The Set Up:
Place your bike gear beside your bike. Racks should be provided. Gear should look like:
Towel
Bike shorts (unless you are riding in whatever you swam in)
Gloves/mitts if cold
Wind jacket (preferably with a front zipper) or fleece with front zipper, along with sweat shirt or long sleeved running shirt. (not too tight because it is hard to pull over a wet torso).
Socks
Running and/or biking shoes
Helmet
Glasses or sunglasses.
Tights/running pants
If it is really windy, put your gear under your shoes or bike wheel so it doesn’t blow away.
The Swim:
Swim in your bathing suit. (duh). You will have lap counters on the swim but keep track of your own laps anyways. Draft behind others to save energy. The whole point of the swim is to get through without too much effort.
Swim to Bike Transition:
1. Leave pool (if it is stinking cold outside (less than 5C) put on your jacket before going outside.)
2. Go to bike.
3. Dry off feet.
4. Put on jacket or shirt (if less than 5C wear sweat shirt and wind jacket (with a front zipper). If 5-10C wear wind jacket and light long sleeve running shirt OR fleece alone. If it is 10C+ you should be able to get away with just one light layer such as a windjacket. Front zip jackets are preferable because they are easier to get on and you can unzip them when you are running.) Only once, in all the years I’ve done IceBreaker, has it been warm enough to do the bike in just a singlet (+12-15C). Just make sure that it is not too tight. If your singlet is too tight it is extremely difficult to pull it over wet skin. If it is warm enough to wear a singlet, you can probably cycling in just your swimsuit or cycling shorts/swim suit.
5. Sit down.
6. Put on socks
7. Put on bike shorts. If less than 10C (not including windchill) I suggest tights instead of (or in addition to) shorts.
8. Put on runners or bike shoes. If wearing runners, lace locks would speed things up a bit.
9. Put on helmet and glasses.
You can practise swim to bike transitions in the privacy of your own home. Set up your gear and run to it in your bathing suit and practise the steps of putting the gear on.
The Bike Ride:
Keep track of your laps on your bike computer or watch either by monitoring the distance or monitoring the time per lap and multiplying by 5 to estimate a finishing time. Pay close attention to cadence (80rpm+) especially when going into the wind. It should feel like a threshold kind of effort. I would suggest not wearing a HRM if this is your first race…you will have enough to think about. I suggest using perceived effort instead because your HR will be elevated from the swim and the HRM will give you an elevated reading for the first few minutes. Ease back on your last lap and spin an easier gear to get ready for the run.
Bike to run transition:
Rack your bike back in the same spot. Drop helmet and gloves (if wearing) and change into your running shoes (if you wore cycling shoes). Lace locks are a big help. Don’t bother being tidy. The bike to run transition is pretty simple: drop the bike and helmet (maybe change shoes) and start running and doesn’t require that much practise.
The Run:
Start running with a shorter stride. Be prepared to unzip the front of your jacket because the run will feel warmer than the bike. Note that it is a slight downhill for the first few hundred meters after the run turnaround. After this it is “gravy”.
A Brief Primer on Dressing for Spring Outdoor Cycling
To to as brief as possible...I rode for 2 hours on the highway on Saturday March 27. It was 5C with winds NW at 20km/hr.
What I wore:
(I added a link to the MEC catalogue for items that may require more explanation.)
Cycling shoes.
One pair of socks.
Neoprene booties.
Leg warmers (lined)
Cycling shorts
Long sleeve poly-pro shirt
Short sleeve Cycling shirt (cool-max type material)
Arm warmers
Cycling jacket (light stretchy fleece with gore-tex front panel.
Nylon vest.
Neoprene gloves.
I was comfortable. The only thing that I would change was I would lose the poly-pro shirt because it was just a bit too warm. A lighter pair of gloves may have been nice. I also tucked an earband in a pocket. I didn’t use it on my head…after about 30mins I tucked it into the front of my shorts to keep my…..uhm…”boys” warm.
The Indoor Long Bike Ride Explained:
We all know that we are supposed to train aerobically during the winter and to keep intensity to a complete minimum. This is also known as working on our endurance base or "base training". However, I've always struggled with how easy is "easy". Descriptions of easy vary from a vague "guilt-inducing easy" to keeping a more precise "between 70 and 100% of your maximum aerobic effort" to a very precise range based on the Maffetone system employed with considerable success by Mark Allen. See this link for more info.
To make matters even more confusing very little guidance has been given to "how long", “what if it is too cold to ride outside?”, and assuming that one has to do an awful lot of base training to get real benefits, "how do I fit this into the rest of my life?"
In a perfect world we would all have unlimited time to train and great weather. The reality is that we have limited time to train and winters in Saskberia are long and cold which entails a lot of indoor trainer cycling. This may not work for everyone but I’ve had some success with it. For winter long rides I break each half hour into the following:
Minutes 0-4 heart rate (HR) 115-125bpm
Minute 5 Surge up to HR of anaerobic threshold (AT) less 15-25bpm (My anaerobic threshold HR is 165 so AT less 15-25bpm equates to 140-150bpm).
Minutes 6-10 allow HR to get back down to 115-125
Minute 10 Surge up to AT HR less 15-25bpm (or 140-150bpm, in my case)
Minutes 11-14 allow HR to get back down to 115-125
Minute 15 Surge up to AT HR less 15-25bpm
Minutes 16-20 allow HR to get back down to 115-125
Minutes 20-30 surge for 10 mins at AT HR less 10-20bpms (145-155bpm). It may take 5mins to get to AT HR less 20bpm (or 145bpm, in my case) and that's OK.
The advantage of this workout is that half hours can be stacked on top of each other to vary the length of the ride. A sprint distance athlete can stop after an hour (2x30mins as above) and get an appropriate workout. Olympic distance can go for 90-120mins (3-4x30mins). Those training for longer races generally stop after 2 hours for most of the winter and this seems to be enough. My personal record is 4.5 hours of this but I will readily admit that this is insane.
This will be the basis of our Saturday indoor rides. Each hour includes 26 minutes of some quality but not enough to offset the endurance building benefits of the workout. Varying the pace during these rides also offsets the mind-numbing boredom of indoor training. There are few things worse than 2hours at the same pace.
About mid-winter last year, I asked the regular attendees at the Saturday session if they wanted to try something different for Saturday long rides. I was surprised to find out that everyone was pretty happy with the routine. I guess there is some flexibility built into these. For example, one could bang out the 1 minute surges a bit harder in the first half hour or go up the top end of the HR range immediately during the 10 minute surges. Conversely, one could stay at the low end of the HR range as much as possible if needing an easier workout. In addition, as the winter progresses, we have been known to combine the last two 10 minute surges into one long 20 minute surge.
So, does it work? It worked for me. In 1996, I was training for what was then known as the Friedrich Nietzsche World Ultra-distance Duathlon Championship in Cedar Rapids Iowa. The race distance was a 155 mile bike and a 32 mile run. The race date was June 1, which created the challenge of getting in enough training miles in the dead of winter. This workout was the basis of my Saturday rides for most of the winter. At the risk of going into one of those “The older I get, the better I was” discussions, my bike split was 7 hours and 32 minutes or 34.3 km/hr (20.6 mph). Since energy saved on the bike translates into a good run, my run was 4:42 for 32 miles including a marathon split of 3:46. The above workout also was the core indoor workout when preparing for Ironman USA in 1999. Here my bike spilt was 5:30 or 70th fastest overall, which meant I started the run with the pro-women and the slower pro-men. Unfortunately, that was the last I saw of them.
Out of curiosity I compared heart rates to what Mark Allen suggests for a maximum heartrate: 180 beats less my age plus 5 beats for working out 4 or more times a week for over a year gives me 144bpm. The recommended bottom limit of this is 80% of the calculated top of the range. Eighty percent of 144bpm is 115bpm which is the same as my winter long ride bottom limit. On winter Saturday long rides I will spend the first 5 minutes of each 10 minute surge increasing my HR to 145. My heartrate rarely tops 145 during a 1 minute surge. So.... for each half hour I may spent 5 minutes out of Mark Allen’s recommended zone and I will happily do this in exchange for less time riding indoors.
Copyright Stephen Johnson 2003, 2004