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Below is an AI-generated transcript of the BC Bike Race Coaches Corner Call. The copy is unedited. Please excuse any errors.
Dre: So basically we’ve gone through… Adam has a great piece that he’ll probably share with you. The get ready to get ready. You know. So we have hopefully established some goals that we are outlining the big goal, the long term goal being, there’s the BC. Bike race. We were all gathered here to to unite our passion for biking, and I’ve set a big and challenging goal. Along the way we’re going to have some little benchmarks, some small goals, and some midterm goals. So hopefully, we all had a chance to address that sheet. Now we’re kind of getting rolling on. I think, for you know, for most people it’s it’s more is more. You know, we were talking about volume. So as we’ve been working with Adam and Karsten. We’ve created a bit of a platform. We also have our strength and conditioning coach, Jason bond, who’s going to add some tips and tricks and tease out, tease out some strength training. So let’s see, let’s check my notes here for a minute.
Carmel Ecker: Ready to share whenever.
Dre: That’s great. Let’s fire that up. Let me get back all right. So basically, if we look at our 1st interruption to our training this year, it’s going to be Christmas and New Year’s. So from this block of where we have now we are, we are now. We’ve looked back at last year we’ve assessed where we are. We’ve hopefully dealt with any nagging injuries. We’ve set our goals for the future. And basically it’s time you’ve got about a month before Christmas. So this is your get ready for the 25 season, and we’re not waiting till January. I mean, we can wait till January. That’s always good, but we know that we’re going to eat too much Turkey. We were debunking the myth of tryptophan last night. It’s basically overeating that does it to you too much, which is good. Have adder, eat lots, enjoy your Christmas time and your New Year’s, but We want to prepare for that moment when we want to indulge, we put in a lot of hard work. So basically, let’s look at the 1st month we have going forward and if you look down the bottom, the sample month is kind of set up. Can we scroll up just a hair. We’re missing week. There we go week 4. We’re taking a progression of hours and hours would include your strength, training and or skiing, or hiking, or touring, or Zwift training, and we’re pushing it up slowly. This is a kind of a volume progression. So these are examples of how you can approach your now. We’re looking at the next month before Christmas. Wherever I am now, I’m going to take that number of hours. I’m going to increase it and increase it. And then, when it comes to Christmas time, we’re going to take an active recovery week. So that’s a very fundamental progression with a recovery built in. Now Carmel has asked me to to expand on what a recovery week looks like.
A recovery week is active recovery. We don’t fall off the wagon and completely abandon all sorts of but you take your volume way down, and your baby, you know, even with your strength, you might, instead of doing 3 strength trainings that week only do 2. But your heart and lungs and your muscles don’t want to be left alone. They just need a light recovery load. So think of it as active recovery. Now that said we’re going to have on our sample weeks, and everybody has a different schedule. We’re just trying to figure out what’s your schedule looking like? Now, these are 3 examples of how it could be so sample. I’m going to actually work backwards here for Sample Week 3 is a prototypical volume building week, where you’re building up. I don’t know if you have Wednesday with a big window or not. That’s up to you to decide what your schedule looks like, but that’s a big build throughout the the week from your gym on Monday a little pedal on Tuesday. Maybe we’re doing a bike and a strength. On Wednesday. a little pedal on Thursday we’re recovering Friday. We’re gonna do bike and Gym on Saturday. We’re gonna have a big bike on Sunday. That’s a big sort of week for someone who’s got maybe a bit more time in their schedule. We’ll look back at Sample Week 2, which is a bit more. again. It’s just a different way that you can structure it where you’re having a bigger workout on Tuesday and Thursday, and you’re fitting your other one hours in Monday, Wednesday. I would probably try to squeeze in a weight workout on a ride on Saturday and Sunday. So that’s sort of a medium sized program or schedule. But of course it’s up to you to decide what your schedule is. Sample week one is is making room for a very busy person who doesn’t have a lot of time for anything. But I’m always asking you we’re squeezing a power hour in here. There. It’s on a swift It’s on your indoor trainer. It’s on your cross country skis. It’s out hiking. There’s many ways to accomplish volume, and your heart and lungs don’t know the difference. You just need to build that base level fitness. That’s kind of it. For you know, getting things rolling. Anything else you want to touch on Moniera.
Moniera: No, if we’ve gone through that, I think we can start to talk about how we see ourselves coming to the BC bikeways and what experience we were looking for. And you know, I think we had talked about sort of the, what did Adam say? The competers and the completers or people who have podium goals versus people with the experiential goals, and, you know, talk a little bit about your different training goals for that. And then ideally. Beyond that. We can get ready to pop into the breakout rooms.
Dre: Yeah. So we kind of looked at. There are many people who are using power meters and heart rate monitors and trainers and there’s many ways to train and to accomplish this goal. So what we are hoping to have our coaches when we get into our breakout rooms is that you know, there’s going to be sort of a more generic program and talk about, you know. perceived exertion, volume training, using a pen and paper instead of a computer. And then when we reverse that, maybe for people who are using more tools, they will each also talk about how they use tools to. You know whether you’re using functional threshold or map testing. So we’re going to kind of put the group into, you know, maybe a more experienced trainer and a less experienced trainer based on your outcome goals that you’re hoping for at the BC. Bike race. And then we’ll have each of the coaches sort of deal with each group and sort of give you tips, tricks, ideas suggest some some things, and, you know. enrich our knowledge of how to get to that big goal at the end of the year that we set ourselves.
BREAKOUT ROOM DISCUSSIONS NOT RECORDED
Dre: We’re very fortunate to have so much knowledge here.
Moniera: And we ended on a really well, really good question from somebody asking about stacking training. So, Adam, do you want to pick that up where we left off.
Adam Walker: Yeah, sure. Actually, Steven, would you mind asking your question again? Because it was a really well thought out question, and I think that the Everybody on the call would love to hear it.
Steven: Sure. Yeah, hopefully, I can articulate it the same way I did the 1st time. But basically, the question was, obviously, we’re going into a stage raise here. So you know, as we’re training through time, how much should we be stacking those training sessions, those intense training sessions versus alternating between intensity and rest, or somewhere in between?
Adam Walker: Yeah. Awesome question the the answer, as far as I see it is, it depends. So it, you know, each of you here on this call has a different history. As a human, different history as an athlete. Maybe you’re coming at it. This is your 1st time doing it. Maybe this is your 1st time being being competitive at anything. Maybe you’re a seasoned, seasoned rider, but you’ve never raced before. Maybe you’re maybe you’re a retired pro, like few of us on the call here. And this is this is one thing that it would be so specific to each individual for somebody who’s got a a great training history. We can start, I mean, many of us ride every single day as it is right now, and we might be doing a ride in the morning a strength session later that day, and but so much of it has to do with what your schedule will allow. and and what your body will allow, and and that is one of the greatest mysteries that that exercise science, exercise, physiology has been trying to figure out over since the inception of that of that sports science. What what can you recover from is really the bottom line and wanting, making sure that we have a a nice progressive increase or progressive overload. Starting from where we’re wherever we’re at, right now and then building gradually. So typically, we would say, we don’t want to increase volume or intensity by more than 10% from one week to the next, and if you’ve got, you know, there’s always exceptions. But if you’ve got, if you work a full time, job, and you’ve got an hour a day to train most days during the week, and then you’ve got the opportunities to to do some bigger rides on the weekend. We might be looking at, you know, alternating strength days with on the bike days during the week, trying to fit in those intensity that intensity sessions, maybe on the shorter sessions, when you you know you’re on the way home from work, you can hit the gym, or you can get home and jump on the trainer and then doing those longer rides on the weekend. Now, for somebody has a works from home, or has a bit more flexible schedule, it could look a little bit different. So the real limiting factor is is what you’re able to recover from, and and lifestyle has a lot to do with that. So your works, work-life balance stress stress is the big one. But but really, I think, again, the overarching kind of concept here is that your recovery is only as good as your training. So the the best training plan in the world for somebody could be the worst training plan in the world for somebody else who doesn’t have the same background right?
Dre: Let me just interject before Carson tackles this. Training is is not a there is science to it, but it’s an experiment in discovering yourself. So when you work with a coach, which is a beautiful thing because you have 2 brains working on it, you’re literally trying things out to see where your edges are, and once we discover those edges, now we want to push those edges. So the 1st phase is opening your mind to exploring things. maybe, being a little uncomfortable, you’re all here. So you’re embracing something that’s going to be challenging. But that’s what the really training in a sports world is is finding that edge and in stacking to your particular question it’s never the wrong time to try. It’s as Adam said, based on your scheduling, but it’s trying. and then feedback loop on the discovery, and then trying again with different parameters that may be going from 2 days to 3 days to 4 days. If we had a blank schedule and you could do whatever you wanted, we’d have a great canvas. But if you try and it and it it doesn’t work. You’ve got to rest before we try something different, and that’s back to what Adam said. So, Carson, let’s.
Karsten: Yeah, I honestly can’t agree more with Adam, I would, I would say. For sure. We used to call it on the National team we call the trial of miles, which is probably term that other people have heard. But that is honestly it. Like, you know, yeah, there’s lots of data that we can collect now, and like, I say, the big one is managing your sleep, and you know, kind of figuring out. Are you sleeping? Well? You know, is life calm? Are you stressed outside of life like, are you in a good position to go try doing one of these little micro blocks? But yeah, you really don’t know until you give it the good old college try, and sometimes it goes great, and sometimes it’ll go terrible. But you learn something from it, and you’ll learn something about yourself through it. So yeah. And that’s again, yeah. Working with a coach, Adam or me, or Dre, or whatever like. That is where you start to get to bounce ideas back and forth, and you get to talk to people who have had a lot of trial of Miles, where you’ve had rides. I’m sure Adam’s had rides go horribly, just like I have, and Dre has, like everyone on this call, has had a terrible ride, and then we’ve all had awesome rides where you’re just like supercharged at the end of the day, and you’re like man. I just felt like a superhero, I could hit another rep and another rep. So yeah, agreed.
Dre: I would also just say, in theory, where we are now in our season, in that, you know, I love that mobility, stability, strength. You’re building those bases. Yeah, if you’ve got a weekend open, throw something at it, but don’t go from riding 1 HA week to do 2 5 h days back to back, because, you know that’s not going to go. Well, it has to fit with your progression. So if you’re building on a block of ride, recover strength, recover, then eventually, after a month of that, then you put 2 rides together. and then you see how it goes, so that linear path goes up is built on those blocks, and, as Adam’s mentioned, 10% gains. And then, as Carson says, then we try things. But 1st build your solid base, and then once you got this covered, try something.
Steven: Thank you.
Adam Walker: Yeah, I’m just gonna follow up with Dre said. I think you know, training can training can be incredibly simple, and it can be incredibly complex. And it it really depends on on where you’re at as an athlete and how you decide to take it. Ultimately, we’re just creating a stress and response cycle. And so we want to make sure that stress is manageable. We want to make sure that there’s there’s other stresses outside of this deliberate athletic stress that we’re we’re putting on our system. But it’s got to be in balance, and so we can only push. We can only increase by a little bit at a time to keep things in balance. And and I think that’s 1 of the the big concepts that I that I couldn’t emphasize enough, and I think Karsten, I’d love to hear your take on.
Karsten: On which part of your last statement.
Adam Walker: Just just the just the stress and response cycle. Yeah, yeah, I, yeah. It truly is like, training is, what what can you actually recover from? And you know, you’ll you’ll learn a lot about everyone like, for example, tapering. I used to learn about myself that I liked. I could handle bigger mileage pretty well. But what I did know I started to need was a big taper. So when I mean big taper, I mean low, very low mileage, very low kilometers, and that usually would help me pop. But yeah, it just comes down to, because again, I was doing a big workload, and then I needed a big taper to be able to actually dump all that fatigue that I had built in time to then be able to perform at the race. So 100 agree.
Dre: I think what we’re hearing here. And I hope you guys all caught in on it is that rest and that awareness of the stresses from both real life and from this load we all know plenty of athletes can go hard, but are they smart enough and disciplined enough to monitor their sleep to actually be aware of overtraining. So this is this is the recipe. Is work hard, recover hard, and be aware of your stresses, and and I love to hear these guys emphasize that so importantly. And then we, you know, we do talk. One day we want to get into having some mental training where you’re you’re learning to change the slide and envision. How you want this to this outcome to happen so complex versus simple. And you want to layer in these things, you know, little bit at a time. So if we’re learning anything, it’s about listening to your body load, unload, assess. That’s you know. Why working with coaches is so good is because they’ve had the experience, and they’re just putting 2 heads together. You know. It’s like getting a contractor for your home rental, you know, like you could do it, but you know it’s always better to have 2 heads thinking about it.
Moniera: Yeah, a couple of questions popping up in the chat about nutrition. And I’m definitely seeing that we might want to bring on an endurance nutritionist to talk to our group at some point, but just to, you know, I don’t know how much we can even get into this. But Craig is asking. We talked about nutrition on the bike, but as a rider who’s 6 foot 3 and 100 kg, what’s the most effective way to manage on, bike off bike calories to hit a good race weight.
Karsten: So I do have a nutritionist that’s on kind of with me and my coaching group. And her. And I did a chat specifically on nutrition for multi stage racing events and such. So there is some resources there. And but it’s honestly that was almost a 90 min call, like it is quite in depth. And it’s very specific. But yeah, like the broad brush strokes, right? It’s. you know, kind of get calories in, and, you know, try, try train to get better at it, because the more you can bring on, because we’re gonna run a deficit always. It’s it’s just impossible to put back what we’re gonna actually utilize. And when you take even the the compounding you know, you’re gonna be coming in with residual fatigue. And you’re going to be coming in from the deficit of yesterday like it does start to become quite challenging. So Carson has put the Youtube link in the chat. So make sure you grab that
Moniera: Katrina had asked about 3 to 400 calories per hour, regardless of body size, and asking if our coaches thought that should be mostly carbs, or what carbs per hour. They would suggest.
Dre: You get into the the Tour de France guys have moved that science so far along. it’s incredible, like, you know. What load are you doing? You know, what zone are you in? It’s again like, there’s some hard and fast rules. But yeah, I mean, the science is really moving along, I’ll let you know. Take take it, take it on, Adam or car.
Adam Walker: Yeah, I’ll I’ll hop on that one. Yeah, I think I mean, you touched on some really great points there that you know, whatever zone you’re in, or or what fuel you’re using is is kind of a critical component to that but the I think the one of the the bigger things to concern is, what can you tolerate? And and you know, traditionally, we’d say, you know, for anything over 2 and a half, 3 h. We want to be doing 60 plus grams of carbs. Well per hour. Now, that’s gone way up like like dre mentioned tour de France pros like they’re they’re well over a hundred 20 grams of carbs per hour these days. But I was having a conversation with Richie Rood the other day. Here’s a a training camp that I was hosting. Who’s world Enduro Champion? And and these guys are riding, you know. 6 h, sometimes in stages, he said. He’s more around 70 grams of carbs per hour. But a lot of that’s you know. It’s practical. What? What can you tolerate? What can you manage, you can actually train your gut to absorb nutrients and what you can tolerate kind of when you 1st start training and what you can tolerate. If you, if you, if you really practice it, it’s it’s quite remarkable how you can change things. The longer you’re on your bike, or the bigger the spread of time that you’re out there, the more you’ll need to add a little bit of fat and protein. If you’re if you’re somebody who’s going to finish a stage in in 2 or 2 and a half hours like the like. The pros. They’re probably just going on pure carbs. If you’re going to be out there a little bit longer. Well, you might want to think about, or they’re probably also doing it all in liquid form. If you’re going to be out there for longer, or you plan on stopping at some aid stations. If you’re there to have a good experience. maybe you’re not looking at those refined products, or those those those much more simple carbs looking for some something more complex. Because you need to. You need to. You don’t feel hungry while you’re out there. You want to. You want to keep the energy coming, but you also don’t want to get that knock when you’re when your body is like, I’ve got nothing in my gut anymore. And so we’re purely relying on Carbs. If you’re out there for a long time, can leave you in that kind of state so.
Moniera: Thanks, guys. Charlie. I do see your hand up, but in, and we will get to you. I just want to do the prize draw so that we can wrap up before the top of the hour for anyone who does need to jump. And then we can definitely address your question. So, Carmel, over to you for the prize. Draw.
LAZER HELMET GIVEAWAY
Moniera: Charlie, go ahead and let’s hear your question.
Charlie Stiven: Yeah, just be quickly. So on the same line we’re talking about with the taking the carbs. And you know the whatever you eat impacts the next day. So I’m always conscious of what I’m eating today and how perform tomorrow. So I’ve done racing. And you know, 2, 3 h races. No problem. And you’re just shoveling back whatever you can in, you know, gels or whatever. But the next day you feel it so in the stage race environment. Is there a way to change the way you do? You have to change the way you eat, like more protein or other types of foods to help balance that. And after the race is there a different type of eatings, in order to be able to stage myself into the next day?
Karsten: I can help hop on that one. I think because again, on the bike, you’re still gonna eat the the fast available food that’s going to keep you moving on. Course fast. Adam’s right, though. You can go into the more complex stuff as if you’re on the more experience. And then you’re going to be taking longer chunks off the bike. But when you’re off off the bike, I think the thing that I learned from stage racing to single day. Racing is you? You can’t. You have to really start eating a little bit cleaner, because otherwise you’re and that Youtube link, we go pretty deep into it. But that’s generally what I learned is, I can’t just be eating kind of the bigger, heavier meals like I I do need to eat salad. I do need to kind of have fruit, and you know some of the more fibrous stuff. But again, you’re balancing, you know. How does that make your body feel? And again, the biggest thing I would say is coming into you get cast up. It’s on a smaller scale, because we don’t want to try and replicate race before BC. Bike race. That would be a bad idea. But doing a little 2 or 3 day back to back hard. How did how did it go? How did your body recover from that? So again, because it is going to be very personalized.
Carmel Ecker: -Oh! We lost him.
Dre: I’ll pick up and hopefully comes back. There he is. Okay, yeah. I mean, stage racing is an interesting thing, and your body goes through some dynamic changes. On average, your heart rate starts to descend. 10 beats a day. So you see some athletic deflection. And this is normal. This is from experience. We’ve seen this over years as Carson. If you take your one day race, and then you turn it sideways and you extrapolate that you’re you’re eating, not for day one. But you’re eating for day 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and you’re continuously under load through the entire stage race. As you start you’ll get wake up with creaky legs, but you get moving because you’ve got a volume of training behind you that’s supporting your ongoing effort. But through a stage race you are eating and drinking more than you want. So you’re really putting your gut under strain, which is supports what Carson’s saying with clean eating. But you’re you’re now not able to handle big big loads. You’re going to be hungry, maybe, actually. But you’re eating constantly nonstop when you’re not hungry to keep fueling your body, which is under a progressive load through 7 days instead of a single day. Load, recover, load, recover, and that’s where, as you bring some experience to that stacking part of your training could just be Saturday, Sunday. Maybe you throw in a Monday, but you start to see how your body is, you know, feeling in the evening after day, one evening after day, 2 and day 3, and then the residual hunger that kicks in the afterburn as your body goes into a bit of a hole, you don’t feel well, but you’re hungry still, but you got to eat for a few days to to replace that energy that was put out. And again, this is the reason that stage racing is so complex and so rewarding is because you learn so much about yourself and your body and the journey there. Thanks for coming. Adam’s got to pop out so great questions. And we’re all on this journey together. So we hope that we can continue to feed this knowledge, and really excited about getting out there and getting training myself.
Moniera: And it’s really helpful for us to see these questions. I can see now that we do want to dig deeper into nutrition for sure and leave that with us. We will come back to you with some answers on that. But again, thank you. Everyone for taking the time to, you know. Bring your questions and to participate in the call. It has been recorded. Except for the breakout rooms.
Moniera: The recording will be shared. So thank you, everyone, for your time and for your engagement, and for showing up.