Rob, man, let's have an honest conversation today
Rob, man, let's have an honest conversation today. I need you to search your heart and think, if you ever jump on the bike and just go out the door, put you no plan or idea what efforts you were going to do, or worse yet, did you set yourself a training session, which is no idea really why you were training these zones. Today, unfortunately, in the short road, my boy, you're going to feel a little bit of shame. Before we get to the shame session, let's cue the intro. The big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long changes? That is the question, this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another Roadman Bites short form podcast. I hope everybody got a chance to listen to yesterday's podcast. I think that I gloomingly tight-lit the death of a group ride or something equally depressing but it's a subject that I'm so passionate about so yeah excuse me if it did sound like a bit of a rant but yeah one of those kind of sorry not sorry because it needed to be said and it's a huge problem and since then it's only 24 hours since that episode dropped. The outpour and the messages I've got from clubs all around the world has been crazy So thanks for all that feedback before I jump into today's topic. Let's take one moment and jump on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. That's the place you can buy me a coffee. The coffee keeps the show on the road. You could say this podcast is fueled entirely on coffee. Do us a solid and get on over there. Okay, I want to talk to you about the number one mistake that I see repeated time and time again today. that's the use of average speed as a metric for training effort and performance. And this follows on nicely. I love this idea of kind of a recipe and like, what's the next thing I need to know? What's the next thing I need to know? So we started off a couple of episodes ago, if you haven't listened, go back and we talk about why you need to threshold test. The next episode after that, we talked about this magical language the coach and athlete now has where we get to converse in a way where we don't have to use terms like medium herd, easy, fast, slow. We've our own vocabulary where we talk about zones. So today I want to dive a little bit deeper into those zones, but I also want to talk to you about the number one mistake that I see people making. And that, as I said, is the average speed culture because what that leads into is junk miles. And junk miles is the main factor preventing athletes from maximizing their available training time. This is not my opinion. This is born out over almost a decade of culture and experience now and the countless countless clients that have encountered. The main training and related problem with the average speed culture is that Reuters ride around at a perceived effort of seven out of ten most of the time. Therefore, whatever number of errors they have available, they tend to ride as they can for data amount of time, trying to get the best average speed. In this way, you're not trying in different physiological systems for optimum benefit, you're spending all your time in one system. So if we take our seven out of 10 metric to multiple people, right, we apply this to our new vocabulary of zones, that lines up to roughly training in zone three for all of your rights. And while there's nothing inherently wrong with training in zone three, if I say to you there's seven training zones and you train eight hours a week, you spend seven of your eight as a week you're spending over 90% of your available training time training one seventh of the different range of zones it makes absolutely no sense it's like a guitarist that only plays one note over and over again you all that happens is you get really good at training in zone three and that just means when you go to doing events when you go out and ride with buddies who are faster they can rip you apart because zone riding in zone three isn't what happens in the real we're all going to be riding zone 4, we're riding zone 5, we're riding zone 1, we're riding zone 2 and that's why we've devised this clever little zone up system.
If you are a time crunch cyclist you must learn the performance, it's…
So if you are a time crunch cyclist you must learn the performance, it's a combination of different physiological systems all working in harmony. Each system we need to train differently and you have to adapt your training accordingly. So that just means we're going to have to get out and we're going to do what we call zoneal training. So what I need you to do for me, you've done that test, hopefully you've done the test 20 minute one that I recommend that if you haven't done it by now, get out and do it. So you're going to come home, you're going to get the results of that test, and you're going to put them into a threshold calculator. And because I'm such a cool and honest scan, what I'm going to do in the show notes, I'm going to put a link to a threshold calculator. So all you need to do if you're using a heart rate meter, heart rate monitor, heart rate meter, it's very old skill, it's only going to be my turn to explain this. If you're using a heart rate monitor, you're going to do a 24-minute test and you're going to take the average of the last 20 minutes. So that's just the slug tweak if you're using heart rate because heart rate is a lagging indicator. Heart rate lags behind effort. So it takes us four minutes to get up to speed with the heart rate. So if you're going to do a 24-minute test and you're going to take the average of the last 20 minutes, take the last 20 minutes, average that out, put that figure into the threshold calculator, you're going to download what your companies do to show. If you have a power meter, look you big expander if you have a power meter life is going well for you you have no complaints my friend because I did not have a power meter when I get started and I tell you I hope the bank manager isn't listening because I'm gonna be completely honest guys I never did get that card I needed to go into UCD that money and that forged loan application all got spent on a shiny brand new SRM that was a proud day Anyway, I digress into some borderline illegal activities. So if you do have a parameter shop, hopefully you didn't have to forge a loan application like me. And you take that 20 min of figure, you're going to also plug that into the threshold calculator. What that's going to do, it's going to spit you out a load of zones. One, two, three, four, four, five, six. It's also going to tell you why you need to train in each of these zones. It's going to give you the associated benefit. So as we said at the start, the majority of people I see ride around in Zontray all the time. So it's going to tell you the adaptations you can expect in Zontray. But also what it's going to do, it's going to wet the whistle and you're going to think, oh my God, why am I spending all my time riding in Zontray? Look at all these sweet benefits I get riding in Zont1. Look at all these sweet benefits I get riding in Zont2. And guess what? They're easier than Zontray. So you're going to get an idea of how we structure a week. And now in the coming episodes, I'm going to talk to you about how you can distribute your time. If you have 10 hours a week to train, I'm going to talk to you about how you can take that 10 hours a week and distribute it across the zones. But for now, let's just agree that we're not going to distribute that 10 hours training time across one zone, zone three and the 90% of our rides in that. So guys, that is, you're coming on this journey. It's a journey of awakening.
If you're listening to the podcast and you're a full-time bike rider…
You know, if you're listening to the podcast and you're a full-time bike rider and you can ride the bike 30 years a week, you can ride around at any damn speed you wish because eventually if you ride for that many hours, I'm sure you're going to do something right. This information, it's so important for those of us who, you know, I'm going to say live in the real world, not to disparage someone that has 30 years a week to ride their bike, but those of us who have family commitments, who have relationship commitments, who have a job, who have social activities, and we don't want to sacrifice that we still want to ride the bike. This stuff, it's essential to us. So in the comment podcast, I'm going to start talking to you about how you can take these results and how you can weave them into your life, into your training to get you just a little bit faster on the bike. Guys, before I head off, last thing I want to do, I'm building on roadman resources all the time. This is people helping people, powerful stuff. There is no charge for roadman resources. They're not products that I'm paid to sell. There are products that I love and products that I recommend. If you know somebody getting into cycling, if you've club mates, send on roadman resources that I'm saying, look, there's tours, they're battle tested, there's nutrition solutions. I remember the 2000 and actually me telling the story. That's what I deal with, it's a safe place, just don't share the story with anyone. 2000 and I think it was 15 national championships here in Ireland and it was in OMA and I was in I wasn't at the front of the race but I was in a decent group we were probably going for it should we ever go for maybe top 15 top 20 and I was using high-fives nutrition products that day and whatever was going on I had the worst stomach cramps and the last 30 40 kilometers all I could think about was getting to the bathroom like proper emergency needed to get to the bathroom and I'd use the toilet and cafe just before the start of the race and I knew it was about 200 meters past the finish line on the right hand side so the sprint opened up for you know top 15 which is a good result in nationals I had to just completely disregard the sprint I just sprint like I did sprint but I had to keep sprint and pass the line to get to the toilet to just try not to shit myself. And I'm not going to tell you if I didn't shit myself, but I'm going to just leave it there and say that when I recommend nutrition products, it's because I've tried a lot of other nutrition products and I may or may not have shit myself. I'm talking too much and I'm digging myself into a hole. So a roadman, you know what, download that calculator and check out the resources page. This has been an embarrassing episode and I'm gonna talk to you tomorrow.