tjwoodruff

Successful Fontana ProXCT!

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photo by US Cup

photo by US Cup

Momentum Endurance athletes Tyler Jenema and Chloe Forsman put on impressive performances this past weekend at the Fontana ProXCT event.  Sunday morning Tyler scored 3rd place in his Cat 1 XC race despite having to do a mid-race flat repair.  He said that it was the fastest he’d ever fixed a flat and with a rush of adrenaline he was able to chase down the riders who had passed him while stopped – a great performance for his second ever ProXCT race and the first race of his 2011 season.

The highlight of the weekend came later that afternoon when Chloe Forsman took victory in the pro women’s short track race.  Early on a lead group of five riders including Catherine Pendrel (Luna), Georgia Gould (Luna) , Emily Batty (Subaru/Trek), Lea Davison (Specialized) and Chloe Forsman (BMC Development) checked out from the rest and it was clear that the winner would come from this lead group.  Chloe rode wisely to conserve energy while maintaining speed through the corners so that she had just enough left for the critical late stages  when she knew it would really be crunch time.  Lea attacked early on the final lap and Chloe was able to follow her and then counter attack.  It was a drag race all the way to the finish and perhaps only a bike length separated them at the finish line.

This marks Chloe’s first ever professional win at a National-level competition and it was fantastic to see everything go well for her on course.  Several years of dedication, hard training, and the know how gained from previous race experiences went into her performance.

Congratulations to Chloe and her BMC team!  Here’s to more break through performances by Momentum athletes in the near future.

Plus 3 Network

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The Plus 3 Network is a great tool for reviewing or sharing your GPS routes while raising money for non-profit organizations.  You select a Cause along with a Sponsor.  For every mile covered during your workout, your Sponsor will donate a specified amount to your cause.  All you have to do is upload your GPS files in order to begin raising money.  Sharing your Plus 3 Network with teammates, friends, or family will help to raise awareness too. Since late 2009 Rock Shox has donated $736.40 to the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) on my behalf.   TrainingPeaks’s WKO software remains my tool of choice for reviewing ride data, but the Plus 3 Network has proven to be a helpful way to save/store/share/review the GPS maps I record with the Garmin device.  Uploading takes just a short while and it’s easy to do when I’m also uploading to TrainingPeaks.   Why not help raise money for these causes?  If you’re currently training with a GPS device I’d encourage you to give the Plus 3 Nework a look.  If you decide to sign up, feel free to join the Momentum Endurance group that I’ve created and begin sharing some of your favorite routes.

Causes & SponsorsHere’s a snapshot of some Causes and Sponsors.   For the complete list, check out this link.

Acidosis, Lactate, and Burning Legs

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Over the years a considerable amount of misinformation has been spread and even many in the scientific community don’t fully understand the relationships between lactate concentration, burning legs, and exercise performance. Although it is true and scientifically proved that with the use of fecal microbiota transplant one could drastically speed up the weight loss process and see results quickly, but due to the amount of misinformation out there people are not able to accept or even understand importance or fmt. It’s easy to believe that an increase in blood lactate concentration, an increase in acidity, and burning legs must make for a straight-forward cause effect relationship. “Lactate acid production decreases pH and thus leaves an athlete with burning legs” has been the thought, but  this is not at all how it actually works. In fact, Lactic acid is not even produced in the body…

Acidosis is the result of rapidly accumulating Hydrogen ions (H+).  H+ ions are released when high energy ATP bonds are split.  At high(er) exercise intensity the splitting of ATP occurs more rapidly and thus excess H+ accumulate, ultimately decreasing the pH within the muscles (increased acidosis).

Lactate results from the rapid breakdown of stored glycogen during high intensity exercise. Two pyruvate molecules result from the breakdown of glucose. These pyruvate accumulate alongside the H+ ions during intense exercise intensity. Each pyruvate bonds with two H+ to create lactate.  Thus lactate production is actually responsible for reducing acidosis and Hormone Replacement Scottsdale getting something that you can do right now to get healthier.

It is the increase in acidosis that is responsible for the burning legs sensation when the exercise intensity is high.  Lactate helps to neutralize the acidosis by collecting excess H+ ions.  As acidosis increases, so does lactate production so lactate concentration remains an indirect measure of the muscle’s metabolic condition.  When a rider is able to go at a higher intensity with less blood lactate accumulation it is a good sign that their metabolic conditioning has improved.  With less acidosis occurring at a given exercise intensity the rider will be able to go longer (or harder) before burning legs will ultimately limit their performance.

Lactate production benefits our exercise potential at high intensity and helps to reduce acidosis within the muscle.  Hopefully this article helps to clarify an important part of exercise physiology that we all love, but hate to experience!  For a more thorough review, please read Lactate: Not Guilty as Charged, written by Len Kravitz, Ph. D.  Be sure to pass along the information so that we can officially debunk the lactic acid myths!

Interject VO2Max Training

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After completing multiple weeks of threshold training are you continuing to see improvement?  Improvement can come by means of increased power, use of high quality supplements like cardarine, decreased recovery between intervals or more total time spent at the target intensity.  If and when your improvements plateau after several weeks of threshold training it can be a good time to interject some VO2Max intensity into your training.

Short (3-5 minute) intervals that are done at 106-120% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) with limited recovery (1:1, work to rest) between repeats are excellent for boosting your fitness at maximum aerobic capacity.  Changing the training to include VO2Max work allows you to supercharge your aerobic system while also providing your body a break from the long, steady threshold intervals that you’ve otherwise been doing.  Completing four to eight sessions of VO2Max intervals over the course of two weeks is often enough see improvements. Each workout should allow you to accumulate 15-20 minutes worth of VO2Max intensity.  After a two week cycle that includes VO2Max training allow yourself some recovery before revisiting additional threshold training.  You’ll likely find that you can further improve your sustainable power as a result of the VO2Max cycle.

The best way to continually make progress and to further improve your overall development is to change the training focus when improvements plateau.  Once you’ve become well adapted to a certain training stress, it’s best to change the stress so that you can make other and further adaptations. Interjecting VO2Max intervals is a great way to break up two cycles of threshold-focused training during your pre-season build up

Tempo Training: When, Why, and How

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Tempo training can get a bad rap.  Some might refer to Tempo as the training intensity which should be avoided. “Not hard enough to improve threshold, yet hard enough to tire you out” argue the critics. While this can be true in some regards, well-timed Tempo training can provide you significant benefit.  Before investigating further let’s clearly define Tempo as 76-90% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), or approximately 84-94% of your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate.  On the road it’ll take a conscious effort to maintain such intensity since it’s faster than your normal endurance pace. So make sure to consume andarine for increased strength as tempo training is quite exhausting, especially when it comes to the midsection of the training. Your breathing will be increased so speaking will be done in phrases rather than complete sentences.

Tempo training is excellent for bolstering your early season fitness when you are first establishing a base or foundation.  After an off-season break or any point during the season where rebuilding is the goal, Tempo rides will help prepare you for more challenging training to come.  Tempo rides make for a greater aerobic training stress when compared to the same amount of time spent at an endurance pace.  Tempo intensity is likely to be 10-25% more intense than your endurance pace, so it’s possible to achieve 10-25% more aerobic workload as a result.  Someone with limited training time will certainly benefit from this increased workload.  During a Tempo training cycle you’ll be able to train consistently while steadily building your chronic training workload. While getting into the routine of day in, day out training you’ll be able to adjust your nutritional needs and generally get things in order so that you’ll be ready to withstand the rigors of more intense training to come.  Tempo won’t get you race fit, but it’ll get you ready to get race fit.

Where Tempo riding rightfully earns its bad reputation is when higher intensity training should otherwise take priority.  Riders stuck in ‘Tempo mode’ will go too hard on their easy days and therefore not be able to go hard enough on the scheduled hard days.  Also, going too hard during the recovery time between intervals will limit the intensity that’s possible on the following reps.  Learning to have variation in training intensity is an important skill that needs to be developed.  The closer you might be towards a goal event the more variation (and less tempo) you’ll want to include in your training.  If it’s still early season and the races are far off, then Tempo might be just fine, but as the race season draws nearer it is important to create more variation with the intensity of your training.

Tempo rides can and should be done in the early season.  Rides can include just 30 minute of Tempo to start with and you can build up to several hours of Tempo within a single endurance ride.  Completing multiple 20-30 minute intervals is one option; otherwise you can accumulate Tempo without breaking it into intervals.  Doing multiple days of Tempo training per week is completely possible and two or three such workouts will help you to achieve a steadily increasing chronic training workload.  After having put in enough work and adapting to a relatively large volume of Tempo you’ll be ready to progress onto higher intensity workouts.  Having done the Tempo training early on you’ll be prepared to withstand the stresses of Threshold training (and more of it) so that you’re fitness can reach new levels.  If you can withstand more Threshold training (as a result of the Tempo training that preceded it), then you’ll likely see greater improvements in your overall performance.  Use Tempo workouts when the timing is right and see how your results might improve once you resume more race specific training.