Hannah Otto, Coach Chad, Ivy, and Jonathan discuss the point of anaerobic training and how strength training affects it, why different people need to warm up differently and guidance for your next warmup, how to use both indoor and outdoor training to get faster and much more. Tune in now to Episode 355 of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast!

TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE

  • 01:23 What happens to our body during a warmup?
  • Why do different people need to warm up differently?
  • 14:52 Tips for your next pre-race warm up
  • 53:30 Rapid Fire questions
  • 01:33:30 What is the point of anaerobic exercise?
  • 01:39:20 How does strength training affect anaerobic efforts?
  • 01:54:40  Pro tips on outside workouts
  • How to balance outdoor riding with your TrainerRoad training plan
  • How to balance indoor and outdoor training to get faster

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Acute Behavior of Oxygen Consumption, Lactate Concentrations, and Energy Expenditure During Resistance Training: Comparisons Among Three Intensities

Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

Successful Athletes Podcast

Science of Getting Faster Podcast

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

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Jonathan Lee: Welcome to the podcast is dedicated to making you a faster cyclist asks a cycling coach podcast presented by trainer road and coach Jonathan Lee joined by an awesome crew here today. We have pivot cycles and DT Swiss is Hanna auto, everyone and hand up. Plus the black bibs racing’s Ivo drain. Hey, how’s it going?

[00:00:27] Jonathan Lee: And we also have our head coach. Chad Timmerman, everybody. Good to have you, Chad. Uh, we’re going to get two weeks in a row with you, but then we made a scheduling snafu. So next week you won’t be with us. So we’re going to like just, we’re going to squeeze the juice. We got Chad this week. It’s going to be a good one too.

[00:00:43] Jonathan Lee: Um, That’s it, you can submit your questions and they’re the ones that we’re going to answer today. Well, I mean, not the ones that you’re submitting now, because that would be future and this has passed, but Hey, just the same. You can submit your questions@trainroad.com slash podcast. That’s where we will come through questions every week and to answer them.

[00:00:59] Jonathan Lee: And if you’re listening to this podcast, joining us on YouTube right now, give it a thumbs up. If you’re listening, share the podcast with your friends and rate it on Spotify, that’s a huge need for us. And it really helps the podcast. So sharing it with everybody. That’s the thing to do, uh, before we get into any, or before we were going to throw everything aside and just jump straight into questions today.

What happens to our body during a warmup?

[00:01:18] Jonathan Lee: And this first one comes from. His name, uh, he says, help me understand warm-up requirements and the performance throughout a ride. I feel like I need about an hour before I can perform properly early efforts. Feel terrible and make me want to quit. While later, during comfort or comparable efforts, I enjoy pushing harder and farther.

[00:01:36] Jonathan Lee: The people I ride with seem to be much more consistent in their performance. Usually outperforming me in the beginning and keeping the same level throughout the ride. Only dropping off toward the end when exhausted. Whereas I seem to struggle at first, often holding the others back then it evens out and towards the end, I can often impress them with my efforts.

[00:01:53] Jonathan Lee: So I paraphrase. Where do you find a paraphrase? Where do you find the strength and energy at this point? That’s what they’re asking him. He says, and they don’t do anything different, different than me. The difference is at most 10 minutes of riding to their pace or to their place or mine. So what could be the cause of this?

[00:02:10] Jonathan Lee: Could it be physiological? I’ve done many years of strength training before starting cycling more seriously. So could it be explained by my muscle mass and muscle fiber type? What else could it be? Do you have any similar experiences yourself or with other riders? What can I do to improve this? Even if it’s just a social ride, it does suck to be barely holding on for the first hour and simply adding an hour at the beginning of each ride.

[00:02:32] Jonathan Lee: Isn’t really practical. Uh, this is, we have a lot of fodder, whether it’s personal experience, where they’re talking about warmups and the science behind Warren was lots of stuff to go through with this. But Ivy you’ve done a ton of different types of racing. Track racing. So there’s this old adage where it’s like shorter event, longer, the warmup longer event, shorter the warmup flight, where they’re in versary related.

[00:02:54] Jonathan Lee: That’s an adage that isn’t scientific. That’s just like what we hear people say. And you have tested the extremes of that because you have done long worlds who are lever level pro road races, and then you’ve done track racing where you just stand in sprint for a short period of time. Have you noticed something like this before, where it takes you a long time to warm up, whether it’s in you or other writers?

[00:03:18] Jonathan Lee: Yeah,

[00:03:18] Ivy Audrain: I’m definitely raced with and written with people that say this and believe this, that they take longer to warm up and get so trapped in it that it sometimes, maybe like William is experiencing kind of wrecks their ride or race because they get trapped in that mindset that they take so long to warm up.

[00:03:38] Ivy Audrain: And the thing that stuck out to me about what Williams said is that the people they ride with outperform in the beginning and stay stronger. I don’t know that that’s necessarily true. Maybe the people that William is riding with just isn’t waiting to feel absolutely perfect, you know, William might be, and that’s kind of what I’ve experienced with people that believe that they need a really long time to warm up.

[00:04:03] Ivy Audrain: They usually don’t, they’re just waiting to feel just right and perfect. And everyone around them feels the same way, but. You know, they’re not warmed up yet either, but they’re just not waiting to feel just right. And there may be able to get into that effort a little bit better because they’re not trapped in that mindset of thinking they need more time, you know?

[00:04:26] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Uh, Hannah, how about you? Like, does this, does any of this resonate with you? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:04:33] Hannah Finchamp: And I feel like I do feel like I need a little bit longer warmup maybe then some people, um, but definitely not an hour. So I think there’s, there’s a point of diminishing returns and this where I completely agree with IVs, what’s Ivy’s saying is at a certain point, you’re no longer warming up.

[00:04:51] Hannah Finchamp: You’re just waiting to feel perfect. And that moment may or may not ever come. And so I think really you need to understand. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so I think, you know, what this individual needs to understand is what the main goals of warming up are. And once that individual has achieved those goals, it’s time to just move forward regardless of what they feel like.

[00:05:19] Jonathan Lee: Um, yeah. And Chad, this is, this has gotta like strike chords with you because there are a lot of different questions in this that he’s asked. Um, there’s also some assumptions in. Uh, where do you want to start with addressing this question? Then we’ll get into more, some like some practical things of what each of us do to warm up and we can take that discussion.

[00:05:38] Jonathan Lee: And

[00:05:39] Chad Timmerman: Hannah just set this up really well too. And we’ll get to what her warmup is because when we were discussing this prior in our planning meeting, she said so many things that hit on a lot of scientific points that are all cover. So, uh, we’ll, we’ll get to that. But William, I, I want to express a little bit of a, I kind of relate to, because I mean, we just dove right into this.

[00:05:58] Chad Timmerman: Typically we have a bit of preamble and we talk about a whole bunch of things and I can settle into a more relaxed groove and there’s no warm up today. We’re doing this.

[00:06:07] Jonathan Lee: So bear with us first.

[00:06:11] Chad Timmerman: Okay. So, uh, let’s, let’s just cover what, what Hannah alluded to that the purported purposes are really the benefits of warming up.

[00:06:19] Chad Timmerman: And then we can maybe piece together why it’s such a struggle for, for William or maybe why it shouldn’t be, uh, first off, you know, physiologically, there are a number of things we’re trying to achieve, and largely we want to increase boss body muscle temperature. So you can call it body temperate. Really we’re trying to heat the muscles.

[00:06:35] Chad Timmerman: There are other things that are going to heat with it, but, um, a number of studies will have touted and it is a clear, scientific consensus. It’s uh, about a degree Celsius increase in muscle temperature can yield improvements in performance and they can pin that to a number. I see 2% up to 5%, depending on whatever aspect of exercise performance they’re measured.

[00:06:57] Chad Timmerman: And there’s also a muscle temperature response that positively relates to the movement velocity. So to put that less scientifically it’s high-speed movements are tied to warming and that ties to improvement performance. So there’s reason we do recommend quick legs spinning at the start of every workout.

[00:07:12] Chad Timmerman: There’s a velocity related aspect to that. And the same can be said about the work rate or in our parlance, the intensity. So, you know, the, the, the, the takeaway here is that all of this so far supports inclusion of both quick spinning and a little bit of hard work when you’re warming up. And this makes sense in, in, in most cases, we’ll get to the simplicity of, of all of this a little bit later.

[00:07:34] Chad Timmerman: And then also interestingly, the higher, the intensity, the warmup, but longer lasting the warming effects. And that’s, that’s something that I kind of want to address a little bit to just ahead here. But, uh, and, and I do recognize that it’s not always desirable to, to warm to, to this point because we can decrease our heat storage capacity.

[00:07:55] Chad Timmerman: I mean, on a hot day, warming up in the direct sun prior to a criteria where you’re gonna be hot from lap one, probably not a good idea. So warm-ups do need to be tempered with good judgment. I mean, it can all be reduced to science. My audio, I can, but I mean, you don’t even have to consider the science.

[00:08:10] Chad Timmerman: Just recognize that if you go in hot, you’re going to stay hot in. You’re probably going to get hotter. Okay. Another benefit, a purported one and actually a measured one or research-based or evidence-based one is to elevate baseline, baseline CO2. So our oxygen uptake, and we want to raise that prior to engaging in whatever our event or race or workout is for a number of reasons.

[00:08:33] Chad Timmerman: First of which is we want to improve those VO two kinetics that we’ve discussed in the past, and to put it really simply, it’s just faster oxygen response. You know, you work harder, you need more oxygen and you work less, you need less oxygen. How quickly did those kinetics change? Secondly, By elevating that that baseline be able to bring in your oxygen uptake up prior to, to whatever you’re going to do.

[00:08:53] Chad Timmerman: We can actually reduce that VO two slow component that we’ve also discussed. So, you know, over time that inexorable crawl toward not really failure, but definitely diminished performance and more labored, just higher RPE, just, just harder work. We can actually affect that positively by warming up. And then, and we talked about this a number of times, and I think this is probably the most obvious one is we can recruit, uh, decrease our reliance on glycogen, early in a workout or race.

[00:09:19] Chad Timmerman: And the idea being that if, if more oxygen is being consumed, then we’re making better use of our aerobic metabolism, which means we’re tapping our anaerobic stores less. And I say all this, but this all assumes that the warmup was intense enough. And Hannah already touched on this. I think we’re going to talk more about it, but passively noodling on your bike is not the same thing as a structured work or a structured warmup where you include fast peddling and efforts that are above your FTP.

[00:09:46] Chad Timmerman: And it also assumes, and this is very important that it’s not followed by too long, a duration of a transition. You can’t warm up and then go raise 30 minutes later and expect to benefit from any of the, any of the things I just described. And a lot of the studies, quite a lot of the studies pin that at about 10 minutes, and it’s a really narrow range.

[00:10:05] Chad Timmerman: I saw the high end being nine to 10 minutes. One study looked at nine and everyone else seemed to agree on 10 minutes around figure. But if you do your warmup, do your best to get to the line and get going within 10 minutes, if you want to fully benefit from a lot of the things I just described. And then there are some muscular benefits.

[00:10:22] Chad Timmerman: I won’t get deep in these, but improve muscle metabolism, which we kind of touched on with the aerobic, anaerobic contributions, increased crossbridge cycling rate. And again, we could dive into what that is, but I don’t think that’s going to make anybody faster so much as what’s important here is to understand that it’s just better muscle function and muscles work better because they’re warmer.

[00:10:41] Chad Timmerman: Okay. And then you get a little more specific and prime your, your type two fibers, right? You’re you’re, you’re high force, low fatigue resistant fibers. If you know, if you’re gonna use on that, if anything you’re going to do is type two reliant, probably a good idea to weight those guys up, it’s spreading as part of your right.

[00:11:02] Chad Timmerman: It’s a, it’s an obvious get, but any type of racing you do, it could be cross country, mountain bike, marathon, mountain bike, uh, even at time trial. Yeah, for whatever reason, attack short climbs. I mean, there are all sorts of use cases where it makes sense to do a little bit or a handful of, I guess, evacuation efforts.

[00:11:20] Chad Timmerman: This does translate to improve performance measured, evidence-based improve performance. And then finally, it’s kind of an outlier. Something I don’t think people necessarily consider, but it can prime your respiratory muscles. And, and I leaned on a particular study that showed evidence that use of one of those inspiratory muscle devices.

[00:11:39] Chad Timmerman: So an IMD actually improved 3,200 meter running time, and it did so via enhancements in inspiratory muscle function. And I know that doesn’t directly translate to what we’re talking about here, but it does suggest that perhaps your inspiratory muscles bear a small influence. And I think that makes good reason those are muscles.

[00:11:56] Chad Timmerman: We heavily rely upon, especially if we’re working hard. So why not kind of prime the.

[00:12:01] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. So this is a lot of like the physical goings on. Thank you so much, Jeff. That was like a wonderful breakdown of what goes on inside our body. When we warm up, we also have other episodes where we’ve talked about this.

[00:12:11] Jonathan Lee: So if you searched for ASCA cycling coach podcast, warm-up, you’ll find the different times when we’ve mentioned this. And Chad has gone. Chad just did a fantastic job of summarizing what he’s gone into a lot of depth in other episodes, which is fantastic. I want to focus in on this physical stuff and then go into the mental side of things thereafter.

[00:12:30] Jonathan Lee: Chad, do you think it, would it be okay if we went over Hannah’s warmup and use that kind of as like a kickoff to talk about the physical things,

[00:12:37] Chad Timmerman: because it, it kind of tees up a number of questions that I have for William, a number of questions. I think we all have for William. Yeah, no

[00:12:43] Jonathan Lee: doubt, Hannah.

[00:12:43] Jonathan Lee: What’s your, what’s your typical warmup? Like we can run through that. And then, uh, the other question that I have with this is when do you change that and how do you change it depending on different circumstances?

[00:12:55] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. I’ll do my best to just focus on the physical, cause I feel like the mental is so intermixed with this as well.

[00:13:02] Hannah Finchamp: That, uh, I’m excited to talk about that too, but usually I just start with a super easy spin, um, where I just ask nothing of myself other than to turn over the pedals. That’s just going to last as long as I need it to, but probably no more than five minutes. And then I’ll start an aerobic build, uh, which will lead into a short tempo effort, usually three to five minutes.

[00:13:26] Hannah Finchamp: Um, and then I’ll do usually three high cadence spin ups, which I feel like really get, um, my respiratory rate up and get my muscles moving without overloading those muscles. That’s the sensation that I have. And then I’ll finish up with one race pace effort. So that’s usually what I’m doing is I’m mimicking what I anticipate the first minute of the race to be.

[00:13:50] Hannah Finchamp: Um, and then I usually spend down a little bit, I actually cooled down a little bit from that warmup so that I’m not just standing in the grid right after that hard race, pace,

[00:14:00] Jonathan Lee: breathing, heavy legs that feel like they’re full of blood and stuff. Yeah. Um, can I ask you when you, when you’re doing these high cadence spin ups that you do early on, uh, are you paying attention to power or are you more paying attention to just making sure that you are getting that neuromuscular coordination firing.

[00:14:19] Hannah Finchamp: Mostly just the neuromuscular coordination. Um, I’ll look at the power just a little bit, but the range that I allow for this is more than 50 Watts. Um, you know, I don’t really have any expectation attached to that other than, you know, I’m not going to be below a aerobic, you know, I’m not going to be in recovery type for that, but mostly what I’m looking at is being over 110 RPMs for those and still maintaining nice, good circles

[00:14:50] Jonathan Lee: and not bouncing on the saddle.

Tips for your next pre-race warm up

[00:14:52] Jonathan Lee: Sorry, Hannah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point too. Like if the whole point is to build life proper firing patterns and coordination, you don’t want to embrace bad techniques, right. Kick off the day. Yeah. Um, how about you Ivy? You just raised a crit this past weekend. Uh, something high intensity, relatively short, compared to a lot of the different events that you’ve done.

[00:15:11] Jonathan Lee: Uh, what what’s, what’s your typical warmup like or what sort of boxes do you like to check in a warmup beforehand?

[00:15:17] Ivy Audrain: Well, from a structure standpoint, mine looks remarkably similar to Hannon’s and I laughed when she said she tries to emulate what the first, like where the beginning of the race looks like, because that’s absolutely what I do.

[00:15:31] Ivy Audrain: Like if I’m going to road race, I’m not going to honestly. For a longer one, I’m not going to do much. Um, especially if I’m expecting a really kind of slow chill start, I’ll do some high cadence stuff. Um, if I’m, when I was doing track stuff, we would have like a set of rollers on the rails, like next to the start line, because you want to do be like warming up and warm all the time and be able to hop right onto the track.

[00:16:00] Ivy Audrain: Um, before this weekend, I wrote to the crit and did a lot of my warmup on the ride to the race. And, um, I think the biggest mistake that I see a lot of people do when they are trying to warm up is do really high intensity, like straight up sprinting, like anaerobic, just striking a bunch of matches to think that they need to get their legs open and ready for that kind of effort.

[00:16:27] Ivy Audrain: And it’s super unnecessary. So it’s hard to find a balance between making sure you like check all those boxes for those systems without burning a bunch of.

[00:16:36] Jonathan Lee: Chad is there like a, I mean, you’ve done TTS crits road, races, mountain bike races across the board. What’s the deal. What sort of structure do you typically try to implement for a warmup?

[00:16:46] Chad Timmerman: We’ve we’ve touched on all of it. It’s super relates to, well, first the duration of the event. I mean, if it’s going to be a three hour road race, unless you’re attacking right out of the gate, I half the time don’t even warm up for that was my warm up is literally riding my bike to the, to the start line, especially if there’s going to be a rollout, which case warm-up is almost purposeless.

[00:17:09] Chad Timmerman: Um, if. Uh, time trial and you’re going to, you’re going to be going fast, right from the start, you know, obviously gradually easing into the pace you’re going to hold, but it’s still going to be a really high pace right off the, off the ramp. Then, you know, it’s going to be more specific, uh, kind of what Hannah described, just taking, taking your time, kind of letting things open up and then easing into some, at some point some race-based efforts and then dialing it back a little bit so that you have a reprieve between the warmup and the start, but obviously not too long, a one, and then with criteriums and anything, uh, cross cross-country mountain bike, race, anything that’s going to take off really hard if you’re not braced for that, if you haven’t established or, you know, fortified the neuromuscular communication, you’re, you’re, you’re stacking the deck against yourself and, and both psychologically and physiologically, or is it sort of said that in the, in the other order, but the psychological components, a big one, because if you’ve already kind of primed yourself for something that hurts that bad, even if you’ve just done a toned down version of it and you should, um, a small ring sprints work great for, for a really fast start.

[00:18:14] Chad Timmerman: I mean, if you’re going to be one of those guys who wants to chase the first lap pre-me, or you just want to be up front, or you just want to start hurting people early, because you’re feeling great, whatever reason, just some small ring sprints, do everything you’re going to need. You don’t need to do some big gears, stomps trying to, you know, affect things in the most important way, the most important training way, probably.

[00:18:33] Chad Timmerman: So, I mean, be realistic about it. Don’t over. But it just comes down to keeping it simple. And everyone’s touched on this, you’ve spoken so far at this. W what are you facing? Well, do a little bit of that. I mean, if it’s going to be a lot of those things, do a little bit of each of those things and stagger them in whatever ways you want.

[00:18:53] Chad Timmerman: If you look at the workouts or the warmups that we’ve, uh, that, that, uh, are staged prior to every workout. I mean, the workouts always specific, or the warmups, sorry, is always specific to the workout. Always has some efforts at 99% of the time, some efforts that are just like what you’re going to do. And then sometimes it’s a more general warmup that is specific to a race simulation, and you’ll see all sorts of things that even though they don’t specifically apply to the workout, they’re purposeful.

[00:19:21] Chad Timmerman: And even some big gear stomp, or, you know, some really high intensity, 150%, 10 seconds at a time proceed a time trial. It’s like, oh, what’s that for? Well, you will rely on those fast Twitch fibers to some extent. So why not prime them with some things that aren’t going to negatively impact them? Yeah.

[00:19:38] Ivy Audrain: Don’t you feel like, uh, mentally it helps you to, when you know, it’s going to be really hard, start to get a gauge for how you’re going to feel on that day to, to kind of emulate some of those efforts.

[00:19:49] Ivy Audrain: I don’t, I mean, yeah, I know.

[00:19:52] Jonathan Lee: Oh, yeah, it’s huge. And that kind of brings up, uh, the let’s talk about the team sky warm-up that was, you know, that’s been made famous, uh, so effectively what that is, is, uh, Bradley Wiggins talks about this a lot at the time he had the, he had the same warmup every time and he used that same warmup because it was like a good diagnostic tool.

[00:20:11] Jonathan Lee: Uh, it allowed him to basically say, okay, cool. I’m, you know, I’m going to, I feel like this today when I’m riding it, the intended race intensity, and as a result, all adjust my plan. Something else, I’ll adjust the pacing strategy. Um, at least I assume that’s the logic behind it. Uh, he says that it was repeatable.

[00:20:29] Jonathan Lee: So then they could get a good fix for where they were at on the day. I’ve tried to implement that before, but I found that to be pretty damaging to my ability to be able to deliver in races a lot of the time. And here’s why, so in this sort of format, you ride at threshold for a short period of time, then you do these sprints and you’re really trying to pay attention to how you feel during that, that threshold portion.

[00:20:54] Jonathan Lee: And when there were days, and I didn’t feel good, I was like, okay, well, I don’t feel good. So today’s going to be. And it was hard for me to then overcome that later on in the race, because I had something that was reliable and concrete and there were days, and I did that same effort and I felt incredible.

[00:21:10] Jonathan Lee: And today I don’t feel that. So therefore it can’t be a good day. It’s going to be a bad day. And then what it would do is it would affect my execution. And I think many times cause me to race underneath my abilities, just because I was mentally holding myself back because of that indicator, the diagnostic tool warmup that we have a forehand.

[00:21:32] Jonathan Lee: Amber always mentioned this from the perspective of approaching something with curiosity. And if you have a warmup that’s placed in front of your racing to completely remove curiosity and give you a programmatical predefined approach, I do think that it can hurt you now, granted, it might also be really good to know, like when you go in and you do a warmup, I mean, if you feel genuinely really, really, really bad, then sure it can help you understand things later on, but it still shouldn’t govern how you race.

[00:22:01] Jonathan Lee: In my opinion, I think that you should still go out and race and give it your all and give it a shot. So I think that this is kind of like a good dovetail into the psychological side of things and what you’re supposed to be doing during a warmup or what benefit you have from that. Um, I’m going to ask you first and, and, you know, there’s music and all the other sorts of motivation that you can bring in as well during a warmup.

[00:22:24] Jonathan Lee: But what are you trying to mentally accomplish? Like what’s the mental state or what are the things that you are trying to accomplish with your warmup? So that by the end you are in a specific mental spot, um,

[00:22:39] Ivy Audrain: nothing else other than to feel like I know exactly what I’m in for, um, and how I’m physically going to respond, what it’ll feel like, what to expect.

[00:22:52] Ivy Audrain: Um, that’s it, so that, that goes for, I mean, like the whole scope of getting ready for a ride that goes for like timing and make sure, making sure I have plenty of time and, uh, reducing stress and, um, for race form of specifically, um, music to get in the right head space. Um, yeah, I really just want to, I mean like the reason why we warm up for getting our legs open and being physically ready is to make, make sure that we’re, we aren’t shocked by effort.

[00:23:25] Ivy Audrain: That’s about to take place. Right. And so that’s basically what I’m trying to prepare myself for on the mental side too.

[00:23:32] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Hannah, how about you? Uh, you mentioned the psychological portion of your warmup is huge. Yeah, I

[00:23:39] Hannah Finchamp: think. Gosh, there’s just so much to this. And I think it’s really interesting what you brought up with team sky, because it makes sense to apply to them because they can change the race, hypothetically, depending on how they feel, but it really doesn’t make sense for anyone else that I can think of.

[00:23:59] Hannah Finchamp: I mean, you know, if you’re not in the world who are road racing and you have a team where you can go to all your teammates and say, Hey, this is my sensation. Let’s do this today. I mean, I’m not going to go to on the start line and ask all the ladies if we can ease into the race a little bit more. So it really honestly does not matter how I feel in the warmup and for that reason, you know, with athletes that I coach and such, I think it’s really important to practice this, um, and create these data points in training as well.

[00:24:32] Hannah Finchamp: I’ll actually have people make a note myself included when they feel really, really bad and warm up, but then have a great workout because it happens all the time. And so it’s super important to remember those times and have those times data marked in your mind on race day, you can say, oh yeah, I feel bad today.

[00:24:53] Hannah Finchamp: But I did the last time I set a PR in my workout too. So you really have to take it with a grain of salt. Um, and I think for a lot of people. That means, structuring it a certain way. It might mean changing up your warmup, or it might be warming up with different metrics. So I think for some people, even though you use power every single day of your life, you might warm up on race day, you know, with more heart rate or perceived exertion, just so you don’t get hung up on those numbers.

[00:25:26] Hannah Finchamp: Because at that point there are Rytary, you’re not training, you’re not, you know, trying to create structure. You’re just simply trying to prepare your body for the race ahead. And so for me, that’s really what I’m doing in warmup is I’m trying to free my mind of all expectations. So that’s why I always start with the spin, because if I I’ve found that if I get on the bike and I just say, okay, I’m going to ride aerobically immediate and really it’s, what does this feel like?

[00:25:59] Hannah Finchamp: How do my legs feel? What do they feel like when I first get on the bike? What power do I gravitate towards if I get on? And I just say, I’m going to spend that’s it. That’s all. Then I find that it just so much easier to be like, oh yeah, the wattage is low because I’m not expecting it to be high because this is what I’m setting for myself.

[00:26:18] Hannah Finchamp: And so I kind of carried that through. The whole warmup is there’s no expectation. It’s just like Amber would say, oh, this is, you know, I’m entering with curiosity. This is how I feel today. That’s very interesting that this is how I feel. Huh? I wonder how that’ll impact X, Y, and Z, but it’s not setting up any sort of, it’s not, oh, this is how the race is going to be.

[00:26:40] Hannah Finchamp: It’s not changing my race strategy. It’s not, it’s not even really changing the warmup that I’m going to do. It’s just going through doing the check marks that I need to do. And then, you know what I’m really doing mentally during that is finding the things that I can believe. So I’m saying statements to myself that I can buy into and every race they’re different, you know, sometimes it is I’m going to win and I can believe that.

[00:27:06] Hannah Finchamp: And sometimes that’s really hard to believe. So I have to break it down to something different. It’s I’m gonna crush this one, climb every lap, and I can believe I can believe that. And so I’ll focus on that and buy into that. And it’s finding those phrases that you really truly believe in can hang on to going to the start lines.

[00:27:25] Jonathan Lee: Um, th this, uh, this resonates with me, I’ve gone, I’ve tried a bunch of different warmups, a bunch of different things. I’m an overthinker. So I’ve over thought a lot of it. And these days, what I typically settle on is I ride for 10 minutes. And that’s just low intensity. That’s just cruising. It’s typically like riding to the race or I’ll just ride away from the venue and ride to it.

[00:27:49] Jonathan Lee: If it’s cold, I like to be able to have a trainer, which we’re going to get into this and Chad’s questions, which are great, but otherwise it’s just, when I’m typically riding around then after 10 minutes, what I do is I just slowly ramp it up until what I feel like is a threshold effort and emphasis on feel like I’m not trying to ride it power I’ll glance down, then it’ll look at power.

[00:28:09] Jonathan Lee: And once again, just like Hannah said, it’s like, okay, interesting. So let’s see what it feels like if I hold that for another four to five minutes and then after that, then I relaxed and I might do some quick spin ups and that’s about it. Um, and that’s my warmup. And how many times has this happened to all of us, where during the warmup we felt something and in the race, we feel something very different.

[00:28:31] Jonathan Lee: Like it’s, it’s, for me, it’s very rare that the warmup is exactly how I will feel also in the race. Uh, Chad just went through a laundry list of different things that are coming on board and getting flipped on and changing in our body when we warm up. And for us to think that it’s just like instant, perfect diagnostic that when we do the warm-up, it’s absolutely everything’s on board and where we can check the systems for how it will feel later.

[00:28:56] Jonathan Lee: Eh, it’s, we’re more complex beings than that. Uh, so as a result, During your race, it’s probably going to feel a bit different than your warmup. So that’s why I try to not put too much stock behind it. I just simply try to get there for a while. And for me, it’s almost purely psychological. Honestly, it’s just getting to the point where I’m not shocked by the effort because I’m shocked by the effort.

[00:29:16] Jonathan Lee: Every single time I ride by the first effort, I’m always shocked. It’s always hard. So why not get the shock out of the, so then I can just focus and see when I’m on course, that’s really kind of like my whole point behind warmups. I showed up at a short track race last week with like zero warmup, because just didn’t have time.

[00:29:33] Jonathan Lee: It got to the race, I think with like five minutes to go. And yeah, starting with a bunch of incredibly fast juniors that just blew my doors off. But even then in those moments, it’s a good thing. We’re talking about psychological preparation, these warmups, I could have easily fallen into the trap and it was tempting to go, well, this race is going to go terribly because I haven’t warmed up.

[00:29:52] Jonathan Lee: And it’s, you know, I’m going to get blown out right at the beginning of the race, it’s going to be really hard. And I could run through all the scenarios in my mind, but instead I was just like, you know what, you’re fine. Like, you’ve done plenty of efforts where you’ve gone really hard in the beginning.

[00:30:04] Jonathan Lee: And then that’s just how it stuck. Whether it’s a group ride that you didn’t anticipate the last that long or anything else. Um, so I had to remove all of those temptations from my mind and just approach it with curiosity, uh, because perfect warmups, aren’t also guaranteed. Like, you know, we don’t always have the time to be able to do them like that.

[00:30:24] Jonathan Lee: Yeah.

[00:30:24] Hannah Finchamp: I think that the physical sensations of warmup are rarely the same as this. But the mental sensations are almost always the same. You know, if you’re really struggling mentally in the warmup, I wouldn’t expect the switch to flip when you hit the start line, same way as if you’re jazzed and you’re excited and you’re energized and man, I’m going to crush this race.

[00:30:47] Hannah Finchamp: You’re probably not going to get to the start line and be like, oh, I didn’t warm up. Well, you know, like it’s, you’re gonna, you’re, it’s the mental aspect is going to carry over. And so that’s really what I would emphasize more than

[00:31:00] Jonathan Lee: anything. Chad, what sort of questions would you have in this case for William about the warm and kind of like some contextual questions that you could ask him that maybe help?

[00:31:10] Jonathan Lee: I have

[00:31:10] Chad Timmerman: several, but I want to, I want to be included on this particular line of conversation right now, because I’m not saying you need to divorce yourself from the psychological aspects of warming up because they’re, they’re crucial. They’re super important, but I am saying there’s a way to mitigate their impact on your Headspace and that’s by not taking your warmup.

[00:31:28] Chad Timmerman: Seriously. I I’ve done enough races and I’ve done probably more workouts than most people on the planet. Most endurance athletes, it’s been a consistent part of my life for, you know, 30 plus years. And, and over that time, I’ve recognized. Just like everyone has touched on already is that the warmup does not dictate where I’m at it.

[00:31:49] Chad Timmerman: And for that reason, especially during race prepper or a pre-race warmup, I never look at the data. I mean, that’s not to say, I never look at the data. I might glance down at it, but I never let that sink in. It says it doesn’t matter. I need to, I’m doing a time trial. So I need to feel what a time trial effort is.

[00:32:06] Chad Timmerman: I don’t care what the Watts tell me right now. It’s just, okay. This is how hard a time trial feels. Cause those wallets are probably not the Watson I’m going to deliver. Especially if I know I’ve done the work I’ve done the recovery, I’ve done the nourishment. I’m gonna I’m in a good place mentally. I mean, if everything’s there already setting the stage for me, I’m not going to let my warmup talk me out of a good performance.

[00:32:26] Chad Timmerman: So, so just kinda at least detached don’t divorce from it, but detach from what the warm-up is telling you, you know, just, if you look at the data, don’t let it affect you. If you don’t want to look at the data, don’t look at the data, just do the efforts that you know, you have to do a sprint to sprint. It doesn’t matter if you’re generating 1500 Watts or 500 Watts.

[00:32:45] Chad Timmerman: If he got on it real hard, you’re accomplishing what you need to accomplish.

[00:32:51] Ivy Audrain: Y’all was special warmup screen on your head unit. Cause I do.

[00:32:55] Chad Timmerman: Oh, yes. Yeah. It’s called skull electrical tape.

[00:33:02] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. It’s uh, it’s, it’s something that once again, we have a tendency to overthink all of us endurance athletes and the warmup is one where we can tie ourselves in a, not rather than enabling ourselves for a good performance. So of that, Chad, like why would you let a, why would you let a warmup derail something that you’ve built for in a very measured and responsible way for months?

[00:33:23] Jonathan Lee: Like you have a track record that proves that you’ll be able to perform, right? So don’t let that Mormon. And

[00:33:29] Chad Timmerman: even on the days where it’s quite the opposite where you’re like, I am going to feel terrible today, I have barely trained or, you know, it took a week off the bike or everything is standing against me right now.

[00:33:41] Chad Timmerman: And my warmup feels great. It doesn’t feel great. It doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s still probably not going to bear a real influence on how, how you raise.

[00:33:50] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. Well, and unless you warm up on a trainer, it’s going to be different every time anyways. So you have to allow for

[00:33:56] Jonathan Lee: flexibility. Yeah. CAD. What questions would you have for William?

[00:34:01] Jonathan Lee: Do you have a handful of them here? And I think that they can bring up some good talking points on how to execute a warmup.

[00:34:07] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. So. We’ve touched on these already. My biggest question we haven’t, or we have, but we have different views on it and that’s going to be fun to discuss. So first off, is it cold?

[00:34:16] Chad Timmerman: I mean, that’s, that’s an easy get, I mean, we just talked about muscles function better when they’re warmed and they function better when they’re kept warm, can’t warm up, let them cool off and then expect to have all the benefits of the warming.

[00:34:29] Jonathan Lee: Can I, can I go nerd on this one really quick? Because this one matters a lot to me.

[00:34:33] Jonathan Lee: Um, on the temperature side of things, you mentioned warming up for a criterium. I’m sure you’re thinking of the Davis 4th of July criteria that you’ve raised plenty of times when it’s just always extremely hot and. It’s a criterium that’s usually really fast. And it’s also a lot of turns. You can go onto our YouTube channel and you can see examples of, of that one.

[00:34:53] Jonathan Lee: So I

[00:34:53] Chad Timmerman: don’t think I’ve ever done it under a hundred degrees. I

[00:34:55] Jonathan Lee: really don’t. And it’s always hard. And the reason that it’s always hard is because you’ve got those turns that are constant in that course, snaking back and forth. So it means that the race is always, if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving back.

[00:35:08] Jonathan Lee: It’s one of those situations. It’s pretty hard to sit in. So in a race like that, you do want to make sure that you’re warmed up, but warming up in, in and of itself just raises your core temperature quite a lot. And then if you do it on a trainer, it’s going to raise your core temperature even higher because you’re lacking that evaporative cooling that you have from moving.

[00:35:26] Jonathan Lee: Because even on a windy day, when it’s, you know, over a hundred degrees and really hot, that you don’t get much effect when you’re just sitting still like that, you get a whole lot more when you’re moving

[00:35:36] Chad Timmerman: races like that, or best case, uh, best promotion or support for cooling vests. I mean, it doesn’t matter if you sit in the shade with fans on you, fans are blowing warm air shade only does so much that the cooling vest actually makes a tremendous impact in events like that.

[00:35:53] Chad Timmerman: I

[00:35:53] Jonathan Lee: agree. And, and this is why like, for an event like cyclocross, when it’s cold, I think that the trainer is awesome for warming up rollers, something like that, because it’s so cold that if you ride around outside, you might be just freezing yourself, you know, but just by moving through the air at a high rate of speed when you’re trying to warm up, whereas if you can warm up on those rollers, it’s great.

[00:36:12] Jonathan Lee: Also like when you think about. I remember Chad said that you’re trying to bring a whole lot of systems online. And if you do raise your core temperature too much, it’s not like you can just like quickly cool off, you know, within that 10 minutes and you’re ready to go for the start line. Core temperature actually takes quite a while to adjust theirs.

[00:36:31] Jonathan Lee: And it’s not something that just the effects are instant as soon as we can. And we can’t just like drop it by stepping into the shape.

[00:36:37] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. It’s dependent on the ambient conditions too. So if you’re sitting in a hundred degree or 90 degree, ambient conditions, you can only expect to cool so

[00:36:44] Jonathan Lee: much. Yep. So think about that in terms of what is the temperature going to be.

[00:36:50] Jonathan Lee: And then for me, that’s my next decision from that is, okay, am I going to warm up stationary? Or am I going to warm up on the road, moving through or on the trail, whatever else it might be. Um, and that’s a big point that I think doesn’t get enough focus. So, yeah. It’s, I think it’s a really good question.

[00:37:07] Jonathan Lee: Sorry.

[00:37:08] Chad Timmerman: No, that’s fine. And still on the topic of cold temperature, because I’m, I’m not assuming anything, but if it is a cold, a cold ride, then you know, the warmup is going to, uh, carry different impact or you’re gonna have to focus on different things. And if it’s a hot ride, but let’s assume it’s cool.

[00:37:24] Chad Timmerman: We’ve already determined that are already laid out. That muscles just function better when they’re warm, but this is something honestly I’d maybe come across, but I didn’t really process it, but this, the speed of muscle relaxation is also affected by the temperature. And it’s a pretty surprisingly high temperature where they’re still affected.

[00:37:43] Chad Timmerman: It was, I can’t remember what it is in Celsius, but it was like high seventies in Fahrenheit, which is not particularly cold, but it does have an impact apparently on how quickly, how well they relax. And we’ve talked a number of times about, you know, muscles, resisting muscles. You know, you got a synergist and an agonist and sorry, an agonist and antagonist.

[00:38:05] Chad Timmerman: So, you know, for pushing down the pedals and our quadriceps are firing and our glutes are firing to some extent. And our hamstrings are for whatever reason resisting because it’s cold, temperatures are cool temperatures and they can’t quite let go as readily as they would. You know, we’re working against ourselves, which even if it’s two milliseconds, two milliseconds magnified times 90 repetitions per minute times, however many minutes that lasts it can, it can be an impact.

[00:38:32] Chad Timmerman: So we do take an efficiency hit when the muscles aren’t sufficiently warm, even on the other side of things, the relaxation side of things, not even the contraction side of things. So the temperature is absolutely concerned on both sides. And then my second question is what’s your typical cadence? And I know Hannah mentioned this already, and there’s the cadence you’re going to ride at.

[00:38:57] Chad Timmerman: And whether or not that serves you best is debatable. That’s a whole other conversation, but the warm-up cadence shouldn’t be direct mimicry of what your usual cadence is, or even what your race cadence is going to be. Because we’ve talked about how some of that quick spinning does do things that that may not seem directly applicable, but we’ll carry it.

[00:39:15] Chad Timmerman: Performance benefits. And then, uh, what intensities are you actually encountering during that first hour? This is a big deal because you know, then you have to ask yourself just like we’re talking about what the specific specificity of the warmups are. You priming the right energy systems. Are you priming the right muscle fibers?

[00:39:33] Chad Timmerman: Did you do small efforts at the intended attends intensities? Because the, and it’s the same thing that warmup simplification you need to replicate. What’s ahead. Don’t surprise your body. Don’t surprise your brain, do the things that are similar to what you’re expecting to do soon. So if you’re rolling into this and maybe you’ve got 10 minutes to get to the start of the ride and you just noodle over there, and then, you know, it’s going to be a fast start.

[00:39:56] Chad Timmerman: Well, surprise, surprise. You’re not ready for that. And this is going to be harder on you than it is for the people who may be on their roll over, did a couple hard efforts. And then this brings me to our biggest question, I think is what we can, we can drive on the most is why do your friends always fall apart towards.

[00:40:14] Chad Timmerman: And I know each of us I’ve seen it on paper and her dimension have, have different theories on this, frankly. I see it as they’re just not pacing as well as you are. I think you might be getting it right. You’re rolling into a long ride, holding a little bit back at the beginning or resisting it or, you know, suffering, but then you end up feeling better toward the end of it.

[00:40:33] Chad Timmerman: It tells me they’re all going out too hard. They’re all expanding too much, too soon, such that the last hour of the ride is miserable for them. And they’re looking at you, like, why are you still so fresh? Well, I didn’t blow myself up in the first hour or

[00:40:44] Jonathan Lee: two. Yeah. And when you’re psychologically in a state where like, oh, I need a long time to warm up.

[00:40:50] Jonathan Lee: I need to do that. You’re going to ride efficiently. You’re going to ride conservatively. You’re going to do all those necessary things to be able to conserve energy and pace properly. Right? So I think that this is where the big point lies. It’s the story you tell yourself about you and your needs to warm up and how that affects your pacing.

[00:41:12] Jonathan Lee: And then you’re inherently considering your situation against your friends. And you’re considering that your friends have the ideal state and you do not, which is something we all do with every race we show up to a race. And we just think about whether we’re in perfect condition or not. And we never think about the fact that everybody else is asking the same exact question and thinking that, oh, I’m not perfect today.

[00:41:33] Jonathan Lee: So it that’s almost that that should be erased. Uh, nobody warms up perfectly in relation to you. Uh, don’t think of it in that regard. Everybody always feels uncomfortable in the beginning. That is part of it. In most cases, most people that are amateur cyclists, not professionals and bad enough, maybe Hannah and Ivy can back us up here and say, it’s the case of professionals too.

[00:41:56] Jonathan Lee: But most cyclists also go out too hard. Uh, so if you combine all of these factors, maybe in this case, William, you’re just, you’re just, uh, you’re, you’re doing great. Like it’s normal. You just make sure that if you do need to do something like a warmup and you have time to do a warmup share, you can do it.

[00:42:14] Jonathan Lee: If you don’t have time to do a warmup, go in and expect the first little bit to feel uncomfortable, but continue to pace yourself. And you’ll, you’ll be in a good spot, but never think that you’re the only one with a problem or the only one that’s unique in this case. Everyone feels something that’s likely very similar to what you’re feeling on the bike.

[00:42:34] Jonathan Lee: Hannah, I don’t know. Do you have anything else to add on this one?

[00:42:38] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I think that, um, this is where you have to decide what. To accomplish and then you have to get over it mentally. So if you want to have your best race or your best ride, then maybe you’re pacing it perfectly. And you should take joy in the fact that you’re beating everyone at the end, because just like your saying, how are they beating me at the start?

[00:43:06] Hannah Finchamp: You even said, they’re asking you how much, how do you have this much energy at the end? So I think in some ways it can be aggressive is always greener situation. And if this is what works for you and, and that’s how you feel, then instead flip the script mentally and be proud of your resilience and your endurance.

[00:43:27] Hannah Finchamp: Um, but on the other hand, if you would prefer, or you even want to just try to be a different kind of racer, have a different kind of ride. Try to change your expectation and to go out really, really, really hard at the start and see what happens. Uh, just like Jonathan said, you know, a lot of races, we all start too hard and we all know that we start too hard.

[00:43:50] Hannah Finchamp: It’s a part of racing. It’s almost a game of chicken, you know? And that’s usually I’m on the throttle, the first lap, just saying, it’s going to slow down. Everybody hurts. It’s gonna slow down. Everybody hurts because that’s the truth. No one is holding that pace. So the next hour and a half, three hours, eight hours, whatever, you know, if it’s led though, whatever it is, everyone’s starting just a little bit too fast and some people, a lot of it too fast.

[00:44:15] Hannah Finchamp: So yeah, just don’t be afraid

[00:44:18] Chad Timmerman: of that. Look at what William’s describing though. He’s not saying the race or the ride starts too hard and I get dropped. He’s saying it starts to hard. And I hang in there. I mean, exactly what you’re describing right now. And then what happens toward the end of this. It is, he’s the one who’s excelling, you know, in a race, you know what that translates to success.

[00:44:38] Chad Timmerman: I mean, you’re, you’re during the podium, you’re in the top 10, you’re the winner. I mean, cause you did it right. So he’s getting through the hard part, which leads me to believe that none of this is really physiologically explicable. I think, I think this is all on the psychological side. He’s deciding to interpret feelings in a particular way that setting his head space, uh, to not fail, but to struggle when, if he just would let himself off that leash and recognize him, this is a way it goes.

[00:45:05] Chad Timmerman: And then I’m good in the last hour. So I’m just going to trust that I’m obviously not getting it wrong. This is hard, but racing is group rides. Our workouts are just, just get okay with it. Because my belief is that William you’re mentally reining in your physical capabilities. They’re they’re they’re they can do the job.

[00:45:24] Chad Timmerman: You’re just fighting them early on and then benefiting from the fact that they’re still existing in the, in that last hour where you’re surpassing everybody else. So there’s

[00:45:36] Hannah Finchamp: a couple things too that I think, I think why. Just flip the script and say everybody’s hurting. And like Chad just said, I’m hanging in and then I’m winning.

[00:45:47] Hannah Finchamp: So

[00:45:48] Jonathan Lee: Victoria people are great at masking. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like they’re totally fine when they’re

[00:45:53] Hannah Finchamp: not, and everyone is better than you, if that makes sense, because you know what you’re feeling. And so even if you’re masking it, well, at least for me, I, I never really know if I am or not. Uh, you know, cause in my head I know what I’m feeling, but I don’t know what anyone else’s feeling.

[00:46:12] Hannah Finchamp: Um, but the other thing I would do is one, if you have a power meter, see what the differences, see if you are going harder at the start. Um, and then the other side of that too, is just one time carve out some extra warmup before the start and see if that actually does make a difference or if it is just indeed a hard beginning of the ride.

[00:46:38] Hannah Finchamp: And then that kind of starts to eliminate some of these variables and it’ll help you tell a more accurate story in your head.

[00:46:47] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic advice. Uh, separating this from Williams experience. If he show up to the race and you want to get an, a warmup, but you don’t have the time and you’re stressed and you’re everything else.

[00:46:58] Jonathan Lee: It’s once again, so much of warmups is the psychological preparation. And if you show up in just a state and you are twisted in knots, it’s going to be difficult to get a whole lot of value out of that. Um, IVU you have a few tips that you would give people just to kind of arrive at the race a little bit more calm and less disorganized and scrambled.

[00:47:19] Jonathan Lee: Uh, what, what tips would you give to, to set yourself up for success with your warmup?

[00:47:23] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. When you were saying that, I just had flashbacks of being less organized and showing up to register when people are like on their trainers and I’m like, oops, Nope,

[00:47:38] Ivy Audrain: spoiler alert. The race didn’t go very well. Um,

[00:47:43] Hannah Finchamp: but yeah, uh, specifically,

[00:47:44] Ivy Audrain: if we’re talking about, um, a crit and riding to a race or a short track or something that you can ride to, um, I like to ride there because I feel like that process of, um, looking at the venue map, figuring out how I’m going to ride there, knowing how long it will take me knowing how much time it will take me and packing my little bag with, um, all the clothes and I may or may not need and like recovery drink and snacks and everything.

[00:48:15] Ivy Audrain: Um, just makes me feel like I’m having a plan that. Takes away. I feel like when I’m driving in Carteret race, I kind of lean on it as a crutch a little bit. And I’m going to just throw all your junk in your car and, um, you don’t really need to look, or I feel like I don’t need to look that closely at exactly how long it will take me.

[00:48:34] Ivy Audrain: How, like, where I will park, um, how far away I have to park from registration, how it leaves a lot of variables, unknown for how long it will take me to actually get ready for the race. Um, so that’s why I liked when I can ride to race.

[00:48:50] Jonathan Lee: I think there’s a, I’ve mentioned this before, but I just build out in the notes app or my phone or whatever else you have, like easily accessible.

[00:48:58] Jonathan Lee: I typically build out like a, an outline based on the schedule of the race. And it’s like, I start at the start of the race and then I think, okay, I’ll probably want to be show up to the line five to 10 minutes ahead of time. Like five minutes ahead, depending on the race. Sometimes you have to show up really early for call-ups sometimes you don’t and then from there I’ll think.

[00:49:16] Jonathan Lee: Okay. And then it’ll take me, I want to have this amount of time. For my warmup. And then I want to have this amount of time to get dressed this amount of time to pin my number on that sort of stuff. And then that means I want to arrive at the race at this point, which means it didn’t want to leave my house by this point and it, but I set that all up in my phone.

[00:49:34] Jonathan Lee: So I don’t have to think about that schedule and recreate that schedule in my mind all the time and wonder it’s a small thing, but it makes everything else fall into place. And then it makes it so that when my warmup is there, I don’t stress about time. I don’t stress about anything else. I just know that my only focus right now is, is just getting my body ready and get my mind ready

[00:49:55] Chad Timmerman: on that topic.

[00:49:56] Chad Timmerman: Let’s, let’s talk about what happens in the event that you get there close to it. And the warmup doesn’t happen because I think we’ve all been in that situation. And there there’s a really, a couple of routes to go either. Just grit your teeth and know this is going to be really hard. I’m not physiologically ready.

[00:50:11] Chad Timmerman: I’m not mentally braced. I’m probably still distracted because I showed up late and I barely got everything together just in time to get here. And now the racist starting, or you can check out and maybe the extreme side of things, you’re like, I’m not even gonna race. I showed up, I didn’t get my warmup in.

[00:50:27] Chad Timmerman: This is what, why bother. Bother because you can work your way through some misery and, and still hang in there. Maybe it won’t be your best race. Maybe you’ll miss an early break. Maybe. I dunno. So, so many things can happen, but the piece of prize over the course of even a short 30 minute crit, how much your system, your body and your brain can, can rally and get you back in it just because you miss your warmup or just because your warmup isn’t exactly what you wanted it to be.

[00:50:55] Chad Timmerman: Maybe it was a bit truncated again, don’t take your warmup too seriously. And if you miss your warmup, don’t, don’t write off that race. You’d be surprised at what you can deal with. If you’ll just make yourself

[00:51:05] Jonathan Lee: do it. I always think of it as there’s going to be an effort early on in my day, that is going to be extremely uncomfortable.

[00:51:14] Jonathan Lee: And that’s inevitable. It’s going to hit like, no matter what, and if I have time to warm up fantastic, because then I can get that one out of the way and then show up into the race and be familiar with what that feels like. And then that’s, it’s not going to hurt as much just because I’m familiar with it.

[00:51:29] Jonathan Lee: That’s it like? It’s, that’s all it is like my body or my mind tells me that, Hey, I’ve just recently done this and I made it through, therefore I can do it again. And I’ve shown up to our local crits with like zero chance to warm up because of time and on the line, I’ve taken a bunch of different approaches in this situation, but on the line, I’ve simply got.

[00:51:49] Jonathan Lee: Well, it’s going to hurt. So I might as well, actually, this is my brain. So this, this may not lead to success, but like it’s going to hurt really bad. So I might as well actually just go extremely hard from the gun because it’s going to hurt everybody else. And then I get it out of the way. And then I have the rest of the race where it’s not going to feel as hard.

[00:52:06] Jonathan Lee: Uh, I that’s the story I tell myself. And then as a result, that’s what happens. Like it’s all comes down to what we ended up telling ourselves and how we move through it that way. So yeah, I mean, uh, uh, your warmup, isn’t always going to be perfect and you have to be versatile enough and you have to understand that.

[00:52:22] Jonathan Lee: Be smart enough to know what you’re getting at here. And that’s to just get yourself mentally prepared. The physical stuff is going to come online as well, but you can think your way in, out of a good race and you can think your way into a good race. And it’s really just up to, to how you want to view it.

[00:52:39] Jonathan Lee: So, yeah, it would

[00:52:40] Hannah Finchamp: also say if you get there late and instead of a 25 30 minute where I’m feeling the have 10 minutes, I wouldn’t just do the first 10 minutes of your warmup routine and then call it a day. I would condense everything into that 10 minutes. So shorter, spin, shorter aerobic, shorter tempo, one spin up in one race effort and then be done.

[00:53:01] Hannah Finchamp: Like just push it all together, get it all done. Or as much as you can done and get to the Starline, don’t just spin around for 10 minutes. It’s not going to do a lot for.

Rapid Fire questions

[00:53:13] Jonathan Lee: I would agree with that. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Um, okay. Let’s, let’s go into, it’s something kind of new, uh, if, if I can we’re we’re calling it live questions in rapid fire slash Chad’s corner.

[00:53:26] Jonathan Lee: Maybe we should trademark Chad’s corner. I liked that picture. Chad doesn’t like it I’m fixturing having a Chillow in the corner and a comfy chair. It’s fantastic. So, yeah. Okay. Um, Chad, you had some things that you wanted to bring up based on things that we’ve covered on previous podcast and just things that you’ve, uh, you’ve looked through, uh, recently, um, what do you want to start with?

[00:53:49] Chad Timmerman: Well, one thing was something that, uh, importantly, or as a bummer got overlooked, that was a kind of my culminating argument or not argument, but support for stretching, because we talked about all these acute effects, all the things that happen when you stretch and immediately after in your workout immediately after your workout, what you can expect.

[00:54:09] Chad Timmerman: And we didn’t, I didn’t get to, I got distracted from the benefits of doing this chronically. So, so anything that we do one once or twice has effects, but the chronic effects are typically extensions of that, or they’re the improved version of what you’re seeking, right. That the sustained version of it.

[00:54:28] Chad Timmerman: With the, with those two things in mind, I, I almost look at it as they’re stretching and then there’s structured stretching. So anything you add structure to makes it probably a chronic affair, something that’s repeated something that’s gonna have an effect, and that affects gonna carry because you’re repeating it and you’re touching it up and you’re staying on top of it.

[00:54:43] Chad Timmerman: And, and there were a couple of studies, uh, that just had a basic takeaways. One looked at quad stretching, which is super important to us. And it was just over the course of six weeks. And it was just three times a week. So, and the stretches themselves, and this is just quads. I understand when you stretch other body parts, you’re doing this for all the body parts and the time committed to your mobility work grows and grows and grows, but honestly, a cyclist, if we just stress quads, probably going to tie into our hip flexors and our low backs and, and do other favorable things anyway.

[00:55:16] Chad Timmerman: So let’s just pretend all we’re stretching is quads. These guys did it, like I said, for six weeks, three days a week. And all they did were six 30 seconds. Static stretches, so settled into quad stretch, held it for 30 seconds, repeated that five more times. And, and the takeaways are there, their knee flection range of motion.

[00:55:32] Chad Timmerman: So the range of motion that they’re trying to improve, and the rate of force development in, in the stretched legs, significantly improved significantly improved in the stretch group. So, so the point is, even though the goal was flexibility, they actually got an improvement in the rate of force development.

[00:55:48] Chad Timmerman: And this is something, and it’s not even the RFD improvement that. Impresses me so much as changes happen due to the consistency. So, you know, you can’t get range of motion, improvements, and hope to keep range of motion improvements. If you only stretch here and there. So consistency is important. A couple of takeaways from this study in particular is just three times a week led to, uh, a translatable endurance performance improvements.

[00:56:14] Chad Timmerman: Second takeaway is that unexpected improvements actually yielded performance improvements. And it makes sense if we have greater, greater range of motion, that’s one thing. But that rate of force development, you know, when you activate the muscles, they respond more quickly. That’s super beneficial and makes sense.

[00:56:31] Chad Timmerman: That would come as a result of increased mobility, because you don’t have muscles that are resisting themselves. It’s easier to recruit them because they have greater mobility, greater flexibility. So. One benefit of chronic stretching in a similar manner. And another study looked at, uh, targeting, uh, stretching.

[00:56:51] Chad Timmerman: They did basically the same thing three times a week, um, three to six sets of 15 to 32nd stretches, which sounds like, oh God, I got to write all this down. This is super important. I got to get this exactly right. But I think the takeaway from this is they, they reduced it. They kind of removed all of this reliance on mat and just said, accumulate 120 seconds per muscle group per session.

[00:57:11] Chad Timmerman: So whatever this troubled area is, let’s use the quads again. Or maybe the hip flexors two minutes, just do two minutes per session. And it was really flexible in its nature. You can do 15 seconds stretches, 30 seconds stretches. You can do one, two minute stretch. It was just accumulate that amount of time.

[00:57:27] Chad Timmerman: And this will, in fact, it did. In fact, in this study, lead to improvements in range of motion, they pointed out a couple subtle points that I didn’t get to cover last time. So I’m going to cover now. Uh, the greater your range of motion deficiencies are that the less stretching as counterintuitive as that may sound the less stretching you’re starting from a lower point.

[00:57:46] Chad Timmerman: So you can ease into it more gradually get the smaller gains before you start search chasing the bigger ones. But once you have adapted and you have those bigger gains, if you want to continue to improve it, it’s going to require greater volume. You’re not gonna be able to just do those two minutes and expect to increase your range of motion further.

[00:58:02] Chad Timmerman: But in a lot of cases you probably don’t need to. But, but, but the point is, is that

[00:58:07] Jonathan Lee: right? Just like training, right? Y gymnast.

[00:58:11] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. Well, gymnast holds the splits for five plus minutes and they would have to be on the far end.

[00:58:17] Chad Timmerman: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They’re not going to do it for two minutes and expect to do the things that they can do.

[00:58:22] Chad Timmerman: Um, and then finally, if you do it chronically, you can actually get away with greater intensities, which brings me into the final point that I didn’t get to cover was the intent, the impact of intensity, or really the flexibility I use that term again, the, yeah, the flexibility of intensity, you can stretch encouraged, stretching to lower intensities and the research encourages stretching to lower intensities when it’s pre-workout they did a study in particular, looked at stretching to 85% discomfort.

[00:58:49] Chad Timmerman: So that’s a pretty uncomfortable stretch versus 50% discomfort, which is pretty tolerable comparatively and, and noted that the 85% actually diminished hamstring strength in this case. That’s what they were stretching. Whereas the 50% did not. So. Pre-workout don’t get too crazy with your stretches. If you’re going to do static stretching at all, post-workout however you can get away with, with quite a lot.

[00:59:13] Chad Timmerman: The intensity can be whatever you want, because the impact isn’t gonna be as, as, uh, it’s not going to be as big a deal overall takeaway just what we said, uh, just with, as it is with structured endurance training consistency. It’s that fundamental that the key to that fundamental, meaningful lasting benefit can just do it here and there and hope for the best you’ve got to get on it, stay on it.

[00:59:36] Jonathan Lee: Consistency is so not exciting, right? Like it’s just not sexy,

[00:59:40] Chad Timmerman: but it works.

[00:59:42] Hannah Finchamp: Power

[00:59:42] Ivy Audrain: stretch.

[00:59:53] Jonathan Lee: splits were accomplished. Yeah. Okay. Let’s go through just a few questions. Uh, semi rapid fire. You can answer them with one word. You can answer them with a word, an explanation. Why as well, uh, about pre-race routines, this also addresses quite a few questions that we’ve got from different people. So do you do, and what we’ll do is we’ll go through the order of Ivy, Hannah and Chad just counter-clockwise on this, on, on the screen for me at least.

[01:00:20] Jonathan Lee: So, okay. Let’s go through, what do you do the day before the race in terms of openers or no openers, Ivy openers.

[01:00:33] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Hope. Oh yeah. One word or a quick explanation. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:00:38] Hannah Finchamp: Openers. Or if it’s an ex CEO, that’s usually in the form of a hot lap,

[01:00:43] Jonathan Lee: good point chat day before,

[01:00:46] Chad Timmerman: um, kind of removed from this. It w it was, it was wide ranging. It all depended on what was going on that day. So sometimes openers sometimes, uh, just an easy ride and sometimes nothing.

[01:00:59] Chad Timmerman: So no real consistency there on the heels of talking about the importance

[01:01:03] Jonathan Lee: of consistency. I do things, he says, uh, Ivy, uh, any tips to make sure you don’t forget anything before race. He kind of shared one already. Yes.

[01:01:12] Ivy Audrain: I

[01:01:13] Hannah Finchamp: used to have a

[01:01:14] Ivy Audrain: checklist. Um, but that didn’t work, um, because I raced too many disciplines now and everything I need and with all the weather and, um, you know, everything’s different.

[01:01:25] Ivy Audrain: Uh, so that didn’t work for me. Um, so from an equipment standpoint, um, I do this thing where I go from my feet all the way up to my head and like run through the checklist shoes, socks way, warmers, bibs, Shamie cream, basically, or dah, dah, dah, and just go all the way to the top, make sure I have everything.

[01:01:42] Ivy Audrain: And then I, um, pack my bags super early.

[01:01:47] Jonathan Lee: Good tips, Hannah. Yeah. I

[01:01:49] Hannah Finchamp: always pack the day before, even if I’m racing at 3:00 PM the next day, I’ll say. The bag the day before the race. And then I really like IVs feet to head. I usually go, um, from the time I arrive at the race, everything I’ll use, I just play through the day in my mind till after the race.

[01:02:09] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Chad.

[01:02:12] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. Same, same idea. I’ve erased checklists and a travel checklist. So everything I need for the race. And I do that, the mental inventory that Ivy described exactly from, from feet to head making sure everything’s on my body. And I know I’m at least pretty well off. And then a travel checklist is a little different and it’s a little different dependent upon whether it’s car travel or air travel and then absolutely pack the night before.

[01:02:35] Chad Timmerman: And just like Hannah said, it doesn’t matter if, if the race is late in the day, it absolves you of that responsibility helps you clear your mind helps you focus on more important things.

[01:02:44] Jonathan Lee: Good tips that feet ahead. Thing is such a dad move too, by the way, Ivy strong dab. Oh yeah. That’s a Kindle, like get up early.

[01:02:51] Jonathan Lee: We got a big day sort of a thing I’m like, yeah. Daddy has to always run through the checklist and never we’d like, before we go, I’d be like, Josh, your boots got your socks, you know, skiing, everything else. So, uh, okay. How do you recon the course Ivy? You first

[01:03:05] Ivy Audrain: depends on the race. Um, uh, if it’s a crit show up early enough to get on the course, at least the race before.

[01:03:15] Ivy Audrain: Um, so if I raise it three and there’s a racist starts at two, I plan on getting to the course in time to be kitted up and ready to take a lap at 1 55. Before that two o’clock rain starts lining up. Um,

[01:03:30] Hannah Finchamp: if it’s a road race though,

[01:03:35] Ivy Audrain: no recon Sol look at Strava. I dunno

[01:03:41] Jonathan Lee: for the best. Hannah, how about you?

[01:03:44] Jonathan Lee: Anything differently you do to recon a race?

[01:03:46] Hannah Finchamp: Uh, for XCO, I usually have kind of a three lap system. So the first lap, I just get through it. Even if I have to walk the sections, I don’t put any stress on what I need to do. The second lap is stock and accomplish every feature that I want to accomplish, even if it takes multiple attempts.

[01:04:08] Hannah Finchamp: And then the third lap is hopefully do it all smoothly, link it together with all the features. Um, and then whatever, extra time I have after that, it’ll just depend on the course. Uh, and then if it’s something longer like gravel or Leadville or something like that, it’s usually just recon via maps, which usually focuses on the biggest climbs and elevation changes.

[01:04:35] Jonathan Lee: Awesome. Chad, anything with different YouTube? Not,

[01:04:38] Chad Timmerman: not anything different, really that the one situ, if we look at it, this look at this, just from the perspective of road racing, being on the pavement. If it’s a short course, we’ll actually ride it and criteriums, I mean, just get on course and ride it at 10 times and it’s no big deal.

[01:04:53] Chad Timmerman: It a road racing course. If it’s a long course, we try to drive key sections where we would in the past, try to drive key sections. And then if, if it’s, uh, not terribly long, it can actually drive the whole course. Although I don’t think there’s a lot to be gained from that. Cause a lot of the time you’re not really picking up on what you’re seeing.

[01:05:09] Chad Timmerman: So really you’re kind of wasting your time and might make sense to actually you might have to drive the whole course is what I’m saying, but if you can just start at the finish line, check out, you know, rolled this way to check out the start of the race, roll this way to check out the end of the race.

[01:05:22] Chad Timmerman: Uh, you’re you’re heading into it with probably more information than a lot of the people are going to come to the line with. I have

[01:05:28] Jonathan Lee: a whole system I’ll look at the course maps. I’ll look at YouTube. I’ll look at. Uh, those three things to look at, like athlete’s experiences and never put too much stock in a single athlete’s experience because it’s all varied instead of trying to get a broad picture.

[01:05:42] Jonathan Lee: And then from there, what I’ll do is I’ll go in and actually have a plan of how the course will, how the race will unfold. And then I typically always try to get boots on the ground to be able to figure it out just in the same way you all said. So, and

[01:05:56] Chad Timmerman: to provide context, I am speaking from the perspective of when I raised, which a lot of this information wasn’t readily available.

[01:06:01] Chad Timmerman: So you did kind of have to boots on the ground, go, go check it out physically.

[01:06:06] Jonathan Lee: Yep. Absolutely. A Google street view is awesome for criteriums because many times you actually have street view there and it can be really helpful. Uh, you can just get a better feel for like, oh, tall buildings there. And prevailing wind always comes from the west.

[01:06:18] Jonathan Lee: So that means that this section we’re going to be sheltered and we’re going to be able to have coverage and here it ends so that that’s going to be decisive point on the course, every single lap Ivy’s not. And she knows what’s up with the crit crit tactics. Um, okay. How long before your race do you like to arrive?

[01:06:37] Ivy Audrain: It depends if I’m writing and already kitted up and have everything squared away and I’m, pre-registered, I, I hate to be too early. Cause then I’m just kinda like sitting around doing more forums than I really need to just kind of wasting time and energy. So if I’m pre-registered and already have my race number and set up only one.

[01:06:58] Ivy Audrain: 45 minutes. Um, yeah, if it’s like, of course I know too. Um, yeah, if I’m driving and need to register and get my number and do all that stuff, like two hours, like lots of time, I don’t like to rush.

[01:07:15] Jonathan Lee: Awesome. Hannah, how long? 90 minutes. Almost always. Yeah. Chad.

[01:07:23] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. I, the nailed it. I, it depends on the circumstances, but it’s, it’s between 30 minutes and two hours and it all depends on the importance of the event, the accessibility of it.

[01:07:33] Chad Timmerman: I mean, if I can ride to it and kind of warm on the, on the, like I’m thinking of our local criterium and ride over, there’s my general or passive, if you will warm up, do a couple of laps of the course, jump in with the preceding race for a little bit line up and go.

[01:07:47] Jonathan Lee: Yep. Yeah. I’m two hours is my preferred time for anything consequential outside of that.

[01:07:53] Jonathan Lee: It just enough time to be able to get my warmup and routine in which typically tends to be 45 minutes. So, um, okay. Next one. Uh, what do you eat before the race and win?

[01:08:05] Ivy Audrain: Now I’m a pancake gal, uh, through three hours before the race. And then I have like, as much like a ton, like as much as I can. And then, um, I definitely snack, uh, leading up to that, usually bananas, um, bars and then, um, gels right before.

[01:08:27] Jonathan Lee: Awesome. Three hours before

[01:08:30] Hannah Finchamp: the race. I have chocolate chip pancakes.

[01:08:35] Jonathan Lee: John makes the

[01:08:36] Ivy Audrain: best chocolate chip pancakes in the world. Yeah,

[01:08:40] Hannah Finchamp: I don’t eat unless there’s chocolate

[01:08:42] Jonathan Lee: chips summit. That’s what’s up Keegan. Pancaking step aside. Yeah, I’m on the podium now. Yeah, she don’t

[01:08:50] Hannah Finchamp: eat anything unless there’s chocolate chips,

[01:08:56] Hannah Finchamp: chocolate chip pancakes. I put chocolate chips and yogurt. I put chocolate chips in pretty much everything. Sometimes I’ll just spread them on toast. Really? Unpopular one is I put chocolate chips in cottage cheese. Okay. What’s

[01:09:10] Ivy Audrain: the, um, the Europe a bit European, like chocolate sprinkles thing that they put on toast.

[01:09:16] Ivy Audrain: What’s that called again?

[01:09:18] Jonathan Lee: That’s not sprinkle that one’s like a spread. Yeah. I don’t know. Sprinkle. I don’t know.

[01:09:23] Hannah Finchamp: I traveled to Europe with chocolate chips though, because they don’t have them.

[01:09:29] Jonathan Lee: Oh my gosh. It’s a lot. Yeah. I put dark chocolate chunks. Like I break up a bar and I put that into the pancakes.

[01:09:38] Jonathan Lee: And my favorite one is a dark chocolate bar. Oh no, it is better. That’s right. It’s not the same. It’s better. And, and there’s this one and it’s got, um, lavender in it and I think that’s what I made for Ivy when she was there. So lavender, dark chocolate chunks put into a pancake. It’s an experience. It’s incredible.

[01:09:58] Jonathan Lee: That was

[01:09:59] Ivy Audrain: for the soldiers hollow UCRs and I think the last morning it was, we had short track when, but yeah, the, the, um, day I like woke up and you didn’t have pancakes writing. I was like, John, are you serious? And Google. Sorry. And it made me a pancake really fast.

[01:10:17] Jonathan Lee: Was it the ritual chocolate? Yeah. Oh yeah.

[01:10:20] Jonathan Lee: I

[01:10:20] Hannah Finchamp: know exactly what the lavender one. That’s

[01:10:22] Jonathan Lee: good. It’s so good. Yeah. Yeah. It’s fantastic. Chocolate pancake talk, give it a try chat. I’m sure you have one of those bars laying around there. It’s delicious. I may

[01:10:32] Chad Timmerman: have, I mean, we’ve got a small pile of them, but yeah, no, no pancakes are my go to as well. And I don’t, as anyone who’s listened to the podcast knows I don’t take my nutrition too seriously.

[01:10:42] Chad Timmerman: It’s usually works out really well for me too, but I can tell you all the signs I can tell you exactly what it should do, but what

[01:10:49] Jonathan Lee: I do do,

[01:10:50] Chad Timmerman: does it typically align? Yeah, no. I mean, why would, I want to make things easier for myself, but it does depend on the duration for me. I mean, I can play it fast and loose.

[01:10:58] Chad Timmerman: If the event is three hours or less, once it starts tipping upwards of three hours, I got to take things a bit seriously and pancakes are the go-to. Um, I don’t, I don’t chocolate chip them. I just slather them and syrup, but just a little bit of butter spray. So I’m not heavy on the fat. And you know, if I get them in an hour prior or three hours prior, ideally, that’s great, but I don’t, I don’t know.

[01:11:21] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. Pancake man, as we’ve already covered in three hours to three to four hours, for me as ideal actually is what I’ve found. Um, and then I, I snack all leading up to it though. So after two to three hours after those pancakes, I’m just taking in small stuff. Um, so, yep. Okay. Uh, we’re gonna, we already covered warmups, so we don’t need to go into that one, uh, song of choice.

[01:11:46] Jonathan Lee: Favorite song when you’re, uh, before you warm up. I changes like weekly.

[01:11:52] Ivy Audrain: No.

[01:11:53] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. You don’t have a single one. Yeah. Okay. Hannah, do you have a single one that you like someone’s attack this, listening to this? Yeah, I had a, do you have a song that you’d like to listen to regularly? I usually

[01:12:07] Hannah Finchamp: don’t listen

[01:12:07] Jonathan Lee: to music at all.

[01:12:09] Jonathan Lee: Whoa, look at that. Yeah. Just like focused in the zone,

[01:12:14] Hannah Finchamp: like be

[01:12:16] Jonathan Lee: aware of my thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. At first I thought you were going to say like,

[01:12:21] Ivy Audrain: just be able to listen to your thoughts before race and be okay.

[01:12:24] Jonathan Lee: Like

[01:12:28] Jonathan Lee: I try to remove my thoughts. They’re terrible

[01:12:31] Ivy Audrain: at empty.

[01:12:35] Jonathan Lee: Chad, how about you? No,

[01:12:37] Chad Timmerman: just like Ivy, it changes by the moment. Um, if I. I don’t have anything in particular or if I, my creativity is lacking, whatever rage against machine is always a bankable bet. And it’s, it ties way back to days when I actually raised aggressively.

[01:12:51] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I actually know what Chad means.

[01:12:54] Jonathan Lee: And he says a various cause what he’s really saying is that he used to listen to foo fighters before every single race. And now that the Dave Grohl book is out, he listens to the audio book. Oh, I get angry.

[01:13:05] Chad Timmerman: If Andrew is my mechanism. That’s, that’s how I go about it.

[01:13:08] Jonathan Lee: If any of you want to make a Chad dot happy play foo fighters around him.

[01:13:12] Jonathan Lee: There we go. Cool. Yeah, actually just say the name, Dave girl. He had a light Chad writeup. So, uh, okay. Where do you like to line up when we’re talking about left side or right side? Do you have a preference or front tobacco? The field? Do you have a preference?

[01:13:26] Ivy Audrain: It depends on the course never center, but sometimes you be able to call up.

[01:13:30] Ivy Audrain: You don’t really

[01:13:31] Jonathan Lee: have a choice. Yeah. Center socks. Yeah. Yeah. Center section. Yeah. Yeah. Hannah, how about you? Yeah. It

[01:13:41] Hannah Finchamp: all just depends on the course what the whole shot, like what the whole shot is like what the first corners, like, whether I think I want to be first into the first corner or follow wheel,

[01:13:54] Jonathan Lee: Chad,

[01:13:55] Chad Timmerman: it’ll definitely depend on the objectives.

[01:13:57] Chad Timmerman: You know what? I’m there to achieve that day. Am I going for a podium? Like supporting someone else? Am I just hanging in for a training race? And then, uh, very much depends on the competence in my training, in my conditioning. So if I know I’m there. To, to break legs, then I don’t mind dead center. And knowing that I’m going to ride away from people in the start and standing in front of them, or just be responsive to everything because I can versus going into it with not a lot of faith in my conditioning, in which case I don’t necessarily hide, but I don’t really care where I end up.

[01:14:29] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I wish we had Pete on right now because Pete rolls up to the very back of the field for every single race. For every trip. He like stands like intentionally, probably about like 10 feet behind everybody can

[01:14:43] Chad Timmerman: benefit from the momentum.

[01:14:45] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. It’s what he does. Every single race. It’s amazing. It’s a power move.

[01:14:48] Jonathan Lee: Uh, I always try to be at the front, um, Ali even like, uh, like it’s amazing what you can get away with. If you just smile and say hi to people. And there have been times where I have not been toward the front of the race and I’ll think, well, why would I go to the back of the field and try to work my way through and said, I can just hop over the barrier and walk toward the starting line from the front and then just turn around.

[01:15:10] Jonathan Lee: And then I’m in the fact guy, buddy, I see where you

[01:15:13] Hannah Finchamp: can only do this. If you’re a famous podcaster, do this,

[01:15:18] Jonathan Lee: or you’re that person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I’m almost always going to favor the inside as well. So, what I say is inside, if the turn is going to be a left-hander, I want to line up on the left because it gives me control.

[01:15:35] Jonathan Lee: So, um, that allows me to be able to move outwards to Dodge something. Whereas if I’m outside and somebody gets pushed wide, I have nowhere to go. Um, so the only thing is when you do line up on the inside like that, then you have to make sure that you’re one of the early people into that turn. If not the first person, because otherwise an accordion effect is going to slow you down, but I’m almost always going to go for control rather than being in the spot where something is out of my control and it can really throw off my race, but I feel like

[01:16:04] Chad Timmerman: you’re going to be in those positions regardless over the course of that race anyway.

[01:16:08] Chad Timmerman: So why do you care? I think people place too much importance on their start position in a race, some races. It definitely matters for sure. You need a whole shot. You need the cleanest quickest line to the single track, but it is as I often do, I come back to criteria and this is why I don’t care where I line up, unless I’m feeling particularly confident because at any point in the race, I’m going to be in all those positions and I’m going to find my way back from them or I won’t.

[01:16:34] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, I should clarify that insight position is for cross-country and short track. Uh, if I’m in a crit, I line up on the shaded on the Lee side of the. Of wherever, like I think, okay, first turn or first like significant time. I don’t want to be stuck in a position where I’m going to be up against the wind and have the wind battering me.

[01:16:54] Jonathan Lee: That’s what, besides my left or right position on a Creek as like you said, Chad, it doesn’t like sprint to the first turn. Great job. One of the first turn who cares. Right. But I just looked at it in terms of, okay, well, the wind is going to be hitting me from this side. So I’ll just pick that side to try to get a bit more shelter.

[01:17:09] Jonathan Lee: So, uh, okay. Almost through with this one last one. What else do you get or what else do you do to get yourself in the zone? Anything unique? We talked about the warmups. He talks about the fact that Hannah doesn’t listen to music, which is incredible. I don’t know how she does it. And the Chad loves the foo fighters, but what do the rest of us do?

[01:17:27] Jonathan Lee: The rest of us do anything in particular to get in the zone? I don’t talk. That’s what I do. I don’t talk. And if you try to talk to me on the line, I probably will ignore you. And it doesn’t affect me if you’re trying to talk to me. Cause I don’t, I’m in a. In my world, like, so I have this focus thing that I can do where I just drop into it and it really helps me feel like I’m ready for it.

[01:17:51] Jonathan Lee: So that’s my, that’s my thing. Chad’s jazz got something sassy to say. I can see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Hannah. Forgive me. I’ve even handed the chat.

[01:18:03] Ivy Audrain: I mean, I don’t feel, uh, I try to make sure that I have alone time. I don’t think that’s super unique though. Um, and I feel like having homeys at races, a lot of people want to do the warm up with you or, um, pre-write period is okay with homies, but I definitely sought out some time to be able to ride or warm up or do something alone and have quiet time.

[01:18:30] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. I

[01:18:33] Hannah Finchamp: usually, um, I usually pray or pray with

[01:18:38] Jonathan Lee: other people that’s yeah. Yep. I say a prayer on the starting line every time it’s like been a habit of mine since I was a kid and yeah. Helps me. It makes it feel like

[01:18:49] Hannah Finchamp: you’re not alone. You know, sometimes I feel like when all the spectators are going and you’re just standing on the star line, you’re like, and now it’s just me.

[01:18:56] Hannah Finchamp: So that’s time. I really liked shipper.

[01:18:58] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Awesome. Chad, I

[01:19:01] Chad Timmerman: do anything I can to, to relax, to not take it too seriously to remind myself that I’ve done this so many times. There’s no reason I should. Exceptionally wound up for this particular time. Um, I’m good at this. I enjoy this. This can be fun if I’ll let it be that, that sort of thing.

[01:19:18] Chad Timmerman: And typically that, uh, comes about in, in the form of chatting to whomever is next to me, especially if it’s

[01:19:26] Jonathan Lee: Jonathan, I don’t know Chad’s ever actually talked to me on the starting line. He and I are both very similar in the sense that we are in our own worlds. And we’re happy with that. The one other thing that I would add is something, actually, Jim Miller mentioned this on the podcast you did with him, which I think is exceptional by the way.

[01:19:44] Jonathan Lee: And you all should listen to it. Just search, ask a cycling coach podcast, Jim Miller, um, I have, I typically have a checklist of things I want to accomplish in the first X amount of time in the race, if it’s like 15 minutes or something else. So when I am in the zone, I’m just thinking about, I’m like literally in my head, just like, uh, so for example, one might be third wheel in the first turn.

[01:20:06] Jonathan Lee: After that it’s clean this section after that it’s sag this climb. So in my mind, I will be thinking through and saying those things over and over and over, over and over just focusing on them. So then when I get on course, I can focus on those three things and that sets up the rest of the race for success.

[01:20:24] Jonathan Lee: So those little, like an early race checklist of things you want to accomplish, it will put yourself in a good position to have a successful race. It’s a very, very effective way to focus and to get rid of all the noise at the beginning of a Rick’s. Do you

[01:20:38] Hannah Finchamp: not talk on the start line even if it’s Leadville?

[01:20:42] Jonathan Lee: Well, I did tell Sarah when I did Leadville is right next to Sarah stern and Sarah is, you know, happy, fun, uh, person. But, so, I mean, we shared a couple words maybe. And that was it. After that we were, no, I don’t talk, like

[01:20:56] Hannah Finchamp: what about in the middle of. What’d you say,

[01:20:59] Jonathan Lee: no, I do not talk at all. Like in a race? No I’m no, I, yeah.

[01:21:05] Jonathan Lee: And people have like, told me, they’re like, I can tell they’re thinking like, wow, this Jonathan Guy is not very friendly. Like what a jerk. I’m sorry. I just I’m in the zone. I’m racing. Like I take it seriously. All I can see

[01:21:16] Chad Timmerman: is Dwight Schrute, shunning and unchaining constantly.

[01:21:19] Jonathan Lee: Sarah stern.

[01:21:25] Jonathan Lee: A good reference, Chad. I liked it. Uh, cool. Um, Chad, there’s also one other thing that we wanted to cover on strength training, something interesting that you found just prob cruising this week. It looks through different studies. Let’s cover that. And then we’ll end up after that. We’re going to get into a balanced question and then talk about strength training and that’ll, and that’ll wrap up this podcast, but first, uh, Chad shared what you learned about, uh, I guess it is strength training as well.

[01:21:50] Jonathan Lee: It’s interesting topic. Yeah,

[01:21:51] Chad Timmerman: it is. Uh, so basically it revolves around caloric expenditure during strength training, which doesn’t sound all that. Uh, relevant to us, but bear with me, cause it kind of is so new studied newish 20, 21. And I think they may have at least provided us with somewhat useful strength, training, energy expenditure heuristic.

[01:22:13] Chad Timmerman: So to put it in another way, this gives us a way to find the quantify strength, training calories. Uh, so the study is a Joelle and colleagues and they looked at oxygen consumption, lactate concentrations, and energy expenditure, and they did it over three different strength, training, intensities, high, moderate, and low.

[01:22:31] Chad Timmerman: And all we’re going to focus on is the energy expenditure component of that. So they all did 30 reps regardless of which group they were in, which means for the high intensity, they did five sets of six reps at 90%, moderate that three by 10 at 75%. And then the low intensity, just a couple of sets of 15 at 60% all at the same tempo.

[01:22:52] Chad Timmerman: So they didn’t do it explosively. They didn’t do it exceptionally slowly. They’re all about a second and a half up second and a half down three second reps. So this is not a fixed rep workout because if you repeat 30 times of your 90% one rep max, that’s going to be a heck of a lot more work than 30 times of your 60% one rep max.

[01:23:11] Chad Timmerman: So, so really simply high intensity did more work than, than everybody moderate intensity. He did more work than low intensity. You get the idea, they kept it really basic. The exercises were chest press pack deck, which is, you know, a Peck fly on a machine. Lat pull down biceps, curls, triceps, extensions, squat, hamstring, curl crunch machine.

[01:23:32] Chad Timmerman: I mean like the most basic, if you are a personal trainer and this is what your personal trainer runs you through, you need to fire your personal trainer because I’m not going to get fit. So as expected, the high intensity group had the highest energy expenditure values. They, they did more work that’s to be expected, but interestingly and perhaps not expected was that the low intensity group actually induced the greatest energy expenditure per unit time.

[01:23:56] Chad Timmerman: So they burn more calories per minute, even though they were going at lower intensity reason, being is at the high intensity group, spent more time resting. And that’s the nature of it. If you work at a higher intensity, you require more rest before you can work at a higher intensity. Again, this is kind of similar to what we face when we do longer recovery valleys during like a VO two max or anaerobic interval workouts.

[01:24:18] Chad Timmerman: And it drags down our average power, right? So, so we, we just spent more time resting. We did the same calories, right. But you know, same Watts. We still did the work, but time kind of dilutes, what would be those sexier more impressive numbers. So the relevant findings here is that across all three of those intensities, the average energy expenditure came down to about six calories per minute.

[01:24:43] Chad Timmerman: And almost all of the participants fell between four to eight. So, you know, obviously they, they average that at eight or six, sorry, which doesn’t, it doesn’t sound like a lot. Right? Cause it’s just for 30 minutes, you’re burned 180 calories, 45 to 70 go for the whole hour, 360 calories. So minor takeaway is, is it strength, training it’s contribution to body composition and fat loss are probably not directly attributable to your in-session energy expenditure.

[01:25:10] Chad Timmerman: Don’t look at the calories you burn during a strength training session as being the driver for, for body comp changes, a two cups of non-fat milk Kapost, which is not a bad thing to follow a workout with all, but wipes away. Anything you may have accrued over six calories per minute for 30 minutes, right?

[01:25:26] Chad Timmerman: It’s gone. So, so not, no it’s not. But for endurance athletes during training, isn’t about burning calories. That’s not why we’re chasing. So the question is why would we care about this, this new potential metric? How is this actually useful to us? What’s its utility to us as endurance athletes? Well, a couple things first, if you’re trying to match your nutrient intake to your workload, feeling the work we talk about this all the time.

[01:25:50] Chad Timmerman: Well, this, this assists you in doing so if you know your basal metabolic rate or you’ve estimated it, you know, what’s your workout just consumed, you know, roughly what you’re intaking, you know that your body stays at this level when you do these things. But now you’re introducing strength training.

[01:26:06] Chad Timmerman: While you can put a little bit of a number on what it might take to fuel that additional work. Uh, similarly, if you’re trying to, you know, ditch fat or just modify your body composition, maybe add a little muscle mass. This can actually, well, actually not. If you’re trying to ditch fat, really this can help you keep tabs on whatever deficit you’re trying to maintain.

[01:26:25] Chad Timmerman: Be it 200, 300, 500 calories. This, this can help us quantify that. Now let me, let me get to the caveats because I know people are going to be saying, this is ridiculous. Can’t how can I possibly rely on this? This is a heuristic, look up the word. It’s not optimal. It’s not perfect. It’s not rational, but it’s sufficient.

[01:26:43] Chad Timmerman: So on average, six calories per minute was expended while strength training at various intensities in this workout, which probably carries, um, another caveat. This is typical. So traditional in terms of the weight training, I’ve already alluded to that. I mean so many machines. So I think that, uh, first off there’s, there’s tons of other ways to strength, train, but I think just by removing the machines from the equation, you’ll probably bump closer to seven to eight calories per minute, doing, doing the same things, but doing them without the assistance of machines.

[01:27:13] Chad Timmerman: And then let’s, let’s take it to the extreme side of things. And CrossFit usually fits this bill and within CrossFit, which tends to be probably the most metabolic way to move weight. It’s the most inline with endurance demands and performance adaptations. A workout in particular. And it really thought on this one, and I can’t think of one that’s worse than this or more challenging than this.

[01:27:35] Chad Timmerman: This is called Murph. And basically it pays homage to, as so many of that work has to do to a fallen soldier. This one’s Lieutenant Michael Murphy, you Dawn a 20 or a 14 pound weight vest run a mile, do 100 pull-ups 200 foot ships, 300 air squats. You run another mile. So this is what in CrossFit, parlance is turned a chipper.

[01:27:55] Chad Timmerman: You know, you’re not going to just run that mile and then drop down or jump up and do a hundred pull-ups and then move on to your pushups. Rather, you’re going to do handful of pull-ups handful of pushups, handful of air squats. Repeat until you knock them all out. Then you’re going to go run and a user run in the loosest sense of the term.

[01:28:10] Chad Timmerman: Cause that last mile is not going to resemble running at all. You’re going to survive that last. But the point is you’re pretty legit. If you can do this inside of an hour, Vestor no vest. And I promise you will exceed 360 calories over the course of that hour. That’s a heck of a lot of work. So my point is be realistic when you’re applying this heuristic that rhymed.

[01:28:34] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. One more caveat work is work. Work has consequences. So even though the energy expenditure is relatively low or maybe relatively low, the toll on the body may not. So you have to consider this impact and not the caloric one. When you’re determining your strength, training volume, you know, how many workouts are you going to do in a week?

[01:28:52] Chad Timmerman: How many minutes is that workout going to comprise of a couple of my personal recommendations? You can get away with three times based training during, or I’m sorry, strength training during base a couple times a week during build one time a week during specialty, which is when you’re in maintenance.

[01:29:09] Chad Timmerman: Anyway, that is maintenance one time a week. And personally, I like to cap strength, training workouts at 30 minutes. I mean, whatever takes place before the workout itself, the warm-up the mobility, the dynamic movement, whatever it doesn’t count toward that 30 minutes. But the strength training itself is 30 minutes.

[01:29:24] Chad Timmerman: And I know there’s a lot of downtime during those 30 minutes. So I’m not saying hit fast and hard when you’re trying to encourage strength gains. So that 30 minutes is going to quit to not, not a ton of work, but so, so again, as endurance athletes, strength training, we’re not concerned with burning calories.

[01:29:39] Chad Timmerman: Our goals are to get stronger, to be more durable, to be more balanced, more mobile, we want to move better and we want to move stronger and we want to do it both on and off the bike. So be clear on your objective objectives.

[01:29:54] Jonathan Lee: I like it. I also like this. So we typically tie in, in our minds and the world, certainly the less performance oriented and scientifically based, uh, folks will associate effort with calories, right?

[01:30:07] Jonathan Lee: In the sense that like, I worked really hard, had to burn a lot of calories, but calories it’s entirely based on the amount of work you can do, not how hard something felt. It’s all based off of work. And that’s, I mean, it’s honestly just like, it’s, it’s a sad situation that exists and it’s unfortunate, but like the, when you first start out, you can’t burn many calories and there are a lot of athletes or a lot of people that look to, to, uh, shift body composition, lose weight, do that sort of thing with activity.

[01:30:37] Jonathan Lee: And it’s like, meanwhile, that 120 pound Bantam weight, little cyclists can burn so many more calories than the much larger person, because they’re just more trained to be able to do work. Right. So this is an important thing. Calories tie into how much work you’re able to do. And not just to the effort because strength training can feel really, really hard and it can leave you with dorms.

[01:30:58] Jonathan Lee: I can do all that stuff, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it puts you in a caloric deficit or something. Yeah. They’re not the best

[01:31:03] Chad Timmerman: measure of the physiological toll. I mean, you can do, I’ve been doing 30 minutes, VO two max workout. And they crushed me their heart. You can jam a lot of work into 30 minutes on the bike doing VO two max or anaerobic and the caloric expenditure.

[01:31:18] Chad Timmerman: And I’m looking at maybe I’m lucky if I break 400 kilocalories yeah, 400 kgs, but I can sit on the bike for an hour. That’s 60%, 65% and do something like Pettit or black, you know, just aerobic endurance work. And I’m closer to 800 calories. But when I hop off the bike, I feel drastically different. And my body is in very, very different state in terms of what it has to come back from.

[01:31:42] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. And you’ll notice that on Trainor road, you’ll look at every workout will tell you how many calories or how many kilojoules, or will be expended as you do the ride as prescribed. It’s really helpful for being able to like plan things out and make sure making sure you’re nourishing yourself. So I, you know, I, I, I pitched that in the circumstance of like, oh, strength training, doesn’t burn as many calories bummer, but also let’s flip this, our VO to work, doesn’t burn as many calories as you thought, bummer, let’s flip it on the other side.

[01:32:07] Jonathan Lee: This is why you need to fuel those endurance workouts. That don’t feel that hard. Keep in mind, if your feeling of the a hundred grams, an hour of carbs, that’s roughly 400 calories that you’re taking in. Like Chad just said, that’s a VOT workout. If you do pet it, that might be double that. So when we talk about nourishment, it’s really, really hard to nourish yourself.

[01:32:27] Jonathan Lee: And it’s so easy for us to just think, well, hard effort means I need to nourish myself. No, you just need to nourish yourself like effort. Isn’t the qualifier. You just need to nourish yourself. So a side point from this, but super important one, um, and

[01:32:42] Hannah Finchamp: a reminder and a reminder why we need to, when exercising fuel intellectually, not based on feeling.

[01:32:53] Jonathan Lee: Oh, yeah. Also we’ll always end up in a hole, right? Like, yeah. Imagine going through like BWR San Diego that you did last year and you did so well at, and I can imagine just going through and be like, yeah, whatever, when I’m hungry, I think I’ll eat. Like you would have not been in a battle on the last climb with Catarina at all, you know?

[01:33:11] Jonathan Lee: Yeah.

[01:33:11] Hannah Finchamp: I was like eating out of fear in that race. I kept looking at my power and I was like, oh gosh, I better eat something

[01:33:17] Jonathan Lee: else. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like, the mouth of the funnel is like real is, is not getting wider. But the bottom of the funnel is real big. Like it’s just dumping right through. I need to put more in.

What is the point of anaerobic exercise?

[01:33:29] Jonathan Lee: Right. So, yeah. Uh, okay. Oscar says, first of all, I want to congratulate the whole trainer road team. I’ve been using it for more than two years and the improvements are amazing. The AI FTP detection is crazy. It just works perfect. And I’ve been more fit now. And I, that I have been, and I have been more consistent since adaptive training arrived.

[01:33:48] Jonathan Lee: Good to hear Oscar had to go. It’s exciting stuff. Um, from Ivy, from community management to our customer support folks, to all of our engineers and designers and our product managers. Thanks to all of you, uh, for all the great work you’ve done. You’re helping us forget faster. Could help you to go to train to rev.com, sign up, give it a shot.

[01:34:07] Jonathan Lee: Uh, okay. It says I got injured in September of last year and now I’m on my highest FTP ever. And I feel great on and off the. Way to go with those improvements. A question came to mind, I started strength training three times per week, full body, and he says eight to 12 reps, three to four sets each exercise.

[01:34:26] Jonathan Lee: So that’s like not, you know, that’s pretty typical for what we would see for cyclists doing strength training, right? Chad? Yep. Uh, he says, uh, this isn’t the sort of stringing attorney you’re doing when you’re trying to like boost, like, you know, one rep max and vanity stuff, you know, the eight to 12, isn’t exactly going to accomplish that.

[01:34:42] Jonathan Lee: Instead. It’s going to make us strong, capable humans. That’s what we’re looking for after my injury. I, and I, he says, I have noticed the anaerobic workout seem really easy now. And he mentioned that he’s on the specialty phase. So usually I rate them easy or moderate. And usually the jumps between the workouts are 0.8 to 1.2 on, on the progression levels.

[01:35:01] Jonathan Lee: VO two max are still hard, but not as hard as before and threshold over unders are still a nightmare for me. Hopefully last week’s podcast can help with that. We talked about over unders I was wondering if there is a relationship between strength, training and anaerobic workouts on the bike. Does strength training help to improve the side on the bike?

[01:35:18] Jonathan Lee: Or is there not a direct relationship between those again, you guys are amazing. So thank you Oscar. And before we get into answering this one, I want to address one thing. First of all, because of this specialty phase, I bet that we’re not trying to say. This is going to explain a bit of the inner workings behind how the plans work.

[01:35:36] Jonathan Lee: Um, depending on your day that you have on your plan, there are different intentions with that specific day, uh, because you can make, you can swap the days around and everything around. I’ll just say like day, one day, do intake day one, day two and day three of a low volume plan. One might be a day in which we really want to improve your abilities.

[01:35:55] Jonathan Lee: Another day might be one where we don’t want to improve your abilities. And instead we just want to keep you, you know, to keep your status going. And then another one might be where we want to stretch your abilities and push you even further. Right. So it all depends. And as a result, sometimes you’ll be doing anaerobic workouts.

[01:36:12] Jonathan Lee: And in this case, like Oscar, you might be marking them easy. So you’d think that like, okay, well then why aren’t I really moving up? Why isn’t adaptive training going? Okay, well, in that case, boom, moving way up on the specialty phase, the goal isn’t to really drive up your abilities so much is to make sure that you are refined and ready and able for your event when it comes.

[01:36:31] Jonathan Lee: And that’s why, uh, that’s probably why he’s marking them easy. So anyways, that’s how that works. I wanted to clarify that and it’s cool because now when you look at your training plan, you’ll understand why some weeks you’ll be like, you know, I marked it easier moderate. Why isn’t it jumping me up even faster because maybe that’s not a relative or a relatable objective for your goals.

[01:36:50] Jonathan Lee: So an adaptive training knows the difference. It’s super smart. Uh, okay. So Chad, there’s kind of like this assumption here, or an assumption about this relationship of. Strength training, helping these maybe higher VO too. And then up from there and intensity. So anaerobic and sprint efforts, uh, what are your thoughts on that from does strength training make those efforts better?

[01:37:14] Jonathan Lee: And if so, how, or make you better at those efforts? And if so, what’s actually going on that makes you better at those.

[01:37:21] Chad Timmerman: I think it’s just a matter of strength, training, making every effort better. It’s just a little more evident when you’re working as hard as you are when you’re doing VO two max and anaerobic work.

[01:37:30] Chad Timmerman: So you just become a better writer. You just have a stronger body. You’re you’re hemorrhaging. Energy movement because you become more refined. You’re better at pushing on the pedals and not suffering power losses, and other parts of the body that move because you don’t push on the battle pedals very well, or in a very controlled manner.

[01:37:48] Chad Timmerman: I do think this, this is just one of the, maybe not unintended, but less celebrated benefits of strength training is you just get better at stuff in general, you’re just better at riding the bike. And again, it becomes more prevalent when you’re doing things that are hard when you’re really taxing the muscular system.

[01:38:05] Chad Timmerman: As much as you can in an endurance sport, something that’s more reliant on metabolic turnover and not so much muscular force capabilities. So it that the translation from, uh, strength training to the closest equivalent in endurance training, that anaerobic side, or even the sprint side is never, it’s still not going to be as clear as people I think want to make it fight.

[01:38:30] Chad Timmerman: If I can push a bunch of weight in the gym, I should be able to push the pedals harder. And yet to some degree that that does carry, but we’re still talking the difference between strength, which is force production and endurance, which is energy turnover, that these things will never perfectly align or even very closely aligned.

How does strength training affect anaerobic efforts?

[01:38:46] Chad Timmerman: This. These are just benefits of strength, training, and again, you see them because you’re working hard, but you’ll also see. If you back it off a bit and you have to ride for five hours when your longest ride used to be three hours yet magically. Now you’re getting through five hours without the same aches and pains where you can work at threshold and do, you know, 40 K time trial in four minutes less.

[01:39:07] Chad Timmerman: And, you know, maybe even at the same power, just because you’re not wasting power in ways that that manifests because your body just doesn’t work as cohesively as it does when it’s stronger.

[01:39:19] Jonathan Lee: Uh, Ivy, what do you feel in terms of like benefits on the bike when you are doing strength training? Yeah. Um,

[01:39:29] Ivy Audrain: yeah, I think about this all the time in the beginning of the season, uh, when I first start integrating really hard efforts and there’s such a stark difference between when I didn’t use to do strength training and would try to jump into those efforts and how horrible it felt the first you few weeks.

[01:39:49] Ivy Audrain: And I was doing them versus, um, doing strength training now. Uh, and there’s so much significance and familiar familiarity for me, um, where, uh, you know, a lot of the lifts that I do at much higher reps. Um, so like 15 or 20, in some cases I feel a direct correlation when I’m doing, um, like sprint efforts, for example, where I feel I’m more able to.

[01:40:24] Ivy Audrain: Use more muscle recruitment and my entire body in the later part of those efforts, because it feels so familiar from doing that weight training to that degree with higher, higher reps. Um, does that

[01:40:36] Jonathan Lee: make sense? Um, yeah, absolutely. Cause there’s just like, yes. Sorry, go ahead.

[01:40:41] Ivy Audrain: Well, yeah, so it’s not like those things that I’m doing make me, you know, from a physiological standpoint, a better sprinter.

[01:40:49] Ivy Audrain: Um, I might be able to put out a little more power, but it just makes, I just feel like it helps me, um, prepared better, um, know what it feels like and, uh, recruit my muscles in a different way at, uh, when, when stuff gets harder, longer,

[01:41:05] Jonathan Lee: it kind of goes against like the bro science, logical conclusion that we have in our minds.

[01:41:10] Jonathan Lee: Right. Hannah, of like, well, if I lift muscles, I get, or if I lift weights, I get big muscles and big muscles would help me really push down on those pedals. Hard, like Chad said, and it’s really not about hypertrophy or like, you know, increasing the amount of muscle mass in terms of, you know, circumference of your biceps and near quadriceps.

[01:41:28] Jonathan Lee: That’s not really the goal, right? Hannah.

[01:41:30] Hannah Finchamp: Right. And I think that should be really encouraging to people who haven’t done a lot of strength training in the past because, um, I think that, I think it’s something like the first 12 weeks of strength training is primarily neuromuscular games. And I feel like those neuromuscular gains are what served me the best on the bike.

[01:41:50] Hannah Finchamp: Uh, which is maybe also why, like I said, when I first start strength training for the year, I’m like, woo, look at this increase. Um, and then, I mean, obviously you continue to have that and more, but it’s just so noticeable, um, when you first start. So yeah, I w I would second that I feel this neural muscular connection, like my body is doing what my mind asks me to do, asks me to do, which is also coordination.

[01:42:17] Hannah Finchamp: I feel more muscle fiber recruitment. Um, and I just feel more durable, uh, you know, kind of like, which to me equates to efficiency, you know, instead of almost instead of power dissipating, maybe through some slight knee movements or upper body movements, I feel so much more stable. Like I can truly push every muscular effort is going straight into that.

[01:42:49] Jonathan Lee: Um, I’m feeling that even with, uh, with doing more running now and swimming and everything else, just getting a stronger body. Cause, uh, man, I’m feeling planted on the bike comfortable like capable, stable. Uh, I don’t feel like I’m, wishy-washy one thing that I noticed too, is that when I’ve been doing strength training and really diligently, and if I start to taper off on that, I also taper off on this ability to be able to.

[01:43:18] Jonathan Lee: Consciously and actively fire certain muscle groups or make them perform like I want. So, uh, glutes turning off is a really common thing. Like your glutes are not as involved in the pedal stroke as they should be. And then what happens is your quadriceps tend to take up the, the brunt of the work and with a cyclist, typically our lateral quadriceps.

[01:43:37] Jonathan Lee: So those outside quad muscles, they are the ones that ended up taking the brunt of the work that pulls on your knees. A little weird that that creates this chain of instability. That then causes a lot of problems all because you know, your glutes, aren’t firing very well. And it’s because we sit down with them, turned off and we don’t really use them a whole lot when you strength, train, and you’re doing, you know, exercises that go on to train the roads blog, and you can find a ton of different resources go onto our YouTube page trainer or youtube.com/trainer road.

[01:44:04] Jonathan Lee: And you can see different strength training exercises that we recommend when you do those. It forces you to fire those muscles. And when you do that, it builds those connections. So then when you’re on the bike and you’re like, Hey, I’m not firing appropriate appropriately. You simply think of it and you start doing it.

[01:44:19] Jonathan Lee: And it happens. Whereas sometimes if you aren’t doing strength training and you have to get off the bike, do like, you know, glue activation exercises and try to do that. So just to restore those connections, and then you hope it lasts on the bike. It’s just, it’s such a great insurance program for athletes to avoid injury and to be able to build proper technique and sprinting, really, you know, I, I don’t know how to really measure this.

[01:44:45] Jonathan Lee: I think more there’s more to sprinting in terms of like, coordination is more to blame for successful sprinting than just pure force creation. And I think that that’s evident by the fact that rarely a sprint is won by the initial surge of power, but the athlete’s ability to sustain that power. Right.

[01:45:04] Jonathan Lee: That’s where you see athletes. And typically what it looks like is instead of an athlete, sustaining it and accelerating away from the field. It’s just everybody else can’t sustain it quite as much. So they end up dropping back, makes that rider look like they’re accelerating ahead. But in many cases they don’t, it’s that ability to be able to fire the muscles all at the right pattern.

[01:45:24] Jonathan Lee: Like Chad said, you have an agonist and antagonist and they’re not fighting each other instead they’re working perfectly in unison. And when that happens, it’s really efficient. You know, we had Justin Williams on the podcast. And what did he say about how he’s so good at sprinting practice? He said that he is sprinted endless amounts of times his whole life.

[01:45:43] Jonathan Lee: That’s just what he has done all the time. And you look at Corey and you look at Justin and how good they are at sprinting, probably a brotherly rivalry of sprinting against each other all the time, doing stuff, you know, and that’s the sort of thing that really builds that ability to, to go fast on the bike.

[01:46:01] Jonathan Lee: So Oscar on those efforts, those require a huge amount of neuromuscular coordination. The higher intensity you go, or the longer things get drawn out, the more important that becomes. So that’s likely where you’re seeing, that’s likely why you’re seeing the most benefit there. It’s probably comes down to coordination rather than just building big muscles.

[01:46:21] Jonathan Lee: So kind of a sneaky sneaky in that you’re getting from strength training. It could also

[01:46:26] Hannah Finchamp: be a sign of needing to work on that threshold. Um, and below a little bit more just, it makes me think and be curious what Oscar’s cadences for some of those efforts, you know, if he’s putting it, if he’s standing for all of his anaerobic work or doing a really low cadence that makes it more masculine versus then if he sits and spins it 90 RPMs during the threshold, it’s a very different type of effort and requires more cardiovascular, um, uh, load.

[01:46:59] Hannah Finchamp: So it’s just different and, and it’s. Not good, not bad. It’s just a data point to know. Okay. These are my areas of opportunity.

[01:47:11] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, for sure. That’s a good point. Looking like everything feels really easy here. Maybe the negative space speaks more volumes. Right? So, and honestly, the one thing I can say is with strength training, that’s one of the, one of the most immediate ways that I recognize the improvement is in sweet spot and sustained work.

[01:47:27] Jonathan Lee: And I think it comes down to once again, that efficiency, like I’m not flopping around, you know, it’s just easier to be able to sustain that. Like one way I always think of this too, is if you’re riding a VO two max and your peddling technique changes substantially when you’re a VO two max, versus when you’re at threshold, it’s probably not sustainable from many different reasons, but even if, just, if we want to isolate one reason, it’s because you’re not peddling efficiently when you get up to VSU max, right.

[01:47:54] Jonathan Lee: If you’re just flopping your body around and you’re peddling with your ears instead of just in, from a solid foundation, pelvis anchored, or the sit bones anchor to the saddle, and you’re able to produce that power. Well, of course you wouldn’t be able to sustain that for long periods of time. Right. And the same thing goes with thresholds.

[01:48:11] Jonathan Lee: So check your technique on that for sure. That’s a great point, Hannah. Um, chances are you have the strength to be able to do it, but sometimes we lack the discipline to be able to sustain and actually utilize all that strength. So any other points you want to cover on this one? Y’all

[01:48:30] Jonathan Lee: cool. So we’re going to get. Yeah, way to go over. Yes. It’s good for you. Yeah. Um, Ivy, do you have any other ACEs plans coming up soon or do you want to sneaky race again? Cause he totally sneaky raced that criteria this past weekend.

[01:48:45] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t want to know if I wanted to race. We talked about early season races pretty recently on a podcast and how I usually don’t do them because of how emotionally damaging they are for me to just get rolled.

[01:49:00] Ivy Audrain: I wasn’t planning on racing, but this race in Sacramento is kind of a nor Cal classic and training’s been going good and I was feeling snappy. So I was like, all right, final bit. And um,

[01:49:14] Jonathan Lee: what’d you learn in? Cause you won, which by the way, awesome way to go. Ivy pot, everyone in the podcast world is clapping for you.

[01:49:22] Jonathan Lee: But now we’re talking about landmark. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, one of our favorite courses, uh, Chad, I bet you, the Chad, do you like that course as well? I’ve never really. Yeah, of course. It’s not very technical. Yeah. It’s fun. Huh. And there’s a lot of different tactics that can unfold on it because it has a few different like key elements that really change it up.

[01:49:42] Jonathan Lee: What’d you learn Ivy? Uh, or what did you enjoy

[01:49:46] Ivy Audrain: a lot, a lot actually. Um, which is that it doesn’t matter that I’ve been removed from. Actual crit racing for what like three or four years or more than I’m, uh, just getting smarter as I get older, I feel like five or six or seven or eight years ago. Um, if I would roll up to Kurt like that, um, especially in this time of training, I would have tried to force a break I would have gone for, um, like every pre-me and would’ve gotten rolled in the end for sure.

[01:50:19] Ivy Audrain: Um, and so it, uh, I’m stoked that I was able to, uh, kind of roll the dice a few times and see where I was at and see where everyone else was at and what kind of course it was. And if it was a breakaway course and what I could do, and actually look at it and critically think about it in the race and respond accordingly

[01:50:39] Chad Timmerman: as a strategy, what ended up working.

[01:50:41] Jonathan Lee: So, um,

[01:50:43] Ivy Audrain: I, because I’m so out of practice with crits and I didn’t know how my legs were, and I didn’t know any of these people I was racing with. I was like, okay, I’m going to get a first frame on just to see how my legs are and remind myself who I am and there’s one on the first lab. So that was great.

[01:50:59] Ivy Audrain: And it went great. And so I was like, okay, it’s good. Um, uh, it’s good day. And it was super windy. And the course is pretty open with the exception of like a tricky little chicane. So it was like, okay, this could potentially be a breakaway course. And everyone was super willing to, uh, attack a lot and try to force a break.

[01:51:22] Ivy Audrain: And so I was like, okay, could happen. And there are a few teams with a couple of writers, so it, um, it’s not unlikely by any means. Um, so I followed a few and kind of bridged it up to a couple in the first, I don’t know, like five or six laps and it just wasn’t working and it was so windy. Um, and the field was too motivated to not let anything go that they didn’t like, so it just wasn’t going to work.

[01:51:48] Ivy Audrain: So then my strategy had to just be to, um, figure out who the sprinters were, kind of like sit back and watch them go for PREMs and figure out where to be in the end and just be patient.

[01:52:00] Jonathan Lee: Okay, nice. Where to go. Those mid race, those mid race, uh, strategy course corrections are kind of tough to do sometimes.

[01:52:08] Jonathan Lee: Right. Because we get married to an idea of how a race is going to play out. And it’s tricky to like sit back and say, actually, I’m going to observe what’s going on and change that.

[01:52:17] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. Good. On your first seen that early on and just, and I’m guessing, so for the middle part of the race, you sat in and played it a little more conservatively and then it came down to okay.

[01:52:28] Ivy Audrain: Yeah. And, uh, that was so tricky and so hairy because of how windy it was. Um, and, uh, being a little out of practice and maybe you should have been a little bit farther back when it’s super windy, you can make the mistake of, um, and I did thinking I needed to be like second or third or fourth wheel expecting it to be like a traditional sprint where people in the front will really wind it up and carry a lot of speed and I’ll be able to pop around.

[01:52:56] Ivy Audrain: And because it was so windy, they lost so much speed and we all got swarmed and all of a sudden there were like four or five writers to the left and the draft like that had already passed me. Whoops. Well, here we go. And just kind of had to weave through them and really winded up and somehow got past them.

[01:53:16] Ivy Audrain: Yeah,

[01:53:17] Chad Timmerman: just superior power. Then you didn’t even latch onto them. You just sprinted against them and beat a train for

[01:53:23] Jonathan Lee: like kind of pay to

[01:53:24] Ivy Audrain: go. Um, try to find another gear. And somehow did

[01:53:30] Jonathan Lee: I know this doesn’t matter at all, and I know that you weren’t going for this, but I saw a picture of you on the race.

[01:53:34] Jonathan Lee: Everyone should go follow Ivy on Instagram, by the way, I go check that out. Um, I think it was on your Instagram. Maybe it’s on your stories. You just look like a bike racer. Like it’s so cool. Like, like, uh, I, when I look at myself in a bike race, I don’t always think like, yeah, that looks like a bike racer, but like every photo I see, if I be racing, I’m like, dang, like that looks cool.

[01:53:55] Jonathan Lee: Like, yeah, it was, it was just awesome. There’s a picture of you like going through a turn and then like riders behind you and it just looks, it

[01:54:01] Ivy Audrain: looks awesome. Yeah,

[01:54:04] Jonathan Lee: that was super cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so like, uh, companies, if you’re looking for models to make your stuff look like real cyclists are using it, Ivy looks like is the most real of real cyclist.

[01:54:16] Jonathan Lee: It’s pretty cool. So sorry if I just pitched you for modeling gigs that you absolutely do not want. Um, okay. Have a discussion. So there are a lot of different, uh, questions that came in here in the states. Everyone switched daylight, saving time, this past weekend switched to it. Uh, and somehow that’s become political these days.

Pro tips on outside workouts

[01:54:37] Jonathan Lee: So we’re just going to leave that there. And instead, we’re going to get into a discussion on what this means for your training. We’ve had a lot of people ask questions about like, uh, well, what does, um, how can I follow my plan since now I’m going to be riding outside more often. How do I balance it? Or, uh, what do I do with all these group rides that are happening after work?

[01:54:57] Jonathan Lee: Now there’s a ton of different questions that we’ve been getting this week. So I want to generally cover a handful of things. And we’re going to go into pro tips on how to train outside, uh, from Hannah, from Ivy, from Chad, myself, everything else. We’re just going to talk about different things that we can think can help.

[01:55:12] Jonathan Lee: Um, and spoiler alert with trainer road outside workouts. You can do all of your training outside, which is pretty darn cool. I do probably, I don’t know. Last year I had to have done over 90% of my training outside. Um, uh, I’m fortunate in the spot where I live, where I have a lot of access to roads. I think that really helped with it, but it’s foreshadowing.

[01:55:29] Jonathan Lee: We’ll get into that in just a bit, but first. Okay. So how to fit in your training with an increased number of unstructured or. So, whether it’s group rides that are happening mountain bike rides, that you want to go do coffee, shop rides, fun rides, big, long weekend rides, whatever it is, how do you do it? So first tip, maybe drop down in training volume.

[01:55:49] Jonathan Lee: And that’s really easy to do when you use trainer road and you pick a training volume there’s low, mid, and high. Uh, when you go into your calendar, you can see wherever that training block that you’re currently in, wherever it starts, there’ll be a little annotation that says what the plan is and where you’re at click on that.

[01:56:04] Jonathan Lee: And you can change the volume right there. It’s super easy. Um, so maybe dry dropping and volume. So you’re still getting Instructure. Construction is still key and important, but then that allows you to get in all the other sort of training that you want to do. The other thing that you could do as well as you, if you don’t feel like you need a plan to build toward a specific goal, you just want structure, but you really just want to be able to ride and do all that stuff is switched to train.

[01:56:27] Jonathan Lee: Now you can remove your plan, but then use train now. Train. Now we’ll look at the workouts you’ve been doing outside. It’ll look at the IMF, it’ll look at the duration. And then based on that, it will recommend which structured work you should do, uh, which is really cool. So it’s using a lot of adaptive training to give you those workouts, but consider it like a drop-in you just drop in.

[01:56:48] Jonathan Lee: You can get a workout. That’s going to be recommended for you. It’ll be an endurance one, a climbing one, which is sustained efforts or attacking, which is short, intense efforts. Uh, so that’s a great option too. And that way you can keep up on structure throughout the year, because there’s so many people that tell us I’m flying in the spring.

[01:57:04] Jonathan Lee: And then in the summer, they’re like, I don’t know what happened. All that fitness. Must’ve been brutal fitness. And it’s like, well, you didn’t train do any structure from, you know, April all the way until August. So of course that’s what happens and you don’t teach structure. Um, the other thing that you can do is, and this is kind of uncomplimentary with this because if a lot of people just, you want her ride outside, that’s why we ride bikes.

[01:57:27] Jonathan Lee: Do outside workouts. So any workout that’s on your calendar, you can flip a switch and it takes it from an inside workout to an outside workout. You just click outside. It’s that simple. If you don’t have a power meter, then you can click RPE and it will give you the interval targets in terms of RPE. If you do have a power meter, it just pushes right over to your garment or your wife who had seen unit.

[01:57:46] Jonathan Lee: And then when you start it up in your head unit sinks, it’ll say, today’s workout. Is this, do you want to do it? And you’ll hit. Yes. And it’s like, literally that simple it’s super cool. Then train the road. After the fact we’ll associate that workout with that ride market is completed. You just have to go back in and fill out the survey for that ride to tell us how hard it was.

[01:58:03] Jonathan Lee: Super cool coming. Soon, adaptive training is going to analyze those outside rides and death. It’s already doing it, but it will actually end up showing the results in your product. Um, because we’re training obviously to do these things. So I want to cover some basics on outside workout. And how to make them better, because since we can’t really control that experience with trainer road, we wish that we could make it like perfect and even better.

[01:58:27] Jonathan Lee: And, but we can’t because we don’t own your head units and all that stuff. So there are some tips that I want to cover on this, and then we’re going to get into tips on how we all execute. So there’s a fantastic blog article on this, and I bet Jessie’s going to link to it and even support or forgive me, uh, help center articles on this, about how to set up your screens on your head unit.

[01:58:45] Jonathan Lee: They can really help. So, uh, there’s some basic tips. Uh, one of the, the, my Garmin screen, the way I have it for training is I have time to go. And if you have a newer garment, you’ll have this option. So our time to go, that tells me how much time I have left in my interval. Then I have my power target and it gives you a range.

[01:59:01] Jonathan Lee: It always gives you probably a 20 watt range is what you’ll deal with. And we specifically do that to allow you flexibility. So then you’re not obsessing over holding a specific power target the whole time in you’re outside, because that’s kind of hard. Then I have my power smooth to whatever duration I want.

[01:59:16] Jonathan Lee: I pick, I use 10 seconds smoothing when I’m outside. Um, I know that probably is going to upset a lot of people for some strange reason, uh, heart rate cadence, and then my lap power. And that’s what I have on there. So with all that information, you’ve basically got the trainer road workout screen on your garment, and it’s a really helpful way to look at it.

[01:59:34] Jonathan Lee: Um, but I want to talk about safety and pacing. So. What are your, like, so, uh, you mentioned this too, that you have a lot of people talk about like how in the world do I hold my power targets outside and how do I do all this? What are your thoughts on suggestions to help people without when they’re trying to do interval training outside?

[01:59:52] Jonathan Lee: Do you have any tips or best practices that you could share?

[01:59:56] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I think it’s a general misnomer that if you have interval workout, you have to do it indoors. You certainly can. It creates a really controlled environment, but outdoors is really fun. Um, and so I think that switching it up can also help prevent some burnout and things like that, and just having options to be able to do either is great.

[02:00:17] Hannah Finchamp: So I think it’s important to know that you can do any workout outside if you want to. It’s just a matter of finding the places that match that workout profile well. So, you know, I think the first thing that can be misunderstood as thinking that you have to have, you know, a perfect loop that has five minute climb and then the five minute rest that you need.

[02:00:43] Hannah Finchamp: And then another five minute climb. It doesn’t have to match the profile of your, if you have five minute intervals, all you need is a five minute stretch of road. Um, and that might not sound super exciting, but to me it’s still fun because I can measure how far I’m going, you know, all of these different things, and I can do those intervals on.

[02:01:04] Hannah Finchamp: One stretch of road. It feels super safe because I know that stretch I’ve selected it specifically for that in our vol you know, that means there’s not, um, stoplights or a lot of cars. There’s probably a big shoulder, all of those types of things. And then after that, I can go and do you know, the rest of my ride somewhere else, finish out the loop.

[02:01:27] Hannah Finchamp: Warm-up, cool-down somewhere more exciting and fun. Um, but I think the big thing is just finding that road that matches your intervals well and selecting a place that it is safe and it doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be back and forth and that’s

[02:01:43] Jonathan Lee: fine. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be a steady climb, right?

[02:01:47] Jonathan Lee: Like it can be a flat section. It can be rolling. I think there’s a lot to be said with learning how to put out power when the terrain is rolling too. We’re not saying like severe where it’s like you’re spinning out or you’re out of gears. And it’s like really, you know, crazy steep up and down. But there’s a lot to be said for that.

[02:02:02] Jonathan Lee: One of the things that I always admired about Chad, when I started racing was the fact that like Chad could just like motor through sections and especially when it would go downhill chap would just motor away from me because I was so used to just holding, like Chad was used to holding 300 Watts up a hill and down.

[02:02:20] Jonathan Lee: Like it was nothing. And, and I don’t care who you are 300 Watts down a hill feels harder than 300 Watts up a hill. It’s just how it works. I don’t know if it’s something broken in our brains or what the deal is, but that’s just how it is. And, but it’s really good to do that because in race scenarios and everything else, you’re not going to have the opportunity for perfect pacing.

[02:02:40] Jonathan Lee: It will be adjusted. Um, even like smart trainers tend to kind of, uh, report smooth data. When you look at it, it’s smoother than the reality is. And if you use trainer road with the power meter and a smart trainer, there’s a feature called power match, which will actually show your power from your power meter as you go throughout this.

[02:02:56] Jonathan Lee: It’s super cool. And you’ll notice that when you do that, versus just using a smart trainer, it looks like it changes a whole lot more and it’s actually just realistic power. That’s just what it is. Like we never get the chance to just perfectly hold our power. It’s always going to undulate it’s always going to adjust.

[02:03:11] Jonathan Lee: So I think that there’s a realistic circumstance. That’s, uh, that can be really helpful when you’re talking about race day performance or meaningful day of performance. If you’re not a racer, it can really help with that.

[02:03:21] Hannah Finchamp: That’s exactly what I was going to say is even if you’re someone who loves the trainer and that’s actually what you prefer, I would still challenge you to get out every now and then, and still complete a workout outside because most of us we race outside.

[02:03:36] Hannah Finchamp: And so it comes down to that specificity again, of knowing how to put out power when you’re doing things like balancing and holding a line

[02:03:46] Jonathan Lee: on your. And the key is structure. Don’t let your structure drop. And don’t cause there’s this weird association. A lot of us have built up that like structure equals indoors.

[02:03:55] Jonathan Lee: And then when I’m outside no structure and don’t do that. Like structure is what makes you fast. So like, don’t get rid of that. You can, you can have your cake and eat it in this case. It’s awesome. So you can do all of the above. I want to talk about, so like the question came in this week, somebody was asking like, how do you hold your power target when you’re riding outside?

[02:04:15] Jonathan Lee: And they were mentioning the fact like, how do I do it safely? Because I’m just staring at my head unit. Um, and Ivy’s eyes just got

[02:04:22] Ivy Audrain: huge. No, I also just think about athletes that, um, you know, fixate on differences of like four Watts and I’m like, I can’t, I can’t do that. Like, I can’t be like, I’m going to do exactly 255 Watts.

[02:04:38] Ivy Audrain: Like, no, it’ll be two 50

[02:04:40] Hannah Finchamp: or 2 58 or two 60.

[02:04:42] Ivy Audrain: Like it’s so hot. I just, I don’t get it. Sorry.

[02:04:50] Ivy Audrain: Thank you. That’s what I wanted to say.

[02:04:54] Jonathan Lee: yeah. And I mean, how do you do that, Hannah, when you’re locking in, when you have power targets and you’re doing it, do you stare at your screen the whole time? Well,

[02:05:05] Hannah Finchamp: first of all, I always have a range. I think that’s number one is I’m never just shooting for exactly one number. Not only does it not matter, I mean, your body, your body doesn’t know.

[02:05:16] Hannah Finchamp: Um, and if you think of the energy systems and you think about the workout that you’re trying to complete, you’re trying to be in a zone or a range or a system, you know, sweet spot and threshold. All of those things are within a certain range. So first of all, picking a range makes it a lot easier mentally.

[02:05:36] Hannah Finchamp: And then it’s just glancing up and glancing down, you know, once you dial in and you know what that number feels like, you shouldn’t be, you won’t be deviating so greatly that you need to fixate on it and stare at it. You recognize what it feels like. So you glance down, you see, okay, this is what that pace feels like.

[02:05:57] Hannah Finchamp: And then you can look up and complete your effort and you just glance down every now and then to make sure. That you’re not fatiguing and falling below that you’re not checking to make sure that every pedal stroke is on that. You’re just making sure that you’re maintaining

[02:06:10] Jonathan Lee: that. Yeah. It’s about tying in perception and power, right?

[02:06:14] Jonathan Lee: Like what I typically do. And with every outside workout that you’ll find in trainer road, during that warmup, you’ll have the latitude to be able to work your way up to whatever power you’ll be holding during the main interval sets. So let’s just say it’s 220 Watts, and that’s what you’re going to be doing during your intervals.

[02:06:32] Jonathan Lee: You’ll be able to go up to two 20 and see what that feels like and be like, okay, roughly, that sort of feels like today. Then when you start your intervals, you start out and shoot for that feeling check in after 15 seconds or so see where you’re at or 10 seconds, whatever it might be. And when I say check in, it’s just a glance down, look down at it and be like, oh, okay.

[02:06:50] Jonathan Lee: That’s where I’m at. And then just make those adjustments. But I find that the higher, the intensity, the more I’ll glance down. Um, and when I say the more I’ll glance down, I’m going to be like every 10 seconds or something, you know, 15 seconds all like, look down and see 30 seconds, something like that.

[02:07:07] Jonathan Lee: Like yesterday’s VO two intervals that I did outside. I was looking down every like 30 to 45 seconds. But after about 15 seconds I checked in and I was like, yep. Okay, I’m close. Or I need to go up, but you need to go a little down. And then after that, I just check in every 45 seconds or so if I’m doing steady state work, that’s lower and intense.

[02:07:24] Jonathan Lee: Like a long tempo ride where I just need to ride, you know, like 70%, 76%, something like that. Right there. I can look down every 10 minutes, maybe I’ll glance then, because I just, that feeling is what I’m trying to hold. And once again, sorry, jet for making a blessed, which has mentioned this at nauseum, and it’s such a great point, but data shouldn’t override perception, it should inform perception.

[02:07:47] Jonathan Lee: And that’s one thing that you really get with outside workouts. It’s super cool. When you combine that with training on the trainer too, because you train on the trainer and you’ll be locked into that and you can really get a feel for what it is and then you get outside. And if you work on tying that in, oh, it makes you a weapon when it comes to racing, because then you’re really in tune with what your body’s feeling and where its limits are.

[02:08:07] Jonathan Lee: And it’s just a really powerful tool. It can, it can help us on. So don’t have to stare at it just glance and tie in feeling. Yeah, there was not a lot of benefit

[02:08:15] Chad Timmerman: and trying to micromanage your power output anyway. I mean, we smoothed the data and, and for, for maybe a number of reasons and yeah, it does make it look prettier, but physiologically, it’s more representative of what’s actually going on.

[02:08:26] Chad Timmerman: If we didn’t smooth it. And we saw, you know, you have a target 255 Watts when really you’re dancing between 2 35 and 2 75 at any point, it’s just up and down, up and down, up and down and you’re thinking, oh my God, the benefit down at 2 35 is very different from the benefit of the 2 75. And this, this workout can’t possibly be.

[02:08:43] Chad Timmerman: Uh, uh, bringing about achieving what I needed to achieve at 255 Watts. It’s that’s not the way the body works it’s but the smooth data is probably more closely in line with what’s taking place physiologically. So trying to nail something perfectly is already a fool’s errand. And then on top of it, using the data to tell you that you’re nailing it is another one.

[02:09:08] Chad Timmerman: You need to be able to feel what it’s like to stay in. What, what, you know, both of you both have, uh, IBN Hannah described as is a narrow band, but it’s not 255 Watts. It’s going to dance below and above it and just, just be close enough most of the time. And this is why we normalize power. This is why we average power because you can’t ma you can’t modulator it that closely and get it that spot on for even a couple seconds of it.

[02:09:36] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, and I want to be clear on one thing too in Chad’s is we smooth? It, he’s not saying train and road does anything you need, but it’s why we have average average power normalized power, or why we view our power in terms of three seconds, five seconds, 10 set, whatever smoothing you have, unless you’re Alex and you do one second.

[02:09:50] Jonathan Lee: Once again, you’re a robot. I don’t know how Alex does it. Um, so, um, but that’s why, uh, we do that. We don’t do anything unique here at train road with that. And it’s something you get better at with time, right? Hannah, like at first expect, especially when people get a power meter at first, they’re like, what does this number mean?

[02:10:07] Jonathan Lee: It’s like bouncing all over the place, but you get better at pacing with time, right?

[02:10:12] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. And I would also encourage everyone to have that lap interval on their cycling computer. Um, whether it’s lap average power lap, mom wise power, depending on what type of interval you’re doing. But if you’re just trying to make that three second, five second, 10 seconds power be the number the whole time it is a fool’s errand.

[02:10:35] Hannah Finchamp: Um, but if you’re trying, if you’re looking at that lap average power, that should just help your mind relax a little bit, because as that number is jumping around, you’ll realize it’s not really impacting your average power for that interval. That much, that average power is not jumping around. So you’ll realize that it’s not, it’s not as difficult as it

[02:11:00] Jonathan Lee: could see.

[02:11:02] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Go give it a shot. Go to trainer road.com. Sign up. If you have big events, put, adapt to train to the test that you totally should just go there, sign up for it. See how it works. You can do all those workouts outside. If you’re training right now and you have more outside workouts, drop down to a low volume plan.

[02:11:18] Jonathan Lee: Maybe switch to train now, but don’t stop doing structure. Stick with us. You will get faster. I promise you and you’ll maintain your speed throughout the season. It’s the way to do it. It’s what all pros do too. They don’t just completely ditch structure. They are doing structure throughout the season.

[02:11:32] Jonathan Lee: It’s making it

[02:11:34] Ivy Audrain: faster. You don’t have to train

[02:11:35] Jonathan Lee: anymore. Yes, exactly. Summer vacation. If you want to stay fast, don’t stop doing structure. That’s the way. That’s what we see across the board. So thanks everybody for joining us for this episode. It’s been an awesome one. Super informative, Chad, it’s great to have you as always.

[02:11:50] Jonathan Lee: Thanks for, for coming on. Hannah Ivy, go to trainer road.com. Share this podcast with your friends. Once again, go rate it on Spotify. And also you can share this podcast from Spotify. There’s a share button. It’s super easy. It just shares straight to Instagram. So if you’re listening to this and you appreciated this episode, while all of you to go on there and share it on Instagram, that would be awesome.

[02:12:08] Jonathan Lee: It’s a great way to help us grow. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks. Y’all thanks everybody.