You need one of these…

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I presume you post it to Labmonkey….

or…

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No sealed bags required.

Chamois cream when riding, talc after showering, (Assos) skin repair gel for bed.

First two all the time. The last one only when you have ‘damage’ to deal with.

OP – drop me an email. You need a metabolic assessment. I can help with that.

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Just wanted to check how it works as I haven’t done this before either. Easy.

If anyone is interesting in getting their actual vo2max measured, not this genetic potential stuff, my email is in my profile.

For the ‘100% effort’ conversation earlier – look up “Monod and Scherrer’s critical power models” as a starting point.

Training ‘volume’ and training ‘specificity’ are both important to enhance ‘performance’. The latter is more important than the former, in my experience.

Jimmy – so why do you want some ‘EPO like substance’?

If your red blood cell count, haemoglobin concentration, or haematocrit are lower than YOUR normal level then there are ways that you can sort that out – but, if you want to enhance these measures ABOVE your normal level than any effect will be both hard to achieve AND short-lived. Send me an email if you are the former.

Edit: I am an exercise physiologist by the way, and I have undertaken some research into blood chemistry and exercise tolerance

Berghain – panorama bar

Joe: it is a tech company, but I think it is one of the good ones.

b r: no cash involved – shares for time/expertise. I will talk to the accountant – thanks for that suggestion.

Mike: that is something that I had considered and I guess it would be sensible I guess to guarantee a small amount for my time.

Edit. The business is growing anyway, without any input from me to date – so a share option would be good anyway right? But, the plans they/we have should take things up a notch again and so I am very keen to be involved.

One question I do have is how do you determine how many shares is a fair payment for time/expertise?

Thanks Paul, thanks Mike.

Right now, this work won’t take up too much of my time – maybe a few days a year, so it would be more of a fun hobby rather than a proper ‘job’ as such. But from where I am sat I think that this may grow into something more, given time.

166,285 metres so far. Off to Spain on Friday for a month of riding so that should bump up a fair bit too.

Footflaps – thank you!

If only I knew what all that lot meant. I will read around the subject a little.

Oh, this sounds clever! Thank you. I will have a look now.

Well that looks easier than I expected – Thanks!

Rapha is short for San RAPHAel.

edit. beaten to it.

I am surprised for such a response…

No sugar, Cafetiere (4.5 min brew), Percol Americano Organic course ground – nowt fancy.

Started this morning, had three cups, all black, and each is better than the last.

It is always best to expend extra energy when you are moving slowly, as air resistance to acceleration is lower at lower speeds. So, work harder on the climbs and easier on the flat and descents.

Ian – of course – still waiting for the information though.

Maybe we can set up a STW timeshare on the place… a semi serious suggestion!

Hi Leogang – can you send me an email to the address in my profile please? Thanks.

Shhh, it is a private thread. echo…

I went from kysrium SL clinchers to Zipp 303 tubulars and the difference is noticeable – more aero, lighter, stiffer, less effected by wind (despite the rim depth – flat alloy spokes are the devils work), just better all round really. Oh yeah, the look pimp too. Money well spent.

njee20 – spotted that on cyclingnews this morning.

At first glance it looks ok, the price is tempting also. I do wonder about its accuracy though – I would need to see a bit more of the data than just that screen shot. Although it looks ‘similar’ to the powertap, they are presenting 30 second average data – that is pretty well filtered. And, if you look at the end of the sample there appears to be pretty big discrepancies (although thy neglect to highlight the axes in any useful way so we can’t see the magnitude of the difference) in the data. Just giving a +/- value doesn’t wash with me I am afraid, +/- relative to what exactly? What is the sampling frequency? Can the user adjust the algorithm at all – this would be cool as I recon I could get the left/right balance sorted if I calibrated it to lab data.

Despite all the negativity, I will be watching this product over the coming months.

Andy – I was just thinking about putting our Oxycon Pro in a kids trailer and heading to Coed-y-Brenin.

ps. After you with the downhill riding on a treadmill. Try it.

Rooney – definitely not an ergomo. I had been looking at SRM’s and Quarq’s but neither have a ‘perfect’ solution. The SRM BMX has a single ring, but they need to be pretty big (40+ teeth) an they are quite heavy. Both do some nice MTB 2 x 10 chainsets that are light enough, especially once you remove the outer chainring, but you then get left with the outer chainring tabs which are a little unsightly – considered a discreet bashguard but haven;t found one that I like yet. Maybe SRAm will bring out a Quarq for the XX-1 crankset – that would be PERFECT!

You could look to ADD soem extra TSS for a given duration of off road riding in addition to a PM derived value – so maybe, 10-15 points per hour – this is an educated guess – an it might be something that I could investigate in my lab – hmmm, thinking cap on – the O2 cost of standing on the pedals for extended periods… hmmm.

Andy – I am lucky – I get to play around doing my hobby for a job, couldn’t ask for much more to be honest.

Powermeter files from a mtb are a little scary at first glance – very stochastic in nature and you will be surprised how much people skimp on peddling. It doesn’t represent the energy cost of standing on the pedals and supporting your body weight though – you need torque AND cadence to display power. This is a limitation of power meters on a mtb. I am presently trying to find a ‘nice’ way of putting a power meter on my singlespeed – that data would be interesting.

Lab monkey sounds like a top knowledgeable geezer/bird to me!

‘Geezer’ – and thanks, that is very kind.

A few years ago I used to race ‘elite xc’ and I spent ages reading everything I could get my hands on about training and racing – and with a fair amount of hard work I ended up a ‘pretty good’ racer. Then I decided in my mid twenties to go back to university and do a sport and exercise science degree, and it was soon evident that most of the stuff that I had read previously was at best – a bit ‘out of date’ and at worst – ‘completely wrong’. I enjoyed all of this ‘tinkering about’ and reading new ‘stuff’ and so I was lucky to get a scholarship for a PhD straight after my degree. Without getting to technical, I spent four years looking at muscle energetics and fatigue mechanisms during ‘endurance exercise’ – now we were getting into the real good stuff – the stuff that I wish I knew when I was racing!

In reality, the human body (and especially the muscle and cardiovascular system) behave in a predictable manner and if you understand how it works, and can identify the physiological/biochemical strengths and weaknesses of an individual you can then design very effective training plans that WILL enhance performance (unless you have a Tour winner or an Olympic champion, nobody is at their peak). Having a laboratory to measure ‘stuff’ helps, and collecting power meter data puts everything into the context of the real world, and the latter allows you to track progress over time – this is essential to get the most out of your training – both in terms of making sure that the ‘composition’ of the training is right, and also to ensure that the rate of development over time is optimal and that enough recovery time to adapt to the training stimulus.

Anyway, I have ‘gone off on one a bit there’ – sorry. haha

TRIMP can work OK – or if you can work an excel page – work out your threshold HR and then calculate a HR-TSS value for each ride and use that instead – it will slightly underestimate the stress as HR doesn’t show the ‘anaerobic component’ but in my opinion, it is a little more reliable than TRIMP and if you use TSS, ATL, CTL, TSB metrics then you can integrate your mtb with road training and manage your overall training load a bit better.

‘Ski squats’ are good for mtb descending – you ‘pedal’ on the road bike all/most the time (and sitting mainly), whereas you may have to simply ‘brace your legs’ when descending on the mtb (off the saddle) as you navigate the trail – quite a difference!

Yep, you can monitor progress over time when you are doing intervals if you use the road bike and the power meter – you should see decent changes before too long. Also, if you have soem decent analysis software, have a look at the cadence/torque/power graphs and check that you are developing across the range.

A bit of extra muscle up top can help, and if you start to feel in in your upper body then a little supplemental weight work may help. If you feel OK though, spend the time on the bike – a nice side effect of just riding the mtb is an increase in upper body muscle.

EDIT – think of TSS as the comparison, not distance/speed and all is well in the world.

Ah ok, so you are familiar with power training – well you are likely to have a higher normalised power on the mtb than on the road bike due to the stochastic nature of riding off road. A hard mtb ride will give you an intensity factor of >0.95, of course this will be lower if you are ‘just chilling’. So take that into account when you switch over, if you do 4 hour rides on the road bike, then consider 2-3 hours on the mtb as the training stress score per hour will likely be higher, and you will want to match this between the road and mtb as you make the switch – this *should* help you avoid overtraining.

Riding off road once or maybe twice a week will help you at first as you will learn how to simply ride in the dirt/mud – much of riding quickly on a mtb is related to technique. Remember though that you will also use supporting muscles to ‘wrestle’ the bike about and so you may feel that parts of your body other than your legs start to hurt as a result of more mtb work. As ever, start light and build up over time.

In terms of intervals, you could do soem on the road bike and/or turbo, and a starting point would be 5 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 8 minutes and 20 minutes. These will cover the major energy systems and if you vary the cadence a little between/within sessions – so for example, change your gear by one cog for each interval in a set – you should develop your torque/cadence power range nicely.

Perceived effort would be my preferred way of gauging your effort – one you calibrate your ‘off-road system’ as the heart rate response is a bit slow to get meaningful feedback on anything but the occasional sustained steady effort.

Hope that all makes sense.

Hi rooney – I am an exercise physiologist by day I have been lucky enough to work with a range of athletes from road, triathlon and mtb backgrounds and from looking at their power meter files there are some marked differences (and some similarities) between them – in the same rider even.

A successful bike leg of a triathlon is a nice steady effort ride at close to your (sustainable) threshold – you want a hard but manageable effort that gets you to the run in the shortest time possible but with an eye on conserving energy during the bike to use on the run. So you try and maximise your power output through using a steady torque/cadence effort through the ride. I am sure you are well aware of this of course.

It was also very obvious that riding off road is very different, the trail regularly undulates, has corners, varied surfaces and obstacles to navigate. Holding a very steady effort in such situations is somewhat challenging, nay impossible, and so a mtb rider generally requires an ability to produce a range of ‘efforts’ across a much wider range of torque and cadences. A high sustainable threshold is important as a by-product of that type of ‘fitness’ is a good/quick recovery between bursts of effort. But you will also need to be able to deal with whatever the trial throws at you – and to do that you need to have a well rounded forte of ‘interval’ type efforts – from a few seconds, right up to a good number of minutes for extended (hard) climbing.

What do you want to know Rooney?

Anybody have a link to watch the live video of this?

hopster – Member
Is the motorola guy Raul Alcala?

Wasn’t he on the 7-Eleven team (which became Mororola) in the late 80’s? I think this picture is from ’93 (ish)

The guy in the Motorola kit – looks like Ken Hashikawa?

Complete laceration of the vastus medialis – could see the inside of the kneecap through the cut – until it filled with blood. Nice Helicopter ride to hospital. Surgery. Lots of internal and external stitches. Back on the bike (very tentatively) in three months. All better now and riding (almost) as well as ever this year. Respect to the NHS!

Ton – you might be best asking for a ‘Bruce Protocol’ at the cardiac rehab department – it is a submaximal test and so a little less ‘risky’ than a full VO2max test. If you want to talk a bit more about this drop me an email – I have experience of working with cardiac rehab patients who want to return to exercise/cycling.

Ton – where do you live?

I could do one for you in Aberystwyth (at the University) – maybe combine it with a visit to a Welsh trail centre and/or cake trip.

Jon

Stoner – you are correct. Workbook sent. Hope it now makes sense.

I will make it a (slightly) simpler version as well!