Gray Guys/Girls Maturing Triathlete - Always OPEN (Page 19)

I was up another pound this week. 

I haven't been focusing on weight loss for the past 2-3 weeks, but I really though I would be down this time due to where i stood earlier in the week.

My total training time was 621 minutes. 

This was my first week to hit 600 minutes since I started Triathlon 3-1/2 years ago.  I worked 8 months getting in shape for my first Triathlon and my volume goal was to get up to 600 minutes in my peak week the month before my race.  I however had excessive fatigue at my 550 hour week and had to cut things back rather than surge forward with my plans for a 600 minute weeks. 

I had my second outdoor ride of the year on Saturday.  It was my 4th time outside with bike shoes, my first time outside with a cadence monitor, and my first time outside with a reliable Heart Rate Monitor reading since my previous GPS watch fell of the bike when I was going 20+ MPH and stopped reading the Heart Rate two years ago.  So It was fun adjusting to new tools and was fun being outside in beautiful weather. 

Weight gain: 1.0 lbs

Work out minutes:  621 mins

Congratulations on nailing your time!  Looking forward to the race report!

Bad week overall for me .  I'm up 2 #'s and missed a lot of my workouts.

S - 1:24
B - 1:31
R - :20
Y - :30

I think the weight gain was a combination of over-celebrating my husband's birthday, stress from my dad being in the hospital and not getting my workouts in (lots of calories in but very few calories out).  I'm not sure this week will be much better but I'm trying to be optimistic.  It would really help if we could get some decent weather.  Temps will be a little better but rain/thunderstorms for most of the week.  

Janet

Scott, et al,

I have a question about bike cadence. 

My cycling background is that I have a newspaper delivery route for 4 years.  It was about a 5 mile route and I delivered it on by bike every day with 50 lbs of New papers on front handle bars of a mountain bike.  I wasn't aero, and I wasn't fast.  During this time my scout troop did the cycling merit badge whihc require five (5) 25 mile rides and one (1) 50 mile ride.  On one of these rides I rode along my next door neighbor who had a 21 speed street bike with toe clips.  Next to the rest of us riding 10 speed mountain bikes with platform pedals he was in a l category of his own. of his own.  My my heavy bike with lots of drag I was used to peddling at a low cadence with high Watts.  I remember riding along the 21 speed street bike during one of our rides and the two us us were going the same speed side by size but I was doing about 60 RPM and the other guy was doing about 120 RPM.  He might have not been that fast by it sure seemed like he was spinning twice for every one of my revolutions.  I learned when I started doing triathlons that low RPM with high watts was not recommended for endurance races.  I counted my RPM on a flate road in the middle of a ride when I was going at my typical cadance and my RPM was in the 75 RPM range.  I worked on increasing my RPM for the past three years, but Saturday was my first outdorr ride with a cadence sensor.  Everytime I looked down my cadence was over 95 RPM.  Often it was 105 RPM or higher.  It felt like the same way I have been riding outside for two years so I am guessing that my effor to quicken my cadence everytime I am out has been making a difference.  I basically drop the gears until can spin as fast as possible with out feeling burn in the quads.  I didn't want to contrain my style too much with the cadence meter my first time out but towards the end of the ride I experimented with down shifting any time the RPM got over 95 and my BPM was under my target range max HR, and shifting up any time  my RPM got under 85 RPM .  I would pedal faster or slower depending on where my HR was with regards to my target HR zones.

So  is an arbitrary 85-95 RPM target the best way of doing things?  is the 95+ RPM better?  Should I just go it blind for a little longer to see where my natural cadence is.  

I've been slacking off for a couple weeks.  Barely swimming or running but still cycling.

My week stats were:

No change in weight!

Swim 14:38 (I'm embarrassed just reporting it)

Bike 260.9

Total 275:32 = 4.59 hours

Weight loss - 1.2 pounds

Workout Totals -

Swim - 6.3

Cycling - 5.2

Running - 2.7

Total - 14.2 hours (852 minutes)

Curtis,

Good questions!

I'm going to answer this (or try to answer this) in terms of power because it's easier to "see" it when talking about power.  Obviously the same theory applies regardless of how you are conducting your training or race (power/HR/RPE).

Anyone who has ridden a multi-gear bike knows you can achieve the same speed (power) by turning a very big gear slowly, or turning a smaller gear more quickly.  That's the crux of your question - which is better.  In the simplest terms, when we are riding a bike, we are turning the pedals to move the bike forward - we are applying force to the pedals.  Our output power (watts) is torque (the force on the pedals) times the rotational speed (cadence).  A lower cadence equals a higher force on the pedals which requires more fast-twitch muscle recruitment while a higher cadence equals lower force and greater slow-twitch muscle fiber recruitment.  To see this in a very simplistic example, imagine you are riding along pushing 250 watts - at a cadence of 60 you would be generating 4.16 watts per revolution, while at 100 RPM you'd be generating 2.5 watts per revolution.  For those of you that don't have a power meter, the same theory applies.  A power meter merely provides a way that we can quantify the work being done.  If you are going the same speed, you will recruit more fast-twitch muscle fibers at a lower cadence and more slow-twitch muscle fibers at a higher cadence.

So, what does that mean?  Fast-twitch muscle fiber uses carbohydrate for fuel - glycogen - and quickly fatigues; while slow-twitch muscle fiber utilizes fat for fuel and has much more resistance to fatigue.  A higher cadence will “burn fewer matches” and place more stress on your cardiovascular system (at the same power/speed, you will have a slightly higher HR at a higher cadence), while cycling at a lower cadence stresses your muscular strength and depletes your glycogen stores more rapidly (burning matches).  While there are conflicting studies on which cadence is "best," if you look to the pro-peleton you will see that most professional bike riders prefer a higher cadence.

It's worth mentioning that a new rider will generally be more efficient at a lower cadence.  It takes energy to raise and lower the legs with each pedal stroke.  When a rider is generating lower power and turning the pedals rapidly there is a significant energy cost to simply raise and lower the legs.  As a rider gains experience and is riding with higher average power (higher speed), they will begin to gain efficiency by increasing their cadence.

The so-called experts generally state a cadence of 80-100 is optimal.  The best cadence for a triathlete is the one that allows you to run most effectively off of the bike.  This is fairly easy to determine in training - simply do repetitions of a 20/2 race-pace brick.  One day do a 20-mile ride at race pace using a low cadence, then immediately run off the bike for two miles.  The next week, repeat the 20-mile race-pace ride using a higher cadence and again immediately run off  the bike for two miles.  Those two workouts will likely give you a pretty good idea which is best for you.

When you introduce hills to the equation, the calculus becomes more clear.  Go back to what I said earlier about power is torque times cadence.  Obviously, going up a hill requires a greater effort.  If we raise our cadence, we effectively lower the force required.  For a more visual reference - imagine you're riding along at 250 watts and come to a hill.  As you begin to climb the hill, your speed drops while your power output rises to 300 watts.  At 60 RPM that's 5 watts per revolution, while at 100 RPM it's 3 watts per revolution - 2 watts less per revolution.  Clearly less force per pedal stroke at the higher cadence.  The steeper the hill and the higher the power required to get up the hill, the more you will benefit from a higher cadence - this is where having the right gears for a particular race becomes important.

I generally tell the athletes I work with to not be overly concerned with cadence if they are generally within the 80-100 range.  Most athletes will naturally arrive at the best cadence for them and their particular fitness/experience level.  If you find yourself regularly outside the 80-100 range by a wide margin, I'd encourage you to experiment a little bit.  Do the workouts I suggested to see if there is a noticeable difference in your ability to run off the bike.  The very best thing to do is vary your cadence in training so you become comfortable across a wide cadence range.  As you do that, it will become clear where your cadence "sweet-spot" is.

Thanks Scott!  My experience in the past is that I run fine of the bike in training (Cadence???) but when I get the races running off the bike is much more difficult. 

Saturday's 3 miles off the bike after 2-1/2 hr ride at close to race pace was the first run in training that has felt like I feel running off the bike in races.

Despite seeing my cadence at 100 RPM+ every time I looked down in the first 10 miles I did see in my work out data that my average pace was only 88 RPM so I must have settle in after I got going. That I and I knew I made an effort to slow things down at the end of the work out. 

I will experiment with cadences and see what I learn.  :-)

I did an STP test at the pool this morning.  I wasn't too sure how it would go after being sick yesterday, but it went OK.  I also thought I might struggle a bit with the 400 since I've been doing mostly just 50's & 100's during my swims, but once I got going it wasn't bad at all.  400 time was 8:38, 200 time was 4:12 which (if my math is correct ) gives me an STP of 2:13 - right about where I expected it to be.  It's good to know the actual number though so I can adjust my workouts a bit.  I felt like I was getting a little too much rest between 100's when I was using 2:45 sendoffs.  This will drop me to 2:35-2:40 sendoffs depending on the workout.  Only 6 more weeks until my Oly so I need to step up the swim workouts.  

Janet

Steve,

Well done!

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A day late, sorry!  Here's the updated "Weight-Loss/Workout Challenge" points.

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There's a couple reasons for that.  Quite often, athletes don't do run bricks off of race pace rides or longer rides.  It's one thing to run off of a 60-minute 70% ride, it's another thing entirely to run off of a 2-3 hour 80% ride.  The other contributing factor is that during training, the focus is typically on achieving the target output - be it power, HR, or RPE.  During a race, it's quite easy to get caught up in everyone else's race and ride harder than the plan.  Add to that race day adrenaline and it's very easy to "overcook" the bike which results in a difficult run.

There are two keys to combating that.  First is to form a race pacing strategy BEFORE race day and STICK TO IT during the race.  Second, I say all the time - nothing new on race day.  This includes doing run bricks following a race pace ride in training to confirm race day bike pacing.  In a very real sense, your training should be harder than anything you will ever experience on race day (except crazy weather conditions, etc.).  If you approach training that way, race day will simply be an extension of training and you will KNOW what to expect at each stage of the race.

Let's try this again.

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