February 2011 – Cycling Central

Cyclist Training For The Off Season

February 22, 2011 No Comments

What you do in the off-season can mean the difference between losing and winning. Maintain your fitness just about enough to avoid weight gain and youll set yourself up for a slow start. But if you use your time off the bike to gain strength, speed and stamina, youll power out of the gates when the weather warms up.

RUN LIKE ROCKY. Stair running simulates the muscle action and power you want to crush steep climbs on your bike. It also builds cardiovascular ability. Beginning at the base of 3 or four flights of stairs ( like those at a local high-school stadium ), run up one step at a time as speedily as possible while maintaining good formleaning a little forward and lightly landing on and springing off the balls of your feet. Walk back down. Now head back up, taking 2 steps at a time. Then work up to 3, if the steps arent too steep. Repeat this sequence for twenty mins two times a week.

SPLIT IT UP. Studies show that two 20- to 30-minute exercise programmes burn more fat and calories than one 40-60-minute bout. Whats more, adding a second workout amps up your growth-hormone levels, which helps burn calories and build muscle. For best results, spin easy for twenty to thirty mins before breakfast to rev up your calorie consuming furnaces, then do a intense workout later .

UP YOUR INTENSITY. High-intensity interval training in little doses can keep you pointed and burn more fat. Intensity also raises endurance as it raises your lactate ceiling. And studies show that high-intensity sprint training doubles the time to exhaustion. Do eight to ten 20-second, high-cadence runs with 5 mins of recovery between each about 2 times a week.

JUMP ROPE. This playground workout scorches 10 to twelve calories a minutemore than most other sorts of exerciseand is one of the speediest paths to stay fit. Weave 2 – 3 mins into your strength-training exercises for a cardio blast. Bonus : Each hop builds explosive power and calf strength for a very solid pedal stroke.

WALK ON SNOW. Snowshoeing detonates 550 calories an hour and builds cardiovascular fitness. Your quads will send off that familiar singe as you head uphill because the lower-body range of motion is similar to pedaling a bike.

LIGHTEN UP. Too many starchy carbs in the off-season, especially when youre riding less, can set you up for a sludgy spring. Get almost all of your carbohydrates from fruit and vegetables and save bread and pasta for early in the day, especially when youll be training. And go easy on the beer and sweetsyour will power will pay off later .

LIE DOWN. You have heard that a strong core creates a pain-free platform from which to pedal. This easy exercise bolsters that base : Lie back on a stability ball so it supports your head, shoulders and upper back. Bend your knees 90 degrees and keep your feet close together. Tighten your glutes and raise your hips so your body forms a straight line from knees to shoulders. Tighten your abs and slowly let your hips drop toward the floor. Repeat, lifting and lowering your hips for a count of twenty.

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Cyclist’s Nutrition: Choose Where You Get Your Calories

February 20, 2011 No Comments

There are 3,500 calories in every pound of body weight. Riding your bike zaps nine to 10 calories a minute, that means a 150-pound bicyclist will burn between five hundred and six hundred caloriesroughly the amount in a 6-inch Spicy Italian tube subon a normal hour-long ride. ( If you are heavier, you shed more calories ; if you are lighter, you lose less. )

Cyclists infamously overstate how many calories theyre burning. If you eat an energy bar and drink a sports drink on a fair ride, youve effectively cancelled out any calorie burn. Surveys show that some exercisersoverestimate the calories they burn by almost 1,000about half a days worth. Unless every morsel has a food label, its difficult to learn how much you are taking in. It can be even harder to know how much you are burning.

A calorie is a measure of the energy in food. And for years weve been told a calorie is a calorie : Whether you eat five hundred of broccoli or pastry, your body will burn or store them equally. Thats not true. Foods close to their natural state, for example fresh vegetables, whole grains and lean, entire cuts of meat, require actionenergyfrom your body. You need to work to chew them and to digest them. They create a thermic response, which implies you use more calories just processing them.

Professionals in part blame the preponderance of lazy calories for the current obesity pandemic. Our food is so heavily processed, its practically predigested. That fastfood burger has gone thru so much pulverization, you hardly have to chew. Were losing the power to burn calories as we naturally would in the eating and digestive process. And many of these same foods are calorie-dense, so theres more for your body to store. Experts don’t suggest calorie counting. It takes the joy out of eating and ends up a futile venture. Instead, fill your plate with active calories, like those found in fruits and vegetables. Such foods possess more fiber and water, which implies you digest them slowly, feel satisfied with fewer of them and gain longer-lasting energy. You can consider them free foods and eat as many as you need.

By simply changing the composition of your plate, you can lose weight without being concerned about pangs of hunger, bonking episodes or watching the calories.

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Carbon Fiber: Essential Bicycle Component

February 13, 2011 No Comments

Regarded as an unusual space-shuttle composite just ten years ago, carbon fiber is now used in pretty much every bicycle component, from frames and components to helmets and shoe soles. Carbon fibers are made from carbon, the ever-present element that forms coal, graphite and diamond and is a component of each organic chemical and each life form on earth. Carbon is the fourth commonest component in the universe and the
Second commonest component in the body.

Polyacrylonitrile ( PAN ) fiber, also the source material for acrylic fiber, is created into carbon fiber by heating it to intense temperatures, burning away fundamentally everything aside from carbon. The ensuing 5-8 micron ( millionths of a meter ) thick fibers are a tenth the thickness of a human hair and made from carbon atoms strongly bonded together in microscopic crystals aligned parallel to the fibers axis. Robust and stiff, the fibers have a stiffness index of 33 million pounds per square inch ( MSI ) and a rough surface. Pricey processing can strip off this outer surface to reveal a thinner, smoother
Intermediate Modulus ( IM ) fiber that packs tighter with other fibers for higher rigidity per unit area. A costlier processing can create High Modulus ( HM ) carbon fibers, which boasts a Youngs modulus rigidity of 42 MSI to 55 MSI or even more.

Common-modulus fibers are bundled together into yarn and woven into fabric. A number followed by the letter K designates how many thousands of fibers are in a strand of the yarn ( as in 3K, for three thousand fibers per strand ). Woven fabric frequently comprises the top layer for cultured purposes, but most carbon fibers in a bicycle part instead come in flat sheets of firmly packed parallel fibers pre-impregnated with epoxy resin stuck to backing paper. Exactly cut pieces ( plies ) are stacked, or laid up, atop each other at opposing angles ( sometimes 45 degrees ), to oppose forces from different directions. Unlike metals, carbon fiber plies within the laminate structure can be oriented to make a composite structure that can be stiff in one specific direction and more
Flexible in another. Indeed, plies must be laid up at angles, because carbon fiber, like thread, is strong if you pull on it but far weaker if you push lengthwise on it or bend it sideways. Nonetheless in a carbon fiber tire bead, you do not need strength in tension alone, so orienting fibers at angles and gluing them together with resin allows the plies to work together, opposing forces from all directions. Subjecting the laminate to high pressure and heat in a mildew pushes out air and excess resin.

Well-engineered carbon composite parts have high rigidity and strength, low density and high fatigue life but low elongation they cannot stretch or bend much before they break. Disasters come from not correctly engineering the directions and kinds of fibers to cope with the loads.

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Bicycle Power Meters Are Essential To Improve Performance

February 12, 2011 No Comments

A power meters capability to appraise workload in real time has fundamentally changed the way bicyclists train. No more making a guess about increases in fitness, no more wildly overblown first intervals wrecking the rest of the set. With a power meter, you can see the precise amount of work youre doing in any particular 2nd, measured in watts. Most top pros train with power, and as more options enter the market and prices drop, more and more recreational riders are jumping on the bandwagon.

What’s A Watt?
In simple language power is torque multiplied by angled velocity. In cycling, that interprets into stress on the pedals times intonation. Power is used to overcome the forces of gravity, wind, inertia and friction. Most power meters measure torque, either in the crankset, heart or pedals, and use that figure to work out power in watts. Another strategy is to start with the other side of the equation, adding up all the forces opposing forward motion and working backwards to work out power.

Train by power, not just With power
training by power rather than with power is not a surplus excellence. Unlike a fast set of wheels or lighter bike, simply putting a power meter on your bicycle and gazing at the numbers isnt going to make you any faster. Riders need to learn how to make use of the numbers, or hire a coach who does.
Also take a detailed look at software options. TrainingPeaks WKO+ software is the industry leader, with numerous probabilities for research, planning and tracking.

Open-source software Golden Cheetah offers plenty of the same features for free . CycleOps own PowerAgent software is also free and offers some of the same features as TrainingPeaks and GoldenCheetah in an easy-to-use interface. The options Crank-based systems are dear and hard to transfer between bikes, but they’re accurate and durable. Hub-based power meters bring the cost down, but glaringly limit rear wheel choice. Power meters that dont measure power immediately are a bit less correct, but are so much cheaper the occasional screw-ups might be overlooked.

Besides the meter itself, consider the head unit ( the PC that presents and records info ). Most meters feature a head unit, but more and more are ANT+ Sport compatible, meaning you may use them with a Garmin or another third-party head unit.

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Advantages Of Titanium Bicycles

February 11, 2011 No Comments

The 4th commonest metal and ninth of the nine elements that account for over ninety nine % of the mass of the earths crust, titanium is not exactly unobtanium, in spite of its reputation. But getting titanium out of the earth and turning it into bicycle parts takes a vast quantity of energy. Part of titaniums mythical appeal resides in the undeniable fact that its strength to weight ratio exceeds any other metal, and that it is highly resistant to corrosion.
Named for the Titans of Greek mythology, the tensile strength of some common titanium alloys approaches that of high-strength steels and far exceeds that of aluminum, without being brittle. Perhaps more importantly, titanium, like steel and in contrast to aluminum and magnesium, has a fatigue limit, implying that if the tensions are kept below that amount, it will never fail from fatigue. Its a high fatigue limit at that, thanks to its high tensile strength. The Youngs modulus ( stiffness index ) of titanium is around half that of steel, but so is its density. Titaniums density is high enough that tubes can’t be made as stiff for the same weight as aluminum or magnesium ones, because heavier walls are required to stop buckling with massive diameter.
The anti corrosive properties of titanium are extraordinary. Nuclear submarines are made of it so they will not corrode in caustic sea environments, and unpainted titanium bicycles and parts simply dont rust. Titanium isn’t crisp either ; it can be stretched around twice as far as steel and 4 times as far as aluminum and then was permanently deformed. This gives titanium frames survivability in crashes, since they will be far more likely than others to spring back after impact. Finally, the ride of a titanium bike is normally smooth, because a frame designer can select thin tube diameters and wall thicknesses to supply a flexible ride without having to sacrifice longevity.
Due to titaniums ability to stretch and return to its original shape, drawing it into tubing demands bigger and stronger machines than those needed to draw steel tubing. Welding requires enclosure in an inert-gas atmosphere, and weld contamination must further be forestalled through careful cleaning. Machining titanium requires very sharp tools and specific speeds and lubricants ; copper-laden lubricants are used on titanium threads, and it’s not endorsed to thread titanium parts into one another.
Titanium excels for bicycle frame tubing and dropouts as well as for light-weight bolts, axles and saddle rails.

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