FISH OUT OF WATER

Don’t worry this isn’t a long story about my fishing woes and the ones that got away.

This is about feeling like that little guy I’ve got there in my hand. I had an experience a few weeks ago that made me think of how people might feel about coming to Pedal Hard for the first time or two. A client I train, Monte Grappa, invited me (or maybe I sort of invited myself) to go running with her and her training group – Rogue running. Fish out of water could be Kevin out of his saddle and on his feet but there’s more to it. See on Friday while having lunch with my wife I was starting to come up with excuses of why I might not make the run. It was too early and maybe I should train some more before trying it out, it would be easier to run from the house, maybe I need new shoes first…I was starting to compile a nice little list. Fortunately my wife encouraged me to go and try something new. Monte had made it easy for me too with the locations of parking spots, time to meet, number to text if any trouble, maps of route, clearance from Rogue coach for me to join. Okay I was committed.

The Run

Found parking no problem – check. Walking up wondered if everyone knew I was the “new” guy – no one noticed me – check. Monte where she said she would be – check. Met some nice people with the group and off we went. It was one of the more enjoyable workouts I’ve done in awhile. Monte’s group of 4-6 runners took me in under their pace and it was a blast to run in a group as I don’t have a lot of experience with that. Something I definitely hope to do more of. And like that little fish there in the photo I survived!

Lesson Learned

Don’t be afraid to be a fish out of water from time to time. Oh yeah…and if you’re ever curious remind me to tell you about that one time I had a steelhead on for over 20 minutes before my line snapped…

ESTABLISH YOUR THRESHOLD~KEVIN LIVINGSTON, PEDAL HARD

Pedal Hard founder Kevin Livingston in Karlsruhe, Germany (2002) with teammate Bobby Julich.

TESTING YOUR THRESHOLD IN THE NEW YEAR

My suggestion would be to get 7-14 days clear of the holidays then consider doing a short test to help establish training zones for your next block of training. Be sure to go into this effort 1-2 days rested so you have strong legs and good motivation. It can be hard to motivate all by your lonesome so take advantage of a group class or a training center à la “Pedal Hard training center” to do your test ride. I suggest a 20 minute test protocol. Pick a goal wattage and go around 5 watts under for the first 5 mins then at the goal for 5 mins then reassess – go harder or stay the same. The last 5 mins you should have paced so that you can be planning to give just the littlest extra of push. This can be a good way to mentally break up the effort otherwise 20 mins can be pretty daunting. Another option, not a cop-out by any means, would be to go a comfortable hard for 20 mins and assess how many watts higher you might’ve done going all out and make a slight adjustment. If you test every 4-6 weeks this might be useful to keep motivation as the 20 minute time trial can become a quite feared workout.

TEST PROTOCOL

THE WARM-UP

LAZY

The initial goal of the warm up is to stretch the legs and get loosened up and into your pedal stroke and settled into your position on the bike. In the center you’ve probably heard me refer to this as lazy warm up. You’re just turning the legs over in a very light gear but not yet concerned about rpm and especially not power. This is a good mental drill too to get your mindset shifted over from wherever you came from and into training – beast mode. 

SPIN

Next level of warm up is adding some focus on rpm. Get the legs turning over and pedal with intent! Focus on form and delivery of power to the pedals. Look down at your legs and feet. They should be aligned and heel drop should match to create symmetry in your pedal stroke. At higher rpm you want to give in to the path of the pedals – just a light tap at approx. 5 o’clock (right) and 7 o’clock (left) where you can feel some resistance. Once you’ve tapped, we’re not yet pushing or stomping, then focus on getting that foot out of the way so the opposing foot can do its work. 

POWER

Time to take the warm up a little more serious. A series of shorter intervals to venture into the upper zones will help ensure you’re ready to start your test. You essentially want to build up and touch into your threshold for a few minutes to turn on that lactate system and then remove-reduce the build-up and roll right into your test. This avoids you having to go through turning on that system during the test. This protocol of a warm up can be very useful for a short time trial as well. 

WARM UP Overview

• 3′ LAZY

• 3′ SPIN – RPM focused. Build your rpm 85-100 over the 3 minutes. Keep the power low.

• 3′ POWER – build into your medium zone, 90s rpm

• 3′ POWER – tempo, 85-low 90s rpm. So bumping up over your medium zone but still below threshold.

• 2′ SPIN – RPM focused. Same as 2nd stage of warm up. RPM focus – spin.

• 3′ POWER – threshold. A good guideline here is your starting wattage goal for your threshold test, 88+ rpm.

• 5′ SPIN – RPM focused. Spin out the warm up and get ready to test.

THE TEST

20 minute time trial. Pick a goal wattage for the test:

• The first 5 minutes pace 5-10 watts under your goal average watts.

• From 5 to 10 minutes work on building up to your goal average watts for the test.

• From 10 to 15 minutes hold on to those watts and keep in mind that you want to have a little in the tank to really push the final 5 minutes.

• The final 5 minutes take it to the line. After working so hard for 15 minutes make sure you finish it off as strong as you can. In other words don’t be a quitter!

THE COOLDOWN

• Record your result.

• Spin very easy for 5-6 minutes then;

• add just a little power (Zone 2) and force yourself to spin for 10-12 minutes.

• Finally super easy – lazy legs again for 5 minutes. That’s a wrap!

Check out my previous blog post on Cycling Threshold Explained to get going on setting up your zones.

Nice work getting down to business.

CYCLING THRESHOLD EXPLAINED ~ KEVIN LIVINGSTON, PEDAL HARD

Threshold in the cycling community might just well be the close relative of ‘core’ in the strength training world. There are no shortages of opinions on it, descriptions, and the frequent threshold name dropping in the coaching and training world of cycling. Don’t believe me? Count the number of times you hear-think-breathe ‘threshold’ during your next workout. I explain to my athletes that the term threshold loosely used is essentially what you can do for any given time period – period. For this article I’m speaking in terms of power output so you would need a power meter to determine your output in watts. Want to know your 5 minute threshold? Then go do a 5 minute effort. 10 minute threshold? Go hammer 10 minutes… At Pedal Hard, we use a 20 minute threshold test or lactate threshold test to establish an athlete’s zones to then build workouts and analyze performance. Quick note: if you’re referring to lactate threshold then the test involved testing blood lactate, anaerobic threshold then testing involved ventilatory measurements with a VO2 cart, and poor old plain threshold was done in ‘real world’ testing without either. You would want to use heart rate and power in all instances to gather some data for training. Now how to use this data is where it gets a little tricky and approaches may vary a little. At Pedal Hard we begin by either doing an LT (lactate threshold) test or a 20 minute time trial…and even better…both! We would do them on different days. The 20 minute time trial is a bit of a feared effort among our seasoned athletes. And rightfully so as it requires a lot of motivation and high tolerance for physical and mental pain. Put frankly- it hurts! Important for both tests that you come into them rested. I recommend 1-2 lighter days of training beforehand. This is so you’re up for the effort and to also limit excuses.

We have done over 700 lactate threshold tests over the last 10 years and even more 20 minute time trial tests. Athletes are often disappointed in their ‘lactate threshold’ results. I’ve found that the majority of our athletes’ lactate thresholds fall about 8-10% below their ‘threshold’ or 20 minutes all-out effort. This should not trigger an emotional response. It is simply additional data to use that is just a part – yes just a part – of a lot of factors contributing to going fast on a bike and feeling strong. Highly trained athletes and professionals will have less of a gap between their lactate threshold and max 20mins effort but that’s for a different article. If you were to visit our training center during any given session you would find everyone referencing a chart in front of them for their individual zones (again in power). Their LT which stands for lactate threshold or what I also call your training threshold, because maybe you didn’t determine this via an ‘LT (lactate threshold)” test but a 20 minute time trial test, will be at the top of their chart and below will be their zones. Here is an example of an athlete with an LT/Training threshold of 250 watts.

LT: 250  

Zone 1: RECOVERY <139  
Zone 2: ENDURANCE / STEADY STATE 140-189  
Zone 3: MEDIUM / TEMPO 190-227  
Zone 4: THRESHOLD 228-264  
Zone 5: AT (above Threshold) / VO2 MAX 265-302
Zone 6: VO2 MAX 303+

 This would mean your 20 minute threshold (all-out effort) should fall around 270-275 watts. Of course there are always exceptions to these calculations but this is the formula we have had good success with in training cyclists and multi-sport athletes and is based on our observations and patterns of testing and training athletes over the years.

If you are interested in figuring out your threshold then find a coach, training facility, or university that does testing or put yourself through a 20 minute effort. I’d be more than happy to shout you through your test in our Pedal Hard facility. The above zones are just percentages of your plugged in threshold – don’t forget to adjust your results if using the 20 minute test method by minus 8-10% to create your training zones.

Zone 1: <55%
Zone 2: 56%-75%
Zone 3: 76%-90%
Zone 4: 91%-107%
Zone 5: 108%-120%
Zone 6: 121% +

Thank you for reading! And hey I kept the use of threshold under 25x…well that might’ve put me over my threshold…see it’s not easy!