Pedaling Technique, Smarter Racing, TT vs. Road Bikes and More – Ask a Cycling a Coach 185

While I understand what the coaches are saying with regards to the amount of time spent training, I do feel there is no substitute for time on the bike for extreme events.
Some that I have done over the last years include:
Tour du Mont Blanc - 330km, 8,000m Road
Salzkammergut Trophy - 210km, 7,100m MTB
Manx100 - 100mile, 5000m MTB
Beskidy MTB challenge - 4 day MTB stage race
plus the Maratona, Marmotte

All of these are long events, and my pace was 17hours for the Mont Blanc tour. I would not want to do any of these without doing some long rides, without training my body, hands, back and butt to cope with spending that amount of time on the bike. One of the big things in these events, especially in MTB, is fatigue and being too tired to control your bike after 13 - 15 hours is not a good idea.

I did on 100mile off road after mainly training on the road, and I crashed 3 times, luckily with no real damage, and could not walk properly for 3 days afterwards due to my back.
So, I’m afraid I just don’t buy the premise that you can train for these types of events by just doing up to 3 hours sweetspot.

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Glad you enjoyed the podcast @JonnyBike!

Unfortunately, we do not have plans to implement Cycling Dynamics into any of our other apps. We have a ton of other great updates that we are working on or that are coming down the pipeline aimed at making people faster and those took priority over Cycling Dynamics.

Sorry I don’t have better news for you!

I would totally agree with you on this @Shred!

I believe what they were referring to is you can get enough cycling fitness for these kinds of events with shorter workouts. You do not have to go out twice a week for 10 weeks before your event and do a 10-15 hour ride to get through a race of this duration.

For more information on this, you can check out our Blog post: I’ve Never Done My Full Race Distance — Will I Be Ready for My Event?

That’s not to say that it’s not a good idea to do a couple of long rides to get your body used to sitting on the saddle and being in that position for such an extended period of time. These kinds of rides are also good to prepare you for the mental aspect of being on the bike for that long!

So, yes, you are absolutely correct in that doing a couple longer rides to get your body adapted to the position is a great idea but you can get enough fitness for these events without having to do the full distance/time.

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RE: Training for MTB style ‘slippy’ pedalling. The Tacx Neo has exactly this in one of the road surface simulation modes. Ice I think does exactly this - The flywheel slips out if you’re not smooth enough. Integrating something like that into specific workouts would be a brilliant use of this ‘new tech’. I’d love to see something like that introduced as nothing has really changed in regard to the indoor SIM or ERG physical experience for a loonnggg time. The difficulty would be that this feature would be vendor specific (for now), so dev time might not be justified.

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Ironically, a slip setup is relatively easy with a wheel-on trainer. Just leave the roller pressure a bit loose, and you will get slip with varied and overly aggressive pedal pressure.

Super low tech, but it’s possible. Funny that one of the negatives from those trainers could be used to a deliberate act for training purposes. :wink:

Making something like that in smart trainers might be tougher for trainers other than the Neo (with the virtual flywheel), but who knows for sure?

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Great verbal walk through on Sprint technique. Any chance we can get a short video from Pete & crew on visual walk through of mechanics?

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No problem, would be intetesting to see but by no means essential. Much prefer you make me faster. :wink:

:clap: Another great episode! And love that the livestream Q&A was included in the official podcast…again (@Ian). :wink:

I agree a video would be super-helpful! I wasn’t sure what exactly Pete meant when he said he “cocked” his wrists.

Many years ago, I learned to rotate my wrists outward so the tops of my hands formed a straight line with my forearms. Supposedly this would provide a stronger grip, and give you more clearance to prevent the top bend of the bars from hitting the inside of your forearms. But maybe I’ve been “doing it wrong” all these years!? :open_mouth:

I’ve heard other sprinters say the same thing about wrist position; think of a bodybuilder doing a classic bicep pose :muscle: – wrists cocked. Like Pete said, opens things up more, gives more power, stability.

I was suitably impressed with @Pete in the “smarter racing” portion, there were a few AHA! moments!

A tip for “smarter podcasting” – more Pete! :grin:

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I was just for you @Bikr! :wink:

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As for creating a video about sprinting technique, we have kind of stepped back from doing these kinds of things but I can bring it up to the team to see if that is something they would be interested in!

Sounds good! But I think @Captain_Doughnutman answered my question. Cocked = flexed = bringing your palm toward the inside of your wrist. That makes more sense.

For some reason I interpreted “cocked” to mean extended, or bringing your knuckles towards the oustide of your wrist…which is why I was confused! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Ah gotcha! Glad it all got figured out!

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I have found these “extended” versions of the podcast to be even better; being in the UK and having to work, joining live is pretty much impossible. it would be great if all the podcasts included these more “unscripted” answers.

I use the podcast for motivation when doing my TrainerRoad workouts, I use the app in full screen as I find it easier to concentrate on the efforts so watching in YouTube is not really my preferred option.

Thanks for a great app and podcast

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I think my main issue here is “a couple of rides to adapt” idea.
There is no way to get the required total body fitness/skill level from a few rides. There is no substitute for riding 3-5 hours off road, getting used to line choices, climbing and descending, body movement, descending confidence (on the road too) when you are tired.

Riding these events are not just about the legs, and so your training should be representative of this.

@Jonathan - back up to 5 stars for reading the question!

I hadn’t thought of doing the sweet spot workout followed by (in my case a badly needed) strength/ core workout.

fwiw the longer outdoor spins are normally for social reasons or the want to explore, rather than me feeling they’re fulfilling a specific training purpose. This week I couldn’t make the group spin, but I did go out solo, but it was only a couple of hours.

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I couldn’t agree more with your @Shred!

Thanks for the input! :slight_smile:

@Captain_Doughnutman Thanks for the kind words! I love it when @Nate_Pearson & @Jonathan let me pinch hit on the podcast!

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In this eposide Pete mentioned the power position for sprinting would it be possible to get a picture /short video of this as I like I’m sure so many others suffer with the rear wheel skip and would like to practice this more. I have no problem on the trainer or rollers but usually happens on the road either in training runs or group rides not so much the races.

Covered above, not likely to happen: