Eric's Arcana and RiderX

You may have heard mention of limiting the amount of food that you take in while riding to 200-250 cal/hour (or in that range – it varies based on who you are and how hard you are riding). Because that’s considerably less than the amount you are expending (in many cases – if you are riding slowly and are quite fit, you may be able to take in enough food to meet your needs), even if you are getting carbs/protein from food during the ride, you will be typically finish your ride with depleted glycogen stores and low blood sugar.

Right after exercise, your body is better at absorbing and using carbohydrates and protein – that’s the whole purpose of recovery nutrition. This degrades over time, and after perhaps 2 hours or so you’re getting back to your normal absorption rate.

If you don’t get adequate recovery carbs/protein, your body will tear down your muscle tissue to get carbs to replenish your muscle glycogen. This will make your muscles hurt more and reduce any strength gains you might have made.

While you exercise, you also get appetite suppression. This lasts for a litle while after you exercise (about 30 minutes for me), and if you can get some recovery food, you can get your blood sugar up and avoid that “eat everything in sight” syndrome. If you are riding to lose weight, that can be important.

Now, the matter of what to eat. All the research I’ve read says that real food is just as good as recovery drinks. My experience is that recovery drinks have some real advantages. First, they are quick to prepare and consistent from time to time. Second, because they are liquid, they are absorbed faster than solid food (you don’t have to wait for them to break down). The obvious disadvantage is price, and the fact that you have to remember to bring them with you.

I’ve tried doing recovery with plain food. It may be that I’m not getting the right food, or it may be that my timing is too late (I sometimes drive home after a ride and don’t get home until at least 30 minutes after I’m done), or it may be something else, but I would often feel like I was missing something. Since starting on Endurox, I don’t get that any more, and it seems to have a significant impact both on how sore my legs are and how much energy I have later in the day.

Whether you need to worry about recovery depends on how you ride. Very generally, if you are a trained rider riding at moderate rates and eating along the way, you may be getting the majority of your energy from fat and the food you take in may be enough to keep your blood sugar up. Or, if you are only riding for an hour it’s probably not an issue. On the other hand, if you are riding 2 hours or more, don’t get many calories during your ride, or are riding at a speed that burns more carbs, or if you are training multiple days in a row, recovery nutrition can make a significant difference.

Food for fitness (Carmichael) is a decent reference on food and training in general.

Armstrong had a fast cadence, and he won a millon Tours de France, so we should all ride at a high cadence, right?

If you ask 10 cyclists about the importance of cadence, you’ll get 3 different answers and 7 blank looks. Cadence is confusing, but the basic fact is that riding at a higher cadence is faster, except when it isn’t.

High Cadence is Faster

So, you went out on that hilly century to ride with some friends. You felt good and fast on the hills, but by mile 50 your legs were burning, and you could barely make it up the later hills.

Power is the product of force – how hard you push on the pedals – and cadence – how fast your turn the pedals. Drop down a gear or two, push 20% easier and spin 20% faster, and you get up the hill at the same speed.

But you save your legs. If you’ve ever weightlifted, you know that a 20% difference in weight can make a huge difference in how many repetitions you can complete. The same effect is at work on your bike – spin instead of mashing, and you can climb 7 hills before your legs give out instead of 5.

It’s also true that riding at a higher cadence helps you develop a better pedal stroke, which recruits more muscles and uses them over a longer period of rotation, lessening the peak force for a given amount of power.

And it helps you accelerate faster when you need it.

Higher Cadence is Slower

When you spin, you put more load on your heart and less on your muscles. All things being equal, for a given amount of power, spinning faster will take more aerobic capacity, so you’ll be more out of breath on that climb.

And, if you spin all the time, you can develop a great aerobic system, but you don’t stress your leg muscles, and they don’t get stronger.

A Proper Balance

For a given individual in a specific state of training and a particular ride, there’s a “fastest cadence”. It’s the one where you use up your leg strength right as you finish the race. Ths could easily be faster than your current cadence, and it’s therefore worthwhile spending some time working on cadence.

My Cadence Story

When I got serious at cycling a few years ago, my average cadence was in the 80s, and I decided to work on getting better at it. By just trying to spin faster, I got myself up to a top cadence of around 100RPM, but I wasn’t very comfortable of it.

Then when I did the Carmichael training a couple of years ago, they specified specific cadence drills to do. I did them that summer, and over the past few seasons. My max on-bike cadence is now up into the mid 140s, and I can high 120+ pretty easily. My average is a little bit higher, but not a ton higher, partly because I spend a lot of time on low-cadence muscle tension work on climbs.

The Drill

On a flat or slight uphill with medium resistance, slowly increase your cadence over a period of 30 seconds until you hit your maximum comfortable cadence. Hold that for 30 seconds, and then slow down over the next 30 seconds. Slow down a bit if you start to bounce. Do 3-4 repetitions of this.  

Initially, two things will happen. First of all, you’re going to feel a bit out of control. That’s because your muscles aren’t used to spinning that fast and you need to “rewire” your brain to make them work at that speed. Second, you are going to get really out of breath because you aren’t very efficient at that speed yet.

Once that starts to feel a little more natural, increase the time at which you hold the top cadence to 60 seconds. Do this once or perhaps twice a week, but you don’t really need to overdo it.

I also find it useful to do one-legged pedalling drills, where you clip out one side and do a fixed number of revs (20-30 is a decent place to start) on one foot, then that same number on both feet, and then the other foot, etc. Do this one the flat and in a quiet area, or do it on a trainer, as they feel really weird.

I can hit the low 120s fairly easily now on the bike, 130 with some effort, and I saw 140 with a slight downhill a while back (though I was bouncing a bit at that speed). On the recumbant exercise bike at the club where I work out I’ve hit 160 for short periods.

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.