Crank Cycling

A key component to having a good race is having a tried and tested routine that you stick to. You will have some pressure and stress while trying to accomplish your goals. So it is important to feel comfortable leading into the day of your race. You already must be a disciplined individual to prepare physically and mentally for your race. Taking that discipline and utilizing it for your race day prep is important.

Pick a routine that you know works. Try to sleep the amount of time you normally when training. If your race is on a Sunday don’t add tons of extra chores around the house Saturday. You and your coach have done efforts that should mimic your event. Pick foods that you have eaten before these hard efforts and that you know sit well in your stomach. All testing of new foods should be done during training, months before your event. Give yourself extra time during preparation. Plan for everything to take longer and expect that you will need that extra time.

Because competition is stressful physically and mentally it is important to not add any extra stress. Make sure you are comfortable. Plan your meals ahead of time. What will you eat the day before and the day of (pre and post event). Choose the clothing you will wear to your event, during your event, and after your event. Make sure your equipment is the way you want it. Do you always use red TT bars at a time trial. Make sure they are on your bike not your workbench.

Just like discipline in training discipline in preparation is very important. Practice your preparation. You will most likely have similar events leading up to your peak event. Try new things months in advance. Repeat what works, and right it down to review later. Repetition is key to dialing in your routine. Finally if its not broke don’t fix it.

It is always important to remember life is not perfect. Things can go wrong. We all have had mechanical at inopportune moments or forgotten a helmet. If your are having a challenges here are a couple things you can do. Take a deep breath, ask for help. If it can’t be helped let out your frustration out and than let it go. It is very important as an athlete to have multiple goals. Pick two or three races you want to do well at. Then choose multiple metrics to measure your success. There is almost always a success in your performance.

If you want to take your training to the next level, let the coaches at Crank Cycling know. We can help you meet whatever training goals you have!
See you on the road,
Coach Jesse Eisner

So it is the end of your season and it has been a long one. You just finished the Everest Challenge which has 30,000 feet of climbing. Or maybe you just did a five day UCI stage race in the Caribbean. For some of the riders I coach, this is the way their season ended. When your season has ended with such lofty goals, you can be left with a lack of drive to continue training.

Some riders force themselves through periods where they lack motivation. This can, and usually does, lead to overreaching and eventually burnout or over training.

It is important to give ourselves time to relax from the rigors of training and racing even if you have come off a stellar season, accomplished your goals, and have a new level of fitness. It is important to remember that even if you are not physically overreaching or over trained, that you may be mentally tired. Our minds need just as much care as our bodies when it comes to recovery.

There are always alternative training methods to maintain and rebuild a high level of fitness. These alternatives can give us a break from a rigorous training schedule and still be fun. One method that some cyclists use is Cyclo-cross. Cyclo-Cross is like mountain biking and running mixed into the same workout on road style bicycles. Cylco-cross race courses are run on road, grass, and single track trails with minimal technical sections, but have areas where the rider must dismount and carry his or her bike while hurdling barriers.

Mountain biking is also another good alternative of riding. At the end of a long season, our training and competing can become only a means to an end. Sometimes this leads us to forget about the fun aspects of riding bicycles. Most of us started riding bicycles because it was fun and our competitive natures pushed us to compete on our bikes. Mountain biking leads us back to trails, keeps our brains engaged picking good lines on technical sections of these trails, and usually leads us to mud; and everyone knows that getting muddy is fun.

If you want to be as functional as possible in your off season, lifting weights is also a good thing to take up at the end of your season. Weight lifting is something you should talk with your coach or trainer about as you can very easily injure yourself lifting. Lifting weights should also incorporate the same movements that your cycling discipline does.

When starting to rebuild your overall fitness and transitioning into the off season, it is important to break up the rhythm of your training to include cross training and conditioning in a fun environment. Allowing your body to rest and recover from anaerobic efforts is important. Allowing your mind to rest from pushing yourself to accomplish your workouts is also very important. Training comes in building cycles. All building cycles whether weekly, monthly, or yearly should include rest periods.

Our long term goals as athletes should include rest, recovery, and relaxation at the end of a long season and taking that time will renew our inner drive. I am writing this blog post from Monterey, California, where I just took a few days off to relax, read books, and ride a mountain bike on beautiful Fort Ord, and believe me, I got muddy.

If you want to take your training to the next level, let the coaches at Crank Cycling know. We can help you meet whatever training goals you have!
See you on the road,
Coach Jesse Eisner

It is essential to know your strengths and weaknesses before adding specificity to your training plan. There are two common approaches, 1) further develop your strengths, and 2) focus on your weaknesses. Riders training to their strengths dedicate time and energy where their skills and abilities already lie; others, focus on their weaknesses in order to develop a well-rounded set of abilities. The Crank Cycling Climbing Camp can help both types of riders.
The Crank Cycling Spring Climbing Camp is where a dedicated rider can harness the power of specificity in order to achieve new levels of performance. After determining a focus area and attaining a base-level of cycling fitness, adding training specificity complementing and stretching your abilities is the next step. If you are a climber, more climbing and specific gradients that mimic upcoming events, including appropriate duration and intensity, is essential. Planning on competing in a century race with a 3-mile climb? If so, then you will want to reflect that exact effort in your training. Do you have upcoming touring century rides? The first goal for specific training is to start with duration barely exceeding your existing limits. To maximize your training, the goal is to incrementally extend that duration until reaching the desired effort level for a given event. Accurately answering the following questions will effectively shape your training program:
1) Does the event have repeated efforts such as a circuit race?
2) Is the event a point-to-point event with continuously rolling terrain?
3) Are there repeated climbs?

After these efforts are added into your training plan you can take specificity a step further
by adding continuous blocks of the chosen discipline to stimulate further adaptation—a training camp is a perfect opportunity for this. Training camps can be as simple as a long weekend with multiple days of riding, or as intricate as choosing multiple specific climbs over 3 to 5 days while maintaining specific power or heart rate output.
Crank Cycling just completed a spring climbing camp in some of the most challenging and beautiful terrain in Southern California. For three days riders enjoyed a FULLY-SUPPORTED experience including a follow-vehicle, food, drinks, spare clothing, mechanical support, expert coaching, and evaluation. Riders climbed over 21,000 feet, sped down winding descents, and pushed themselves to new levels—all developing their riding skills and pushing their physical limits.

“It felt like I was on a 3 day vacation, except I was never more than an hour away from home. I got to push my body over some of the most beautiful climbs San Diego has to offer, while feeling very “pro” the entire time. There is nothing more relaxing than knowing you have a support vehicle near you at all times. A raise of your hand gets you anything you need, water , food, a jacket, a wheel change, sometimes just a word of support, or the directions to your next turn. I will be the first to sign up to Crank Cycling’s next climbing camp!” ~Jose Cepeda~

Summer Climbing camp

Jose and Coach Jesse

Coached athlete Justin Farrar

If you want to take your training to the next level, let the coaches at Crank Cycling know. We can help meet whatever training goals you have!

See you on the road,
Coach Jesse Eisner

I saw this story on Velonews today:   Upcoming from CycleOps: Heart-rate-based power meters and superlight carbon wheelset

I am going to say this as clearly and simply as I possibly can.  There is no way to measure power using heart rate.   It just isn’t possible.   Heart rate is to dynamic.  It changes due to factors such as fed state, level of fatigue, how long you have been exercising, hyrdation level and more.      Power measured via strain gauges is instantaneous,  and any effort put into the pedals can be measured right then and there, but but  heart rate may take several minutes to catch up.    So heart rate is a reasonable proxy  for effort level on long efforts, but  is practically useless for long efforts.

Like I said, I love my powertap,   I have one on my bike, and I have a studio full of powertap stationary trainers.   But don’t tell us you are measuring power when you aren’t.    What PT is trying to do is measure training stress using heart rate, and make it applicable across different types of exercise.   This is nothing new and it can be useful.    You can read a good article on TRIMP HERE.    But there is absolutely  no no way that TRIMP equals power measurement.

-Sean

I had a Retul bike fit done with Chris Bennet at Studeo DNA in Carlsbad last month, this is Part 1 of a 2 part entry on my experience with Studeo DNA and the Retul System.

I’d like to start off with my  thoughts on bike fits, and fitters in general.  A good bike fit is can be one of the most elusive parts of a cyclists training and fitness regime. Fitting an athlete and a bicycle is equal parts science, rider feedback, personal experience, black magic and voodoo. I’ve always been skeptical of expensive bike fits that use lasers, smoke machines, and other fancy equipment. After all, the most important part of a quality bike fit is the fitter himself. You often see shop mechanics doing bicycle fits, but this never made much sense to me. I don’t go to TP Automotive for my shoulder pain, so why would I go to a bike mechanic to help me with a bike fit. Even a week at some bike fit school, and a certificate on the wall doesn’t necessarily impress me. I’m not saying that all bicycle mechanics are bad bike fitters, I’ve met many excellent fitters who also know how to turn a wrench. My point is that working in a bike shop does not necessarily qualify someone to do a good bike fit. In my opinion, the most important aspects of a bike fitter are( in no particular order) are:

1) Experience on the bike:
A good bike fitter should have logged literally thousands of hours on the bike. This means that they have several years of experience riding bikes themselves, and simply know what it means to pedal a bike for mile after mile, hour after hour… and how to pedal a bike hard. Their understanding of how a bike and a rider fit together needs to be more than academic, it needs to be experiential.

2) Experience watching others:
Ok, this mostly comes with logging the miles themselves. But spending all those hours riding with others riders allows a good bike fitter to instantly sense when something isn’t right, to recognize the “suplesse” of a a bike and a rider working in perfect harmony, and to try and help you replicate that yourself.

3) An understanding of biomechanics and physiology:
A good bike fitter has to have a fundamental understanding of how our muscles and bones work together to put the power to the pedals. This is where some good old fashioned book learning comes in. Fitters can be self taught, take college classes, go to weekend or week long bike fit classes, or combination of these things to learn and understand the biomechanics of pedaling a bike.  A good background in biomechaincs  allows an experienced fitter understand how parts of the body are related, and adjusting one part effects the rest.

4) Experience doing actual bike fits:
Practice makes perfect.   That is not to say that all new bike fitters give poor bike fits,  simply that experience counts.

Each of these things is equally important and helps a bike fitter make you more comfortable, faster, and injury free on your bike. What you sometimes find in a bike shop employee is someone who has some background and understanding of biomchanics because they went to a “fit school”, yet I assure you that all of these things cannot be learned in a weekend. Many bike shop employees loves bikes, and love to ride them but don’t get all that , much saddle time. If a fitter has not had long hours riding the bike and watching others, a good understanding of biomechanics, and actual experience doing bike fits, then approach with caution.*

Studeo DNA in Carlsbad specializes in doing bike fits only.     Chris is an experienced masters racer, with many miles on under his belt, and one look at Chris clues you in to the the fact that he is a former bodybuilder.   As a bodybuiler and cyclists, Chris  has spent  years   studying and absorbing information about the human body and biomehanics and is as well versed  as anyone how all of those muscles, bones,  ligaments and joints work together.    Chris would be using the Retul Fit System to  help examine my current bike fit, and  possibly recommend any changes in my bike fit.   People usually get a bike fit because they are either new to cycling, have pain or discomfort, or simply want to find a more aerodynamic or  improved biomechanical position.     I had no particular reason to change or  alter my current fit, but I figured I would see what these guys have to offer.

Coming next…the actual fit process:

* I don’t want to seem as if I am bashing bike shop employees here, I’m just trying to drive home the point that being a good mechanic  and  being a good bike fitter are not the same thing!   I have also seen non bike shop  bike fitters that posses all of the attributes I’ve mentioned, at yet still give terrible bike fits!

Coach Jesse is heading up a climbing camp next week.    Here are the deets:

Time to get your climbing legs on! If you are training for a long hard ride like the Death Ride, or just love to climb, this camp is for you. You will get in 3 days of 3+ hour rides with 4K feet of climbing or more each day. Each day features some of the best climbing and riding in the San Diego Area. You can train like the pros with full sag vehicle support, including spare wheels, food, drinks, and more. Day 1 Begins in Escondido, and gains 4K of of climbing a on the Way to the idyllic mountain town of Julian. Day 2 Follows the fabled Kitchen Creek up to the top of Mount Lagunaa and climbs for a total of over 5500 feet. Day 3 is definitely the “queen stage” of this camp and you”l climbs from Escondido up to the lake Cuyamaca and back, amassing over 7K feet of climbing along the way. Cost for the camp is $100 per day or or $275 for the whole camp. Athletes on a monthly coaching plan get a 25% discount. Contact Coach Eisner for more information: jesse@sandiegocrank.com   or register HERE.

In the summer of 1996, I took an introduction to velodrome racing class. I had been riding my bike quite a lot that year and the year prior. Learning how to ride and race on the San Diego Velodrome just seemed like the next natural thing to do with my cycling. A velodrome is an oval track with banked turns. Velodromes can be made out of wood, asphalt, or concrete. They are built indoors and outdoors. There are only 25 velodromes currently in the United States as opposed to Japans 67 velodromes. Recently velodromes are being called hipster Nascar, as the rise of fixed-gear bike riding is currently cool. In my opinion, all things leading to more people on HPVs (human powered vehicles) is good.

Since 1995 I have ridden a bicycle. This is my 16th season racing my bicycle. I still can’t get enough of the adrenaline rush of going fast. My motto is going through corners at 30 mph is good, and going through corners at 35 mph is better. My current job is coaching cyclists. I coach all kinds of cyclists: athletic enthusiasts, adventure racers, century riders, masters racers, and a professional. This coaching started when I was asked to be an assistant coach at the San Diego Velodrome in 2008. This is my fourth season as a coach at the velodrome, so it seems I have come full circle. I learned to race on the velodrome in 1996 and now teach people to race on it.

If you want to come and learn how to ride and race on the San Diego Velodrome, click on the link below or let me know. Our six-week classes start in early March and end in late September.  The next class begins on June 22nd.

This link i below is for the 6 week Developmental class at the San Diego Velodrome. This class is appropriate for riders of all levels, from true beginners to experienced trackies. Sean and Jesse will split the class participants up into two groups. The beginner or Level 1 group, and the advanced or level 2 group. The level 1 group will learn the basics of track riding, while the level 2 group will learn more advanced training and racing techniques. The cost is $120 + a $3 online registration fee. The cost of the class includes a rental bike if you need one. Class is from 7-9 PM on Wednesday evenings. Please arrive a little early, especially before the first week of class. You will receive an email a few days before the first class with a reminder and more information.

San Diego Velodrome Adult Class  Registration and Information

–
Cheers,
Cycling Coach Jesse Eisner
619-962-3176
www.eisnercoaching.com
www.crankcycling.com

A warm up is an important part of your race preparations.   It  is rather silly to  train for countless hours,  travel to a race, and payg entry fees if  you aren’t  going to be properly warmed up. A  proper warm up may not necessarily  win  you the race, but it can definitely lead to a sub-optimal performance and can lose you the race.   We have posted  warm ups for road racing, cyclocross racing, crit racing, time trialing, track racing, and mountain bike racing.    These warm ups are not set in stone, and you may have to experiment a little bit to find out what works best  for you.    If you haven’t been doing a structured warm up, or are looking for something new, consider them a starting point.   If you like them, stick with them,  but  feel free to experiment a little.     You’ll more find  information   links to all of our warm up  protocols here.

Milk does not produce excess mucous.  That is a strange title for  an entry in this blog, but  it seems very appropriate  to my personal situation today.     I am suffering from a wicked headcold at the  moment.  A headlcold that may have been exacerbated by a high volume training cycle I completed on Sunday. ( and therefore relevant to cyclists, training and coaching)    I have  a slow nasal drip constantly coming out of my nose,  and down the back of my throat,  yet I  my head and upper respiratory  tract feel like they are holding so much pressure they are about to explode.    Basically, my head is full of mucous.     ( Doesn’t that paint a pretty picture?  I know some might say my head is full of something else) .   I’ve heard from more than one person today, that I should stay away from milk and dairy, as it increases mucous production.   My first instinct was: ” I don’t buy it”   But that could be because I love cheese; swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, pepper jack cheese, gorgonzola cheese, I love the stuff.    Cheese is one of the primary  reasons I need to drop 10lbs before track season starts.  (You can guess the other. It start with a B and end with an eer)  The other reason for my skepticism  is that I am not aware of any physiological  mechanism wherein dairy products produce mucous, but I have been wrong before, so I decided to do a little research.

The first article I found that came from a reliable source ( ie: journal article or similar)  was this:   Relationship between milk intake and mucus production in adult volunteers challenged with rhinovirus-2.

In this article, they gave people sinus infections, and then essentially  measured their snot by weight, and measured their other symptoms ( such as cough).  What the researchers  found was  “Milk and dairy product intake was not associated with an increase in upper or lower respiratory tract symptoms of congestion or nasal secretion weight.”   Basically:  Milk does not make mucous.   They also found what they called  “A trend … for cough, when present, to be loose with increasing milk and dairy product intake; however, this effect was not statistically significant“  What this means is that basically they think there  may have been a difference there, that milk may have made  the cough  more loose, but that  the researchers did not have enough data or statistical power to prove it.    To me, this seems like like a great reason TO  enjoy dairy while you have a sinus infection.  I would rather couch up some loose phlegm that comes up easily, rather than that thick stuff!

Then I found this:  The Milk-Mucus Belief: Sensory Analysis Comparing Cow’s Milk and a Soy Placebo.

In this study the researchers  performed a double blind study, and gave  subject either a milk , or  soy milk beverage that was indistinguishable from the milk .   Subjects reported increases in 3 of the mucous related variables when they drank the test beverage, but the effect was the same for  both the milk, and the placebo soy beverage.   The researchers “concluded that the effect measured is not specific to cow’s milk, but can be duplicated by a non-cow’s milk drink with similar sensory characteristics.“    Bascially, milk does not make mucous, but if you think it does, and if you think you are drinking milk, you may report more symptoms.   I am going off of the abstract on this one, and I would like to read the whole article so I can see a bit more of their statistics and physiology, but I’m not willing to pay $41.95 for the privilege.

Those first two are from the 90s, and I found more from that  time period, but this is the one that really sealed the deal:   Milk Consumption Does Not Lead to Mucus Production or Occurrence of Asthm is a well written review article from 2005 with 49 references.    These  Swiss researchers carefully reviewed the literature and determined that recommendations to abstain from milk and dairy  in order to  avoid  to increased mucous or asthma symptoms  is not supported by research.  They also report that people  who believe  “milk makes mucous”  tend to report increased symptoms with milk consumption, while people that do not believe ” milk makes mucous” do not report increased symptoms.   This in itself means nothing, until they point out once again, that people who believe “milk makes mucous”  are easily fooled by a placebo.    The reviewers  go on to say that avoidance of dairy products may lead to limited intake of certain nutrients, specifically calcium.   This might not be a an issue for a cyclist suffering from a short term a headcold, but  fact that I can still enjoy my cheese ravioli for dinner with no fear of extra snot buildup in my head gives me some comfort as I  stay at home recovering ans itching to get back on my bike.

-Sean

In 2003, I wrote about how milk  is an excellent recovery drink: ( this is a very old version of my old coaching site)

Several studies have confirmed that milk is an excellent recovery drink, and  , and works as well as commercially available recovery beverages for both cyclists, and runners.

Heidi thinks you should drink more milk

I

The Red Trolley Classic is on the schedule and registration is open.   Its’  the first big race weekend for people in San Diego and really all of  Southern California.  I’ve been involved with this race since its first year in 2003, and I really do enjoy putting on the race.   I’ve managed to keep the entry fees the same, even though the costs have risen by 20% over the last several years.  Ambulance cost has gone up by about $400 since the race started, USCF insurance fees have gone up by about $600, officials fees by about $200,   and San Diego City  traffic control costs have gone up by about $1500 over the last several years. ( from $300 a few years ago, to $1800 this year)  Fortunately the costs of the toilets and dumpsters, Ralph Elliot’s announcing, traffic control equipment, and other costs have stayed relatively the same over the years.  Still, these increases mean that race entry fees  will go up  by a few dollars next year.    It also means that we have to  give some serious thought to the categories that we have racing.   The cash, and time outlays are quite significant, and I am putting my own money on the line.   We  already lose money all morning  by running the collegiate races, which have relatively small fees and mandated low entry fees.  We had to make the decision a few years ago to cut out the junior races, as we can’t afford to lose money on those as well.   The women’s field has been the smallest field over the last several years, and if the women’s race does not have enough entries this year, we may have to eliminate that category as well.    It is simple  fact that  revenue needs to be generated to cover all the costs of putting on the race.  I would love to help support women’s racing, but  I simply can’t afford to take money out of my own pocket to make that happen.  So please women racers…. please come out to the 9th Annual Red Trolley, so that  we can have you there for the 10th!

-Sean

You may want to read my post from last spring explaining:  Why it costs $10,000 to put on an industrial park crit.