Professional Cycling

The alternative to riding in the rain or on a trainer is to, god forbid; do something other than ride your bike. No! I don’t mean watch cycling videos and eat popcorn.

There are many different endurance type sports that you can do to keep yourself fit while the weather is poor, including running, swimming, weight lifting, or in-line skating. If you live somewhere that is blessed with snow, or desecrated depending on your viewpoint, you might cross-country ski, snowshoe, or go mountaineering.

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Long endurance training rides are the backbone of your development and provide the best opportunity to train your body to digest food during exercise. On these rides you are concentrating mostly on endurance and aerobic development and using oxidative metabolism for almost all of your energy supply but you will use up a good amount of muscle glycogen along the way.

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Cycling is a sport that often requires training and competition in less than desirable conditions. Being well prepared and properly dressed for the weather is vital to your success and personal safety. Cold weather, combined with rain can make riding miserable and dangerous. The process of learning how to dress properly and take care of yourself in bad weather can be very unpleasant. Keeping in mind that every rider is different in their natural resistance to the elements here are a few guidelines and suggestions for riding in cold and wet conditions.

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Winning an event is the ultimate result but it often depends as much on the opposition as it does on you. Since there is nothing you can do about how your competitors ride the only approach left is to concentrate on yourself and the things you can control during your preparation.

People often under-perform because of a lack of thorough preparation. They have plenty of talent but will have peak fitness at the wrong time or be injured or tired and unable to deliver when the big day comes along. And it is often the case that even when they get it right physically they fall short because they did not prepared themselves mentally and physically to be the a “winner” but merely to ‘do my best’. This attitude can sometimes produce a good result but not very often. It often seems that at bigger events the top results will go the athletes who have prepared well and expect to win. This involves mental as well as physical preparation. Here are the 10 key areas to focus on in your preparation.

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Nutrition is a very complicated and mysterious science. Not so much because researchers and scientists lack understanding about food and what the body does with it. Actually we know more than ever about the relationship between food and human life with new and exciting discoveries being made every day. What makes nutrition, especially sport nutrition, so interesting is that every “body” responds uniquely to what is put into it.

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Carbohydrates are the high-octane fuel of choice for your body. With a yield of only 4 calories per gram carbohydrates are also a very precious source of energy for physical activity. The normal endurance athlete diet should obtain about 65% of total daily calories from the intake of carbohydrate. Your body is always working to keep glucose levels in the blood constant under all conditions. Under periods of great physical exertion this can be very challenging. Your understanding of where carbohydrates come from and how to use them the most effectively will make life on and off the bike much more enjoyable.

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The Ongoing Vitamin Debate

There is a lot of debate as to the health benefits of supplemental vitamins. To my knowledge, there is no hard scientific evidence that taking vitamins will improve your athletic performance, although there are people out there that will swear to the contrary. However, there is a lot of evidence that vitamin supplements, especially antioxidants, might be really good for your overall health. Since healthier athletes are able to train and compete with more consistency I will go out on a limb and say that taking vitamins, at safe prescribed levels, will help you stay healthy and get more benefit from your training. There is a long list of more important things you need to do to support your training but I will leave those for other discussions. Right now, we’re talking antioxidant vitamins.

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At some point in your athletic career you are likely to find yourself looking for ways to “give back” to the sport for the many meaningful memories and lessons learned. One of the best ways I know of is to pass the torch to those of the next generation. Before you make a determination that you’re perhaps too young, too old, too busy, etc. take a few minutes to really evaluate what cycling has given to you and what you might gain (not just give) through such a commitment. Working with young people can be very rewarding regardless of their ultimate success on the bike. This reward is not just theirs, but yours as well. When you choose to work with young people you become much more than just a coach, often you become a friend, a mentor, perhaps even a role model. This can shape their life and future as well as yours.

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Motivation is the best friend a bike rider can have. It drives you on both good days and bad and always serves as the driving force behind your desire to succeed. Motivation keeps you going when all else fails and is a key ingredient in progress and development. Motivation is produced by the regular sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that follows your hard work and dedication.

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Movement is caused by the contraction of muscle fibers attached by the tendons on either side of a given joint (i.e. the elbow joint is flexed by contraction of the biceps muscle attached to bones of the upper and lower arm). In athletics this is called dynamic or “active” ROM (range of motion), where the movement of the joint is caused by a muscular contraction. Active ROM, or athletic specific movement, is most effected by the force of the muscle contraction and the flexibility of the joint being moved.

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