Adding my race schedule to the extensive winter training and teaching schedule kept me enjoying life on two wheels like never before. For almost three years I was in the best shape of my life, and both race results and training rides were at their peak. Then it happened… the combination of getting sick in the middle of winter training this year and deciding to spend 100% of my time building a new Indoor Cycling franchise took my training to an all time low. Basically, I returned to what I did before I met Sally Edwards and the Keiser m3… I just rode. As I saw my abilities decline, I fell into an old way of thinking; to wit… I better ride more, I’m starting to get worse out here.

This is what I and most of my riding buddies did to “get better” before Cycling Fusion. We just rode more, or did more climbing. Unfortunately, it never really translated into very big improvements, yet it was all we could think of. So guess what happened. Past patterns translated into past results – no significant improvements and a return to pre-Heart Zones®, pre-Power training levels. I have a saying I stress to my students and team members. If you train right, the results will be easily seen and felt – you will either go faster, or suffer less. My riding in France… let me start that again. My attempting to ride in France for Global Ride (see pained rider in photo) was the event that forced me to admit the truth: I’m neither going faster, nor suffering less, even when I go slow… basically, I just suck right now.

For a while, I tried to explain it (translate blame it) away on a variety of situational factors. Truth be told, I just stopped training. Training does indeeed take hard work, and committment. You can’t cheat your training and hope everything will turn out alright, like some kind of workout fairy will sprinkle performance dust on you while you sleep at night. It’s simple… start training again, or stop crying in your beer. The fact is, I’m going to suffer in the hills, and keep getting dropped by my buddies until I decide to start working for it again. Argh… I hate starting over like this, but this stuff works in both directions – conditioning or DEconditioning. The choice lies before me.

Rather than blather on, I’ll simply describe how we arrived at these numbers, and define each of the metrics that we tracked throughout the sessions. Our methods were as scientific as is possible outside of a university setting. We required everyone to do a New Leaf metabolic test (measuring fat/carb burn rates, VO2, Threshold, Heart Zones, etc) one to two weeks before Winter Training began on January 2nd. We also used the first 2 weeks to measure everyone’s baseline power numbers.  Having the Keiser M3 to work with was the absolute key component of tracking and improving our progress for improving Power.  From there, we kept track of these various metrics over the next 16 weeks of training, culminating with a post New Leaf test.

The percentages in the table images represent the amount of improvements each rider has achieved from the beginning of the year to about the middle of April – setting each one up for the cycling season of their lives. I graded anyone with cumulative improvements over 100% with an A, over 200% an A+, and one individual (our most improved rider) had a total of over 300% gain across multiple metrics. The highest degree of improvement in each category are highlighted by a pink cell, showing while they’ve all had huge gains, each person responds differently to training, and thus they vary by which aspect of their riding and fitness improved the most.

Training Load: These are measured in Heart Zones® training load points. Each week riders were required to increase their load by 5%

Threshold: This is their measured heart rate where the body shifts its use of fat in the aerobic energy production system to carbs (actually, glycogen) in their “anaerobic” system. This is also their Lactate threshold, and team members were given lactate tests to double confirm these threshold values.

VO2 Max: The maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in to produce energy

Sustainable Power: The MSP (Maximum Sustainable Power) measured in Watts, for 20 minutes (all tests were done twice and averaged, with 5 min of rest between efforts)

Climbing Power (5 min): The MSP for the Climbing Power Zone. It represents power output for 5 minutes. Three efforts were averaged for each of these.

Climbing Power (3 min): Same as 5 min, only at higher power levels, for 3 minutes of power generation instead of 5.

Explosive Power: This is the MSP for the Explosive Power Zone – which is 1 minute power. Three efforts were averaged.

Pocket Power: During the New Leaf tests, we manually record their power numbers each minute of the test. The power each rider generates while they are within 15 beats of their threshold is their “Power Pocket”. This is similar to Sustainable Power in that it represents a hard effort that should be able to continue for very long rides.

Watts per BPM: This is an efficiency rating. Every Watt of power you produce is at some physiological cost. The heart rate is the easiest way to measure that price you are paying. Hence, the fewer heart beats that you require to produce the same Watts, or the more Watts you can produce with the same BPM (Beats Per Minute), the more efficient you are.

Burn Rate Change %: New Leaf measures how many calories you are burning in each heart zone. As you train your metabolism, the intention is to have your body learn to burn more fat, more often, and for longer periods of time. This preserves your glycogen for harder efforts, and makes you much more efficient at producing energy, especially over longer rides.

Weight: Not everyone attempted to lose weight, but even if that was not the goal, a lighter rider should be able to produce more Watts/Lb, thus becoming stronger and faster.

I’ve used that saying (“If you can measure it, you can improve it”) as long as I’ve been in business for myself.  It’s not just a saying, it’s virtually an axiom of life.  Just google the phrase, and you’ll see what I mean.  The results are incredibly varied, from the expected business references, to literary writing, and everything in between.  Heck, there are even YouTube videos in this category. Here are some of the more interesting links from just the first page.

Business (From site called “Goliath” Business knowledge on demand)

Life (from a blog called “Life Optimizer”) I love that name.

Neobluepanther (Writing, among other things)

What got me thinking about this truth of truths today was my Physical Therapy visit.  It was my last visit for my wrist, broken a couple of months ago from my first road crash.

What’s the first thing they do in PT?  They measure.  What’s the last thing they do?  They measure.  On my last visit, all my measurements improved except for one.  Truth be told, it was the only thing that I didn’t do my “homework” for.  The poor results then made me ultra aware of its weakness, and so from Thursday till Monday, I worked the wrist in the weak direction.  In just 4 days, upon my return and remeasurement, I increased 14% of mobility.  No matter how many times I see this process work, it still gets me excited.  I think it’s the control freak in me.  If I can improve whatever I measure, I can improve my life.  Cool! Let’s see, what can I measure… (hey, I know what you’re thinking.  Stop that, this is a family show).

The obvious connection here is TRAINING.  This again points to the critical importance of using training tools; heart monitors, cadence counters, power meters.  These are more than just tools, once you get used to using them, and understand how to exploit them, they become the closest thing you have to a personal, full time, always at your beck and  call, coach.  They give you the means to measure your effort, the tools to set your targets, and best of all, it keeps you honest along the way.  Without the constant feedback, what do you have to tell you when you’re slackin’ off or working too hard, or worse than both, training without focus and discipline.

I received an email this summer from one of the members at my club who had just completed one of the best “measurement” experiences – a complete metabolic assessment for Heart Zones, VO2 max, and lactate threshold.  In her own words “ … took 3.5 minutes off my best time….and that is due to nothing more than awareness and data! watched my heart rate the whole time” Danielle

Without these tools, we end up thinking something stupid like “Wow, I sweat buckets today, I must have been working really hard”, or “I want to do better this year.  I’m going to ride more”.  The interesting thing about these common misconceptions is that it shows how inherently people want to measure; the amount of sweat, the miles of riding – the notion is there, but without the tools, it will inevitably leave them frustrated.

So why is it, at least in the field of sports, that the average person seems to use only one thing to measure success; winning and losing.  Even if you don’t race, the only measurement seems to be “I did __________ “(fill in the blanks with your latest accomplishment) or I didn’t.  That sounds a lot like pass/fail.  Don’t get me wrong, I celebrate the mere completion of hard endeavors as much or more than the next guy.  But I am still perplexed by the lack of measurement and hence training along the way.  The reasons why are likely to be wide ranging, but could it be that sports and “exercise” in general don’t often merit this consideration?

Take my original Google search as an example.  I was shocked to not see a single reference to any sport or physical activity on the first three pages of the search results when I put this phrase in the search box.  Every other subject imaginable came up:

Pg 1 results – primarily business and a few other stray subjects as noted in my links above

Pg 2 results – Marketing, Internet Traffic and Conversion, Manufacturing, I.T. Security, BioMed, Carbon Emissions

Page 3 – more of the same Search Engine Optimization, Healthcare, and on it goes with no sports references

So, let’s use this post to change this pitiful state of searchability.  After all, one of the key tenants of the Cycling Fusion manifesto is the need for training tools in cycling indoors, where we have control of the environment, and thus have the ability to be very specific in our training.  If you write a blog, or have a website dedicated to sport – link this blog (this specific post) to your blog or site, and let’s represent sport in this vital life lesson of the need to measure something in order to improve it.  On my next post, I’ll report whether we did enough to fight our way into the first 3 pages of Google or not.  After all, isn’t that the measurement standard of any good blog performance

When you are a mediocre climber (actually I suck), you learn to go fast down hills so you can keep up with the group in front. So it’s a familiar pattern, get spit out the back on the climb, tear down the hill to catch up, repeat… and so it goes. On this one particular hill, I could see the two in front just at the bottom of the hill as I crested. So, I stood up, took a few feet to shift into the highest gear I could, cranked it up while beginning the descent (to around 37 mph or so), settled in the drops, looked up and HEELLLOOO– a big 90 degree bend in the road is 20 feet in front of me. I must have had my head down too long cranking and getting in the drops – completely misjudging how close I was to the bottom of the hill and the bend.

I knew if I tried to skid and lean into the turn I was going to put it down in the lovely moonlike tar and chip road that Pennsylvania is famous for. So instead, I headed for the bank. With a flash of Michael Rasmussen going through my brain, I planted my shoulder in the middle of the bank, and at that speed, instead of just sliding forward and over the handle bars like Rasmussen did in the 2007 TDF, I bounced about 6 feet in the air and landed on the road. The rest was uneventful – I just slid, skid, rolled and otherwise flailed about till my body came to a stop.

I never lost consciousness, but as I sat up, I couldn’t immediately figure out if what just happened was real, or just a bad dream. I had a little pain on my left side, but then it hit me… LOOK AT MY SHORTS! I had just gotten this team kit from Italy, as my only take away from the “Giro d’ Italia. My first thought was – “These better come clean”. I know, the guys are groaning right now, and the women totally understand. I can’t help it if I’m in touch with my “fashion” side.

Seriously though, I was truly blessed to not have been seriously injured. Right after the fashion shock, I checked my hips, and thank God, they suffered no trauma whatsoever – a definite miracle for someone with 2 artificial hips. This is one more reason why the surface replacement ROCKS! If you would see the size of the ball and socket of my prosthesis compared to the “traditional” hip, you would understand how it could take that kind of impact and not be damaged – it’s bigger, sturdier and built for an active guy like me.

After receiving a lot of Twitter and Facebook family love on line, I returned home to lots of phone calls of folks praying for a speedy recovery. These prayers were the real thing because I have a picture of my shoulder blade sticking up by a quarter inch above the top of my arm, and by Sunday night it was smooth as a baby’s bum. God was continuing to bless me. I say if you ask for prayer, you give Him credit when they are answered, right?

Don't hate me because I'm stylish

I saw the ortho doc on Monday and he told me despite the shoulder separation, I would not need surgery there – and time itself would heal it. I would however need a cast for the broken wrist for about 6 weeks. Since the 6th week would take me right into the only team road race I had planned for the year, I made sure she used my team colors for my cast (come on, it’s important to honor your sponsors right?). I’ll probably begin teaching indoors next week, but I’ll stay off the outdoor bikes until the race – I still want to catch those guys ☺.

Today was just our 4th ride or so, and she was feeling the “blahs”. I told her the difference between just working out, and “becoming an athlete” is Structure, Purpose and Discipline. With the addition of our Keiser M3 indoor bikes, we had created a good Cycling Fusion structure for her (combining the best of indoor and outdoor training), she had a good purpose – the road race in September – and now she was finally experiencing the real heart of discipline. Anyone can ride or workout when they look forward to it, and it just fits in nicely with their schedule. It’s when you feel like staying in bed for just one more hour, or when it’s damn inconvenient to force your workout into your schedule, or you have to ride in the rain, or when you feel like anything else would be more fun than training right now, but you do it anyway. That is what shows the difference between someone who just “works out”, and a true athlete. It’s the “D Word”. Discipline stands between the average person and their goals. It is what makes us look a lot deeper into who we are and what we are made of.

These were the reasons to be disciplined, just for discipline sake – it will make her stronger, giver her confidence that she can push herself to achieve her goals; when life tries to get in the way – it was reason enough. That being said, I also told her that occasionally you get rewarded for this type of focus and tenacity. Two weekends ago I was so uncommitted and feeling so unmotivated that I didn’t even decide to do an important race until the morning of the race. I even “tweeted” that I had very low expectations and felt quite slow and out of shape. Nevertheless, I arrived early enough to do a 30 min warmup ride before coming to the line, and then after suffering for the first 25 minutes of the race, I hit my stride and had the best result ever at that race. I took 3 minutes off of last year’s performance – a full 15 minutes off of 2 years ago. I came in 3rd in my division and pulled ahead in the series from 7th to 3rd.

So we put a goal of speed on todays dry run on the 21 mile race course. We only managed a 10.5 mph average speed last time (it’s her first experience road riding, and there are a lot of hills… do you know how hard it is to go that slow… anyway, that’s another story). So we set a descent 12 mph goal for the ride. Just as I suffered through the beginning of my race when I felt likewise, she struggled in the first half hour. But as time went on, her “inner athlete” emerged and she picked up the pace. We finished the ride at 13 mph average! My girl had done good!

While I’m happy she had a good result, I hope it was the lesson of discipline that stays with her, not the higher average speed. That she can use on and off the bike ☺.

To that end, we have just left our Spinning® boat, and have embarked on a cruise liner to the next level. The results achieved in the Giretto proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only indoor training works, but when coupled with the right set of tools – which in today’s world must also include a power meter – can take you to multiple levels of performance above where you started. The Keiser M3 was purchased to help us train for the hardest, longest and most challenging cycling event we ever attempted, and the results convinced us to replace all our Spinner bikes with these amazing machines.

Now clearly, there are other power bikes on the market, and you can also use your own bike with a power meter and a trainer. I’m not out here selling Keiser bikes – it was simply the model that we settled on after test runs and training success. The REAL point is having proper training tools, matching class design, and a facility that demands instructors to educate as well as entertain. These are not mutually exclusive objectives. Our kick off event held 2 nights ago proved that – and the 5 minute YouTube video will give you a taste of how that went.

This is indeed the mission of Cycling Fusion; to help indoor cycling reach its full potential for both outdoor cyclists as well as dedicated indoor enthusiasts, and yet to challenge the indoor only folks to broaden their horizons by exploring the outside world on 2 wheels. We can not only all “get along” as the cliché goes, but we can actually help or at least enjoy each other’s company along the way. If you haven’t ever read the full Cycling Fusion Manifesto, please take a moment to do that. Impacting an entire industry will be difficult to do, but we can do it with a ground swell of folks who catch the same vision.

You can read the full press release of the kick off night and the departure from Spinning® by clicking on the press release hyperlink.

Instead I felt this surge of adrenaline and inspiration like it was shot right into my heart. Speakers who have “been there” in both athletics and business were passing their drugs around like they weren’t even controlled substances. Check out the goodies I got to sample:

CIH2 - Courage In Honesty:
This drug took an interesting path from the mind to the heart. By being honest with yourself, it turns out you stop trying to be that person everyone else wants you to be, and you start becoming that person you were meant to be. To stop playing that game however, takes a lot of courage. Sometimes it means leaving some old stinkin’ thinking’ behind. Other times it means leaving friends that keep dragging you down, and in some cases, it even means leaving a long standing job and striking out on your own.

DM.iB – Details Matter in Branding:
This drug isn’t very portable, but it is reproducible anywhere I go. It turns out that our experience when we encounter our training facilities is quite sensory. Our senses are taking in everything before we even begin our workout. How the place smells, the sounds we experience before, during and after our rides, the visuals we see and feel on the walls, and even the conversations – even casual ones with any staff member – all produce “who we are” – our brand.

UCAx – Unfair Competitive Advantage:
This is the drug that really made us give into temptation, and begin doping. We want that uniqueness that no one else has – that unfair advantage that sets us apart. The challenge is finding what it is, clearly identifying it, and then attacking the climbs ahead with it. This drug required direct injection – it needed to flow through every vein in our bodies.

MbtM – Meaning Beyond The Money:
Ironically, this drug is not actually a controlled substance. It turns out that every one of us at the conference had already been on this drug before turning up at “camp”. I think though, that it is only a matter of time before this will be outlawed, as it almost immediately gives every person an unfair advantage. While we made it clear that we should establish a fair monetary value for our time and expertise, if that was what made us wake up every day and turn the cranks, we were probably going to get dropped in one of the early stages. To sustain the long multi-stage race of building a business in our industry, you need the desire to truly help people – achieve their goals, become healthier, achieve what they never thought possible – in short, change lives in one way or another.

BdH – Bonding With The Heart Zones™ Family:
This was the actual “bonding agent” that kept all these drugs working together towards the finish line. I never would have imagined having the opportunity to improve my own performance through others in the room, and they through me. The aforementioned drug UCAx works differently in each person’s such that we are able to play off each other, and work like a finely tuned team in an opening time trial.

SEf3 - Sally Edwards Factor:
This probably comes as no surprise, but this always seems to be the catalyst that gets all these drugs working in the first place. Sally may hold older world records in multiple sports, but she is still pulling off new victories in inspiration and dedication. Without this catalyst, we would be stuck in the middle of the peleton, working hard, doing our best to avoid crashes, but not really leading the charge. With Sally as our captain, we see constant progress. She is constantly reinventing herself, constantly attacking every climb, constantly making herself and Heart Zones™ relevant to today’s athletes. In a decimated and fragmented industry, she is undaunted by crazy break away attempts, and has a quiet confidence that we will pull them all back before the end of the race. In short, the rest of the team is inspired to pull longer, train harder and embracing the sacrifices needed to win.

Even though I’ve brought a good supply of drugs back from the conference, I’m sure I’ll need to go to the annual conference in October to restock. In the meantime, it’s off to train for the Giretto, and see how these drugs can enhance my performance!

This is why, when I win and place in my age class (the one and only thing to look forward to in the “golden years”), and finish in the top 3rd of the rest of the field, I feel pretty darn good about myself. I do indeed train for these races, but I never had the opportunity to do serious training indoors. My training indoors has always been one of desperation – where I desperately fight to keep my fitness level from being decimated by too many Christmas cookies and the winter insulating blubber that always seems to wrap itself around my waistline.

Opening Global Ride Training Center has changed all that. Not only did we build the facility specifically for indoor training, but for the last 3 years I’ve been soaking up knowledge about cycling training, Heart Zones, power meters, metabolic testing and all the tools readily available to any athlete that cares about their progress. This combination has probably been partially to blame for my first blog post here – where I made the insane decision to ride the first 5 stages of the Giro (provided that Lance agreed to give me a head start on the road ahead of him).

So naturally, I’ve been hard at it for one big reason – I don’t want to fail the Livestrong foundation, and I don’t want to fail myself. Oh yeah, and one other thing… the natural desire to avoid pain. Having ridden in the dolomites in ‘06 before I had this facility and the knowledge about real training, I know what it feels like riding there without being properly prepared. At the time, I thought I was ready. But after day 1 in the Italian Alps, it was abundantly clear – I was in deep doo-doo… the word clueless came to mind quite a bit. Even though I appeared to be suffering less than many of the others, the sufferage was stellar.

That was just 3 years ago, and those memories are like it was 3 days ago. I did indeed finish the rides, and it clearly made me stronger – to the point where I was crushing my training routes at home with 20% improvements in time or speed. For two weeks after my last foray in the dolomites I rode like Superman – it was the closest to an “out of body” experience I have ever had. It was like I was watching myself kill climbs that used to make me cry for my momma. There was however, a steep price to pay for these results. We climbed 7,000 to 10,000 feet per day – it was like a crash course in mega-climbing. Now I know why the pros live over there during the race season.

I know that the only way to avoid a repeat painfest (especially considering we will be covering almost twice as many miles) is to train smarter and harder. The more pain I endure here, the less I will meet out there. I usually say “train smarter, not harder”… good advice for the average cyclists and athlete in general. However, if you’re going to the Giretto, and you have less than 2 months to get it together, you better do both!

The picture above is of my Garmin Edge 705. This is one of two display screens I use while I’m riding. This one sort of shows the ride totals and averages, while the other one I normally keep set to show the “real time” data while I’m riding. This unit is the bomb, and I don’t know how I’d train without it! I have maps for both Italy and the US… and well, I’ll cover that more on another post. The pic above shows the stats from our ride on Sunday.

Getting back to my fatigue factor, as I looked at our time, I realized that since we didn’t originally plan on more than 30 miles, we did bring anything to “refuel” with during the ride. Having something to eat 1.5 hrs prior to the ride, put me at 4 hrs since the last fuel break – not advisable for endurance riding. I should have taken something with me to eat at about mile 25 or so.

So, given a fueling mistake (apparently the same mistake made by Contador during this weekend’s Paris Nice race), I was pretty happy with how we did, and how we felt. Now I’m trying to decide if I should rest a few days before I start hammering for the next 6 weeks or not. I’ve not had more than 1 day off since around Christmas, so I would probably benefit from a few days off from training.

Oh yeah, the best news of all.. NO HIP PAIN!!!!