Issue No. 505: Giving Thanks for Road Cycling

Editor’s Notes: Another new off-season training eArticle goes on sale today -- Off-Season Conditioning: Cross-Training to Complement and Enhance Your Cycling, by Coach David Ertl, Ph.D., and a USA Cycling Level 1 Coach. See full details below.

One last reminder that we will not be publishing an issue next Thursday, November 24, Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. We wish you and your families the Happiest of Thanksgivings! We’ll be back on Dec. 1 with a new issue.

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As we spend Thanksgiving reflecting on all that we have to be thankful for, it seems appropriate to focus some thought today on what I have to be thankful for as it relates to RBR and being a roadie.

I’ll offer up a few brief thoughts of my own, and I invite you to do the same on our Comments page.

RBR Readers:  I’m thankful for our readers, who aren’t just cycling enthusiasts -- you’re good people. All the great feedback on cholesterol and heart health after my column last week (it’s still up on the Comments page for anyone who missed it), showed me that we are all willing to share and help each other -- not just when it comes to cycling, but when it comes to life.

RBR’s Team:  I’m thankful for the men and women who contribute their time, talent and experience in all the areas we touch on in every issue to make RBR Newsletter and www.RoadBikeRider.com the best they can be. Coaches like David Ertl, author of our 14th new eArticle this year, Off-Season Conditioning, and physicians like Richard Ellin, who provides a follow-up on cholesterol and statins in today’s Health Matters, complement Coach Fred Matheny’s and Jim Langley’s wealth of experience -- which they share in abundance with us every week -- and the touch of humor that Scott Martin delivers to keep us grounded.

70-degree November Days:  I’m thankful for living in a place where Mother Nature tosses us the occasional bone in months like November and February, allowing us to enjoy our ride in shirts and shorts, when we’re already getting used to our winter gear.

Fall Riding:  I’m thankful for the chance to cruise the roads at a time of year when nature puts on a colorful show, and the sky seems impossibly blue. It’s my favorite time of year to be on the bike.

My Cycling Buddies:  I’m thankful for the guys I ride with throughout the year, who encourage, push (and pull), humor and motivate each other to become better riders. It’s a microcosm of what I hope RBR Newsletter does for everyone who reads it.

Another Safe Year:  I’m thankful that I and all my friends have avoided any serious crashes this year. We’re not always so lucky.

Road Cycling Itself:  I’m thankful for a sport that has kept me fit, passionate, engaged and consistently striving to improve since I found it. I’m not sure where I’d be without it.

My Family:  I’m thankful for my family, who support me when I want/need to go on long training rides, ride in organized events on weekend days, and tinker with my bike in the evenings -- and who have stood behind me as I’ve worked harder than at anything I’ve ever done professionally to make RBR the best it can be. That work never ceases.

We’ll talk to you again on December 1.

In the meantime, what do you have to be thankful for? Share your thoughts on the Comments page.

Enjoy your ride!

John Marsh

Editor & Publisher

Comment

Team 7-Eleven Book -- A Personal Reminiscence of Racing Against Davis Phinney and Ron Kiefel, and What They’ve Meant to American Cycling

By Coach Fred Matheny

Geoff Drake’s new book, Team 7-Eleven, brought back a flood of memories for me because I was racing in the late ’70s and witnessed the rise of principal players Davis Phinney and Ron Kiefel.

Jim Langley reviewed the book in RBR Newsletter a few weeks ago. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about the history of U.S. racing and how the groundwork was established for the eventual domination of Lance Armstrong and the current crop of top U.S. pros. The late ’70s and early ’80s don’t seem all that long ago to those of us of a certain age, but without Drake’s book, the particulars of that formative era could have been lost to history.

I was an aspiring, and already aging, Colorado racer in the late ’70s when the state was home to an incredible array of cycling talent, including: the late Bob Cook, a world-class climber; U.S. time trial champion Tom Sain; Thomas Prehn, the only rider to complete all 13 editions of the Red Zinger/Coors Classic -- the list goes on and on.

But two riders stood out in those years, and both were still in their teens. Davis Phinney was crushing the local cat1/2 competition at the age of 16 or 17, and his competitor and eventual lead-out man, Ron Kiefel, was similarly dominant.

It is hard from the perspective of 2011 to realize how little we knew about pro racing in those dark ages. Except for race fans who could understand French and tune in to a broadcast on shortwave radio from Canada, we learned who won the Tour de France several months after the fact when Velonews, at that time a tabloid on newsprint, finally came to our mailboxes.

But worse than the slow flow of information about races was our lack of knowledge about exactly how good the European pros were. There were no power meters then, so we could not compare our wattage on a climb with that of the best riders. And needless to say, top pros didn’t come to America to race.

So when Phinney, Kiefel and a few others began to race in Europe -- and win -- we recreational riders back home longed to compare ourselves to them, waiting in trepidation for the few times they’d do a local race between forays to the Continent.

How good were the pros? Mighty good. As if Phinney and Kiefel’s dominance as teenagers in local races wasn’t evidence enough, when they came back from a spring campaign on the roads of Belgium and France, they were -- to us, anyway -- supernatural.

I remember two races, in particular.  In 1979 Colorado still had long races on open roads. One was the Franktown Follies, an out-and-back course from Franktown, southeast of Denver, toward Colorado Springs, over the Palmer Divide and back. It was April, and Denver had just received a spring snowstorm, so drifts lined the road at higher elevations.

I was 34, my wife and I were both full-time teachers, we had a 2-year-old son, and we lived 300 miles from the Denver/Boulder area where most of the races were located. To say I had little time to train is an understatement. But I worked hard on the bike at 5 a.m., secure in the naïve belief that I could overcome my deficiencies of talent and location with plenty of intervals. After all, hard work had quickly elevated me to category 2. So after teaching all week and driving 6 hours to Denver, I lined up, jersey pockets full of fig bars, in a field of 75 local riders -- and Ron Kiefel.

We rode over the Divide, snow lining the road, and streamed around the cone marking the turnaround. About halfway back to Franktown, Kiefel decided to go -- and was gone! I remember him vanishing up the road while I was going flat-out just to hang with the field. To me, trusting as I did that hard work could make me a winner, it was crushing. Seeing real talent can do that to a guy.

In 1981, I headed to Denver for the state time trial championship. I had had some success in that event in previous years and figured maybe I had enough miles in early June to get a result. The fabled Colorado prairie wind was blowing, and as I sat in the car getting dressed, the car rocked back and forth in the gusts.

Davis Phinney won that day, setting a time that I would have been delighted to post on a day of dead calm. Most of the rest of us were happy to simply keep the bike moving and upright as we fought back from the turnaround into the headwind, but Davis knifed through the gale like a shark. Talent had triumphed again.

So as I read Drake’s book I was struck by how a couple of teenagers with dreams and passion for cycling yanked the American version of the sport out of mediocrity and provincialism and into the professional ranks.

In later years I was privileged to coach at Davis and his wife, Connie Carpenter’s, cycling camp. As an editor with Bicycling Magazine I rode mountain bikes with Davis in Moab, Crested Butte and Vail. Ron Kiefel is in charge of rounding up speakers for the annual Ride the Rockies event, and he would ask me to talk when the event came through my town. We’d ride to the next destination, once with a relatively unknown bike enthusiast, Bob Stapleton, who went on to run the highly successful HTC-Columbia team.

I was always struck by how down-to-earth both Davis and Ron were, how they had taken their talent to a then-unknown destination -- European professional racing -- and won.

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On his 9th attempt, 58-year-old Michael Secrest set a new indoor 100-mile world record on October 15.

Secrest (pictured in a photo by Alan Clift in pursuit of the record) covered the 100 miles (161 km) on the Home Depot Center Velodrome track in 3 hours, 46 minutes, 16 seconds -- at 26.52 mph (42.68 kph).

After a clean drug test following the ride, Secrest’s record was officially certified by the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association (UMCA). His mark bested the previous record of 3:47:26 set in 1994 by Rod Evans.

As if Secrest’s time weren’t remarkable enough, he wrote us to share a couple of other amazing facts about this astounding record:

--- It was set on a standard bike. But not just any bike.

“I used the same frame that I used to set the outdoor 24-hour world record in L.A., back in 1996,” he said. “Imagine that. In this day of high-tech advancements on even a greater turnover than annually, I set a WR on a 15-year-old frame! I guess this can make the case that it's not the bike, it's the engine!”

--- He is the oldest athlete ever to set an overall (all ages) world record.

--- He is the only athlete in history to set world records in four consecutive decades.

“The fact of which I am most proud is that all were achieved without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. ([I was] drug tested after every WR). I hope that maybe some of your readers may find inspiration through this fact or because of my age as not being a barrier to either continue or start riding a bike!”

Well, fellow roadies, if you can’t find inspiration in a 58-year-old, drug-free cyclist setting an overall world record on a 15-year-old frame -- you might not have a pulse!

Two more notes about Michael: He’s also the author of The Guy on the Bike, an autobiographical eBook that reveals details of his unmatched cycling successes and turns them into inspirational life lessons for cyclists and non-cyclists alike. He’s certainly got a new chapter to add to his book.

Finally, while he’s the rarest of cyclists in terms of his ability, he’s all too normal in terms of his facing danger every time he rides on the road. He concluded his message with a cautionary tale for all roadies:

“I forgot to mention that just four days after setting the 100-mile indoor WR, I was hit by a car making a left turn into me while I was riding through an intersection. It was early evening and I had two rear flashers and my front strobe fully functioning. The accident left me with a fractured collarbone and two fractured posterior ribs. I'm very lucky, as it could easily have been fatal. I expect a full recovery.”

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RBR reader Mike Henderson sent us an email with another encouraging, inspirational message: Even after a total knee replacement in 2010, he’s still cycling strongly.

Not only that, he was just about to have his 2nd total knee replacement. He volunteered to document his recovery and rehabilitation to provide RBR readers who may be considering this or some other serious surgery some insight into what it entails. His hope, he said, is to encourage and inspire roadies to get back on the bike and continue on down the road.

“At 52, I'm guessing there are more and more cyclists out there asking what they should do about pain that was not corrected by bike fit and other medical solutions,” he said. “I've been coaching, training and mentoring others to complete 100+-mile events for the last 17 years, and knees are something that participants always have questions about.

“I had my right knee done in February 2010 and recovered quickly and well enough to ride an event in October that same year.  I did a 620-mile 7-day ride from San Francisco to San Diego with the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) to raise funds for that cause. That was accomplished after only 8 months of recovery and rehabilitation. I had to regain endurance, strength, power and speed on the bike, and my rehab was key to the outstanding outcome.”

We’ve taken Mike up on his offer, and he had his 2nd total knee replacement this past week. Today is his first post-op update. We’ll be running his follow-up reports on a weekly or bi-weekly basis throughout his recovery and rehab.

Operation and Hospital Stay

First Week:  The first week was, in my mind, one of the hardest mentally to get through last time.  During my first TKR in 2010 I didn't have the experience, but I did have some knowledge.  I tried to arm myself with as much information as I could so that I would be mentally and physically at attention.  But even so, you just don't know what you don't know.

The Operation:  I checked in Monday morning, two hours before, they took my clothes and put me on a gurney.  They installed an IV and the next thing I knew I woke up in the recovery room.  That was 2 1/2 hours later.

My Room:  Next I was wheeled up to my room after a few hours in recovery.  I had a beautiful view of the Torrey Pines Golf Course and the Ocean.  Not a bad motivator. 

How's it Feel:  For the next 2 1/2 days I will see a lot of different people in the medical field who will ask me: How are you feeling?  I learned last time that if I'm in pain (on a scale of 1 to 10) if it’s 6 to 10, tell them so they can get me medications. Anything below 6 really doesn't matter most of the time. There are some other things, though, besides pain, to be aware of: temperature, cramped muscles, hunger, dizziness, etc.  If I felt out of sorts, I would tell the nurses and doctors. Once the block started to wear off (which they give you to numb the leg for surgery), I immediately told them on Tuesday morning at 6 a.m. It can last up to 24 hours, but last year I was in severe pain after it wore off, which I didn't want to experience again.

Can You Feel This, and Move Your Leg:  I started by rolling or pumping my ankles.  Any kind of movement should be started immediately. The doctors and nurses wanted to feel my leg to see if the touch sensation is coming back, is it warm or cold, and to check the flow of blood. A strong pulse in the ankle is a good sign.

Sleep:  I was not having too much trouble sleeping, but this was due to the medications.  Your senses have been dulled, and because you have a catheter in you don't have to get up to pee. All of these led to some restful sleep.

Are you Eating:  I had my first real meal on Tuesday -- oatmeal, fruit, milk, muffin, etc.  I've found that I don't want to eat as much while taking medications, but I do want food.  During my last TKR I lost 10 pounds in 3 weeks.  My body at this point is craving real fruit and healthy foods.

Getting My Move On:  Our internal systems are indications of recovery.  You digestive system needs to start processing food, which leads to gas.  It's a monumental moment when that happens, so it’s something to tell the nurse!  Physically moving is another part of healing in the hospital.  I started Physical Therapy on Tuesday afternoon.  We did some in-bed exercises -- quad flexing and leg lifting -- to start.  From there we strapped on the walker and went for a spin. Wednesday, I graduated to the crutches and was doing stairs in the morning.

Time To Leave: By Wednesday I'm also ready to leave. They have removed the catheter and I can get to the restroom by myself.  We did up the paperwork and I called my wife.  At 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, I was heading home.

-- Mike Henderson

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Overheard:

--- “It is a normal period of time for a case of this complexity.”

-- Court of Arbitration for Sport Secretary General Matthieu Reeb, telling the Associated Press that Alberto Contador’s clenbuterol case likely won’t be decided until early 2012. Contador has said he will attend the four-day hearing, which starts next week in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is closed to the media and public.

The case dates all the way back to the 2010 Tour de France, when Contador tested positive for traces of clenbuterol -- which he claims he ingested in tainted beef -- and has seen two scheduled hearings postponed along the way. Contador faces a ban up to two years if the panel rules against him, along with the possible loss of his 2010 Tour title, among others.

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--- “There is no doubt that next year we are faced with three super teams, BMC, RadioShack-Nissan and Sky. BMC went shopping as if money does not play the slightest role. Not only does the team now have the defending Tour de France winner, Cadel Evans, but also Belgian Philippe Gilbert and Norwegian Thor Hushovd, both of whom are candidates for the points ranking in the Tour.

“RadioShack-Nissan is, as I see it, very much addicted to success in the grand tours. [Team Sky] secured a guarantee of victory in Mark Cavendish, and during the Tour de France that makes the team strong. It would surprise me greatly if Mark did not strike again with stage wins in the Tour and therefore ease the pressure, so Bradley Wiggins can concentrate on the GC.

-- Brian Holm, sport director with Omega Pharma-Quick Step, predicting that three “super teams,” BMC Racing Team, RadioShack-Nissan and Sky, will dominate the 2012 pro season. But he didn’t count out his own squad, which has been dubbed the “Belgian super team:”

“We have in Levi Leipheimer a safe man for the standings in the Tour de France. Whether Tony Martin also may develop in that direction, time will tell, but he continues developing, he is certainly he one for the time trials. And I also feel quite confident that we certainly have not seen the last of Tom Boonen.”

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--- “I appreciate that a French court has exonerated me, found me not guilty, of hacking of the French National Anti-Doping Laboratory that tested Floyd Landis in the 2006 Tour de France. The court has convicted me of having knowingly received hacked documents revealing testing irregularities from the French National Anti-Doping Laboratory that tested Floyd Landis in the 2006 Tour de France.

“All of my sentence has been immediately suspended -- it is without effect. Perhaps this reflects the weakness of their opinion on even this lesser charge. The charges were not true -- I had nothing to do with any hacking and as far as I knew, the lab documents I received while serving as an expert consultant to the legal team for Floyd Landis were obtained legally.

“The case was initiated by the lab, which complained that I had published secret documents that reflected poorly on its work. Rather than interview me locally, following established protocols between the U.S. and France, investigators short-circuited the rules. They summoned me to appear in France, at my own expense, and then threatened my arrest if I set foot there.

“The French court used legal theories contrary to principles of U.S. justice and law. They tried me in absentia in an inquisitorial system where there is a presumption of guilt, rather than of innocence. No evidence of wrongdoing was presented; they relied on false assumptions, including my absence from the court.

“This case against me appears to be a deeply flawed process from start to finish, designed to protect a national French institution and cover up its apparent sloppy work and incompetence. Now that this saga is over, it is important to reflect that the sport of cycling needs reliable, competent, transparent, and high-quality testing.”

-- Arnie Baker, in a press release following the French court decision November 10 in the case in which he and Floyd Landis were accused of hacking into the French National Anti-Doping Laboratory to secure evidence to bolster his position in his doping case. Landis was found guilty, in absentia, by the French court of masterminding the hacking. He also received a one-year suspended sentence.

In an email to The Associated Press after the trial began, Landis wrote that his only information about the case came through the press, and that he was never contacted by the court, despite the court saying it had summoned him. He denied any connection to the hacking.

Comment

Answer at Question of the Week, where you can also find an archive of previous poll results.

Highlights of your responses to last week’s Question:  Do You Have High Cholesterol or any Heart Condition?

-- 41% said “No. I do not have either a heart condition or high cholesterol.”

-- 29% said “Yes. I have high cholesterol, but not a heart condition. I take meds for it.”

-- 13% said “Yes. I have a heart condition, but not high cholesterol.”

-- 9% said “Yes. Unfortunately, I have both high cholesterol and a heart condition.”

Comment

Question:  I'm a 48-year-old recreational rider who trains 100-200 miles a week during the season. I'm not built like a climber and go up hills slowly. This year, I've climbed more, ridden spinning classes each week and lifted weights. But when the road gets steep, I still lack power to turn the gears. How do I improve? -- Giny C.

Coach Fred Matheny Replies:  I get lots of questions about how to climb better. That's why I devote several chapters in my Complete Book of Road Bike Training to the subject. And I wrote an entire book, Climbing For Roadies, too.

Without getting too detailed, climbing better always includes these factors:

Power-to-weight ratio.  You can either reduce your weight or increase your power (or both) in order to climb better. Naturally small, light riders always have an advantage among those intent on improving.

Ability to suffer.  Climbing is hard work. To get the most out of your talent, you need the ability to ride right on the edge of blowing up. This isn't fun but it builds character (or so I'm told).

Practice.  Good climbers like to climb, and they seek hills. Poor climbers often opt for flat courses if they have a choice. This retards the development of the aerobic power, strength and technique necessary for them to improve climbing. If you want to climb better, climb!

Motivation.  It's possible to have plenty of fun on the bike without being a very good climber. That's one reason triple chainrings and compact cranks are so popular. If you really crave to climb with speed and power, you'll have the motivation to work at it. If not, there's nothing wrong with you. Just gear down, go slow and enjoy the scenery.

Serendipity.  Don't over-enthusiastically force yourself to attack every climb. That'll soon cause you to start avoiding hills. Instead, cruise when that's all you feel like doing. But on rides when you're feeling like Cadel Evans, hit the hills hard and get the benefits. Listen to your body.

Comment

Last week I covered slipping seatposts and mentioned that it’s important to lubricate posts so they won’t freeze in the frame. Over the next two issues, I’ll give you some tips for preventing and removing seized posts, since even if you do everything right, it can still happen.

Today, in Part 1 of this 2-parter, I’ll focus on tips for prevention. In our December 1 issue, I’ll finish up with some removal tips.

A guy with a Sparrow frame came to me at my shop in Vermont around 1978. His exquisite steel hand-made American frameset was so nice I couldn’t believe it needed any work. But when he told me the seatpost had become part of the frame and no one could get it to budge, I knew I was in for a battle.

After trying all the “easy” remedies, I finally had to cut the top off the Campagnolo seatpost and, using a hacksaw blade holder and working inside the post -- while carefully avoiding cutting the frame -- saw lengthwise through the post. Then I knocked the pieces out with a punch. That was a delicate, scary and expensive repair, but all was well in the end.

Tip: This is obvious, but just in case, before you take any drastic measures to remove a “frozen” seatpost, double check that the seatpost binder bolt in the frame is completely loose.

Avoidance

The thing to understand is that it’s dissimilar metals that tend to have corrosion issues. So if you have a steel frame and seatpost, a little lube will usually keep corrosion at bay.

As soon as you put an aluminum post in that steel frame, though, you’ve got the potential of corrosion forming due to a reaction between the two metals. So, it’s even more important to lubricate the seatpost so that there’s a protective layer between the two metals.

As I mentioned last week, with carbon frames, there are issues, too. An aluminum seatpost can react to the carbon in some cases and corrode. The same thing can happen with a carbon seatpost in an aluminum frame. For aluminum posts in steel frames, greasing the frame/seatpost will do the trick.

Tip: It’s easier to put the gooey stuff inside the frame than to smear it on the post because inserting the post will scrape it off and spread it all over the place. When the grease is inside the frame that doesn’t happen.

You never want to use grease on a carbon seatpost or on an aluminum seatpost used in a carbon frame. Why? Because it can make the carbon too slick and prevent you from being able to tighten the seatpost securely. It won’t freeze but it will likely slip when you’re riding -- and that’s an even worse problem.

The same is true of a carbon seatpost in a carbon frame. So, if it’s carbon on carbon, use what’s called “carbon assembly paste or compound” instead of grease. It looks like grease, but it has grainy particles in it that provide the grip to hold and stop the slippage.

Tip: The most common cause of frozen seatposts is forgetting that they need a little TLC every now and then. Partly, this is because nobody wants to change their seat height all the time. But, to protect your bike and prevent a frozen seatpost, you should pull the seat out of the frame at least yearly and make sure that the post/frame are lubricated. If you marked your post or have your seat height memorized, it makes the job easier.

Don’t forget: In our December 1 issue, I’ll finish up this 2-parter with some tips for removing a seatpost if it does become frozen in the frame.

Comment

Jim Langley has been a pro mechanic and cycling writer for 38 years. At RBR he's the author of Your Home Bicycle Workshop and moderator of the technical forums on the Premium Site . Check his "cycling aficionado" website at http://www.jimlangley.net , his Q&A blog and updates at Twitter. Jim's streak of consecutive cycling days has reached 6,520.

It’s easy to ride with a couple of like-minded friends. But it gets more complicated when you’re with a big group of people you don’t know, maybe fighting a strong crosswind. And in a racing pack or the random groups that dominate centuries, it often seems like there are no rules at all.

We’ll finish our 2-part series today on how to handle these advanced group ride techniques. In Part 1 last week, we covered double pacelines and rotating double pacelines. In Part 2 this week, we’ll cover echelons and racing packs.

Echelons

In crosswinds, the area of maximum draft from the rider just ahead isn’t directly behind him or her. Instead, the draft is to the leading rider’s left if the wind is blowing from the right, and vice versa. In these conditions, riders hide from the wind in a formation called an echelon. Looked at from above, the riders will be offset like a slash: /

Here are 4 rules for riding in an echelon:

Always pull off into the wind.  To get shelter from the wind, the rider behind may be overlapping your rear wheel on the lee side. If you pull off to that side, you may strike his front wheel and cause him to swerve or crash, thereby taking down following riders like a line of Dominoes.

Don't make sudden moves.  Because echelons mean overlapped wheels, use extra caution. Swerves to miss a pothole or debris in the road could cause a crash. Communicate!

Watch the wind direction.  When the road turns, the relative direction of the wind changes, too. So does the location of riders behind you. Always remind other riders of the new conditions and make sure everyone knows which way to pull off.

Don’t hog the road.  Big echelons take up lots of space. Six or 7 riders can easily fill a lane, causing a dangerous situation for traffic. If the road doesn’t have a wide shoulder, break your group into smaller echelons of several riders each.

Racing Packs

In a racing pack or large group like those that form during events, usually no one organizes the riders, telling everyone to ride a double paceline or an echelon. You’re jammed together like a herd of stampeding cattle. Survival tips:

Ride near the front.  It’s safer because there are fewer riders in front of you to do something that could cause a problem -- and fewer to get mixed up in any problem that does occur. Often, the strongest and most experienced riders are at the front.

Avoid getting boxed in on the edge of the road.  There’s no place to go except off the pavement if riders crash in front. And if the road suddenly narrows, you’ll get squeezed out. It’s also more dangerous because the road often drops off several inches into the gutter or shoulder, making it very difficult to get back on the road in the middle of a pack of riders.

Stay aware of traffic.  If you’re on the left side of the bunch, avoid swerving across the centerline for any reason. (In most races, doing so gets you relegated to the back of the pack. But in the early stages of organized events, it tends to happen often when riders of varying levels are bunched up.) Even if no vehicle is coming at you, one could be passing from behind. Tangling with another rider is preferable to becoming a hood ornament on an SUV.

Comment

Adapted from Coach Fred's Solutions to 150 Road Cycling Challenges, a helpful eBook especially for cycling newcomers. Coach Fred Matheny is the author of 13 RBR eBooks and eArticles.

“Lookin’ good!”

We’ve all heard these encouraging words at some point in our cycling lives, and we all know what they really mean: “Man, you look like crap.” We’re talking glazed eyes, salt-encrusted shorts, drool-flecked chin, 3-pack-a-day breathing, drunken-sailor pedaling style.

And yet we embrace the lie. We wipe our chins, dig deeper, keep going.

Yes, deception works. And now science proves it.

In a study of trained cyclists in England, The New York Times recently reported, riders on stationary bikes were told they were racing against a computerized avatar programmed to match the riders’ PR pace. In reality, the avatar was going 1% faster than the riders had ever gone. The riders ended up matching the avatars’ pace.

So lying is good. To a point. In another study in which the avatar was secretly programmed to go 2% faster, the deceived riders kept up for half the distance, then gave up.

Which makes sense. When your non-cycling friend says, “Geez, you oughta do the Tour de France someday,” you reply: “You know, you’re right.” No, wait. You modestly say, “Well, I’m not quite that good.”

But when somebody says, “I bet you can climb Mt. Aneurysm without barfing,” you believe it. Even if the stains on your shoes say otherwise.

Cash, however, supposedly doesn’t increase performance. “Physiologists have asked athletes to go as fast as they can on a course and then offered money if the athletes could beat their own best times,” the Times says. “They could not.”

Clearly, researchers have never witnessed a local criterium where 100 Masters riders with careers and families go elbow-to-elbow at 35 mph for $5 and a gluten-free energy bar. 

So, best stick to the white lies. Studies show they make you 3.2% better. Really.   

Comment

If you enjoy reading Scott Martin, the eBook Spin Again contains 181 of his witty, sometimes wacky, and occasionally heart-felt observations on road cycling.

Regarding the many Comments on cholesterol and statins following last week’s issue, any recommendation regarding how to treat one's cholesterol level needs to be individualized, based on each individual's unique risk for cardiovascular disease. This risk depends on many factors besides cholesterol, some of which include blood pressure, presence or absence of diabetes, smoking, family history of heart disease, weight, and exercise regimen.

There are a number of formulas we sometimes use to stratify people into high-, intermediate-, or low-risk categories, but it's important to keep in mind these are just estimates. One of the most popular of these formulas is the 10-year Framingham Risk Calculator. The National Cholesterol Education Program has adopted this 10-Year CVD Risk Calculator as its official method of risk stratification.

Many doctors will also recommend their patients periodically have a coronary CT scan to assess coronary calcium score, but this is not universally accepted, and the data correlating the results with actual outcomes are not without controversy.

Nevertheless, as a physician it is incumbent to try to give your patient some estimate of their cardiovascular risk. It's not good enough to simply punt. Therefore, my practice is to use the Framingham formula, and to use statins for those at high risk (>20% risk of developing cardiovascular disease in the next 10 years). I recommend a coronary CT for those at intermediate risk (10-20% risk), and I typically don't use statins for those at low risk (<10% risk).

For all people, however, it makes sense to adopt a healthy lifestyle, including a healthy diet, regular exercise regimen, and maintenance of a healthy weight.

One final comment regarding statins: There is no question that much, if not most, medical research is funded at least in part by Big Pharma. Therefore, there is at least the appearance of a potential conflict of interest in the results, when the results indicate the benefits of the drug being studied.

Having said that, there is ample research -- not only in the U.S., but around the world -- of the benefits of statins in reducing the incidence of heart attack and stroke, and cardiac death. That's not to say statins don't have their drawbacks as well, but the evidence of benefit is clear and has been replicated [in studies numerous times].

Comment

Richard Ellin, MD, FACP, is a board-certified specialist in Internal Medicine who practices in Alpharetta, Georgia. He received his medical degree and completed residency at Emory University, and has been in practice with Kaiser Permanente for 26 years. He is also an avid cyclist.

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