Family visit

Going to see mom today. The guys are in Tongeren and hopefully they'll behave. More updates later tonight.
Picked up bikes and wheels from Luc Assez at Asfra/Flanders. All ready to roll now.

All decked out: 2 spare bike and 4 spare wheels

Got to Tongeren around 5PM. Guys were out on a ride but John was sitting in the room. He had crashed and hit his head. He went to see a doctor but he is fine now. Hunter is joining us tomorrow.

Road to Tongeren

Happy New Year-Gelukkig Nieuwjaar

I wish all of you a Happy New Year and a wonderful 2011. May you score many victories this year.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Event horizon

We all know that it takes just seven days to make us a man. Unfortunately, it takes almost 10,000 hours to turn that man into a world class performer. 10,000 hours is about 10 years. Nobody in their right mind wants to wait that long, nor -we are constantly reminded- should they have to do so. These days we can get what we want, when we want it. It is called instant gratification and like greed it is one of the pillars upon which our consumer society was built.

In just seven days, I will make you a man

No doubt this is why we all look for shortcuts. Maybe we need a power meter so we can train smarter? Or perhaps we need to change our nutrition and add more micronutrients? Or analyze our sweat to see what electrolytes we are missing? Or strengthen our core so we can be more efficient?

It is also why we are so eager to correct any perceived defects. Better get to it before it gets to us is the mantra. Better drink before you are thirsty, or eat before you are hungry. Or start pedaling circles before you know how to pedal. Or correct your gait before you have developed a proper stride?

We study and analyze and we take great pride in our deep understanding of physiology. Unfortunately though, every time we test that understanding in the real world, we are -most likely- in for a big surprise. All those things that seemed so rational and logical, all those things that just had to work, turn out to be for naught. Whenever we apply our fabulous insights or clever tricks we risk doing more harm than good. The road is littered with great ideas and fool proof remedies that achieved little or nothing beneficial.

Meanwhile our friend Iljo Keisse is still on for the Zesdaagse in Rotterdam, Alberto Contador is booked for the Tour of Murcia -all these conditional on any last minute UCI or WADA interventions, and Zdenek Stybar is back in cyclocross. There, Sven Nys suffers one mechanical failure after another, while Lance Armstrong bailed out of the New Zealand Ironman race and possibly Kona?


In other news, I have discovered a great Kriek (cherry beer) for you. Earlier I introduced you to Cantillon, no doubt a very worthy brew, but one that I am sure many will find too dry and too sour. Turns out Oud Beersel, makers of authentic Gueuze Lambic, make a fantastic Oude Kriek that is full of flavor, just a tad sour, and lacks the cloying taste of most popular Krieks. Like Cantillon it is deep red. A superb beer to top off a great workout.

Authentic super kriek

New Year's resolutions

2010 is coming to a close and this is as good a time to start thinking about your future as any. January 1 is when people want to start anew with a clean sheet. Many make firm resolutions to better the remainder of their existence. Most of these resolutions will not survive January and so the more experienced among us may not bother, but if you do, let me help you along by showing you how to save some time.

New Year

Whether you are aiming to lose some weight and get back into shape, or whether you are aspiring to become a top racer, here are some things you should know about. I want to warn you beforehand that these are not what you expect nor what you will see or read about elsewhere, especially not in trade journals. I would dare to say that these time-savers might be seen by some as crazy, inflammatory, irresponsible or just plain wrong.

So let me state the following in a way of disclaimer: these are my personal opinions only and in presenting these to you I speak as an individual from personal experience.

My favorite list of things that do not matter and that you should not worry about.

1. Nutrition. As our friend Bjarne Riis said, you can eat pasta and ketchup and train seven hours a day. In short, despite all the hoopla and talk, nutrition is one thing you need not worry about. As long as you don't get an upset stomach during the race -nearly always due to eating too much or eating stuff other than carbs- and as long as you don't gain too much weight, you will be fine. For more details check here.

During the race, eat candy bars, i.e. carbs (sugars), any sugar, it does not matter, but if the race is longer try eating normal food. Forget everything else, it will make things so much easier. For more on eating while racing, check this out.

Food

2. Drinks. Yes you read that right, drinks. You can drink anything you like during the race as long as you don't drink too much. You should also mind the calories. It is easy to get an extra 5-600 calories from drinking. Don't worry about complex or less complex sugars, or glycemic indices, or even electrolytes. If your race is longer than 3 hours try to ingest some salt as well.

3. Vitamins, minerals, supplements. These items are a waste of money for everyone, period. If anything they can be dangerous to your health and taking these is riskier than not taking any. If you live in the Western world and eat a normal diet and go outside for a few hours each day you will be OK. For my take on micronutrients and other scams, check here.

4. Anything performance-enhancing. The only performance enhancing drug that is legal is caffeine. Why that is so has to do with culture and social norms, not science or reason. Everything else either does not work or is on the prohibited list -which does not necessarily mean it works. Caffeine works well as long as you don't overdo it. Like most drugs it shows tolerance.

5. Weight loss pills. These either don't work or are illegal to use (see section 4).

6. Stretching. It is fun and may be entertaining to put your feet behind your head, but it won't make you a better racer. As a matter of fact, being stiff is beneficial for runners and bikers, but not swimmers, who need flexible ankles. Leave the stretching to ballerinas.

7. Massage. Also great fun -unless you are standing in line after the ironman, getting cold. Better in not-safe-for-work settings, massage is a feel-good form of entertainment that has no proven performance or recovery benefits. It does release endorphins and other signaling molecules, but that should not surprise you unless you believe in ghosts. You can only feel good if your brain is swamped in feel-good molecules.

8. Core exercises. Great fun to roll around on a ball but if you want to become a better runner or cyclist you should run or cycle instead.

9. Yoga. Another great way to spend the off-days and impress your friends. Yoga may be a great stress reducer and have tons of other (largely unproven) benefits, but it won't make you faster on the bike, regardless of what superstar so and so says.

10. Any mechanical fix, gadget, widget, wedge, or "technique." It does not matter how you pedal, how fast you pedal, whether you pedal in circles or in squares (like all the pros), or what crank length you use. It does not matter -for runners- whether you are a toe striker or a heel striker or whether your shoes are motion control, padded, or have wedges in them. You can run barefoot if you like but shoes protect you from sharp objects.

Chain ring shapes are irrelevant and so are pieces of padding under the ball of your foot. I would add bike fits to the list but that is sure to infuriate some of my friends who stand to gain financially from this activity. I can certainly add any mechanical fix to "correct" a perceived problem or any method, video or otherwise to diagnose such "problems."

Unless you have a real problem don't fix it.

BioPace anyone?

In conclusion:

What does help and what you need to focus on is training hard with adequate recovery. The only skill you need to learn is to listen to your body. That is easier if you don't have beeping heart rate monitors or distracting GPS voices, or erratic power meter displays to worry about. In this case, as in many others, less is more.

Dazzle camouflage

I was riding with Alistair this weekend and he was wearing his '08 Team Specialized Jersey. The jersey is bright red with a large white S cutting across the front and back (see picture). When you look at it really stands out. Yet when racing in a pack I -and many others- had always noticed how hard it was to find him, or his team mates in the group.

Then I was reminded of something I read a long time ago about camouflage. There is such a thing as "very visible" camouflage, technically called Dazzle Camouflage or Razzle-Dazzle.

It sounds counterintuitive but when you paint an object in bright and large patterns it plays tricks on your visual system, especially when the object is moving.

Dazzle camouflage was used briefly in WWI to confuse enemy gunners. It was said to interfere with the gunsights that were used at the time. But I can attest to the fact that you don't need a gunsight to be confused. What matters here is the contrast, the size of the patterns, and the speed of movement. When these three interact within certain ranges, things can become very difficult indeed.

Here is a picture of a British warship painted in Dazzle. The British abandoned this type of masking when radar was introduced. Painting dazzle is more expensive and time consuming than "regular" camouflage.

What happens in dazzle is that your visual system wants to break up the image along the very visible edges and then your brain puts pieces together that don't belong together. I.e. it is as if you parse a piece of text the wrong way and make words out of groups of letters that don't belong together. That makes all subsequent recognition next to impossible. The trajectory, the speed, even the boundaries of the object all become hard to find, let alone the actual recognition of a person.

The newer Specialized Team jerseys have a smaller S pattern and less contrast making for a much improved experience.

On Saturday I went to Hellyer and did a three hour track workout. I am still trying to get used to the fixed gear. Things work well as long as speeds are reasonable. But I do not like going all out on a fixed gear.

I rode a 200 m time trial with flying start and got to 15 s -which is pretty slow-. I know I was holding back for fear of locking up once past the finish. Apparently my intentions were obvious because one of the guys came over afterwards and told me, you didn't look like you were going all out on that bike? Well so much for that.

I wish we had a track in Oakland or Berkeley so I would not have to waste so much gas just to get a workout. Driving to a workout is not something I like doing.

On Sunday, I rode with Alistair and Barbara up Redwood to Chabot park. I tuned up KOM some more beforehand and we are getting close to perfect. Some minor glitches (the saddle squeaks a bit) remain to be worked out but the bike is almost perfect now. It is a great ride.

Fractals

I saw a Nova program on fractals in biology last night. As with every popular science program it too was a bit simplistic. My other qualm was that the program jumped around from one topic to the next without ever explaining much or going into any reasonable depth anywhere. However it did enough to remind me of my previous encounters with fractals, chaos theory, and nonlinear dynamics.

Suffice it to say that many natural objects approximate fractals to a high degree. Natural objects also tend to be stochastically self similar and may even appear to be (almost) scale invariant. This fractal or quasi-fractal property of nature gives a nice explanation for such things as why small animals use more energy per weight than larger ones, or how brain sizes scale with body size.

Even our experiences are self-similar. I can read a race account from a pro race and it feels remarkably similar to my race experiences, although I perform at a much lower level of "fitness." Once I read an Ironman race report from a guy I did not know and it was so similar to my race experiences that I looked up who he was and what his finishing time was. Surprisingly enough he turned out to be quite young (20-24) and his finishing time was just below 9 hours.

Compare that to my age group (50-54) and my best finishing time at just above 11. Yet almost everything he described, including the remarks he made about competitors around him could have been written by me. Everything that is except the "absolute value" of the numbers. Is that self-similar or what?

Today I ran a 10K in the hills.

Nothing better than a cold beer

After Ironman Switzerland we were offered cold beer. Here in America, where recovery drinks reign, that would be considered heresy. But I have found that nothing tastes better or is more satisfying than a cold beer after a hard race. Especially when it is hot.

Please spare me the lectures that will say how alcohol dehydrates the body, or some other non-sense that is really trying to cover up the fact that you do not approve of anyone having a beer. I say, if it feels good there must be a reason why. That is, in general how biology works, and things that feel good are good for you (in moderation of course).

After Coeur d'Alene, I walked by a bar where a number of students were drinking beer from a pitcher. One started talking to me, and I -in my post-race high endorphin state- thought nothing of it to ask him if I could have a glass. To my surprise he promptly obliged and they filled a glass for me and the whole group toasted to my race. Man, that felt good.

Today it was quite hot and I ran 10.5 miles in the hills. That after having spent three hours this morning working in the sun. I was quite dehydrated. I drank several cups of water, all of which tasted so-so, some nuun, which tastes better, and even a Rockstar energy drink. But nothing really satisfied my thirst or ended my craving. In the end, I drank a beer and that really hit the spot. It was just amazing really how good it felt.

Cheers to all of you! Keep up the good work.