6 Big Time Cycling Tips for Triathletes

TriDot Podcast Episode 287

6 Big Time Cycling Tips for Triathletes

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Announcer: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire and entertain. We'll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let's improve together.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yes. Hello everybody and welcome to the TriDot podcast. I am feeling pretty lucky today as I am sitting here with two guests who will no doubt be delivering some seriously good information about one of my favorite parts of triathlon, which is the bike. A warm welcome to Craig Alexander, who a lot of us know as Crowie. He's a legend of the sport as a three time IRONMAN World champion and founder of Sansego Tri Club powered by TriDot. We also have here with us today Chris Navin from Chicago, Illinois who is a Level 2 USA Triathlon certified coach and head endurance coach of Four Star Endurance. With over 100 triathlons to his name. These five fine gentlemen have brought a total of six big time cycling tips for triathletes. Welcome to the show, Crowie and Chris.

Chris Navin: Pleasure to be on.

Craig Alexander: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Vanessa Ronksley: Awesome. Well, I'm Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm. We will be rolling through our warmup question, heading to the main set to hear the six best cycling tips and then we will wind things down with our coach Cooldown. Tip of the day we Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: Time to warm up. Let's get moving.

Vanessa Ronksley: Because we are talking about my favorite discipline, I thought it would be quite fitting for this warm up question. So the question is what is the most memorable bike ride you have ever done? So Craig and Crowie, who wants to take this one first?

Craig Alexander: I'll take it. That's a tough one. It's. I've been very lucky to ride in some beautiful places in Europe. Trained and raced over there for a while. Back here in Australia we've got some beautiful riding roads. But I, I guess the first thing that always comes to mind is Colorado. I spent a lot of time training up there and the ride up to Trail Ridge was amazing. I used to do a 120 mile loop when I was training for IRONMAN through Estes Park up to Peak Peak, Peak to Peak highway. That was just scenic and beautiful. Epic ride. There was a couple, couple in and around Boulder that, that immediately come to mind. But yeah, as I said, I've been lucky because I've ridden in the French Alps as well, so that's beautiful. Switzerland is amazing. We've got some just awesome riding down here in Australia. But yeah, Colorado is probably the top of my list.

Vanessa Ronksley: Excellent. I think I'm gonna have to add that to my bucket list. I've never been cycling in Colorado without a cast on. I've been there with a cast on, but that doesn't count because I was on an E bike. So I wanna tackle those, tackle those hills with my own two legs. And Chris, how about you? What is the best bike ride you've ever done?

Chris Navin: That's a tough one. I've had some memor memorable ones. I just did the, the unbound gravel race. It was my longest bike ride, 200 miles, but I don't know if that was the most enjoyable. That was a pretty, a pretty tough, tough race. But Crowie mentioned Switzerland. I grew up in Switzerland, so I hadn't gone back for about 25 years. And I went back and went to the UCI world headquarters is in Switzerland where they have the village room and everything. And that village room is in a valley in the Swiss mountains. And it was just going back there for me was very nostalgic and riding in the mountains. So there's a couple of beautiful, beautiful climbs in Switzerland that are definitely my, my most memorable and favorite ones, for sure.

Vanessa Ronksley: That is super cool. I've never ridden in Switzerland. I've never been to Switzerland actually, and I've never ridden in a velodrome before. That sounds like a really cool experience.

Chris Navin: Yeah, Scary the first time when the banks are, you know, at almost 40, 40 degree angles and you're going around at, you know, pretty, pretty fast speeds. That was the first time I got to do moto pacing as well. Getting behind a motorcycle on drum. So, yeah, if anyone ever goes, that's a beautiful opportunity. You can do every type of cycling from there. You can get to the mountains in 15 minutes. You can ride in the velodrome. They have a BMX pump track on the outside of all the Olympic sports. So you get to do everything. We did a one week trip there and got to do every BMX, cyclocross, you know, velodrome, track cycling. Every cycling discipline in one place is pretty awesome.

Vanessa Ronksley: That sounds like cyclist heaven right there. Well, I think for me, I would have to be crazy if I didn't mention the world championship bike course in Nice, because that was ridiculously epic. And I constantly go through that ride in my mind on a very regular basis. Basis. But I think the most memorable bike ride of my entire life was when I was 12, and my family did a cycling trip in the San Juan Islands. And one day, part of our ride was going up Mount Constitution on Orcas Island. And up to that point in my life, that was probably one of the hardest physical things that I'd ever done. And it was summertime, so it was warm. We had no snacks because no one knows about nutrition. Back in the day, like, we were snacking on blackberries on the side of the road. And I just remember getting up to the top and it was the most glorious feeling. I can picture it in my mind, and it was the first time that I actually hoisted my bike up over my head. And there's a picture to commemorate this very moment. And I think I, I'm just so grateful for my family taking us on that trip because that kind of experience played a really vital role in, in the development of, you know, sense of accomplishment and, and confidence, and it was really great. So that, that's probably at the top of my list. Uh, we're, we're going to throw this one out to our audience. What is the most memorable bike ride you have ever done? So make sure you're a member of the TriDot community hub so you can share. Um, and me, I want to look at all of the comments so that I can encourage my, my bucket list for bike rides to, to grow. It's already grown by two already from, from what Crowie and, and Chris had to say. So not only that, but I'm actually going to give out some bonus points to the listeners who include a picture that goes along with their bike ride. Um, and then maybe if you're lucky, I'll actually find the picture of me at the top of Mount Constitution. Can't wait to see what all of you out there have to say.

Announcer: On to the main set. Going in 3, 2, 1.

Vanessa Ronksley: The bike is undoubtedly my favorite part of the triathlon, and I love that it's the longest portion of racing. I look forward to every single session on my schedule, even if it's like 2x18s in zone 4 or something crazy like that. Um, and, and you'll also find me requesting extra bike sessions each week because I love it so much. But I do realize that this is not the case for everyone. And so for athletes out there who may not love the bike, or even those athletes whose weakest sport of swim bike run is maybe the bike, I'm, I'm wondering what you, both of you as a coach, what do you tell them or how do you encourage them to get on their bikes? When they might prefer to add an extra swim or a run session instead of biking. Um, or. Or maybe they even skip their bike sessions. So, Crowie, let's go to you first.

Craig Alexander: Yeah. To be honest, it's not a conversation I have to have too often. Most people love the bike, so I think that's a good low watermark to start from, I guess. But, you know, it's. It's part of the challenge of the sport. There's three disciplines. There's not one or two disciplines. There's actually three disciplines. The good news is there's a cross training effect. So the training that you do in one discipline will help with the other two, certainly with cardiovascular development and fitness. Of course, there's a specificity of the way our muscles work that's different in the three disciplines. So. But yeah, most athletes get it and honestly look forward to the bike training. So I can't say it's a tough conversation I've had too many times. It's the biggest part of any trough on whatever distance you're talking about. And athletes get that. They understand that the bike training is going to form a big part of their weekly training hours.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, that's definitely true. If you don't like biking, that could be a big issue. Especially if you're attempting a full distance. That's a long time to be on doing something that you might not appreciate. Um, Chris, what about you? Have you ever had any athletes indicate that they just don't like doing their bike training and how you might help them to overcome that?

Chris Navin: Yeah. Yeah. I think being in Chicago, we have long winters and so a lot of people have to do a lot of their biking indoors on trainers. And sometimes people don't like getting on the trainer. They. They prefer to. To ride outside or, you know, in an urban environment. Oftentimes people are sometimes scared of riding their bikes in the city environment. You know, there's cars and other things. So you have to think about, you know, different ways to stay motivated and get yourself on the bike sometimes. But I think it depends on the athlete. You know, if it's a runner, oftentimes they just like to run all the time and they don't like to do as much cycling. But when they start to realize that cycling is actually one of the best forms of active recovery for runners and it can actually help improve their running. That's a great way to just mentally think about the why of why we do that cycling. It's not just because, especially for IRONMAN, half IRONMAN, the bike is 50% of the day, it's the biggest chunk of time. So you do want to put a good amount of training into it. But it's a great way to just scale up your volume. So sometimes I like to geek out on metabolism and metabolic testing. Cause I do a lot of that. And when people talk about, you know, how do I improve my VO2 max, and a lot of it just has to do with time. And cycling is the easiest way to scale volume with the lowest impact on your body. And so it's a really good, just general way of gaining, gaining fitness. You can put a lot of time on the bike and gain a lot of fitness faster than you can in a lot of other ways.

Vanessa Ronksley: That is so true. Um, I know especially even coming off injury and getting back into running, running, that was something that, that my coach worked with me a lot on, was increasing bike volume. And then the run was just gonna be the run. But it definitely made a huge difference in, in the recovery process. Um, and putting in that many hours on the bike definitely benefited my ability to run off the bike, despite the fact that I hadn't run very much leading up into my, into my big A race. So I get that. And I also can relate to living in a cold environment where there's snow on the ground and gravel on the ground like well up into the end of May. So I do, I can, I can understand how people might be a little resistance to the, to the trainer. Um, but I think, I think we should get into our tips for today. Um, so it's, it's tip time with Chris and Crowie and we're going to roll through six big time cycling tips for triathletes. Uh, so Chris, why don't you kick us off with tip number one.

Chris Navin: All right, so one of my first tips is always not just about cycling, but how to improve on your cycling. And that's really doing some of the off the bike work that can help, you know, strength, strengthen mobility work. You know, you don't have to. If you're someone who's a runner or cyclist who just loves to run and bike, sometimes you do enough of that training volume already. And the best way to really progress and get to that next level. You know, I, I used to, in our training studio here in Chicago, I used to play one of Crowie's YouTube videos he did for, for, I think it was Saras trainers a long time ago where he would talk about doing strength training on the bike and doing low cadence work and also demonstrating what to do off the bike for Strength and mobility. And it was actually inspired a lot of our athletes be like, oh, I don't just have to cycle. I need to do some off the bike strength work. And we've had a lot of athletes use that as the way to really level up, you know, getting, getting to that next level. So whenever you get those workouts in your training plan where it calls for, you know, a little bit of strength and mobility work, you know, during a bike workout, like getting off the bike and doing squats or doing some activation work before the bike or doing some work after the bike, it doesn't have to be lifting all the time. It can be, you know, doing high torque work when you're on the bike. Like, really low cadence work can help with that. But then off the bike, things like yoga and Pilates, any type of functional movement and stability work. I know I love biking and I love being on the trainer. So I log a lot of virtual time on my bike in the wintertime, but I've never actually seen the same gains as when I actually do off the bike, like weekly Pilates work, just working on core and strength. And for the little time you put in, I literally will get sometimes 5, 10% faster in just a couple weeks just by doing one weekly strength workout or mobility workout. So I think that's the biggest tip that I like to give people is, you know, don't just think about what you're doing on the bike, but that off the bike strength and mobility and stability work that makes the biggest difference.

Vanessa Ronksley: I think you have some secret plan that you're going over there that's a lot of improvement in a short period of time. Um, do you have any of the strength, like specific strength exercises that you might prescribe or you found? I know you said Pilates and yoga, but is there an actual strength set of exercises that you would do or recommend that would improve your ability on the bike that quickly?

Chris Navin: Um, it depends. And that's an example of, like, when I sometimes do too much cycling and I haven't been doing any strength for a while. So when I go back to strength, that's when I see the big gains. Right. So I think it's all relative to the individual and how much, how much you're actually doing. Um, but yeah, I, I like anything that is full body and focused on core and glute activation. So whether it's just basic things like squats, you know, it's a very basic movement, but it helps quite a bit trying to do deeper squats. But also in terms of like yoga or Pilates, anything that does core activation. So plank, like three point planks where you lift one leg or one arm at a time while keeping everything else engaged. I love just adding that in between sets sometimes or just leg raises. Anything that, you know, gets your. Your connection between your legs and the core upper body, you know, leveraging your upper body mass to support the leg movements. So, yeah, it just depends. I think everyone has strengths and weaknesses, so you have to kind of get out of your. I think the biggest gains I always see are when people do something they haven't done before. So if you do a lot of squats, do something different, don't do squats. Uh, if you do a lot of planks, don't do planks. Find. Find something else. Um, but yeah, just following what's in the training plan. You know, I think if you're on, on, try to. Don't skip those strength workouts that are in your training plan. Um, they can make a big difference at the end of the day.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah. How about you, Crowie? Do you. Is there anything that you prescribe to your athletes to that's. That might be off the bike that will help to increase their strength on the bike?

Craig Alexander: Yeah, definitely. I think there's. I mean, I'm a huge advocate of sort of supplemental strength work. As Chris mentioned, there's a lot of things you can do specifically on the bike, but I think there's a lot of things you can do off the bike that help. There's so many exercises in the gym where the strength gains transfer into the real world of swim, bike and run. Of course, we're talking about bike today, but it's. It's the same in all the disciplines. I loved how Chris talked about, you know, the stimulus that you apply. I think that's where we get gains from exposing ourselves to a stimulus and trying to get the gains from that. And at some point you need to change things up. Either progressively overload or just completely change the stimulus. But the exercises that I think you get a lot of bang for buck in the gym are things like squats, inclined leg press. Lunges is a great one. Most people would associate it with, with running, I think, but I like it for cycling because it takes your hip flexors under load into extension, the rear leg. When you fall into a deep lunge, your hip flexor is working eccentrically and it goes into quite a bit or almost full hip extension, which I think is important to strength your hips for cycling, but also for running off the bike. And also, yeah, just Reiterate again what Chris said. I think you can never overemphasize the importance of not only core strength, but just activation and stability, being able to turn on those muscles around our pelvis to provide that stable base, a great posture in the time trial position, and just a really great foundation for generating force on the bike. So there are a lot of exercises. I used to do specific core activation exercises three or four times a week. I recommend that to the athletes that I work with. They do at least two or three times a week and it's as simple as could be a 20 minute routine. You don't have to go off site, you don't have to go to a gym. You can have a little setup at home. It's very easy to maintain compliance and consistency. I think there's a thousand exercises, but most of them are tagging your deep abdominals, your glutes, as Chris mentioned as well, hip flexors, hamstrings, all of the small and larger muscles that attach to the pelvis. But yeah, there's plenty of things that you can do off the bike that translate into really good performance on it.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, yeah, I 100% agree with both of you on that and thank you for the tips. I can't wait to work in some of those exercises into my own strength training plan. Crowie, let's go to you for the second big time cycling tip. What do you have for, for our audience?

Craig Alexander: Yeah, well, again, it just, there's a, there's a lot of crossover with these tips, but the, the tip specifically is talking about cadence. I think there are a lot of metrics that we look at when we're training and that we play with to try and generate a different stimulus or create certain gains. And, and one of those on the bike is definitely cadence. One of my big go to sessions was that strength session that Chris talked about. I think getting athletes to do low cadence, high resistance efforts have a lot of benefits. One is obviously you're forcing your muscles to activate as many muscle fibers as possible and also within those contractions, produce a more forceful contraction. So there's that strength building component, you know, and you want to be mindful when you're doing these to really lock out your core, not use your upper body to get momentum. You want to generate all that force from sort of your core or your hips down. You want to target a cadence of around, I would suggest 60 is that you might want to start at 70 or 75, because there is a period where, you know, the muscles, the ligaments and the Tendons need to adjust to this sort of a load. It's a different load and it should produce a fatigue in the muscles, but not a pain in the joints or areas around the joints. So you want to start at a slightly higher cadence, but I would suggest the target cadence is somewhere around 60 RPM. If you're more proficient and experienced at these efforts, you can, you can go even lower. I used to get down to 50 RPM. My go to set was always 5 by 5 minutes with 2 minutes rest. As Chris had seen in that video. I didn't feel the need to be too creative with that. The progression came with just lowering the cadence or adding resistance. So I would typically do that session after a warmup. That would be my main set once a week. If it was off season or preseason or that period between your last goal race of one season and the first race of the following season, I would do a period of four or six weeks where I'd do that session twice a week. When I wasn't working on so much top end VO2 or threshold work, I would incorporate two of those strength effort sessions on the bike. I feel they are a really nice foil for doing zone two endurance work, which you typically also do at that time of the year. So my suggestion to athletes would be trying to incorporate those at least once or twice a week. There is a strength building benefit, as I mentioned, but I think when you increase the resistance and your cadence really gets in those lower ranges. There's also a, a huge benefit to your pedaling mechanics. You're required to generate force throughout the whole 360 degrees of the pedal stroke. So you develop the ability to not only push down on the downstroke, but rake at the bottom, focus on the upstroke and over the top as well. So it really eliminates any dead spots in your pedal strokes. I think that's just an, an added bonus of that sort of low cadence work. And, and then the counterpoint to the low cadence work is high cadence was something I incorporated in my training a lot. Again, timing is very important, but I used to target efforts of 120 RPM or more. The key is you pick a cadence where you're not bouncing or rocking in the saddle. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's sort of a range that I, I guess you, you get to with a bit more experience in these efforts. And I just arrived at these efforts from reading a lot of, of what track cyclists would do on a velodrome for, for pedaling efficiency. I think when we pedal at a high cadence, there's a neuromuscular. It's almost like a neuromuscular drill. It's promoting faster and more coordinated firing of the muscles which, which again leads to a more efficient pedal stroke. So once again, my, my go to session wasn't Sexy. It was 5 by 5 minutes with 2 minutes rest, different stimulus. So high cadence, low resistance, no rocking in the saddle. Again, lock out the core. I think the technique is so important with all of these sorts of drills or efforts. So I would incorporate it on the trainer, the indoor trainer, once a week or again if I'm in off season, pre season. What I would often do is at the end of a zone 2, right, just incorporate 30 minutes of a much higher cadence than I'd been. Typically my Zone 2 rides were a cadence around 85-90rpm. But for the last 30 minutes of a three or four hour bike ride, I might just bump that cadence up to 120 in a very high gear. I think there's a huge stimulus and a lot of gains to be, to be had from forcing high cadence or generating high cadence under fatigue as well when your legs are a little fatigued. So, but again, you don't want to be bouncing in the satellites with all of these sorts of drills and efforts. It's paramount that the technique comes first and that gets dialed in before you start progressing, changing loads, increasing or decreasing cadence. First port of call is always perfect technique and then we, we, we, we go from there.

Vanessa Ronksley: Well folks, there you go. That was a masterclass in cadence right there. Thank you so much, Crowie, for, for sharing and for allowing everyone to hear about how you incorporate that into your sessions. That's incredible. I think we're going to head right over to tip number three again. Crowie, tell us about tip number three. I think this one's really important for everyone to hear multiple times.

Craig Alexander: Yeah, and I think it's something that most coaches would recognize, particularly experienced coaches and most experienced athletes. And that's just the need for a proper bike fitness. And by proper, that means you either go to a professional bike fitter or perhaps your coach is very experienced and you know, you can arrive at a really great position just from getting advice from someone who has experience and can eyeball it. So. And what do we mean by a proper bike fit? I think it's one that's comfortable first and foremost, that meshes that comfort with, with the new adjustability in bikes with some sort of aerodynamic benefit as well. But generally speaking, we want our Joint angles. And we want our body to be in the best position that affords sustaining the highest output for the longest period of time. And to, to do that, we need our muscles and joints to be working in their optimum range, to be as ergonomic as possible. And there's an injury prevention benefit as well, I think. You know, you don't want your seat too high, put stresses on the knee joint, you don't want your seat too low. Possibly not going to get injured from too low a seat, but you're definitely going to lose power, potentially get a sore back, you're closing off your hip angle a lot. So there's a lot of reasons why you. A proper bike fit, I think should be probably the first thing that an athlete should do when they get a new bike or when they're undertaking a new season. You know, I know athletes who sometimes get one or two bike fits a year because they might change equipment mid season, new shoes, new pedals, or potentially change brand of seat. And those things can change your position by millimeters often. But obviously when our body's so used to being working in one or two planes the same way in a repetitive motion, little changes can lead to big magnified results, good and bad. So yeah, I think it's something on every coach and athletes checklist should be a bike fit either done by a professional bike fitter or an experienced coach to maximize comfort, which maximizes performance and also minimizes the chance of injury.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, that's great. I think something that a lot of people overlook is that they, they see how other people look on their bikes and then they go to their bike fitter and they say, I want to look like this. I want to be really aero. And I think it's important when you have a good bike fitter, that bike fitter will say to you, well, you're not ready for that yet. And so it's, it's important, I think, to also recognize that what you think looks like a good bike fit might not be the most comfortable for you or might, you know, cause those injuries, as you said, or be one of the factors that could lead to an injury down the road.

Craig Alexander: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's just again speaks to this idea that we're all becoming more and more comfortable with, with it, which is, it's just, it's never a one size fits all. You can have two male athletes or two female athletes who are identical height, but their body morphology is a little different. Some people have longer torsos, shorter legs that impacts Fit. And just because you see someone on a live coverage looking a certain way or on the Tour de France, you're 100% right, Jenna. Sometimes people arrive at a bite fit after 18 months of progressive and incremental changes. We never go from A to Z in one go. And a great bike fitter or coach will always do a physical assessment on an athlete to work out, well, this is our optimal fit, but is there anything that's precluding us from getting there? Tight hamstrings, Inactive glutes, very, I guess, weak or inactive core. So, again, it's every athlete's different in terms of our shapes and our sizes, our strengths and our weaknesses, and that all plays into the bike fit that you end up with.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, agreed. Chris, do you have anything else that you'd like to add there about bike fitting, or did Troy cover it all?

Chris Navin: I think he covered pretty much everything. But, yeah, I think emphasizing that, you know, bike fit is not. Not just for the elites, you know, it's for all abilities of cyclists, too. Like, some people think, oh, I don't need to do a full professional fitting because, you know, that's only for the people who are trying to qualify for Kona, but the people who are on their bike longer are the ones that probably need to get that more dialed in. And it's always worth spending the time to reassess that. Like, I just got a gravel bike a couple years ago and did a fitting on that, and that reminded me that I actually haven't done a recheck on my time trial bike fit since I got that bike, which is almost 15 years ago. So I know I've gained weight. I don't have the same flexibility I used to have. And so it made me realize, oh, I should probably, you know, and I've been tweaking my fiddle but here and there, but I should probably, you know, get a full, you know, professional recheck. And a lot of the trends in the industry have changed too. You know, shorter crank arm length is a trend. Moving the cleat position is a trend. The aero bar position is, you know, all those things are small marginal gains. But when you add them all up, you're talking about, you know, 5, 10% performance gains and just spending a couple hours looking at your bike check once a year or at least every couple years can have a huge, huge impact. Whether it's, you know, injury prevention, comfort if you're on the bike for a really long time, or just performance gains of, you know, getting more aerodynamic or trying new Equipment out, different positions of the aero bars. So there's a lot that goes into it. And it's not just about, you know, going to a bike shop and doing a static fit either. You know, doing active fits, like where you're actually pedaling at different cadences, different power numbers. Or locally we have a velome, an outdoor velo that will go and put on the equipment we're going to have on race day and actually do we call it a virtual wind tunnel. You, you time yourself and look at your power as you're going around and your splits and you can change your fit, change your position, and get aerodynamic gains by doing a poor man's, you know, wind tunnel, basically. So there's a lot of fun things I think you can do in the whole, you know, realm of bike fitting.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's really creative, using that velodrome as a, as your personal wind tunnel. I like that idea a lot. Thank you for sharing that. Let's head over to our fourth big time cycling tip. We're rolling right along here. Chris, what's Our tip number? 4.

Chris Navin: So I wanted to give a big tip on using, if you're going especially a lot of time on a trainer, the erg mode, the ergometer mode, or the resistance control mode, you call it on a smart trainer or bike, but not always doing it. So I know Crowie was talking about doing like the low cadence torque work. I love using the erg mode for that. And, you know, playing around even at the same power and cadence target in one interval, you can play around with dropping your cadence down a little bit and letting the trainer crank the resistance up on you and then see if you can bring that cadence back up. So instead of just going right for 60 RPMs, you might go dip down to 55, go up to 65 and kind of play around with leveraging the erg function of a smart trainer to make that, that interval workout even more effective. So I think if you're not doing erg resistance on some of the workouts, definitely do that. It's a really, really powerful tool. You can get a lot of performance gains in a very short period of time using the erg mode properly and especially doing, like Troy said, the lower cadence work. But then also if you're someone who uses erg mode all the time, I have a couple athletes that just use it every workout all the time. I like to encourage people to not always use it all the time and make sure you also get used to shifting your gears and, you know, that's the skill of just getting comfortable, controlling and being aware of your own cadence and whatnot without staring at a screen all the time. So whether that means getting outdoors and riding outdoors more and doing those cadence drills. But that erg function can be effective tool, so I think it goes both ways. Use it and also make sure you're not using it sometimes. So depending on the individual, start using it more or start using it less.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's an excellent way to phrase that. I've been in the erg mode, the rut. I call it the rut, for a really long time. I don't know what happened, but I just got into this pattern where I was just constantly doing erg boat. And I agree there are times when. When it's really effective and useful. Um, I especially like it for the longer intervals, um, because it makes sure that you're not getting any of those little micro recoveries. Um, but at the same time, it's important to come out of erg mode because that's how we race. We don't race in erg mode. Um, and so finding ways to leverage the free ride, as you said, shifting the gears, getting proficient at anticipating hills and. And that sort of thing, that's really important to do. And you can do that on your trainer. Um, Crowie, what do you. What. What are your thoughts on erg vs not erg on the trainer?

Craig Alexander: Like, everything you need to find a good balance. We have access to much more technology and so many more tools than ever in our sport, and they're great for the reasons you mentioned. Certainly can use it to develop better fitness on the indoor trainer. But ultimately, that specificity of, you know, we need to be proactive with our cadence and our gear selection and our ability to hold effort at a certain level. So I think it has. Has its place for sure. But in the end, you want to make sure that you're not overusing it and that you have the ability to do a longer effort and not. Not be subconsciously incorporating those micro arrests that you were talking about, because that. That will. You know, there's a great saying, we. We race how we train. So any little idiosyncrasies or habits that we develop in training, good or bad, will follow us wherever we. Wherever we go, particularly on race day. But I think it has its place for sure. You can use it as a tool to definitely develop a huger fitness bay or a higher fitness base. And it's just about timing and situation.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think one of the things that I really like to do that I started to do a little bit last year was to take the trainer off erg when hills were coming up and just so I could get a feeling with my own gearing. What does it feel like when I'm on a 10% grade hill or a 16% grade hill or a 5% grade hill? How does that feel? And how do I have to adjust my physiology and my, my cadence or whatever just to make sure that I can get up the hill? And, and I think practicing that, it takes a lot of the, the unknown out of your mind. When you're coming up to a race that might have potentially a higher elevation profile, I think that it's really important to, to be able to utilize the, the non erg mode, to, to be confident in your ability as well. So I think it's, it has to do with a mental aspect in addition to the physiological gains that you can have.

Chris Navin: And one thing I want to add to that actually, is, you know, when you're using erg mode, there's a lot of different creative ways to use it. And, you know, Crowie, I think hit on earlier about hitting higher cadences for longer periods of time. Like, you know, I see oftentimes with endurance athletes, we do so much time at the same time cadence. You know, there's 90 RPMs or so, and that ends up becoming a big limiter for a lot of cyclists. Like, if you can't hold over 100 rpms for a long period of time, that might be an opportunity to get yourself to that next level. And can you hold 110 or 120? You know, track cyclists go to 150 up to 200rpms. And oftentimes if I see a cyclist and I try to have them do a high cadence drill and they can't even break 110, then that tells me that's, that might be a limiter that's going to be a big opportunity to take them to that, that next level. When you're using erg mode, even at the, you know, a set resistance, you can try to bring your cadence higher and higher and higher. And like Crowie said, like, get to that point where you start bouncing in the saddle and that, that tells us kind of where that limit is for you. And if you can keep trying to push that limit higher and higher and higher. I just had a class last week where I had a cyclist for the first time hit 150, 160, and then 170rpms on their cadence just to push that upper level. And that does tend to shift your whole kind of cycling fitness up because just like swimming and running especially even more so if you're not doing cadence work, you know the speed is, you know, your stroke length or stride length times your cadence. So if you don't work on the cadence, you're always going to be limiting yourself. And the same thing on the bike. And the erg mode can be a powerful tool for both extremes of that low and high cadence work that Kroy hit on earlier.

Vanessa Ronksley: As you were talking, as soon as you said 200 rpms, all I could think about was what does that even look like? How does that even work? I can't even imagine in my mind seeing someone's legs spinning that fast. I'm gonna have to go to YouTube or something.

Chris Navin: Yeah, YouTube. I think there's some track cyclists that even go up to like 250rpm. So if you need some inspiration, YouTube will definitely give you a coup good videos on that.

Vanessa Ronksley: I will, I can assure you I will be going to YouTube to look for this high cadence work and I can also assure you that I'm going to be incorporating more high cadence work into my, into my cycling program. So thank you so much for these tips. This is just great. I love it for my own personal gains. It's great to be here with you. I think we're going to head over to the fifth big time cycling tip. So Crowie, what do you have for us here?

Craig Alexander: Yeah, I think it's again, it's a one that may seem like it's common sense and it's just working on bike handling and bike skills. I mean that's an ongoing journey that we're all on. How much is enough bike skills or how long's a piece of string? The more the better because often when things go wrong on the bike it happens quickly. And the better your skills. The better, I guess or yeah, the better your adept you'll be at dealing with those situations. So I think it ties into some of the other themes we've been talking about and you know, the advent of indoor training and these cycling platforms which are amazing and the smart trainers, which are amazing, they have so many applications. I'm just a huge fan of indoor training. I think it's so, it's so time effective. I think riding on the indoor trainers, the smart trainers these days have just much more of a road simulation or a road feel than ever before. So there is a good transfer of training effect. You know, I think you get bang for your buck in terms of a Return on your time investment. There's no coasting on an indoor trainer. There's no downhills, there's no tailwinds, there's no traffic lights. If you have an hour or 60 minutes on an. On an indoor trainer, an indoor session, you're pedaling the whole time. So there's so many advantages to it. You take out weather, you take out traffic. You can really dial in on the key parameters of the workout, whatever that might be, cadence or effort level, whatever. I think the downside potentially could be when we're spending more time indoors, we don't focus or develop our bike handling skills as much. So that's something that we just really need to put on every athlete's radar. It's still important to, you know, and I mean, there's been athletes out there, pro athletes, who have trained through winters exclusively indoors, and their first outdoor ride is actually race day. But we need to remember these are athletes who have been riding bikes for 15 years out on the roads and have really polished and developed bike handling skills. So things like braking safely, cornering, picking your lines into and out of corners, understanding potential dangers as well. It's not just the actual art of handling the bike. It's being able to spot obstacles off cambered corners, gravel on the apex of a corner, things like that that just come with practice. So, yeah, I think a great tip is always to go to a controlled environment, whether it be a bike path or a bike track or a low traffic area that's very safe, and expose yourself to the different risks and challenges of riding the bike outdoors. I think that's always time well spent and subsequent to that, to understand as an athlete, or hopefully your coach understands some of the things around bike setup. Now we have, I mean, Chris was talking about it before. There's so many things that you need to be across. And, you know, there was a time maybe 20 years ago where you couldn't buy speed, but you can now. There's no question you can buy speed. The bikes are better. The nutrition, the running shoes. You have to be across a lot of the different equipment choices as a coach and an athlete. With the way the bikes are set up now with integrated storage, you need to be able to access your fueling and hydration safely while out on the road, navigating through other athletes and aid stations and the technical aspects of the course. So these are all things that need to be practiced. I think it's very easy to, you know, bed in a great time trial position on the indoor trainer, doing those long 1015 and 20 minute efforts and we need to practice those. And the indoor trainer is the perfect place to get your body well accustomed to holding that position and becoming comfortable in that position. But we sort of need to be able to do that outside on the road as well, potentially having to break that position at different times to brake or in high risk areas. So I think that there's probably two components to it. Recognizing situations where you shouldn't be down on the bars and then having the skills to be able to, I guess, deal with those challenges that arise. But I think bike handling skills is something that, whether it's your first year in triathlon or your 25th year, it's something that every athlete needs to work on. Like any sort of skill acquisition, the right sort of practice, you can never do too much of it. So that would be my tip, is to absolutely access and utilize these indoor tools, but get very proficient and always be working on your bike handling skills. Very specifically outdoors as well.

Vanessa Ronksley: I 100% agree with you and this is something that I fall short of, I know, is getting outside more often. And as you said, practicing these skills is imperative for safety and, and, and for success as well. Um, Chris, what, what kinds of things do you tell your athletes about bike handling skills when it's time for them to, to take their, their rides from inside to outside?

Chris Navin: Yeah, it's always hard. You know, triathletes, we're balancing all of our training time and sometimes we prioritize just getting workouts in rather than working on, you know, little, little things like bike handling and whatnot. But there's a lot of very direct ways that it can transfer in, you know, some of the areas I typically look at. You know, I live in Chicago, we have very flat terrain here, but a couple hours away, our local IRONMAN race is IRONMAN Wisconsin, which has some really big hills and very technical turns and things like that. And so I try to encourage our athletes, you know, get up there if you're a local athlete at least once a month or if you have any neighborhood area where you know it's safe, but there's a place where you can practice things like Crowie saying high speed turns. I remember looking at some of my athletes data files and seeing all these little heart rate spikes on a flat course. I'm like, it wasn't a hilly race what was going on? And I didn't realize he was slowing down way before turns, losing a lot of speed and then having to push hard and accelerate. He was constantly surging throughout the race and so we started working on counter steering. So turning opposite from where you're going to turn to be able to lean into turns better and take turns at higher speed. So you can wait and you can break later and take a lot of speed going into the turns and a lot of speed out of the turns. And his heart rate just began to level off. There was not nearly as much volatility and that helped tremendously. So even on a flat road and a flat race, there's a lot of bike handling related things that you can work on. But getting comfortable descending too. Like anyone doing technical races or you mentioned nice, you know, getting comfortable climbing, getting comfortable descending and then CRO hit on aid stations. Being comfortable riding around other people, you know, reaching for water bottles and grabbing those at speed. A lot of people are a lot better at that than others are and just riding next to people. You know, if we're triathletes, sometimes we don't do group rides if you don't have a road bike, you know, some group rides don't welcome triathletes if you have aero bars and you don't have a regular road bike. But getting comfortable riding next to people, knowing how to rub elbows. I coach a big local bike racing team in Chicago called Triple X Racing Athletico. And any USA cycling team like that will oftentimes do bike handling skills clinics that are open to the public or low cost. So I would say look for those opportunities like we host a weekly practice criterium bike race. But it's not a, it's, it's a race, but it's not a race. It's a clinic. We do a clinic first and then get people comfortable riding around other, other people getting comfortable riding at higher speeds, teaching people how to, you know, take turns at higher speeds and things like that. And that can really level you up very quickly as well. So any cyclist should seek out those opportunities. You know, ask a coach or look at the single sport, you know, experts, the USA cycling coaches, especially in the US or wherever you are can oftentimes host those skills clinics and those are really invaluable.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, that's great. Thank you, thank you for imparting us with that, that wisdom and knowledge. We are headed to our final big time cycling tip for triathletes. So Chris, let's hit this one over to you. What is the final tip that you'd like to share today?

Chris Navin: Well, this is, I do this in a lot of different areas of the sport. The main reason we do the sport to have fun. You know, look for those opportunities to have fun on your bike. You know, whether it's, you know, joining a group ride, like I mentioned, you know, meeting new people, socializing, or just doing some epic adventures, you know, going on big, big rides, go explore, go see new sites, have, have ways to have fun. I know one, one of our local athletes started here in Chicago recently, the Chicago Randoners. So randoneuring, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but that's long distance cycling, like Brevettes in France. They do, you know, across the country type of rides. Usually it means, you know, 100, 200 kilometers, 300 kilometers, these kind of epic cycling adventures and, and those people, you know, there are races, but most of them do it for fun. They're there for the camaraderie, they're there for the achievement of, you know, riding from one city to another or doing some type of, you know, epic routes that, that, you know, go to a, a restaurant like I think one was to go to all different donut shops in, in the 100 mile area, you know, and stopping every so often. So I think anything that, that can get you having fun with the bike and doing something a little bit different, you know, builds your confidence, build your mental health. If you're getting, looking for some stress relief, don't worry about the training all the time. It's okay to take a workout on your training plan and just turn it into a fun workout instead of. That's my biggest step.

Vanessa Ronksley: I love that. Crowie, do you have any final words that you'd like to include on having fun with your cycling?

Craig Alexander: I know when I think back to being a kid, all my best memories are ripping around the neighborhood on my BMX with my buddies. So cycling, riding a bike's a fun thing to do. And Chris also mentioned that right off the top when he was in Switzerland. All of these different disciplines that are available within the sport of cycling and I, you know, a lot of the things, these things that we've been talking about, the tips, you know, whether it be bike handling skills or cadence work, it's amazing. By repeatingly, repeatedly, I guess exposing yourself to a different stimulus, how quickly you make gains. It's about repetition and consistency. You know, that high cadence work, you, you really do improve with that quite, quite rapidly once you start committing to it in a consistent way. And I mean we think about that word consistency. What, what makes us keep coming back to something. It's some sort of enjoyment, whether it be the challenge or, you know, we, I think we're all driven. We all have our goals around our racing, what we want to do. Some people want to finish races, some people want to set pbs, others want to qualify for championship races. And they're all great goals. There's going to be times when our motivation ebbs and flows and ultimately what will keep us coming back is just some sort of underlying enjoyment for doing the thing. So I think it's a great tip. Just having fun. Just love it.

Announcer: Great set everyone. Let's cool down.

Vanessa Ronksley: We are here for the cool down and I have kept our coach, superstar Chris Navin on here. Thanks for staying on with me. I think that you have so much knowledge and wisdom. I would love to hear one more tip that you have that is cycling related on how we can improve ourselves in this discipline. So what do you have for us today?

Chris Navin: I always like to encourage, you know, when you get into a discipline to explore different areas of it. Don't always do the same thing. And one thing I love giving my athletes in, especially like training studio classes, but really when you're training on your own to kind of nudge people in a direction they might not have gone before is doing peak power efforts. You know, oftentimes we just follow the workouts and you know, if you do erg mode all the time, for example, you might not do things like just looking. It's kind of like the equivalent of what a someone working on strength might at the gym look at like their one rep max, you know, what's that maximum weight you can do on the bike? I like to look at your peak, usually 5 second power. Like what is that top, top end? If you were to sprint, even if you're not a sprinter, you're an endurance athlete. If you keep pushing that top end higher, you might be able to level up your, your cycling game. And one of my favorite examples of this is I used to always end a class with one extra rep, one extra interval where I would have my athletes do a peak power effort. Can you hit a new personal desk? You know, can you break, you know, 500, 600, 700 watts on just a very short period of time? And one of my cyclists, I kept one upping them, I gave them a couple more watts so they would hit a new number 800. I would go to 802 watts and then they would have to commit. And one of them, actually Jackie Godby, she ended up winning the ITU age group World championships. And she was the only person I ever got every, any female to break a thousand watts on her sprint. And when she hit that number, it was just such a big confidence booster. You know, it's like, okay, I've achieved a new level. So even when you're having a bad day, sometimes you can just throw in that one extra rep. Do something, go for a personal best and you might surprise yourself that, hey, wow, I do have more fitness than I thought or, you know, I had a bad day and all of a sudden your mood is elevated. So I think those peak power efforts are always a fun thing. Whether you're doing it during a warmup, you can do it and do a high cadence warm up drill. That's a great time to try to just do a little five second effort or if you got a little bit left at the end of a workout. But just make sure you do a cool down afterwards. Spin the legs out. Yeah, go and see what's your best 5 second power. That's always a good one to go after.

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