Cape Epic, DOMS, Strategy with Sofía Gomez Villafañe – Ask a Cycling Coach 209

That’s some great info, thanks for sharing.

I really enjoyed the DOMS section. Admittedly, I had to replay a couple of bits to keep up.

Last weekend I tried a 100km hike with no conditioning. 2.5km of vert decent and 2km vert ascent over the 47kms I managed before my legs totally locked up.
Three days of painful recovery. Very painful recovery.
It was really interesting as I’ve always been pretty light on my feet and this was the first time I’ve done something like this with zero training.
6 months of bike only training has done some weird things to my body.

As always, the podcast is a great resource. Keep up the good work everyone.

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Great info and advice! Tour de Boland and possibly even preceded by the Argus MTB (Franschoek) will surely get them acclimatized to the heat down here in Cape Town.

Also, the most technical part of the race is probably getting through the prologue safely, assuming the UCT route. There is a very short stretch of single track between the block house and plum pudding that has taken many collar bones! The rest of the route shouldn’t be overly technical…some people still ride it on hard tails!

We are seeing more dropper posts in the race though, even on usual 100mm travel XCM style bikes, so that might be a worthwhile addition to one’s setup if route technicality is a concern.

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@chad With regard to DOMS discussion you briefly mentioned that you would want the body to heal those inflammations and so avoid taking anti oxidants.

Did I get that correctly and am I therefore doing wrong with adding fruits (berries, grapefruit, apple…) to my after training bowl of oat/cereal meal (milk, low-fat quark, protein powder, oats, cereal)? If so how long to avoid fruits etc.?

@chad based on the research you found, did the level of DOMS change based on the level of exertion during the exercise? ie. if you lift 5x5 135# deadlift is DOMS going to be less than if you did 5x5 @ 225#?

i always seem to get hit really hard by it when i start back lifting and i’ve tried experimenting with “easing into it” and i haven’t really had any success.

Nothing so specific, but there were several mentions of how intensity affected the level of DOMS based on which theory you’re backing. For example, the muscle-damage model would totally support a link between the weight of the lifts and the level of DOMS, but the metabolic-stress theory probably wouldn’t throw much weight behind that correlation.

HI Chad.

Absolutely fascinating stuff, thank you. Can you link the papers you mentioned about the neurotrophic factors theory? I’d like to dig into them!

Hi there!

Here is one of the articles that Chad referenced in the podcast:

I am working with Chad to get the other articles found, and put up, so that everyone can dig into this topic if they want. So, stay tuned for some more articles to come! :smile:

Fantastic. Thank you Tucker - much appreciated!

Sure thing, @pwb: Consumption of green tea, but not black tea or coffee, is associated with reduced risk of cognitive decline - PubMed

You can also plug in “EGCG” at PubMed and get many, many more studies on this particular catechin. Enjoy!

No worries. I am happy to help!

I updated the episode notes with all of the other articles that Coach Chad used for the DOMS Deep-Dive. So, feel free to dig in there!

I was listening to older podcasts today and it dawned on me that we haven’t heard @Nate_Pearson talk about Cape Epic for a number of weeks. There was a promise we would hear about it every week until 2021! Can we have a update please :stuck_out_tongue:

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Challenge excepted!!

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