Hot Weather Tips, Rest Weeks, Aero Field Testing & More – Ask a Cycling Coach 205

Hot weather training and racing tips, why you might not need rest weeks, tips for aerodynamic field testing and more, all covered in this week’s episode of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast. Join us live this Thursday at 8:00am Pacific!


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Topics covered in this episode:


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Episode Notes:

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/tv/video/AP-1XH4Y6VFD1W11/women-s-xco-finals-albstadt

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Drop Bar Shifters with Shorter Reach, Shimano R7000, 105: Hydraulic Disc Brake DUAL CONTROL LEVER (Small Hands Version)

Chung Method:
http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/wattage/cda/indirect-cda.pdf

Aerotune:
https://www.aerotune.com/tutorial-aerotest/

4 Likes

Another good podcast. Had some spare cycles this morning :grinning:

• How to beat hot weather (11:38)
• Why you may not actually need rest weeks (43:40)
• Are hiking and stair running good cross training? (52:37)
• How to balance training with pregnancy (1:00:52)
• How long can you ride in the Sweet Spot zone? (1:16:34)
• How the digestive system reacts to a race (1:24:23)
• Tips for riders with small hands (37:24)
• Tips for aerodynamic field testing (1:10:36)
• How to pin your race number (1:34:30)

4 Likes

On the topic of how to beat the hot weather:

a.) how do you salt load before an event in the heat, days, amount per day, etc.?
b.) when taking in sodium tabs, any recommendation on the quantity, frequency and any brand?
c.) if I substitute sodium tablets with salt in my home made sports drink is 5 grams of salt per 750ml bottle enough?

Thanks and regards,

elvis

Great Podcast. :+1:

Lots of chat about recovery and judging readiness for training. How about a podcast discussion on using HRV as a stress guide and applying numbers to recovery? Seems to be plenty of research out there suggesting that HRV is an effective way of planning your training and is a good measure of whole body stress.

John

2 Likes

On the subject of aero testing, if you want to do Chung method then it’s worth looking into Golden Cheetah and the aerolab plugin. It should allow you to pull the data from the fit file your garmin will spit out, and there are a bunch of built in adjustment factors for wind speed and stuff. There’s more info about it here: GoldenCheetah
I’ve not tried it myself yet, but there are a bunch of guides online as to how to use it, and some respected UK TTers have generated good data out of it.

3 Likes

You’re makin’ my job easy! :wink:

3 Likes

Just finished listening to the podcast. On the question of changing music to match cadence targets, I’m like @Nate_Pearson, and I cannot ride on anything but the beat. After a bunch of testing, I now use VLC Media Player (Official download of VLC media player, the best Open Source player - VideoLAN), and I play either Youtube or Soundcloud mixes through VLC.

Everyone’s obviously different, but I’m a progressive trance fan when I ride, and Above & Beyond is the music of choice. A two hour set of theirs played through VLC means I can vary my cadence by 5-10 rpm with a single click of the keyboard. And the beauty is, the music doesn’t sound like it’s just done four grams of speed–it maintains the sound integrity pretty well.

e.g. This morning I did an hour’s easy cadence ladder ride - went in 2 min increments from 80rpm all the way up to 130, down to 50 and back up to 80. Was literally a single click every 2 mins, and the cadence match was perfect. It’s by far the easiest solution I’ve found. The only challenge is it doesnt seem to work on iOS (because you can’t feed YT/SC videos into VLC for some unknown reason on an iPad or iPhone). But on a PC, it’s golden.

1 Like

I reached out to Coach Chad about this and below is what he had to say:

a) Sodium loading depends on sodium loss rates which are really subjective. Visit precisionhydration.com to learn more about assessing loss rates, then you can tailor your loading protocol, if you need one at all.
b) See above
c) That’s 5000mg in a 750ml bottle while the “hyper-hydration” drinks contain 3500mg which is insanely high and aimed at very salty sweaters heading into long, hot events.

Good resources are skratchlabs.com, osmonutrition.com, precisionhydration.com, and probably nuunlife.com since that’s where Stacy Sims is now, though I haven’t explored their website at all yet.

1 Like

Hi Ian,

thanks for checking my questions with Chad. I will check on all the resources provided and make sure to not consume too much sodium either, as mentioned by you in piont c).

Cheers,

elvis

1 Like

@Nate_Pearson is scotch super 77 and 3m super 77 the same thing? Per the website it looks to be but can’t be 100% sure.
Also we were given fabric numbers for the season. Will the spray method work if you need to reuse? Or will it destroy the numbers if you have to pull them off.

“Number Pinning”
I feel like I have seen in triathlons I’ve been in people with the little number placard attachment to their seat tube or seat rails that the guys mentioned. Anyone know a good place to get one?

Depends on the bike. With new aero seat posts and disc brake bikes they are getting very model specific.

In the podcast Coach Chad mentioned that you shouldn’t be using salt tabs because of the chloride. It was a brief comment and not discussed; stated like it was common sense. Can you explain in more detail what he meant. Is this related to products like Saltstik capsules?

I have the Headspace app now and since it’s subscription based, wanted to get some feedback from anyone who may be using it.

TIA

I used it for a few months, was really great. The 10 min sessions were very useful to get into mindfulness and taking a bit of time to calm my mind. I stopped using it after a few months as I found I had picked up some of the skills and was using them more consistently without the need of the app. great app and great programme

2 Likes

Anyone able to explain massive headaches when salt deficient? I get very specific headaches when I lose too much salt (sodium).

You can reuse the numbers.

I’m not sure if those are the same. My bottle looks like this: 3M Super 77 76098 Multipurpose Spray Adhesive (10 oz.) - Walmart.com

This is for the listener who wrote in with the question about pregnancy. Disclaimer: I am not an M.D., nor have I ever been pregnant. (I am, however, female.) This was a really good article from Lindsay Goldman, pro cyclist/co-owner of Hagans-Berman Supermint. She trained throughout her pregnancy and raced not that long after post-partum.

Her website/blog is http://www.thedirtfield.com/ and I’m sure if you have questions or comments, she’ll try to respond.