During the winter, you have few choices:

• You can focus your training on keeping the couch from floating away, and watch much of your fitness vanish.
• You can ride in the cold, rain, wind, and snow
• You can do another sport
• Or you can ride inside

Riding inside is the choice of many, and it's been a common choice for me, with my bike mounted on a Kurt Kinetic trainer. Some people say that riding on a trainer is tiring. Some people say it's tedious. I think that is unfair. Riding on a trainer is not tiring, not tedious, but an experience that sucks the soul right out of you. Even with music, a book, or a DVD, 40 minutes is about all I can take. Even WiiSports did not lessen the suckitude. 

Plus, there's the hassle of getting the bike on the trainer, tightening the tension adjustment, and putting up with the noise. The one thing that I hate is the NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!

Another indoor option is rollers. Rollers are pricier than trainers for a given quality level (or, perhaps, cheap rollers suck more than cheap trainers), have a reputation for being hard to ride and easy to ride off of, and being difficult to stand or sprint on successfully.

So, I thought about rollers, but for $350 plus $150 bucks for the resistance unit seems a lot considering the limitations. That's for the Kreitler rollers, and yes, there are cheaper ones, but word is that they don't work very well.

Last year at the Seattle bike expo, we saw a few riders demoing a new style of suspended rollers from InsideRide. And this year, I got around to ordering a set of their E-Motion rollers. Despite the price, which is in the $800 range, but just how much is too much to get your soul back?

First up was a bit of delayed gratification, as there was a 6-week backlog for the rollers. And then, due to their being shipped on FedEx (who are congenitally unable to understand the realities of home delivery) they got a nice tour on of the Puget Sound area on a truck for a few days before my generous wife picked them up for me.

Here's what you get when you open the box.

Their unique features are:

• Inline skate wheel bumpers on the ends of the front roller (keep you from riding off the sides)
• Roller bars in front of and in back of the rear rollers (keep you from riding off the front on back)
• Rollers suspended in the main frame on rubber bungee cords

Perhaps that "keep you from" should really be "reduce the incidence of..."

You adjust the distance between the front and back rollers to fit on your bike (using the included wrench), and you're set. They include a good set of instructions on how you should start, which worked well for me, except for the part of not clipping in. I did a couple of sessions in tennis shoes on top of my SPD-SLs, and thought that I had enough to worry about already without keeping my feet on the pedals.

As of now, I've probably ridden 3 hours on the rollers, It's definitely a lot more like riding outside - the bike moves around a lot, and you need to pay more attention. It feels really weird at first, but as the instructions note, that goes away after a while. And while it is possible to stand up in a normal way, it feels really weird to have the bike oscillate forwards and backwards when you sit back down. You still have the "endless 2% hill" feeling because of the constant resistance - I had no idea how much I look forward to small undulations - but overall it's pretty good. And quiet enough that I can keep the TV volume down, a big benefit since the guest room is underneath our bedroom and I sometimes like to ride early on the weekends.

My tip - it's a lot easier to start if you have a horizontal surface on which to put your hand. You can start with slowly supporting yourself, and then slowly lift your hand. I found that easier than a doorway, though there are times when you'd like to have support on both sides.

So, what are the cons? Here's my list:

• Price. Unless you're riding a bike in the $3K range, they're probably more than you want to spend.
• Resistance range. The resistance unit goes up really high, but even on zero, there's a fair bit of resistance. You can reduce that by removing the belt to the resistance unit - which I did accidentally one time - but it would be nice if zero really meant zero. And I'd like the lowest to be a little lower, because riding at low intensities - such as a recovery ride - are going to have you riding fairly slowly, which gives you less stability.
• The resistance adjustment is possible to hit with your cleats, and you may end up riding on 1 when you really want to be riding on 0.
• The rollers are big and non-foldable. However, the back roller bumper is perfectly positioned to hold the unit upright when you lean it against a wall, and I happen to have a perfect slot in which to store them - as soon as I clean all the junk out of it.
• There is no first aid kit. I have some scratches on my left forearm from falling into a shelf, and bruise on my right shoulder from a tip over. Both happened when I was stopping - no issues while I was riding.

Over time, I hope to be able to work up to this, without too much of this.

Ff you can afford them, they're great. If you want another opinion, go read Fatty's review.

Lots of the cool guys have heart rate monitors. Should you get one?

I'm going to assume that you are doing a set of structured workouts.

So, if you're doing that, you need to set your training zones. You can do that by taking a percentage that you determine use 220-age or one of the other formulas, and then train based on that.

But there are a few problems with that. First of all, none of the formulas to determine max hr are of much use, as there are wide variances of maximum heart rate across the population.

But even if that formula does work for you, it's a poor way to set ranges.

Basically, one of your goals is to push your anaerobic threshold to a higher percentage of your maximum heart rate. To do this, you may need to work out near your anaerobic threshold.

The problem is that that threshold is a moving target. A range set based on a maximum will likely be too high when you are untrained, and too low when you are well trained.

The right way to set ranges is to use a field test, like the Carmichael one. That will gve you better ranges, and a good way to track your progress over time.

The other big benefit of heart rate monitors is to get you to slow down. Most riders spend too much time working out right around their anaerobic threshold, which is bad.

Summary

Heart rate monitors are a great tool. Unfortunately, they can be a bit pricey, especially the ones that can upload your data to a computer.

To travel at a given speed, you need to put out a given amount of power. You can either do that by pedalling slowly and putting a lot of pressure on the pedals, or by pedalling faster and putting less pressure on the pedals.

Since the more pressure you put on the pedals, the faster your legs get tired, it's preferable to pedal faster. Within reason.

First of all, there is a limit to how fast you can comfortably pedal. And second, spinning generally stresses your aerobic system more, so you can run out of breath more easily.

So high cadence isn't somewhere you always want to go, but it's a useful tool to have in your arsenal. And if you can ride smoothly at a high cadence, you will be able to ride smoothly at a lower cadence, which is a good thing.

You may have come across suggestions to aim for riding at 90 RPM. I'm going to make a different suggestion. If you are willing to work at it now and then, you can expand your RPM range all the way up to 120 RPM, and beyond.

To make good progress, you need to do focused drills that will work on your speed. Here's the one that I like to do:

1. Start at a comfortable cadence and a middle amount of pressure
2. Over 30 seconds, gradually increase your cadence until you reach the point where your stroke becomes jerky or you start bouncing
3. Back off the cadence slightly until you are smooth again
4. Continue for 30 seconds
5. Slow back down to your original cadence

Repeat this a couple of times, and you're done for the day. The next time you get back to it, extend step 4 to a minute, and then ultimately aim for 2 minutes. You are retraining your neuromusclar system, and it will take a bit of time to do so, but over time you'll smooth out again. Initially you will be a bit inefficient at this, so you might get out of breath. You can deal with this by going into a slightly easier gear, and over time it will get easier.

On normal rides, spend some time at a higher-than-normal cadence, but don't try to push up your whole limits.

You don't need a computer that supports cadence to do this, but it does help. With doing these now and then, I pushed my top cadence from 105 RPM up to 120 RPM, and on a ride last year I held 145 RPM for about a minute while pulling at the front of a paceline on a slightly downhill.

Rating: Good stuff. Will make you faster, but most importantly, will make you smoother and impress you're riding buddies.

Initially, you just start riding. Perhaps you're doing it for fitness, or to lose weight, or just for recreation. And then, at some point, you decide that you want to get a bit more serious, so you start riding a bit faster, riding a bit farther.

And then you plateau. You're riding harder, but not getting any better.

The problem is that you're riding "sorta hard".

A bit of digression into training theory...

The purpose of training is to impose training stress on your body. The stress triggers your body to get better during recovery. But when you're riding sorta hard, you aren't riding hard enough to put a real training stress on your body. That's why you plateau.

The way to get beyond this is to add specificity into your training. Rather than trying to work on all aspects of your riding - on all the energy systems that go into being fast - you work on them one at the time.

Or, in other words, your training is *specific* rather than being general. You might be doing:

• Intervals, to stress your anaerobic system hard
• Long steady rides to build up your aerobic system
• Tempo work to push up your aerobic threshold
• Muscle tension to improve your strength

And, you'll be sure that you're recovered so that you can get the full benefit from the hard workouts.

The disadvantage? Well, you have to have focus, and you have to work to fit the workout you want into group rides (if you go on group rides)

Speed Improvement: High
Coolness Factor: Low (this isn't very sexy stuff)
Cost effectiveness: Epic. At most, you need a book, but you can get by with what you read on the internets.

Verdict: One of the best ways to improve your speed, if you can stick to it.

Ceramic bearings - bearings with ceramic balls rather than steel balls - are a common choice by the top-end cyclists. So, how much do they really gain you?

If I can, I try to figure out what sort of maximum gains you might see when from a specific increase. In this case, we can do a decent job, as we know roughly how efficient bicycles are.

The best data that I've found suggests that modern drivetrains are about 95% efficient (though it's hard to know exactly what they're measuring). If we could get rid of all the lost, it would be like we increased power by 5%. So, a climb that took us 10 minutes would now take:

600 seconds * 0.95 = 570 seconds.

Which seems like an impressive difference.

Though, from a speed perspective on the flats, it's not as big of a deal. 5% more power takes us from 15 MPH to 15.3 MPH, or from 20 MPH to 20.4 MPH.

But, we're not going to get rid of all of that - there's still some loss in the chain.

Cyclingnews did an article a while back on SRAM's $190 bottom bracket that claims that it reduces frictional losses from 4% to 0.5%. Note that that also includes some other low-friction design changes and a low-friction grease. That's gets you up that 10 minutes hill about 21 seconds faster.

On the other hand, Zipp claims that you get 2 watts at 25MPH with their ceramic wheel bearings. The handy Speed and Power Calculator estimates that 25MPH requires 300 watts with hands on the drops, which means you're saving 2/300 or about 0.6% of your power. Not really a lot of savings there, though presumably you could save that much for each wheel, and gain a small amount of speed. They do note that the savings against the high-quality steel bearings they use on their other wheels is only about 1 watt.

We can also assume that both SRAM and Zipp are using the best ceramics they can find in their bearings, and there are very likely cheaper bearings that are going to have a lesser surface finish and therefore far fewer gains. I'd be especially leery of the improvement from other ceramic bottom brackets because my guess is that the seal design and lubricaton are significant factor, especially given the big difference in gains from using ceramic bearings between the bottom bracket and wheels. As for cost, I've seen 5 bearing sets for Mavic wheels for $300. Or, you can find a set of bearings for $35 on ebay.

In other words, buyer beware. Those ceramic bearings you saw on ebay may not be any faster than the ones you're currently using.

Speed Improvement: Medium (pretty good for a hardware change)
Coolness Factor: High (all the pros are doing it)
Cost effectiveness: Low

Verdict: The bottom bracket looks nice, but yowsa, those parts are expensive. But, probably a better use of funds that that titanium seat post bolt you were thinking of buying...

or girls...

This is probably the most common suggestion that riders give when asked how to get faster. I know that I got it, and it led me to head out on a lunch ride with some co-workers. At the time, I'd been riding for about a season, and had only done a small amount of riding with other people.

The "slow warm up" consisted of a 20MPH ride on a slight uphill, and then continued through a flat section. I spent the first 20 minutes dropping off the back, chasing, dropping off the back, chasing, and soon after that...

well, I'm sure you all know what happened then.

So, what is the training benefit of something like that? To do that, I'll correlate it with some of the better approaches to training.

Riding with the fast guys is like doing intervals. Poorly. It can definitely make you faster, but the pain/reward ratio is higher than a lot of other approaches.

Speed Improvement:Low/Medium
Coolness Factor: Nil. Being dropped is not cool
Cost effectiveness: Low, for the amount of pain you endure

This time, we'll talk about whether lighter wheels make you faster.  

This last summer, I upgrade from a set of Bontrager Race X Lite wheels (which run about 1900 grams) to a custom set from OddsAndEndos (which run around 1500 grams). That's about 400 grams difference, which is about 0.9 lb.

The lighter weight will have two effects.

First, it's going to give me less weight to climb. With me at about 165 pounds during the season and the bike overall weighing about 20 pounds, that means a drop of a pound will make me 184/185 or about 0.5% faster on climbs. On a 10 minute climb, that would be a savings of about 3 seconds.

Not really worth it for faster climbing (and you can probably guess what I'm going to say about light bikes in a future post)

So, what's the big deal about lighter wheels? Well, it's because they have a lighter rotational mass.

Whenever you start from a stop, you have to accelerate the bike and spin up all the rotating components of the bike. Because rotational inertia is proportional to the distance of the weight from the center of rotation, the weight of the rims + tires have the biggest effect. So, if you make them lighter, it takes less effort to do that.

This is especially important if you're riding in pacelines or groups. Light wheels can reduce the amount of effort it takes to close gaps or grab onto the back of a paceline considerably, and those little efforts tire you out at a lot. If you ride by yourself at more of a constant speed, you probably aren't doing as much accelerating, but it's still a nice thing to do.

There are a few downsides of light wheels.

First, the lighter the wheel, the more expensive it is. My lighter wheels only cost about $500, but if you want to, you can easily spend $2000+ on a carbon wheelset.

Second, lightness may mean less durability, especially if you go for the really light stuff.

And finally, lighter wheels are a bit harder to control. Because there is less rotational inertia, it's harder to hold a constant speed in a paceline, and the lower inertia also means that a given amount of force into the bars generates more lean angle. I notice this most on fast descents - I have to pay much more attention to keep the line that I want.

Speed Improvement: Medium to high (it may allow you to ride with a faster group where you couldn't before)
Coolness factor: High
Cost effectiveness: Pretty good, if you look for some nice custom wheels.
Bonus benefit: You get to decide what hubs, spokes, colors, etc. if you go the custom route, and custom wheels are often tensioned better than machine-built wheels.

Phatty's fictional post on how to be popular - fictional because of his delusion of popularity - reminded me of something that happened the last time that I did RSVP.

I was riding with a group of guys that work at the same large software company that I do (yes, *that* large software company).

The second day of RSVP starts in Bellingham, goes north and across the border into Canada, and wends its way north. After a while, it runs into the Fraser river in Fort Langley, where you will catch the Albion ferry to get to the other side. On the way to the ferry, there's a small market, which Steve (not his real name) had been talking up for hours.

I'm not typically one to eat a lot on long rides, but the Steve's Rhapsodic descriptions of the effectiveness of the macaroni and cheese as a mid-ride meal swayed me, so I bought a small server and headed outside with the others to eat. Steve decided not only to have the mac & cheese, but also to have a piece of chicken.

After a few minutes, he appeared outside with a large container of macaroni and cheese, a container of water, and a large roast chicken, which he bought "because it was cheaper that way".

Initially, he was exposed to a considerable amount of teasing, but by the time we got back on our bikes 15 minutes later, the bulk of the chicken had been consumed by the four of us.

And, on that day at least, he was right about the mac and cheese.

I've wanted to write more, but I've kept getting involved in big articles, and running out of steam partway through them.

Instead of that, I'm going to write a series of short articles about whether something will make you faster or not.

First up: Aero bars

Drag reduction is important in going faster, and aero bars definitely do it. So, put the bars on your bike, and you'll go faster...

Well, not so fast (ha ha!). You have to get used to the aero bar position, which requires flexibility that many cyclists lack, and you'll need to learn to ride on them smoothly. And you have to put up with the derision of many road cyclists.

The reason is simple. Road cyclists are jerks. No, wait, that's not it. Road cyclists often ride around either in packs or in peletons, and in either case aero bars are dangerous because neither brakes nor direction are as well controlled. Not to mention that you don't get much benefit from them in a pack, because you don't spend that much time in the wind.

So, road cyclists may look down on you. Exceptions to this are as follows:

1. You ride in time trials.
2. You are a triathlete (all triathletes are considered a bit strange by road cyclists)

Ratings:

Speed improvement: high
Coolness factor: low (most cyclists) high (time trailists)

My triathlete friend Chris wrote a nice post a while back with some nutrition tips. It covers a lot of the same topics that I've been meaning to write about, so I'm going to use his post as a starting point.

Carbohydrates and athletes

Philosophically, my nutrition is very close to what Chris advocates - I eat one way for my normal diet, and eat differently around my workouts. As Chris notes, simple carbs are fine during exercise, but should be limited other times. The difference is because of the difference in the body's needs during the two periods, and the explanation is going to be long and have a few sidetrips, but I'll get there in the end.

Basically, your body has mechanisms intended to regulate your blood sugar so that it stays in certain ranges. Your brain, muscles, and other systems are constantly pulling carbohydrate out of your blood, and your digestive system is providing carbs back into the blood. Since mammals don't necessarily eat all the time, there are a couple of systems to smooth things out.

First of all, your liver stores a fair amount of glycogen, and it will release it to the blood as needed. It will also make you hungry. If you are exercising hard, however, you will get appetite suppression, and eventually, you will run out of liver glycogen. At that point, your body goes into a survival mode - it can synthesize enough glycogen to keep your brain going, but not support exercise at the same time.

This is the dreaded "bonk", and the confusion that you get as part of a bonk is because you don't have enough sugar in your brain. The amount of time it takes to bonk depends on how hard you're exercising (higher intensity requires more carbs), your level of fitness (high trained individuals burn fewer carbs at a given intensity), and how full you muscle and liver glycogen tanks are. So, some people can ride 3 hours without bonking, and others might sometimes bonk after 75 minutes. Be especially observant with kids, as they don't tend to eat as well or as often - my daughter bonked (or came close to it) on a bike ride last summer about 15 miles in because she hadn't eaten much recently. I always carry a couple of gels in my seat pack for those situations, and that made her happier quickly (though not happy, as it takes days to recover from a bonk).

So, anyway, that's why having a supply of carbs during exercise is a good idea, but as Chris notes, you don't need much - perhaps 150-250 cal per hour.

If there is excess blood sugar, it will go to muscle and liver glycogen. If those are full, the liver will convert them to fat and save them for a rainy day. That mechanism has served mammals pretty well historically, but it evolved for the typical mammalian diet, and a situation where food is scarce. It has a few problems with refined carbs.

Or, not really with the refined carbs, but with the stuff that has been refined out. You can eat foods that are high and sugar - such as fruit - but the absorption will be slowed down by the fiber in the food. Similarly, if your meal is a mixture of carbs, protein, and fat, the protein and fat will slow down the absorption of the carbs, and you will get a slow trickle of nutritents, which will keep you satisfied for a longer period of time.

If you eat the refined stuff - sugar, white flour, white rice - you blood sugar goes up pretty fast, and your body will likely have to store some of it in fat, and your blood sugar will go back down.  So, that's why the whole foods are better from a carb perspective - they keep you full longer. Not to mention their other health benefits.

During exercise, things are different - your liver and muscle glycogen aren't full, and the small amounts that you should eat during exercise will go to keep those sources full.

Recovery

It's important to get protein and carbs very soon after exercise, to refill the liver and muscle glycogen stores and start any needed repair. If you don't, your body will work to refill your glycogen stores by converting protein to glycogen. It gets this protein from your muscles, which would be bad. I have much less muscle soreness with carbs/protein drinks during and after exercise.

I've had great results with Endurox, and there are other recovery drinks out there. Low-fat chocolate milk is pretty good if you tolerate the lactose well.

The other huge advantage of a recovery drink is that it moderates your blood sugar, and you don't get super-hungry after the workout, and then overeat.

Sodium

Finally, you need to think about maintaining your sodium stores. If you are eating fairly well, you probably aren't taking in a lot of sodium, and you can easily burn through all of that sodium after a few hours of continuous exercise. Your sports drink may not provide enough sodium, so you may need to consider supplementation

Last year I did a quick summary.

And here's this year's data:

That's about 500 miles shorter than what I rode last year, but given that I haven't ridden much in the past 8 weeks, that's not surprising. This doesn't contain any time on the trainer or the rain bike as I'm too lazy to track anything that doesn't show up automatically on my polar HRM.

It's interesting to note that did nearly the identical amount of climbing as last year despite having ridden about 20% fewer miles. I guess that means I rode a lot more hills (and RAMROD had something to do with it).

My plans for next year:

• Work on my core strength. I backed off on that mid-july and my back has been bothering me.
• Play some soccer. I like cycling, but I need something that's weight bearing and team based.
• Try to get into RAMDOD again
• Think about doing STP one-day, so I don't have to remember it as a sucky sucky day
• Lead a few rides for cascade - I want to do an organized ride up Stevens Pass, and Zoo Hill.

Today, I went on a ride. The first ride since I got hurt.

I have been on the bike since then. But, it was a very controlled ride, on my rain bike, where I found that my "leave it on the trainer" approach to maintenance didn't do anything to make the "broken-when-they-made-it" Shimano RSX drivetrain on my 30 lb LeMond Tourmalet work better, and in fact it meant that I broke a rear spoke and my bottom bracket started creaking.

And my body hurt, so after about 45 minutes I limped back in both the mechanical and physical sense.

Redmond cycle replaced the spoke, chain, and did some tuning up, and I did some more PT, so today I went on a real ride. Sure, the bike still weighs a ton and has rims made of lead, but I did somewhere around 25 miles without overworking my body.

Deep breath.

Unclip.

Sit up.

Knee hurts.

Left shoulder hurts.

No pain on the clavicle. That's good.

Sit for a little.

Scoot left, off the trail, take off the helmet, gloves, sunglasses.

Move around experimentally. Ouch. Is the kid okay?

****

I've been under the weather for a week or so - skipping the Tuesday and Thursday night rides - and I really wanted to get out on Sunday. I did shopping in the morning, and then headed out for an easy 20 or so. An easy 20 because I came really close to skipping the riding and working on a storage project.

The easiest 20 starting at my house runs down to Marymoor park, up the Sammamish River Trail to Woodinville and back. It was about 50 degrees, so I went with a light underlayer, jersey, vest, and leg warmers. Yeah, and shorts, socks, shoes, and my full-finger gloves, with arm warmers and hat in my pockets.

I took it easy on the way up, because I didn't know how I'd feel, and because there was a headwind. Oh, and because Sunday afternoon is a high use time, so the trail is not a place to try to make time.

I got to Woodinville, took a break and stretched (my right knee is still not healed), and turned around back. The tailwind (and I have to mention that there really was a tailwind, as I swear that this trail often manages to have headwinds both ways). I'm spinning along at an easy 16-18 when I can.

About 3 miles south of Woodinville, I come up behind a jogger with a cyclist riding next to her. The cyclist is weaving around a bunch, and I'm waiting for an opportunity to pass, when she sees me and pulls ahead of the runner. I start to ease by when the jogger makes a U-turn directly across the trail right in front of me. I move left and hit the brakes and barely miss her. I ask her to PLEASE look before she cuts across the trail, and ride on.

You may wonder at this point why I didn't say anything to her to tell her I was there before I started to pass...

My experience is that that is usually a waste of breath. If there is somebody who is moving in a predictable manner on the right side of the lane, I've found that it's safer for me to pass at the far left than to say something, as saying something sometimes cause them to move out of their path. "On your left" has been particularly bad in this respect.

If I come on a group or up to riders that look unpredictable, I might say "passing", but at that point I'm already down to their speed and I really need them to move for me to pass safely.

So, anyway, I have a bit of a jolt of adrenalin, and I keep riding south, on into Redmond. This part is typically more busy, so I drop down to an honest 15 MPH. As I approach the underpass at NE 90th st, I move left a bit (since it's dark underneath), I see single image of the front triangle of a small bike, and WHAM, I'm on the ground.

...

"Are you okay?"

The voice is young, and when I turn and look I guess that she's about 8.  

"I'm not sure yet"

I look up to see another cyclist on his cell phone talking to the Redmond emergency dispatchers. An adult comes to my side, and I ask "is the kid okay?" The woman says that he has a bloody nose but he looks otherwise uninjured, and tells me that the kid's mom is on her way.  

The EMTs show up about 7 minutes later. I thank the rider who called and the other people who stopped and move father off to the side.

"Do you know where you are?"

I understand the question - he wants to know if I am oriented - but the needlessly precise part of my mind says "Is this redmond, or is this king county here?". I look both ways down the trail, and settle on "Redmond", which makes him happy. I tell him my shoulder hurts, and he's a bit surprised to find out that my collarbone is not broken (I was pleasantly surprised to find that out myself). They do a quick exam of my other body parts - my gloves look unscathed, as does my helmet.

At this point, I'm starting to shiver - partly because the adrenalin is wearing off, and partly because I'm dressed to ride, not to stand around sweaty in the shade. I look over and see the boy - he's about 11 years old, lots of blood on his face, but he looks okay. His mom approaches me, introduces herself, and offers to take me to where my car is.

She goes to get in her car, the EMTs send me to the jump seat and put my bike in the back doors. They drive out to 90th, drop me off, and the boy's mother takes me home. She apologizes, tells me that she tells her son to make sure to look, and I tell her that I have a 13 year old and sometimes they need a more intense experience to internalize that sort of advice.

We get back to my house, she gives me her number and I take the bike and hoist it up to the spot on the wall where it lives with my right arm.

That was a mistake....

*****

So, what's the damage?

Well, physically, I did a number on my shoulder, but I don't think I broke anything (going to the Dr this morning to be sure). Left knee is swolen but doesn't hurt too much. Abrasians on both elbows, both sides, and some rather nice brusing on my butt. I think I have a bit of a bruise on the left side of my head, but I'm not sure because I had a migraine after I got home and it's hard to tell the two apart.

As for the bike...

Well, the fork is rather convincingly disconnected from the frame. The front brakes are misaligned but I don't know if anything's bent or broken. A quick look at the rest of the frame didn't show anything obvious, but I may have missed something. It's going to go into the Trek dealer for the full test because you don't mess with damage in carbon fiber frames.

The front wheel seemed undamaged when I looked at it.

That's my first crash. I'm happy that it was so minor.

When people first start riding, they rarely have any training philosophy other than "just go out and ride". And initially, that's enough - the mere act of riding at all puts a fair amount of training stress on your system, and you therefore improve.

But as you start to ride more, you'll get to the point where your body has adapted to the way that you are training. Or, to put it another way, the workouts that you are doing aren't putting sufficient stress (or, more specifically, the right kind of stress) on your body, so you get stuck.

At this point, most people try to ride more/harder, which can achieve some gains, but you will rapidly reach the point of diminishing returns.

To make further gains, you need to switch to training that can stress your body in specific ways, so that you can improve in those individual ways. Together, those improvements will make you faster.

The Carmichael Field Test can be used to get a decent estimate of your lactate threshold, and then used to set your training ranges. The course consists of two 3 mile time trials with a recovery period between them.

WARNING: There's a lot of pain to be had here, 'specially if you do it right. But I found the zones I got from the test to be very useful, and well correlated with my "seat of the pants" estimate of LTH

The steps are as follows:

1. Find a 3 mile course. Ideally, it will have good pavement, no hills, and no turns or stops. Good luck on that part - my guess is that you will have a bit of trouble doing that. So, if you can avoid big hills and any stops, that will work well. My course is an out and back.
2. Ideally, you have a HR monitor that can give you an average for a session. If not, you can kinda/sorta approximate with a direct reading one.
3. Make sure you are well rested.
4. Don't eat anything within 2 hours of the test, but have 16 oz of a good sports drink about 45 minutes before the test.
5. Warm up thoroughly. You need something more than 10-20 minutes - whatever it takes you to get nicely warmed up. For me, that's about 30 minutes. You also need 2-3 very high intensity efforts of a minute or so to get yourself ready. If you don't do this, you will find that it takes you half of the first effort to get warmed up.
6. Begin from a standing start in a reasonable gear.
7. Don't start too quickly. You should take about a minute to get up to perhaps 90% effort, and then ramp up slowly after that until you get to max effort
8. Your cadence should be 90-95RPM, and you should have a steady breathing pace.
9. Your speed should be one at which you can barely maintain it for the entire time period.
10. Force the pace

At the end of the 3 miles, collect the time and the average heart rate for the first effort. Recover for 10 minutes at low intensity, and then repeat.

Cool down at the end.

After you've done this a few times, you'll get better at holding a max effort for the whole time.

One you get this, you can set your zones, based on the "average average" of the HR. Include the whole effort, including the part at the beginning.

Okay, so to take myself as an example. My average HR from the field test was 164 BPM. And I'm an old dude, so I use the right column.

My recovery HR is 72-115 BPM.

Endurance sets a limit rather than a range - it's basically anywhere underneath the limit. So, my limit is 164 * 0.86 = 141. For tempo it's 164 * 0.96 = 158 BPM. For both of those, you add 4 BPM to get the upper limit of the range (Carmichael say 2-4 BPM, but my experience is that I can hold a 4BPM range fairly easy but it's a lot harder to keep it within 2BPM). That gives me the following ranges:

Recovery: 72-115 BPM
Endurance: 141-145 BPM
Tempo: 158-162 BPM

I'll talk about what these are in the future...