I have a question about my struggles with fast starts on group mountain bike rides, the lads head out very fast.

And I find myself at max heart rate and quads feeling like swollen balloons for the first 10 minutes. I eventually settled into a rhythm and can keep up. He says, I don’t see others in so much pain. I, eh, he says I’m more muscular. And, and he says more muscular than lean. If that is a helpful data point. I appreciate your thoughts.

Cheers, Ben for Victoria Australia. So Ben, I assume that what you’re talking about, when you say more muscular than lean, meaning that you just carry more mass, um, than perhaps the other riders that you’re with. Um, so that probably hints at power to weight ratio. Isn’t like that of Chris’ room or something, which none of us are.

So I assume that’s what you mean by. If I’m wrong, I apologize. I mean, this is common, right? Like group rides, people get together, egos come together and they just want to go hard and they go hard at the beginning of all the time. This is every

[01:29:49] Nate Pearson: mountain bike ride I’ve ever done with John talk to me. Well, it happens.

[01:29:55] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. This is super common. Right. Um, group rides across the board. Also, Ben, he says that I don’t see others in so much pain. I bet that they are uncomfortable. They’re just masking it. Right,

[01:30:07] Amber Pierce: Amber. So easy to assume that everybody else feels great and has it all together and you don’t, but that’s almost never ever the case.

So don’t let it get in your head. If you start assuming that you’re in less pain than the people around you, magic can

[01:30:21] Jonathan Lee: happen. Hmm. Yeah. Good tip right there. Ivy, how about you? Like, do you notice early season when your fitness isn’t, where it needs to be with cyclocross goes, cyclocross starts crazy. I’m sure you feel this, right?

Yeah.

[01:30:37] Ivy Audrain: And I feel like so many of those efforts that you do during the build season and train road has numerous workouts like this, where you begin a effort with a like 10 or 15, second really hard effort. And then no, like no rest, just settle back into the effort. And I feel like that emulates starting really well.

Um, and I actually, I feel bad. I misread this question. I thought it was mountain bike races. So it was like, yeah, just like starting, like it’s a race. Um, but I think being able to start do a hard effort and settle right, right into riding hard is, um, important to not feel, uh, not feel so taxed in the first 10 minutes.

That’s, it’s always a hard thing for me when I first get into build and start doing like race group rides and. I start really fast and I’m not ready. The first 10 or 20 minutes. Sometimes they never recover. Sometimes I can never get on top of it after those hearts is cards. So it has a lot to do with where you are in your season.

Um, preparing for that practicing, doing those hard starts before hard efforts,

[01:31:42] Nate Pearson: uh, Ben, you attack them and establish dominance.

no. What? Uh, obviously we, I mean warmup. Okay. That’s great. The other thing, um, I learned this with the super sapiens, like glucose thing was wearing that, uh, it takes time for your body to like, uh, pull glucose from your bloodstream. At first it’s like your liver. And on the days I did not have one. I did not eat like two to three hours before, but also like a gel.

You have to time it, right. 20 minutes was actually too much time in front of me, like a five minute, five minutes before you start gel helped a bunch.

[01:32:20] Jonathan Lee: And the other one. Right away. So, and it’s 15 for me. So hammering home, the point, figure out where you feel like you have ideal energy levels after you took that in.

[01:32:29] Nate Pearson: That is a huge part that I would notice in interval workouts, that timing that just right. Um, my glucose was responded way differently inside of the ride, and I would feel way better than that settling in. And that’s also, the warmup will help you get past that point where it won’t matter as much, but if it is like a cold start, something that can help.

And then, um, especially if you’re bigger, the way that you ride the accelerations as a big guy, myself and being heavy, it is it’s the little accelerations at the beginning where you’re not carrying your momentum as well in a crit, but especially in mountain bike start where there’s like little things is super hard.

Um, and, uh, ask them a question. So tell me about your life. That is, that is a secret one. I always do that. If someone’s like half wheeling me on. All like, I’ll ask them a question. That’s open-ended what was it like growing up in wherever. So they have to talk cause, uh, that will then slow it down too.

Especially if it’s a warmup. Um, cause I know there, so it could be something too where if these people are like one watt per kg higher than you, it really does feel easy for them. And it’s going to feel hard for you and you can ask them to slow down too. That’s perfectly acceptable to be like, Hey, can we go a little slower today?

You don’t, you can. It’s okay. Not to be as fast as people

[01:33:47] Jonathan Lee: like to leave to. Exactly.

[01:33:49] Amber Pierce: I bet you, if you were the first person to say it there’s like 10 other people, they’re like, oh, thinking of

[01:33:54] Jonathan Lee: somebody. Yes, exactly. You’re not alone. You know that since Ben in this case, you’re likely new. I don’t know how new you are to structured training, but you’re new to train a road.

Like Ivy said, as you go through your training plan, you’re just going to get faster and faster and better at this sort of stuff. So that will help. Um, the only thing I would add to what everything else or everything or what everybody else has said. Especially on mountain bikes. There’s little things you can do that are mistakes you can make that make everything way harder.

So it’s about, uh, your momentum and anticipating what could stop your momentum or what could give you a moment? So if there’s small bumps and you see those coming up, which can be tricky if you’re following in a close line, but if you’re watching shoulders, instead of watching wheels, you’ll be able to pick it up because you’ll see a person kind of go through a bump or lift up over a bump.

But if there’s something that is a bump, make sure that you just lift your wheels lightly over it. It’s it doesn’t take a huge lift. Doesn’t take a bunny hop. It’s just even, unweighting your bike. It’s a slight move that will go from stopping you and then having to restart your momentum to making it so that you just preserve.

And if you add that up and let’s say that there’s 20 of those and the first five minutes of your riding, that’s 20 little accelerations that you don’t have to do. And to put this into even more. Like I guess a specific context right. At threshold, because Ben’s probably feeling like he’s riding at or over threshold, right.

At threshold and throw in 20 micro accelerations over the course of five minutes. I guarantee you, that’s going to be way harder than just riding it threshold. And so we think it’s no big, no big when we go through that little rut and then we push harder on the pedals to regain our momentum and we let that star of our momentum be okay with spending a bit of energy, just to pick up those wheels and be smooth over something.

Because in the end, that’s going to be less energy expended than trying to starve your momentum and then regain it thereafter. It’s a small thing that you’ll notice from watching a cyclocross racers. Like Ivy’s a great example of this when I was riding with Ivy this summer and the spring at different races.

And here in Reno, Ivy’s really. Uh, she looks at terrain and she just picks up and she moves right over things. Um, it’s not like it’s a, like she’s a trials rider and he needed to be able to like bunny hop and do anything. That’s really technical. She just looks at things and she looks at terrain. Like I want to keep my momentum.

So I’m not just going to hit that rock. I’ll just pull up slightly or I’ll just go around it. So it’s the little things. If you really focus on the small efficiencies, they add up to make you way less tired, um, on road racing, it’s, it’s kind of similar in the sense that you, you don’t hyperfocus on the wheel in front of you.

And instead you’re looking at those shoulders and you’re just trying to stay close and you’re trying to anticipate surges. And it’s all the other things that I, Amber is an absolute pro after racing the pro Peloton of, of that micro level of efficiency. That adds up

[01:36:47] Nate Pearson: one is the, uh, this is the same with Critz and I see the.

Athletes do this, is that what I will do is if something technical comes up, I will stop pedaling way before other people. And I will pedal out of it way after where somebody else like John, the little bumps, he might just be peddling through and all, I actually stand up and be like, oh my gosh. And go through it.

Um, and then I have to accelerate and that is so hard, um, to do that. And then the other one, I forgot.

[01:37:17] Jonathan Lee: So what you’re saying, Nate, is that you want to, instead of stopping, you were saying, you do the bad thing in this case, right? Like you don’t want to stop going into something and coast and then have to accelerate a bunch of.

Stay on the gas coming into it, be smoother with your power. Oh, and

[01:37:33] Nate Pearson: the other one is too. If there is, uh, depending on how, uh, smooth, the first rider in front of your rides is leaving a little bit of a gap on something technical, and then you don’t hit the brakes and you actually come out faster and you like, you screwed up to everybody else.

Uh, and that is, that is huge because the other time, if you’re in this something technical and you have to hit the brakes and then it, like, there’s like a dip and you have to peddle out of it. That is so hard. And that’s another one of those surges that John’s talking about, John, you, I mean, you must do it all the time.

Like if someone in slower is in front of you, you, you leave space and IB to, do you let him cross over, do you leave space on a corner?

[01:38:10] Jonathan Lee: Um, maybe

[01:38:11] Ivy Audrain: not just like a regular corner, but if there’s a feature, especially something that you kind of have to set up for. Absolutely. Um, something that you really need to scrub your speed for and pick up your tires for you.

Can’t buzz the tire of the person in front of you and, and hope to carry the same. The same with going over barriers, you can’t be right on someone going into that, knowing that they’re going to have this scrubs feeding

[01:38:36] Jonathan Lee: a really good example of that very thing was to pump Pitcock recently when he was in that, uh, I can’t remember which, uh, cyclocross race, it was like went viral over the internet because of his interview.

Um, it was profane, but, uh, it was also pretty, uh, it was a stamp of authority. Um, but anyways, he, uh, he was racing with, uh, Lee summit and they were going through these and you could see like he was going to get around him and he was looking for a way, but where an anxious racer tries to do that by riding next to them or riding super close to them, he was doing exactly what Nate’s saying.

And he was sagging into sections where he knew that there could be a difference in line choice, or there was some sort of feature, some sort of complication in the course. And because he did that leading into a turn, coming into barriers, He saw him. It was really just one pedal stroke that he stopped early going into the barriers and he kinda like took a breath and then went to bunny, hop them.

And Tom didn’t do that. He just, since he had sagged a bit, he wasn’t stuck behind him and he didn’t have to slow down. He just shifted over on his line. He did that one extra pedal stroke carried more of a momentum through and then attacked him. And he ended up winning. It’s like a perfect example of it.

That sagging. You have to be careful because if you sag too much, especially on road, then you’re cooked and you’re in the wind. It’s kind of finding that sweet spot within there it’s can prove here usually beneficial.

[01:39:56] Nate Pearson: If they are more technical than you, then sagging is horrible because then you have to then accelerate out of it too.

Uh, so like John, I might be right on his wheel to start and then help come out faster than me. But Amber, on road races, did you, would you ever someone who is a poor corner, would you ever give a little bit extra space and then come up on the.

[01:40:14] Amber Pierce: Well, I tried not to be behind somebody. Who’s a poor coroner in the first place, but yeah, you’d definitely, if you know that somebody is a little bit squirrely, you definitely want to give yourself more room to be able to react because generally speaking, the more skilled somebody is the less, the less, the less movement they’re going to, they’re going to create, right?

They’re not going to move as much laterally. They’re not going to stop or start, you know, accelerate or decelerate suddenly. Uh, so you want to give somebody who is going to do that a little bit more room, so you have more time to react. But I think a way of framing, a lot of what we’re talking about right now is instead of thinking about how you can accelerate better, another way of approaching it is to flip that on its head and think about how you can decelerate the least, um, because it makes less work for you, which isn’t to say that you don’t want to work on the accelerations.

I think. Benefit to doing the types of efforts that, um, that Ivy was talking about those hard stars and then settling into not recovery, but a steady state heart effort. It trains you to understand and to know, and to have confidence that the sensation of that burn and the. Still holding on and not just dropping off to recover is okay.

And when you do that over and over and training, you will come to appreciate and have confidence in the fact that you can feel like that and be fine, and possibly even do it again and recover. And sometimes it’s just the mental confidence of knowing that you can feel that way and that it’s not the death knell for your ride, um, because there’s never going to feel good.

Like you’re never going to get to a point where those types of efforts are easy. And so don’t get in your head that if it still feels hard, you’re not doing it correctly. You, you definitely are and you’ll get better at it, but it will always be uncomfortable. The key is that you can be confident that that’s okay, and that your, your absolute power or your, your ability to do that relative to your ride mates will increase in.

[01:42:07] Jonathan Lee: And like you said, Amber, that you’re not alone and feeling that cause there’s nothing, there’s nothing more productive at making your burn worse and making you feel more exasperated than thinking that you’re alone and feeling that exasperations right. Like knowing that everybody else is there. And it sounds like Ben, in this case, you’re, you’re getting through, it just sounds like it’s miserable.

Like you’re just hanging on by a thread because it, can you say that for the first 10 minutes, it’s really tough. So you don’t mention that you’re just getting dropped. So, you know, probably is that case. Can I share a, another efficiency tip for mountain bikers in particular that I just thought of that I hadn’t done before, or that I hadn’t mentioned before you can do it.

That’s shutting this thing down, um, uh, switch backs. So when you come in to switch back. It’s really easy to lose all your momentum. Um, and it’s usually because the switchback feels tight and we don’t want to lose traction. And they’re usually steeped too. Um, bad trail designers tend to make all the elevation gain or the majority of it come and switch backs, which they shouldn’t switch back should be the spot where you don’t climb.

But Hey, the trail is the trail when this happens and you see the switchback, see the matrix. And what I mean by that is don’t look at it. Like the trail is telling me to go here. You can choose to go anywhere you want on that. And when you come into a switchback, your goal, especially uphill ones should be all the way on the outside.

Like to the point where you’re like, if I went anymore, I would probably be off the trail. And if you’re setting up there, it gives you so many options and it allows you to carry so much momentum through switchbacks. It really helps. And when rides group rides start with switchbacks, it’s the same thing that happens when you have a turn in a crit that’s really tight.

It creates this really bad yo-yo effect where everyone slows down to a stop. And then the acceleration to catch back up to the group afterward, it gets really, really hard. You can solve this by simply setting yourself up wider, taking a different line, and you can carry that momentum and you don’t have to come to a stop.

So set yourself up wide. And then usually that allows you to decide that you can cut in early and even cut out some of the elevation gain of that turn too. So yeah, wide enough, so that your tires feel like they’re going to come off.

[01:44:18] Nate Pearson: Two more things. If I can, John,

[01:44:21] Jonathan Lee: please. Yes, I grant it to you. Yes.

[01:44:26] Nate Pearson: Number one, be the first one on the trail.

That’s the best, because if you do that, then everyone’s at your speed and don’t feel the need easy to go fast. Just be, and you’re gonna communicate, Hey, I’m going to, we’re going to chill until. Okay. Do you

[01:44:39] Jonathan Lee: mind if I lead today, that’s like a totally in, I just want to lead at my pace. That’s absolutely.

Okay.

[01:44:45] Nate Pearson: Yeah. Yeah. And so I did this, uh, I totally do this on races. I can think of, uh, San Rafael, where there was a downhill section coming into. Uh, so Sandra fell Twilight crit. It’s like, you’d do a steep up. And then there’s like a really fast 45 degree turn. And also I didn’t want to behind people and, uh, by being in first, you get to then dictate what the speed is and everything.

Um, I actually got to drop people on that as on video, pretty proud of, and the other one I’m thinking of John, John is the race at, uh, uh, land park, where there is a video of Pete and have John talking on the GoPro because I’m the first one in the technical Sexton, making fun of me, like coming in, like I’m going to crash the field out and I gap the field on that.

Yeah, it is so much easier. I think to, uh, technically if you’re first in to really like take it, then be like being a Peloton full of people. It’s easier just to go first. Um, and the last one is somebody asked what makes me a big writer, what class I stopped. So I don’t think like, I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but how tall are you?

I’m six. Six. And I’m like probably 1 95 right now. So in sight, glad that

[01:46:02] Jonathan Lee: we finally covered that on the podcast. I finally did.

[01:46:06] Nate Pearson: I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned that before. I don’t remember mentioning

[01:46:09] Jonathan Lee: before. It must be the concussion. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. Um, let’s go into Chase’s question.

He says somewhat related to training plan selection, but more on how to train with two very different race types and goals scheduled over the race season. Last year was my first season of cycling and racing and I’m hooked. I really like competing and racing and long distance gravel races. He mentioned 80 to 150 miles as well as the local weekly series.

And you mentioned cap for racism, the 30 to 40 minute time range. It’s hard to pick which race format to focus my training on is I enjoy both of them too much to pick aside the physical requirements and the associated training plans for these two types of races seem to be at odds with one another. The odds they’re just different.

This is still a aerobic exercise that we’re building. So that’s a really key thing to remember. It’s not like we’re building you into a powerlifter for crits or building a you into like an ultra marathon, you know, athlete on the endurance side. It’s still endurance exercise. Colin. Strickland’s different.

Yeah. Colin strengthens a great example. Right? Top

[01:47:10] Nate Pearson: level, current racer and winter.

[01:47:13] Jonathan Lee: Exactly her Unbound. Gravel. Yeah. Sorry. Um, so he says gravel focusing on long sweet spot and threshold efforts versus the crit training plans where the high VO two max efforts are the primary component. They’re not necessarily the primary component.

Training for long and short races/rides

I know I’m kind of answering this question as we go throughout it, but these, these are important things. And that kind of like what Ivy was saying earlier, even in cyclocross, he spent a whole lot of time in sweet spot in tempo and thresholds, right? So even in crit racing, it happens, uh, the shorter duration of the workouts in the plans also seem to be deleterious to maintaining my long distance aerobic engine.

Uh, so again, Not necessarily, but yes, to a certain extent. So how do I approach my base season training and early spring workouts with the goal of doing well on both of these types of races in summer of 2022, he’s asking for base seasons. So boom, it’s taken care of it’s base training, man. Uh, more or less it’s the same.

So you don’t even have to worry about it, but we’re going to entertain this question and go a bit deeper. Just, I just started weight training this month and plan to continue the supplementary supplementary work throughout the year. No idea if that tidbit offers any helpful information or not. Thanks for everything that you do for the cycling community and with your podcasts and products.

Uh, Amber, uh, where do you want to go on this one?

[01:48:24] Amber Pierce: Well, I’d like to just start with the base training and say that, you know, given that this is your second year cycling and racing, I think that you can get so much out of the base training, um, and that would apply as much to the crits as to your longer efforts.

So just because the specialization component of this is going to be for a shorter effort, um, doesn’t mean that your racing can’t also be. Immensely from a quality based block. So I, you know, those two things are definitely not mutually exclusive. The base block is something that can be extremely effective for both of those types of racing.

Um, so that’s not something where you necessarily have to do something specific in your base training for either of those cause, uh, a quality foundation. And again, when we talk about base training, this is really about, if you think about you’re building a house, this is the foundational things, not just the foundation of the house, but this is where you’re getting your electrical online.

Um, you’re getting the plumbing online. So the electrical is your mitochondrial efficiency. The number of mitochondria, your, your plumbing is the capitalization. Um, that’s all going to benefit the higher intensity training that you’ll do later in the season. So I would really lean into your base training and be super, super consistent with.

And maybe even, um, do a little bit more base training before you start shifting to the building and, um, more specialized forms of training later in the season. Cause that will benefit both of those types of, of efforts.

[01:49:52] Nate Pearson: I’m going to disagree.

[01:49:54] Jonathan Lee: It makes it entertaining. Yes.

[01:49:56] Nate Pearson: Uh, chase you’re so new, any like just when you’re brand new, like that, the threshold stuff you’ll raise your FTP so fast and that is going to kill it on both sides and our base training.

I would, I mean, I don’t know Amber, if you’re talking about sweet-spot base or if you’re talking about like traditional zone two base, what are you thinking for chase?

[01:50:19] Amber Pierce: I’m talking about a focus on aerobic efficiency. So that would be anything from endurance all the way up through threshold. Um, and even the VO two max stuff, but mostly, mostly the lower zones.

Um, and then sprinkling in some, maybe some BOC towards the end of the day. Then

[01:50:36] Nate Pearson: maybe we are in agreement, but chase, I would do sweet-spot base. Basically. What will happen is your cap for racer? There gets to be the point of wanting to specialize between the two of being like I got to do one or the other.

And if you are, um, very high level, maybe like Keegan or something that that specialty will make the difference between winning and losing. But if you’re new to this only two years in like 20 more Watts, FTP will Trump any like icing of specialty you’ll do on either one and you will just destroy it. And I would pick a plan to, I would actually do climbing road race inside of our plans.

It’s got some threshold, it’s got some punches, it’s got some VO, two max, um, when I was doing crit racing and doing really well with it, uh, I did not do. Any like really punch your work on my aerobic stuff. That was a strength of mine. I just want to focus on getting the FTP high and what happened is at the end of the race.

So I would raise very chill at the end of race. We talked about it before I was fresh. Right. So I did not have to, uh, I, I went down less than other people. So even though maybe I wasn’t as good as some of the aerobic stuff at that moment in the race, I was better at the anaerobic. And that’s, what’s important.

And I think just having any higher FTP in general, once you get to a point where you’re starting to not see improvements on that, and it’s kind of going like, it’s, you know, in a year you might raise five or 10 Watts that you’ll, we’ll get to that point. Everyone knows that’s when, oh, now I really want to focus on one.

And that’s probably when you’re going to be at a level of rider where it’s going to be hard and you will want to do either a quit plan or focus on the gravel stuff. But right now, just raise it in general. It’s like, it’s going to be so good. You can get so much better.

[01:52:24] Jonathan Lee: I have a different approach to suggest.

Uh, yeah. So I would, uh, and all of us are saying plan builder, by the way. We’re not saying just toss on blocks, plan builder. We’ll work it out for you. And then you can figure, you can, like Nate said, if you want to do the climbing road, race version or whatever else you want to do, you can do that. I assume that your race is like, you’re going to have like a gravel race or a gravel races that don’t fall just when you have your crit racing season.

Um, so I assume you can probably do some changing around here. I would say do the Gran Fondo plan. Uh, that’s a great one for gravel racing works on sustained power. Like Nate said, that’s really going to raise your threshold across the base build and specialty phase. But then when you get to your specialty phase drop down in volume, when you get close to those crit races, super easy on your plan, you can just click where your current training blocks started and you can switch your volume and switch your plan really easily.

So switch your volume. Let’s just say you’re doing mid volume in that case, switch down to low volume. Once the crits races start getting close and then use train now to add in some attacking workouts, uh, that way you’re still staying on that path of making sure that you’re working on a robotic fitness sustained power, raising your threshold.

Cause that’s absolutely key and create races, even though it doesn’t seem like it, it said, but then if you give yourself a little more time to be able to work in those train now, rides that are more punchy, then that can just make you feel prepared for whatever punches somebody throws. But Nate has such an important point, no matter how punchy you are, if those punches are at too great of a percentage of your threshold.

And the time that you spend in between those punches is too great of a percentage of your threshold, you won’t be able to hang so thresholds king, like it’s really hard to try to find a problem in bike racing in terms of a racer themselves, try to find a problem that you’d face as a bike racer, that a high threshold doesn’t fix.

It kind of solves all things. Um, so it really makes things a whole lot easier. But yeah, you could do that. Switch your volume, drop it down a little bit. Once you get closer and then just add in some train now, attacking workouts

[01:54:31] Nate Pearson: and then cat four races to where my, uh, my just pure Watts were high ovens.

It was flat. That my, my threshold was so high that the punches did not feel like punches. Like they were like gradual accelerations and I didn’t really go above threshold very much cuddles what

[01:54:49] Jonathan Lee: it’s good flex.

[01:54:52] Nate Pearson: What it was is that I did a lot of training and then I jumped into crit racing. Uh, I mean, we did a lot of racing and Reno, but it wasn’t a USBC racing.

So then when I drove to California to do it, I always below what my fitness was for category. And that’s the best is if you, and then you can learn stuff and you can really be efficient because you’re not tired all the time or hanging on. I’ve definitely had that time where racing a Reno, a crit when I wasn’t that fit.

And just like getting dropped after 10 minutes and, uh, getting

destroyed.

[01:55:19] Jonathan Lee: You kind of need a bandwidth, right? Amber, like, um, if you’re so comparatively speaking, if your, if your fitness is so far off from the group that you can’t even hang with a group at all, and you just get blown out in the first lap or two, then you can’t learn from that.

Also, if you are way faster than everybody else, it’s easy to learn really bad habits. It’s like riding on the front CZ, you know, um, uh, how many times can I attack these, these people and what will they do? Like, you know, you don’t want to like be the cat playing with the ball of yarn. So you kind of want to be like right in that sweet spot where it’s like, in terms of learning and improving where it’s like, if I am not careful, I can fall off the back and it will be really hard to get back to.

Cause that’s the spot where you kind of have that forced efficiency learning where it has to happen. Um, it’s kind of like what you experienced. You’ve mentioned this plenty of times, going over to Europe where it was like blown out the back and then suddenly you really had to learn how to sharpen the blade.

Right?

[01:56:18] Amber Pierce: Exactly. Yeah. And I think you bring up a really good point because this is, I think the question is framed in terms of, are there two types of fitness here that are mutually exclusive, which we’ve established that they’re not, but it’s also not just about the fitness. It’s really about the learning.

And since you are so new, not only. Big gains and fitness pretty quickly. Um, but you’ll also probably make huge gains in terms of learning and racing. A bunch of crits is going to teach you so much if you let it right. If you approach them with a sense of curiosity and you approach each race as an opportunity to learn something about handling your bike, about racing your bike, about your nutrition, about your own capacity, to express your fitness in certain types of efforts, that learning will all carry over into a gravel race and vice versa.

So make sure that in addition to leaning into these new types of training and a new fitness level, that you are maintaining, that kind of curiosity and enthusiasm for learning as you’re approaching all of the different kinds of races that you do, because they will again be mutually beneficial.

[01:57:25] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, great tips.

Uh, well, perfect. We’re coming up on two hours. Let’s close this one out. Um, we do have one live comment that I absolutely have to mention is from Jack Tam. And he says Zelda was an intellectual’s game. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Um, yeah. Big

[01:57:44] Nate Pearson: picture, like eight year old me, you know, their friend’s house, like

[01:57:47] Jonathan Lee: intellectual,

the pinky outlet. Yeah. Yeah,

[01:57:52] Nate Pearson: exactly. Yeah. Well you do that gain control

[01:57:55] Jonathan Lee: your drinking, your Hawaiian punch with your pink unit. Yeah. To my

[01:57:59] Ivy Audrain: instructors when I they’re like Hy-Vee what’s up, you’re not turning in your homework. I’m like, listen, I’m an intellectual. Okay.

[01:58:08] Jonathan Lee: Uh, check out the soccer ina. Cool. All right. Well, thanks everybody. If you’re listening. We’ve talked a bunch about how you can become a faster cyclist, go to trainer road.com, make it happen. Uh, adapt to trainees there. It’s ready to make you faster. You can use train. Now, if you don’t want to use the plans or you use plan builder, tons of great stuff, go subscribe to the train road blog, subscribe to the YouTube channel, subscribe to this podcast and share it with other cyclists.

Have an amazing holiday, and we will have that special episode for you next week and see you in a couple of weeks after that. Thanks everybody. Take care. Bye everyone. Bye.

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