HOME TRUTHS
We discover what the experts, from scientists to bike fitters, really want to say to make you a better rider.
nless you’re the Buddha of the bicycle, chances are there’s something about your fellow cyclists that gets up your nose. The guy who stops dead halfway up the climb, the clubmate who tries to force quinoa and kale energy bars on you, or the rider who corners so cautiously the entire group piles up behind them (that last one is me, sorry).
Fortunately for most of us, we can take a day away from the bike and its irritations now and again, or vent our feelings to like-minded souls, but what about the people whose reputations or livelihoods depend on cycling? The coaches, mechanics and riders who can’t say what they feel for fear of losing repeat business? We’ve given them a chance to let rip and see if there’s anything we can learn from their candour.
GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
“Harden up!” says Dr Steve Faulkner, senior lecturer in sports engineering at Nottingham Trent University. “All the time I see people bogged down in having the fastest bike, the most aero helmet, the lightest shoes, and they’re wondering why they’re not getting any faster. A £10k time trial bike is not going to make you a faster rider if it’s ridden by a slacker lacking genuine motivation. Cycling is a hard sport and you need to be able to hurt yourself and suffer when the training demands it.”
It’s a fair point. Most of us don’t do our milestones flat out. Our first century or first col are daunting, so we ride at a hard but sustainable pace, achieve something impressive that we’d previously thought was beyond us, and come away with the lesson that staying in zone 3 [75-82 per cent of maximum heart rate, riding at a steady effort] is the key to mastering tough challenges.
The zone 3 rut is incredibly common – long periods in this zone hurt, and tend to produce an improvement in average speeds, so it seems effective. The combination of convenience and quantifiable results makes it the unconscious default for training rides, building endurance but doing little to help you dig deep when the pace, the race or the gradients demand that you really put yourself on the rack. Shaking up your training by incorporating regular high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions to spike your top-end power, and the occasional recovery ride at humiliatingly low speeds, will allow you to hurt when you need to.
DON’T JUDGE
“Quit being such snobs,” begins Professor Stephen Cheung, author of Cycling Science and Professor of Kinesiology at Brock University, Ontario, Canada. “Stop judging people by what bike they ride, what kit they wear, or how fast they are. Remember that you were once also brand new to the sport and didn’t know a thing. Try giving some friendly and constructive guidance instead. Someone is squirrelly in the pack? Sure you can yell at them, but how about giving them a few quiet words of guidance instead? Or offer to go riding with them and show them the ropes?”
That sort of attitude will make better cyclists of everyone, but Professor Cheung also has advice for individuals: “The most advanced training plan or marginal gains approach is like spitting into a hurricane if you don’t get the fundamentals right. So many people are obsessing over supplements and long-term goals without nailing the basics of consistent training, good nutrition, good recovery and sleep.”
Matt Rowe of Rowe and King coaching feels the same. When asked what most vexes him in his profession he’s quick to offer a constructive answer: “People who don’t get the 95 per cent right before looking for the marginal gains! You should aim to ride a bike four or five days a week, and get some structure in place, ensuring that three specific types of session are completed each week according to your goals. Write it down too, it’s amazing how much more likely you are to achieve something if you write it down.”
DEAR DIARY
Mark Walker agrees with the need to keep notes. As a coach he has worked with the likes of Alex Dowsett and Helen Wyman, while his role as a lecturer on Writtle College’s sports science and cycling degree courses puts
“Stop judging people by what bike they ride, what kit they wear, or how fast they are. Try giving some friendly and constructive guidance instead” Professor Stephen Cheung
him in regular contact with upcoming riders. Consequently he has an interesting perspective on several levels of the sport at once.
“I have a good level of communication with all my riders: we talk regularly, share feedback over Today’s Plan, text and email. The communication is very effective and so most issues, assuming my riders and I share everything in equal measure, get addressed. Some problems may take more time to broach than others, but most things eventually come out into the open and are dealt with.
“I do joke that I come across riders who are ‘coaching black holes’ who swallow up training and provide little feedback. I find that data from training and racing is invaluable in assessing progress, but it often needs context. How did the rider feel? Was the training enjoyable? Is there something we need to work on? Feedback is also useful when looking at previous seasons to see what worked. I find the riders who progress the best are the ones who take time to consider what they did in training and racing and write a few notes on their day’s endeavours. Fill in your feedback!”
KEEP IT CLEAN
If writing it down is simple and effective, Richard Melik of bike fitter FreeSpeed has something more straightforward.
“Keep your bike clean! I’ve been bike fitting for eight years, I’ve completed in excess of 3000 fitting sessions, and it really upsets me when someone wheels in a beautiful and expensive bike that is caked in road grime and grit. Look after your bike and it will look after you. A clean bike is faster.”
Figuring out where the savings come in cleaning a bike can be complicated. Most estimates suggest that a clean chain alone might be worth an extra eight to 10 watts, before you’ve even flossed the cassette or taken a toothbrush to the jockey wheels. Dirty bikes are often unlubed bikes too, most of us feel guilty about not washing the bike but leave it anyway, but pretty much everyone draws the line at adding lube to the dirt to make an abrasive grit paste. An unwashed drivetrain is almost always an unlubed drivetrain with slack cables, iffy shifting and the inevitable mysterious noise. The knock-on effect of taking time to clean your drivetrain isn’t just the watts gained from cleanliness, but bonus watts gained by having a drivetrain worth maintaining.
TECH IT SERIOUSLY
Having said that, not every rider should be trying to optimise their bike.
“Stop fiddling with your bike,” says Walker. “Racing bikes can be pretty simple machines or hugely complex depending upon the branch of the sport you choose to compete in or your level of interest in tech. However, riders vary in their mechanical competence or their desire to spend time repairing or cleaning their bikes. This can be hugely frustrating as some people seem to have unloved, permanently broken bikes that give up on training rides or in races, while others lose time training because they are always replacing components and waiting for spare parts, shims and various adaptors to make parts fit. I also find frustrating the number of training days that are lost to electronic gears that don’t work because they’re broken or have flat batteries. If you aren’t good at mechanics buy something simple, and if you want tech build a good relationship with a decent local bike shop.”
ENJOY THE RIDE
Finally, we come to Rob Kitching of Cycling Power Labs. Rob helps cyclists look for extra speed by analysing every bit of available data. Right frame for your height? Historic weather conditions for your event? Wattage variations based on tyre pressure? If there’s a bit of minutiae that might find you a bit of extra speed, Kitching is looking into it, which is what makes his pet peeve so interesting.
“If you’re not being paid to race, if you’re not comfortable with watts per kilo being the number one priority in your life, then leave some speed on the table. There are so many other ways to enjoy this beautiful sport of ours.” Just get out in the fresh air and experience the sense of freedom, for example.
Even if you don’t want to take that laid back route, and are determined to wring everything out of cycling that you can, Walker would still suggest that you learn to keep your ego in check.
“Just because a local team has poached you from your club and promised the world, it doesn’t mean you’ve made it! Some youngsters are flattered when they get into a team and develop the delusion that they have hit the big time and get quite cocky. Actually, this is the point in their careers where life gets much more complicated and they probably have to work twice as hard as they did.
“If you are able to turn your hobby, whether that is art, music, sport or something else, into your career then in my opinion you are hugely privileged. I remember reading an interview with Ian Stannard who was quizzed about his hardman image and the brutality of cycling. He pointed out that most of his training rides in the cold and rain are less of a hardship compared with being out all day in all weathers doing manual work. So my advice to my full-time riders is to remember this when you think cycling is tough, and to treasure every day that you are able to ride because it could abruptly stop one day and you will wish you had enjoyed it more at the time.”