Reading the journal of Mr. Pizzaz, I got to thinking that a diary from the point of view of someone trying to actually get back on the bike, might make an accessible read some out there could relate to. Who knows, it might even inspire one or two of you… or motivate myself.

Let me start with a bit of a background.

I’ve been on the bike for what must be 26 years now, making me…. well the wrong side of 35 and to close too the four-oh for comfort. I’ve ridden just about all the things I ever wanted to and was once 2×9 XC fast, big bike slow, race and epic fit. I lost interest in being 10 hrs a week on a bike and ended up riding for the fun of it, no goals, just the simple aim of being and staying ride fit on the fastish side. Sometime back in ’05, my back went south, north and then west, resulting in me spending a year plus with physios, sports doctors and in and out of all sorts of scanning machines. Nothing phases me any more, having had triple cortizone injections at once and being jabbed with radioactive crap. The end result of all of that was not much. Some ideas but no one actually knows and the physio and I parted ways with her final words being “there’s nothing more I can do. Do these exercises and if they work, just keep doing them”. The last few years have been anything but inspirational to say the least and for the past year, getting a clear run of the bike has seemed impossible. Some people call that thing that gets in the way – life.

I kept riding, or trying to during ’05 and into the next year but for the most part things just backed off at their own pace. Moving back to Sydney in ’07 only added to the slow down (no longer 10 mins off road from Majura does dampen the enthusiasm some what). Stolen bike, life and food and the net result is 12kg more than I should be and zero bike fitness. Something had to give and it did. My sanity needs the bike thus, a few weeks ago I decided enough is enough and I have to get bike fit again. Needing a goal I signed up to the Fling, half mind you, and now I have a horizon to head towards.

Thinking I needed some solid guidance, I pulled out my copy of ‘The Mountain Biker’s Training Bible’ by Joe Freils, the one true book every so called serious MTBer has. I spent half an hour with it then chucked it aside. Not a chance in hell I am going to be that serious. Between a mixture of real world living and stresses, and having no intention to go back down the road of heart rates, times, hours and intervals, the book, as good as it is, represents nothing I am even remotely interested in pursuing. I’ve ridden enough that I should know how to get back into shape. Not a winner, but in shape.

So how am I going to get there? It’s the depth of winter and even Sydney is damn cold, so it’s not what one could describe as the ideal time to try and get back on the bike. None the less, one has to ride to get bike fit and I need to find a way to get motivated and make sure if the motivation lacks, that there is a substitute to make sure the system is kept moving.

Firstly, the plan I have is to attack it as an overall fitness thing, not only making sure I can ride but the whole body gets into shape at the same time – there are kilo’s to get rid of. As such, making use of that card in the wallet that gets me into that thing called a gym, is top of the list. MTBing uses more of the whole body than one thinks, so having overall strength is a good idea and to me that means hitting the weights. That and increased muscle mass means a sped up metabolism, which is good for fat burning. The one thing I did pick up from Freils’ book was to forget specific, isolating moves and only aim for compound moves – moves that involve more than one joint. Having been a serious climber in a past life, I know that no muscle works in isolation, so I could not agree with Freils more. So in the gym I’ll do:

• Bench press – chest, shoulders and triceps.
• Standing shoulder press – shoulders, core muscles, triceps.
• Squats- pretty much every leg muscle from your glutes down, lower back and core muscles.
• Pull down – lats and biceps, forearms and obliques.
• Chin up – biceps, forearms, shoulders, middle back and obliques.
• Row – biceps, forearms, upper and middle back, lower back.
• Dips – triceps, shoulders and upper chest.
• Core abdominal muscles

It’s a simple workout, over with pretty quick (which is important) but covers pretty much the whole body, which is good. There’s no desire to be an Arnold or anything like that, so a generic routine ensures all the muscles develop in balance to one another – something that can go out of whack if one starts doing single joint specific moves, such as arm curls, used more to define and enhance specific muscles.

I aim to do this routine twice a week max and at very least once. Twice is all you need, giving the muscles enough time to recover between sessions and makes sure I don’t burn out. Even at once a week progress can be made, as muscle gain starts deteriorating after 7 days.

Bike wise, the aim is two to three times a week. While I think I am well over riding endless laps around Centennial Park, my plan is to use the park as a base and loop out from it to take in the bike path on Anzac Parade on one side, and Queen’s Park on the other. Overall the simple aim is to ride and hour and a half each session, taking in a range of flats and hills, with some breakout sessions to ride sections of coast, which is a solid mix of hills and pinches. There’s no aim to have specific ‘workout’ sessions, just to ride the bike and ride what I feel like at the time. Naturally, as the fitness gets better, I’ll seek out little challenges that I can use to guage progress. The key is to keep it interesting and not become bored or think of it as training – we are out to ride bikes here and that means having fun.

And what about when it’s arse cold and the motivation is lacking? The vow is that if it’s a bike day and the motivation is not there, I will go and walk 5-7kms. A brisk walk gets the heart rate up and gets the cardio and fat burning going. At very least it will help with the weight loss, which will improve power to weight ratio!

Like I said in that waffle above, the aim here is not to become a peak fitness racer but rather to obtain a solid, realistic, and most importantly maintainable level of bike and overall fitness. In doing so, I am hoping to do an event such as the Fling, have fun in a team at the odd enduro or be able to pack the bike and head to NZ for some real fun without having to wonder if I can actually do it, or suffer in the process.

And the first fortnight? So far I have got on the bike once, walked twice and been to the gym three times. Keep your eye out for the next update.

To date I’ve been focusing on two things. Loosing bulk (from me!) and lifting my lactic threshold. So firstly, the easy thing to quantify… the bulk bit. Since changing to a reduced carb diet, so far I’ve lost about 2.8kg in 3 weeks or so. J so this takes me back under 90kg for the first time in about 7 years or so. Putting this in perspective, that’s better than the weight difference I lost when I upgraded from my Prophet to my ASR! Considerably cheaper to do as well…

As for the training side, lately I’ve fallen into a routine of doing spin and hills and it feels like my ability to cope is getting better. My lactic threshold was 155 but I’ve noticed that I seem to be able to hold efforts above that without too much discomfort – if I sustain a HR above 160 for three mins or so then things get uncomfortable. As an aside, I’m now finding it bloody difficult to hit HR max.

A bit of a test for me was on the weekend out with my regular club (roadie – www.sydneycyclingclub.org.au) ride. Now, I know this is a mountain bike hangout but unless you live right on the trails… roadie kms are the way to go (hey, if it works for Gordo then it works for me right J). Anyway, we do about a 50-60km loop on a Saturday morning around La Perouse and ANZAC parade and this was the first week that I’ve pretty much been able to hang onto the pace line and even have some left to respond to ‘attacks’ – ok, we weren’t racing but its probably as close as I’ve gotten to road racing! Although even through this session my HR didn’t get above 175 (max is 184) and I was well and truly in the hurt box!

I did some reading during the week and found http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/lactate-threshold.html and its companion article http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/lactate-threshold-training.html which were quite interesting and more or less backed up the sort of training that I’ve been doing – either intervals of 10min or so with a 3 min rest or sustained efforts of 20-30mins. My intervals are generally shorter than that but with less recovery time. Oh well… probably too early to tell!

On a less training specific note I found a neat way to work as a bit of a change from either trudging out east…

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Or battling the pedestrians around rozelle

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So I tried this way…

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And its not too bad – definitely a mountain bike ride, some curb and rough pavement riding required.

Anyway, till next time…

I’ve been riding since about 2001 and really started to get into racing in 2005 – my first race was the 2005 NZo 12hr. A mate and I foolishly decided to race as a pair (how hard could it be?) of course he subsequently fell off and broke his hand on his first lap and I decided to continue on as a solo. After a world of pain for the next 9 hours or so I was hooked on this silly sport of endurance racing.

Since then I’ve managed to get a little team of regulars together (Team Fake Rolex) and we now race most of the endurance stuff around Sydney but recently, I’ve been getting more into the solo thing. I did the 24hr solo champs at Easter 2007 and loved it. Solo endurance racing is a hard thing to get your head around but really (for me) it’s almost the perfect combination of mental and physical activity. Am I physically strong enough just to do this… can I convince my legs to go around for just one more lap (of course when you’re thinking this at hour 2 it can be a problem!).

Lately however, the racing is getting easier but I’ve come to notice a sad fact… I’m not getting faster. Sure I’m fitter now than I have been since I was a kid but its not translating to making me a faster rider. Now, I’m realistic and a Craig Gordon / Andy Bell / etc I’m not (nor will ever be!) but I figure I spend about 13 hours a week on the bike, spend most of my day thinking about the bike so dammit, I’d like to be quicker than I am

So, time to get serious about training. Based on a recommendation from my local bike shop (www.citybikedepot.com.au) As a first step I went to see Radek Valenta from Zoom In Zones (http://www.zoominzones.com.au/) to get some scientific information about just how fit I was (or wasn’t). The testing process was pretty simple, pedal on a stationary bike where the resistance is being upped by about 30watts every 3 minutes until you can’t pedal anymore. Every three minutes, Radek takes a pinprick of blood and analyses it for lactic acid build-up. This process took about 35 minutes for me to hit HR max and being ready to curl into a small ball and die.

Results wise, what came out was that my base fitness was actually pretty good – I can comfortably maintain a 70 / 80% max HR pace for ages without significant lactic acid build-up i.e. at this pace, I dissipate the acid pretty much as quick as its produced. This gels pretty well with how I feel out and about – I can potter on the bike for hours without significantly feeling any ill effects. However the story changed dramatically at about 85% max HR

At this point, lactic acid built up exponentially which eats into the power I had to go quicker. Also, my ability to deal with the ‘burn’ that goes along with this was not good. Basically, when the going gets tough, I descend into a world of pain and performance starts to suffer. This isn’t good for mountain bikers as all those short pinches push you into this zone. Luckily this is something you can train for… unluckily… interval training is the main way to do this

The other somewhat sensitive topic that Radek discussed was my errrr weight. When he divided my power output by weight it basically equated to the expected output for an average B-Grade club road racer. If was to gain another 30Watts of power (only 1 more step up and three more minutes) and loose 10kg (hmmm) then that would put my power to weight in the upper band of A grade road racers. The message being that hauling my 92kg self around wasn’t doing anything for my performances

So, what’s next

I’ve changed my training regime to include regular indoor sessions (spin) to focus on intervals, both upping my lactic threshold and ability to recover. I’ve also started seeing a sports dietician to see about how I shift that 10kgs. Over the coming weeks I’ll write more stuff on the ins and outs of the training programme and share the journey. In the meantime, feel free to drop me a note and let me know your thoughts – suggestions etc are always welcome.

Ok, firstly power to weight… this is the ‘simple’ bit. Two things I can do here, (a) increase power or (b) decrease weight. Now both of these are going to be good but I thought that I’d get serious about tackling the weight thing and see someone about what I should be doing (who’da thunk that learning to eat would be so difficult?).

Based on a recommendation from my cycling club I went to see Dr Naras Lapsys (http://www.thebodydoctor.com.au/) who is a sports dietician – what this means is that he specialises in not only helping in working out what to eat but makes sure that this is in line with the sort of training that you’re doing. For me, I need / want to loose about 10kg (currently 176cm and 90kg, want to hit 80kg ish) but I want to do it in a way that enables me to still have the energy to train.

So, this is what an ‘average’ training week looks like for me:

· Monday AM: easy ride, approx 30km, focus on cadence HR <85%

· Monday PM: Ride home, ANZAC bridge evening race J, approx 15-20 min hard

· Tuesday AM: Easy ride (5km), spin class 50min, ride to work (5km)

· Tuesday PM: Ride home, ANZAC bridge evening race, approx 15-20 min easy

· Wednesday AM: easy ride, approx 30km, focus on cadence HR <85%

· Wednesday PM: longer ride home, approx 18km, varied terrain

· Thursday AM: Hill repeats – New South Head road * 3, Cranbrook Rd * 3 (big chain ring – Heartbreak hill in 50*11 – ouch!!!!)

· Thursday PM: Straight home

· Friday AM: Easy ride (5km), spin class 50min, ride home (5km)

· Saturday / Sunday: One long MTB ride – 3-4 hours or hard road session with club, other day off.

All up this works out to be about 12 hours or so.

The analysis of my nutrition actually showed that my basic eating habits weren’t too bad but there was some unpleasant news L. We were doing quite well until the discussion of booze came up… did you know that having the odd alcohol free day is counterproductive to weight-loss (and fitness training in general)? So, mid week drinking is to be severely curtailed. Apart from that, it was mostly tinkering and putting something together that reflected the emphasis that I have on doing longer endurance work on the weekends.

So, roughly the eating plan is:

• Get up, have piece of fruit to kick-start metabolism (nothing you eat now is going to fuel the ride but it will trick your brain into metabolising food from the night before)
• Once at work, wholegrain bread, cream cheese & jam or baked beans on toast – good carbs and protein to aid recovery of muscles.
• Lunch, alternate between a carb and non-carb lunch – for me this is either a tuna sandwich or some sort of packaged salad (coles or woollies – Sumo etc are chockas in fat and a bit of a rip off!) and add some form of protein on top
• Afternoon snack – some sort of yogurt or protein drink
• Dinner – pretty much anything I want but making an effort to reduce the amount of carbs – i.e. if we have spag bol then more mince, less pasta. This is what is going to fuel the ride the next morning.
• Weekends… anything goes (my favourite quote was ‘if you feel you need a burger and chips after a big ride then go for it’)

There are some other principles as well, firstly eat at home 5 nights a week. This one is TOUGH – you know how it is, working in the city, late nights, can’t be arsed cooking, Glebe Point rd less than 5 mins walk away… not doing so well on this so far. Other big one was mid-week alcohol, this is allowed but no more opening a bottle with my wife and then finishing it off – one glass of wine or one beer only. Again, a tough one – how long was it that you got home after a long crappy day and were happy with _a_ beer?!?!?!

Well, been following the plan for about two weeks now and it seems to be working. I feel like I’ve got enough energy to ride strongly which initially I was worried about as it’s a lot less calories than I have been eating and my guess would be that I’ve dropped a kg or so.

Next time, more on the actual bike training bit!

But I have this theory. No, really I do. Just hear me out.

I think riding a road bike makes you a better mountain biker. I can hear you saying rude things under your breath at me now, but I really mean it. I think it does. How does this theory work? Well it goes something like this: mountain biking is an all out physical activity. Your upper body gets a thrashing, the legs get hammered and your mind is working overtime to pick the best line, keep you upright and keep you going fast on the trail. You might not realise it at the time, but when you stop there is a good reason you feel completely screwed – because you are. Now this is where my theory kicks in. By increasing your strength and overall ‘bike fitness’ it makes the job of controlling the mtb a whole lot easier. How? Well because you are stronger in the legs, you can dedicate the grey matter to more important things other than convincing your legs to keep going.

I came to this conclusion about a year ago when I was riding a lot on the road (on a slicked up hardtail). I rode with my wife to work and picked her up in the afternoon (all up four trips for me as I had to come back into the city). All up about 2 hours a day on the road. We did this three or four times a week. What astounded me was on the weekends when I’d hit the trails was that my riding improved three fold. Now that was odd as I was riding off road less, so one would well assume that I would get slower. That’s when I noticed it. My legs were on auto drive and almost all my grey matter was concentrating on controlling the bike off road. As such I was riding a whole lot better than, better than I had for a very long time. Bike control it seems takes up well more than 50% of the thought processes, if it’s getting less you will not be riding at your best.

Riding a road bike is the easiest way to build up this strength. 40 or 50 road k’s in the saddle is not an ordeal like it is on a mtb and unlike riding an mtb, all energies are focused on propelling the bike. As a result doing 200 k’s a week is not such a big deal as it might otherwise be. The net result is that you are going to get a lot stronger and a lot faster/fitter, and hey that’s not a bad thing

See, it does make some sense.

So what about this road bike thing?

Well, without a doubt there is something about it. Quite a few of my fellow cohorts seem to be thinking the same thing, with almost all of them riding or entertaining the thought of buying a road bike these days. Road bikes are fast, no two ways about it. Get out of the saddle, honk on the pedals and they take off. While mtb’s are about skill, road bikes are about speed. It’s a rush really. But what’s really interesting is that it makes you smooth, something that many mtbers out there are pretty crap at. Your legs spin in a smooth circle and deliver power in a completely efficient manner. With time the smooth motion becomes instinctive. Many mtbers mash their pedals in an untidy and inefficient manner, not great for conserving energy. For some reason riding a slicked up HT does not produce the same results. Interesting….

What’s better is that you can find out any physical issues relating to riding and work to fix them, something VERY hard to do off road. I blew my hip at the 24 last year. It was an ongoing thing that was causing a lot of problems. Well this time it got so bad that I took a month off the bike and spent $600 bucks at the physio. While he was good the problem kept on coming back and had me quite stummped. Last week we did a mild road ride and on climbing a hill Chuck asks “do you have problems with your left hip?”. Well, yea I do. “Well, do you realise that your left knee is throwing out when you climb, especially out of the saddle?”. Damn, he was right. No one on the mtb had ever noticed, guess we are all to preoccupied with other things. On the road bike it was as plain as day. Suffice to say, I have been working on keeping the knee in (thus building up the weak muscles) and guess what? The problem is going away!

But you want to know what the biggest hoot is? It’s now being able to take on and at times beat those roadies who used to make a point of walking away from you when they saw you were on a mtb. Childish really, but hey, a lot of fun. Just this morning some guy was a little incensed that I passed him so he sat on my wheel, refusing to take his turn. Simple, wait for the hill and then sprint away. I could never have done that on the HT. He must have been pretty tapped out as he did not give chase. You also get to plug into the ‘road scene’. Pass a guy and he takes your wheel. If he knows the deal you can get an even faster pace going, swapping the lead in order to maintain and build the speed until it almost becomes a controlled sprint. It’s sort of the same as someone setting the pace in single track, but now involving gobs of speed instead of gobs of skill. Lastly you can do some great rides such as the Akuna Bay ride in northern Sydney, something that on a mtb would be an awful, slow and somewhat dull thing to do. It’s a different but equally interesting world.

But what sucks, it can’t be all good can it?

Riding on the road blows. I went for a ride on the 2nd of January (when it should have been quiet on the roads) and I nearly got run over four, count it, 4 times in the space of two hours! Sydney drivers are complete shitheads. Hell this morning at 6.15 a turd in a truck would not give me an inch on an otherwise empty road. Road bikes are no where as sure footed as mtbs. They are light, whimsical and completely incapable of getting you out of trouble. Their brakes are a complete joke, at least when compared to my Hopes. As par of the course I will not ride in Sydney unless I am out the door by 7am at the latest (a downer right there) and even then I pick routes that are free of box tops.

More gear. Yup another bike to maintain and this time with parts that can not be swapped the the mtbs in the household. That blows. Smartly I bought another pair of Egg Beaters and have them on the schmoad bike, so at least I do not have to use those really silly road shoes. I also refuse to dress up like some sort of pro Euro rider, what a toss. I still have not figured where to the bike either….

At the end of the day though, riding a road bike can be fun and beneficial. It’s a different world with new skills and thrills and a required level of fitness that is hard to achieve riding only a mtb; especially if you are urban bound. Perhaps best of all, riding one will not make you a worse mtber, rather a better one (you did read the first bit, right. You know, my ‘theory’).

Ultimately there should be no stigma attached to riding a road bike. A certain Crash Carden said to me when we were talking about the rifts in the cycling world, “I ride bikes”. Rightly so. As long as you are on two wheels and have the right attitude, you are part of the clan no matter what you ride.

Dr.V8