There’s a great TT series in San Diego. Four races through the year on a closed pancake flat 8k loop. First one is this Sunday. It’s a short flight or a nice weekend drive to the beach. http://www.fiestaisland.info/
@Nate_Pearson - the GCN racing YouTube channel now has a ton of cyclocross full race coverage that is available in the US. Good additional trainer entertainment.
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Paula Higgins Memorial Record Challenge Time Trial
40k TT, Moriarty, New Mexico
Elevation 6,220 ft
Labor Day weekend
Slight elevation change (~ 100 ft), wind can be a factor, but many national records set here, including tandem TT!
Inspiring 
I loved the goal setting session. Great to hear about your personal goal setting, especially Chad’s 
I do alot of smart target setting at work. We use the 80% of the time, 4/5 opportunities to indicate a goal has been achieved. This allows for being successful, whilst being an imperfect human.
So if someone’s goal was to be confident whilst racing in a pack the aim would be to achieve this for 80% of the race, 4/5 races. You can have a negative moment without failing and this helps to generate positive self talk whilst moving forward from that. You can also have a “bad” race and succeed overall.
You can have a meal which does not meet all the nutritional goals you have set for yourself, because you are hungry, forgot your lunch and you can see a Popeye’s in the distance/ someone offers you birthday 
and still be succeeding - this neutralises the “I’ve failed, so I might as well fail properly and eat the rest of the cake while no one’s looking!”
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Come to the UK. During May/June you could do 2x fast 40km TTs a week without much traveling, all around sea level.
I think there’s an important caveat to the sleep advice: if you have Primary Insomnia then placing a focus on “getting more sleep” and spending more time in bed can make the problem worse. What happens in Primary Insomnia is that people begin associating the time they spend in bed with 1) worries that they will not be able to get enough sleep, and 2) a physiologically aroused state that prevents sleep. So, in order to overcome it, you need to actually restrict the amount of time you spend in bed and reduce the pressure you place on yourself to fall asleep.
When someone has Primary Insomnia, the treatment is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-i). One of the most important aspects of CBT-i is that you need to maximize “sleep efficiency,” which is the ratio of the time you spend asleep to the time you spend in bed. A “good” sleep efficiency is >85%.
Spending more time in bed is not a problem (and probably a good thing) if you can maintain a sleep efficiency >85%, but it can make insomnia worse if you spend that extra hour in bed ruminating about how you are not getting enough sleep.
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Chad, if you are looking for a 40K TT, check this one out in Washington.
http://www.53eleven.com/wsba-time-trial-championships.html
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@chad, if it’s not too far, try the Texas State Champ TT. 40K, 207 ft elevation gain, new asphalt. It’s near Houston. Plus, Texas users would love to see y’all in person! https://txttchampionship.com/
Excellent suggestion, @jgarner. Adding it to the list!
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I thought the goal setting conversation was super interesting and helpful. Does anyone on here have any good recommendations for how you keep track of your yearly goals? Any good formats, checklists, etc?
Green mountain stage race on the labor day weekend in central Vermont has a cat 2 only field. The opening ITT is what I’d call “Vermont rolling”.
Forgot to mention, that Piru TT turnaround is very tight, on both ends. It’s a essentially a country narrow two lane (one in each direction) road.
@chad come over to the UK and do this 40k TT
It is probably the fastest TT course in the UK. Many a sub-50 have been achieved here including this guy from GCN (formally of CyclingWeekly)
Hi @ambermalika. 1Hr 47 Min into the podcast you reiterate that nutrition leading up to and in a workout should equal to the calories of the workout. (Hope I paraphrased this correct)
In a two hour morning endurance ride before work(4:00AM) I’m burning 1500-1600 calories. How would you fuel for this? Currently I’ve drinking black coffee and shooting for 45-60g of carbs per hour and playing “calorie catch-up” after the ride but your comments lead me to believe I would be better off fueling the night before. I thought eating later in the evening was kind of taboo but not sure… How do you go about something such as this?
Thank you for any help you can provided and you are such a great addition to the team. Keep up the great job.
-L
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see my thread on oatmeal at night (Oatmeal at night - my experience so far - #18 by slowmart) , I started doing rather than try and eat breakfast in the morning and wait around to digest. In my very brief experience Ive been happy and doing 2hr sweet spot workouts of around 1400-1700calories by having a bowl of oatmeal mixed with raisins, dates, maple syrup before bedtime. I’m also finding less of a need to stuff myself full of food after the workout
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Good question. My equation is really easy to apply when you’re not doing an early morning workout, or if you don’t mind waking up at 2am to eat for a 5am session (but seriously who does that). My bottom-line advice is to try a few different methods to see what works for you.
You’re burning rough 800 kcal/hour and taking in at a maximum 60g CHO per hour. That’s 240 kcal CHO, so you’re running a deficit of about 560 kcal/hour, or 1120 total kcal deficit, based on what your burning and taking in during the ride.
The first thing is that you can probably eat more on the bike. I’d bet if you took in fuel more frequently, you could up that to 80g/h or 320kcal/h without too much trouble (or GI stress). You could do this by eating more, or adding more CHO to your bottles. That would close the gap by 160kcal. If you could work up to 90g/h, you’d close the gap by 240 kcal, which would leave 880 kcal. Ideally, you’d be able to take this in before you ride, but that’s a tall ask early AM.
While most folks need time to digest, some people can handle eating something really early and just before riding. If you want to try this, I’d recommend sticking with simple carbohydrates - toast with jam, for example, which will digest quickly and easily (the less fat, fiber, and protein the better for quick digestion and energy in this case). I can actually eat right before a ride and feel fine, as long as it’s nothing too heavy or rich. It’s worth trying, anyway. If it doesn’t work, you’ll know! Getting in 880kcal would be a tall order. I wouldn’t stress about lining up the math exactly. Just see if you can get a little more fuel in before and while you ride (even if “before” is a few minutes before).
The other thing about working out early AM is that, unless you’ve fasted purposefully the day before, your glycogen stores are likely restored by the time you wake up to train. You can certainly take in more CHO with dinner to see if that helps. Keep in mind you have both liver and muscle glycogen, so making sure you have a recovery shake post-workout each morning will be the key to restoring muscle glycogen and thus positioning yourself best for the next day’s workout, even if it isn’t until the following morning.
@hubcyclist mentions an interesting strategy that’s worth trying. If you find that eating oatmeal or another carbohydrate-rich meal the night before really helps your RPE and performance in your morning training without compromising sleep, that’s awesome. I would be wary, however, if it messes up your sleep schedule too much. If you find it’s a one-or-the-other situation, I’d prioritize sleep first, then work on the low-hanging fruit of adding more CHO during your workout (and before if you can), plus your recover shake. Even if you can’t fully replace 100% of those calories burned, you’re better off just getting closer and still getting good sleep.
Hope this helps!
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@ambermalika Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such a detailed and well thought out response. I’m going to work with your advice and ramp up my intake before I get on the bike and increase my nutrition on the bike as well. Previously I hadn’t eaten as much on the bike/trainer because it’s often difficult to eat frequently in a MTB environment but it makes sense now to eat in a training situation.
@hubcyclist Thank you as well for the recommendation on the oatmeal. I gave it a shot last night in hopes it would help this mornings workout. I think I hit the dates(sugar) too heavy to close to bed because my sleep was totally off. I rarely remember having dreams at night and I woke up this morning exhausted feeling like I’d just binge watched some crazy Netflix sci-fi series. I’ll give it another go without the dates.
Thanks again to you both for your help.
Kindly,
Lance
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Hi Amber
I too have been following your advice about eating up to, during and after workouts to equal the calories burned, with great results. How long is the window before each workout that the calories should be included? For example, I workout around 5pm, so should I start counting the calories from my 2pm snack or should I include my lunch too in the calculation, which I eat around 12 noon?
Thanks
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@ambermalika
See above question. Can you help?