I personally like the term survival. Everyone wants to race a race BUT everyone has just wanted to survive a race at some point, when it happens you know it. Besides we are bike racers basically the opposite of special snowflakes.
A proxy might be ‘Coasting’ from your power zone file. TR and Team Clif Bar analyzed one of @Pete’s crit races and he spent 10% of the time coasting, i.e. not putting out power but still at speed. It’s kind of a vague metric because it doesn’t tell you how this was achieved…you’d have to match it to other variables, like you said.
Is your in-laws place available for all of the TR users racing that race?
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That’s another good thing to consider but it’s really complex.
@Nate_Pearson 's example of someone who hits a corner ‘too fast’ at 500w vs a rider on the same corner at optimum speed at 400w highlights where coasting may not tell the whole story.
There’s probably really no way to get a specific measurement of momentum unless you had sensors all over your bike a la F1 race car (I think GCN showcased a bike like that a couple years ago…for something like $50,000…).
This might be better as a separate thread, but since the guys talked a ton about tracking what you are eating, I will ask here. We rarely EVER eat out. We almost never eat processed foods – cook from scratch at home for our meals. Homemade yogurt (ok, we buy the milk), leftovers for lunch / snacks, and then cook dinner.
HOW do you folks track such a lifestyle?
Several years ago I tried to track everything I was eating. I eat even less processed stuff now. @Jonathan mentioned on MTBpodcast (I think) that Keegan Swenson only eats raw stuff - how would he track nutrients and calories? Entering in each recipe (esp since they are modified to how we like food) is a total nightmare.
willing to do this, but gotta be an easier way.
Thanks
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I actually find it easier tracking what I cook myself as I can be a lot more accurate with the calories by weighing things out. Unless you eat in a chain restaurant it’s considerably easier to be accurate.
I’d say it takes <5 minutes to input most recipes and My Fitness Pal allows you to store recipes for later which helps if you have it again.
You could probably figure out a way to approximate it by comparing average power to speed.
Overlaying that onto something like strava flybys could potentially be useful.
Love the podcast as always, but I have to say, Bentonville sounds absolutely awful. Literally the opposite of cool!
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You can weigh the things you put into a recipe and then figure out what % of the total you are eating as part of your serving. It’s about the same amount of time as weighing other things you eat and will be significantly more accurate than using calorie values from restaurants
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Food scale!
Funny is I just heard the other week about how Bentonville is a nice place to go ride.
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My brother in law works at a bike shop in Austin, most of the employees used to plan trips to Colorado. Now they’re all going to Arkansas
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I’ll stick with Colorado 
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You’re already there! Funny thing about driving to Colorado from Texas… almost 2/3 of the trip is in Texas.
I’ve been to Breck a lot, so might want to put the Breck Epic on my bucket list of things to do.
@chad thanks for all the great science in this and other podcasts. But concerning the benefits of saunas, let me say that it’s almost totally false that it grows more brain cells as your source might be claiming. I say this because there’s almost no evidence of neurogenesis in adult humans under any conditions, exercise or otherwise. We’re born with all the brain cells we die with (and lose a few on the way). We do see increases in connectivity and blood flow but that’s the brain using the resources it already has, not growing new neurons or glial cells.
Still gonna look into saunas for its other benefits though!
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I just listened again to that portion of the podcast, starts around 12:20 mark. The conversation seems to have started in the context of picking a plan, say training for a rolling or climbing road race versus riding at a more steady pace where training for general power/endurance improvements is sufficient. Another common thread in the podcast is racing tactics - being the animator, how to plan an attack, etc.
My feedback is to simply differentiate between:
- racing a course
- riding a course
and either can turn into survival if you blow up.
I’m usually seeking to improve performance in every event, and its usually pretty clear in my own mind when I’m racing it and when I’m riding it.
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Good thought. How about the bold section for an option?
My feedback is to simply differentiate between:
- racing a course (racing is about going against other riders)
- riding a course (riding is about going against the course & yourself)
There’s obviously elements of both, but I am thinking more about the greater portion (70/30) of the focus.
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I wrote that but then deleted it because:
- keeping it simple
- I’ve done some solo efforts that I’d classify as racing against the clock. Think time trialing against yourself, or really long Strava segments
You know when you are racing and when you are riding.
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