[Closed] Race weight

a whole lb - a decent shit will weigh that 😕

I can't eat enough beforehand to cover a days' riding, so snack constantly plus pretty much always have (at least one) a cafe stop.

just remove a couple of links from your chain, maybe?

wwaswas - Member
just remove a couple of links from your chain, maybe?

winterfold - Member
a whole lb - a decent shit will weigh that

Although as I pointed out, my mistake at the weekend was to not prem-empt the need for 2-3 thousand extra cals and I rode on a normal daily diet. The fact though I completed 50miles 1000m climbing with a 17.4mph average (at my level) is testament to the fact that it worked to some degree as it didn't kill me completely.

b r how far and fast are you riding? a typical (not bradley wiggins) body is storing 50-100,000 calories, but only 2-3000 are instant access.

I read it last week. Very interesting stuff, bear in mind though that (it seemed to be anyway) to be firmly aimed at professional athletes/very serious amateurs (e.g. he recommends training at least 6 days a week in the [b]off season[/b]!) so if you're a more recreational athlete you'll not want to follow his advice to the letter. Still a lot of decent info to take home.

I actually liked the way the author was sometimes contradictory or ambiguous in his advice because often there [i]is[/i] no one right answer, especially coming from a bloke who is generalising and has never actually seen you! Better to cover all the angles (or at least acknowledge they exist) rather than insist that one particular way is perfect for everybody.

Also bear in mind a 1lb weight/.5% body fat fluctuation over 1 week is meaningless due to a) inaccuracy in measurement and b) changes in hydration, etc. I'm sure if you keep it up though you'll start to see something more concrete!

One the tiny glycogen stores are gone (isn't that in like the first 45mins of a race) you're going to need topping up with food anyway.

I think you think [b]way[/b] too much, Just eat more pasta the night before and a healthy dose of porridge and banana before you ride.

I actually liked the way the author was sometimes contradictory or ambiguous in his advice because often there is no one right answer, especially coming from a bloke who is generalising and has never actually seen you! Better to cover all the angles (or at least acknowledge they exist) rather than insist that one particular way is perfect for everybody.

Yes me too, hence I'm adapting my weekend calories to average them over the weekend rather than stick to may daily allowance and have a defiecit I can't make up on Sunday.

Also bear in mind a 1lb weight/.5% body fat fluctuation over 1 week is meaningless due to a) inaccuracy in measurement and b) changes in hydration, etc. I'm sure if you keep it up though you'll start to see something more concrete!

True, I actually recording my measurements using bodyfat scales on a four weekly basis. I have last week as a base (13st, 23.6), I'll record again in 3 weeks time.

I think you think way too much, Just eat more pasta the night before and a healthy dose of porridge and banana before you ride.

I do this, but I tend to overeat/eat rubbish by habit during the week, this kind of thing helps me keep a generic discipline.

I think you think way too much, Just eat more pasta the night before and a healthy dose of porridge and banana before you ride.

+1

move more eat clean should see you move through amateur ranks no bother.

the upper echelons require a bit more science.

how ever if your entering at master level your screwed by all the wasbeen elites.

just the act of setting a goal or challenge should keep you on track - reading a book less so. ive struggled to find a challenge recently that appeals - but i might be onto one now - in a different sport - found something i want to achieve - now to shift 2 stone.

Don't worry trail rat, I'm a 40yo wannabe just wanting to be ahead of the pie eating weekend warriors, I won't be entering master categories (unless by accident I can ride that fast 😯 )

🙂

[i]b r how far and fast are you riding? a typical (not bradley wiggins) body is storing 50-100,000 calories, but only 2-3000 are instant access. [/i]

Normally +50k and 1000 to 1500m of climbing , all offroad. But I've never been able to 'store' energy, which is why no matter how much I eat I don't put on weight (48 and can still fit in my wedding suit..., with a BMI of 20).

I use to really suffer until I realised it was just how my body worked, and I needed a constant intake of calories.

I think you [b]think[/b] way too much

+1........x 1000.........to the power of Gnaaaar.

If you put as much effort into your biking as you did worrying about minor details, you'd be in the Elites by now. Just ride the ****in' bike(s)! 😉

Surprisingly I need to put more effort into eating. Todays, what feels like adequate meals leave at only approx 1700 cals (according to myfitnesspal)! This is it:

Granola Cereal with semi skimmed
2 Slices wholemeal toast

1 x Geobar

3 x Wholemeal pitta's with houmous
400g Organic chicken & rice massala chunky soup

1 x dried apple snack

Wholemeal pasta with fresh tomato sauce & bacon.

I need to find another 800*, yes 800 just to stay alive!!

*May arrive in the form of beer later

yep youd be surprised how much CLEAN food you need to break even on calories.....

eat junk and calories come easy.

br - fair do's - that is a decent ride and sounds liek you are in good nick. I would need to eat a decent amount on an XC or trail ride like that.

I find with MTB you ride at high tempo/threshold a lot more and dont have the option of knocking it off into the fat burning zone but still keeping an OK average like you can on the road.

Kryton - 13st doesnt mean much on its own - how tall are you? do/did you play rugby etc. 28kmh for that kind of ride is not bad at all if you were riding solo, but if it was all that threshold you will be starving afterwards and your daily intake would need to be ~4000 cal.

Anyway, I just had a cup of tea and nana and my weight went up 250gm. I'm going to write a book about it.

ride more.
eat porridge.
and bananas.
get some protein
avoid chemical shit.
stay hydrated.
dont become a diet bore.

that will £6.99. Or it would be if I didnt get that advice free from the NHS dietitian* after my op and feel honour-bound to share, and she has 2 degrees, a masters etc

trail_rat - Member
yep youd be surprised how much CLEAN food you need to break even on calories.....

eat junk and calories come easy.

Yeah, as you can see I'm finding that. This (roughly speaking) is in the book - a McD's Cheeseburger (400cals) and a Carrot (60cals & more nutritious) take roughly the same time to eat. Carrots aren't marketed or as generally available / easy to eat vis a vis most people go for the easy option of wolfing don 400 dirty cals in the same time they could eat the carrot if they'd made the effort.

Kryton - 13st doesnt mean much on its own - how tall are you? do you play rugby etc. 28kmh for that kind of ride is not bad at all if you were riding solo.

5ft 11 and 3/4, I used to play rugby (outside centre)up until 15 years ago at a then weight of 12.5 stone (3 gym workouts, 2 training session and a match in that though) now biking is my sole sport / hobby, only 18 months into riding events of any kind competitively and same amount of time on road bikes. On that ride I may as well have been riding solo as I was dropped off the back pretty much after an hour, for 2 1/2 hours (first 20 miles was a 19mph average). Bear in mind here it was very windy on Sunday with very wet roads and floods in places.

I'm new (6 rides) to club riding, last year my fastest solo was 31.5kph over 30k and 28.5kph over 70k.

Enough of a background?

Edit: One of my goals this years is to do that 70k with a 20mph average.

It can be quite hard dropping that rugby weight. I had to crash my car and have half my guts cutout to do it. I don't recommend this path.

make sure you eat while you're riding if you are learning to hang in with the fast group on your club ride, you will be eating into your glycogen store pretty quickly if they are testing you out or just like riding hard. If you are doing 28 kmh solo then you should have the power to ride with a 34-36kmh group, but maybe havent got the nous yet? It will come.

It is wierd but it is long steady rides that build your base power. Put the miles in at endurance/moderate level, then you will find 30kmh becomes a tempo ride rather than balls out 😉

I am doing so winterfold. 2 lunchtime midweek rides of 20 miles has me riding balls out inc 3 x cat 4's on a Tuesday and Z2 or mtb on a Thursday. With the Sunday club rides included I'm struggling for any more time with work / kids.

I have considered doing club rides bi weekly and doing a long solo z2/3 solo in the intervening week.

yep its hard to combine with any kind of life and why full-on roadies are wierd

Was wondering how you were getting on with it. Picked up the book earlier this week but not got much further than the body types for various sports bit. I'm beginning to think reading the rest may not be a great idea!

Though I did find [url= http://www.cyclingtips.com.au/2009/07/just-how-good-are-these-guys/ ]this chart[/url] the other day showing watts/kg for various categories. Then knocked up a chart with watts against kg. Can see that 1.5 kg is roughly the equivalent of 5 watts, or about a 0.07 difference in watts/kg. Well I thought that was interesting! At least it gives you some sort of idea about what sort of weight change you would need to make a significant difference.

this is as good a resource as anything: http://www.joefrielsblog.com/ if you are a bit of a geek and need to know/worry about everything <scratches chin to think of anyone who might fit that description> then look at Andrew Coggan's blog/academic papers. Then think 'did I eat a massive bowl of porridge this morning?' before going on a hard ride.

In part due to circumstances borne out of near death (totally my own fault from driving like a tit) I have had to look hard at my diet/exercise/priorities but is really ****ing satisfying at 46 to be as fit as I've ever been, pretty skinny and looking forward to doing some racing this Summer knowing I wont be straight out the back. But it isn't rocket science.

The hard bit is working out how to balance work, life and family - I took the decision that hard work and being hung about status and career was killing me and then post-rationalised that by reading all the research that said more money doesn't make you more happy once you have what is really quite a modest income (except the £4k I need for a new Foil Di2 😉 )

Yes Coggan is very interesting, I think the chart i liked to above is based on a spreadsheet of his. Easy to get quite obsessive about this stuff though.

Crikey MrBlobby, my fastest on Thursdays quick ride was 227watts. divide that by 82kgs and you get 2.7 over 7 minute which puts me at the untrained or at best fair category.

(average 187 over 30k)

😯

Yes, that chart can be quite depressing!

Oh and losing 1.5kg will only improve your number by about 0.07 🙂

mrblooby, agreed a kilo here or there really doesnt make a lot of difference to 40 something recreational riders and amateur racers.

10/12/15kg does though.

Unfortunately at about 75kg and about 8% body fat, I'm going to need to do something drastic to lose 10kg!

FWIW the race Weight table recommended I went down to 11.5 stone. So thats 10kgs roughly leaving me with *does maths* 3.15 or fair / moderate.

Blimey, I'd look like a stick at that weight, all that suffering to not much gain!

Kryten - work a set of nasty supermaximum power intervals into your week.

5 x 3 mins on 3 mins off. They need to be done above threshold, as hard as you can go for 3 minutes. Be properly warmed up.

that will get your 5 minute power up (and your lunch) 🙂

That is a good set for keeping up with a group and being able to put some hurt on when necessary 😈

I kind of thought I was doing that by accident on my weekly fast ride winterfold, by "thrashing" up the 3 cat 4's that are on it as fast as possible.

I say thrashing....

But I get it.

Yes, if that power is an indication of your FTP, would suggest there are big gains to be made from intervals focusing on FTP.

Philip Gilbert is your height (5'11") and looks reasonably built for a cyclist (ie he could beat my daughter in an arm wrestle) and is 67kg. Barking! They must disappear when they turn sideways.

mrblobby - yep my musculature basically rebuilt itself over a year in a cyclist shape rather than a 'rugby player who took up cycling' shape. My thighs got thinner but are way more powerful (I am about 4.5-5 W/kg for 5 mins on a good day). Either I had a lot of visceral fat or there was a load of muscle there that felt hard but was just dead weight on the bike. Still got my hookers ribcage though so will never get down to a true 'race weight', which I reckon would be 62kg-ish at 5'8".

my fastest on Thursdays quick ride was 227watts. divide that by 82kgs and you get 2.7 over 7 minute which puts me at the untrained or at best fair category.

Sure you can go quicker than that!

you improve your FTP by pulling it up from above and pushing it up from below. So a combination of base miles (your zone 2 rides) and supermaximum intervals.

'thrashing' up successive climbs sounds about right. Just riding along at 80%/mid zone 3 the whole time is not particularly effective when you are time poor. Strava is a massive help here as it encourage focused effort.

Dont get too hung up on your average speed, focusing on that is a good way to end up riding at 80% the whole time. Once in a while, do your route you want to do at 32kmh and see how you are going against your target.

Is Kryton down our way then njee?

Njee / winterfold here:

http://app.strava.com/activities/39160262

(Njee thats the ride I broke my chain on but...)

I thought I was going pretty hard, it was a blustery day but you should be able to see my power & HR on the Performance tab. You'll see where the chain and later the puncture occurred also.

28.6kph It felt faster too but hey....

winterfold - Member
Is Kryton down our way then njee?

The flip side of london but we've ridden together socially on MTB - mutual friends.

Actually here's the bonking ride:

http://app.strava.com/activities/38818756

:-/

Very interesting stuff, bear in mind though that (it seemed to be anyway) to be firmly aimed at professional athletes/very serious amateurs (e.g. he recommends training at least 6 days a week in the off season!)

My training plan has me training 6-7 days a week all year round, lots and lots of hours in the off season (18hr week) as its just building base (z2). Even Joe Friel says these days in base you don't necessary need a recovery week.

I've still not finished the book, but its interesting. I started eating clean last year. Lost 2.5kgs only Z2 training. Now i'm upping the intensity, i can cope without the need for high GI around exercise time as my body had long enough to adapt to eating clean without stressing it with higher intensity work. When I initially lost 1kg, i noticed the difference straight away when riding with the fast guys on climbs.

To get faster, going out and thrashing yourself every ride isn't necessarly the most effective way of getting there - i went from cat 4 - cat 2 in one season, i was surprised at how easy a lot of my sessions were...long recovery in between intervals etc.

Slightly off topic but why refer to rides in km

But was that absolutely flat out seeing what power you could put out? I imagine you can manage more than 227w for 7 minutes. Do you use any 'proper' software for analysis as you obviously have a power meter?

Dont get too hung up on your average speed, focusing on that is a good way to end up riding at 80% the whole time. [b]Once in a while, do your route you want to do at 32kmh and see how you are going against your target.[/b]

Thats pretty much what the Race Weight book suggested. The four weekly weigh in is also a recording of an all out effort on a known / the same route. Its says to measure time but I've added power to my spreadsheet as my route include traffic lights etc.

But was that absolutely flat out seeing what power you could put out? I imagine you can manage more than 227w for 7 minutes. Do you use any 'proper' software for analysis as you obviously have a power meter?

No power meter, just strava and a garmin...

If I was doing it specificlally measuring FTP / LT yes maybe over 7 mins I could get higher. I've been up to 270 on some rides for 2-3 mins so perhaps if there was a focussed effort....

There's an 8 min fairly flat stretch in there (Lap 5). I'll repeat that ride Monday, doing z2 up to the beginning of Lap 5 and go blindingly hard for that 8 mins and see what happens....