pedal on the downhills

BG, sounds like cho intake is suspect, see my postings and those of bikemax's on how much you should be taking during a day and during a ride. Take one of the unflavoured energy drinks to get around sweetness thing. more cho energy won't make you put onfat, it will just give you more energy for trianing, so your intensity will goup, recovery will increase, and you'll get fitter in the bargain. Shouldn't be such a tough sell?

they have snow, we have taxi's..

Sorry to hear bikemax is closing its doors in favour of online coaching. At least one of the flag-bearers of systematic training with power has made it much more accessible, in both senses. Come on gauties, how about an indoor power-training facility?

must be that helmet you wore that was making you irritable.. dunno if this is old news to y'all, but a study was done (cited on cyclingnews bout 2 mo back) which showed motorists gave helmetless cyclists and women (helmet or no) more passing room - which proves conclusively that wimmin are worse cyclists! aahh, gotta love logic..

not exactly pc, but that's The Onion for you... Avoiding eating in order to improve your appearance is part of being a woman, and it's natural for a woman to devote all of her time to achieving a figure pleasing to the male eye. While there are many ways to get hot, one of the simplest, fastest, and most effective is through self-starvation. However, anorexia, like all things, is best used in moderation. For example, you should never get so thin that you lose your tits. <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> I've seen it time and time again: A woman of "normal" weight buys a scale, tapes pictures from W magazine to her refrigerator, draws a weight chart on her bathroom mirror, and makes a commitment to subsisting on iced tea and steamed broccoli. She resists the temptation to cheat, and slowly, her will power is rewarded: The butterfly emerges from its chrysalis. The pounds melt off, and she is undeniably hot. But then, sometimes, inexplicably, something goes wrong. Rather than maintaining her new slim, sexy body through marathon training and obsessive calorie counting, a woman will continue to shed pounds, starving herself?dreadfully, heartrendingly?way past the point of hotness. Reality check, ladies: If your ass resembles your scapula, you are in the danger zone. That kind of thing is not attractive. It's like I told my ex-girlfriend Lisa: Feminine fragility is a plus, but if I actually snap your arm while having sex with you, you've gone too far. A woman should have a pleasingly light, impossibly fragile appearance, much like a piece of fine china, but if her body has begun digesting the calcium in its bones to sustain its necessary functions, there is a good chance she has starved herself beyond the point where I would even want to have sex with her at all. Fat on the upper arms, hips, or waist is a turn-off, but there should be a thin matting of fat underneath the skin to prevent a man from being able to make out your skeletal system. A lot of girls don't know this, but slightly rounded, healthy appearing limbs are sexier than rail-thin ones, provided a man can still wrap his hands around your waist. Women like the emaciated thing, but guys actually like it if a girl's upper thigh is a shade wider than her knee. It's heartbreaking to see a chick who's too anorexic. Don't get me wrong, because a little bit is a plus, but when I see a too-anorexic chick, I always imagine her spending night after night running on her treadmill, trolling the Internet for diet tips, doing stomach crunches in her cubicle, eating head after head of iceberg lettuce?all the while tragically unaware that, at her weight, she could probably be eating 1,000 calories a day. At least 700. Ironically, all her work has left her so crazy skinny, she's as desirable as that fat cow Kate Winslet. Ladies, if you are suffering from too much anorexia, I urge you, in the name of all that is alluring, increase your calorie consumption by about 10 percent. Treat yourself to a bite of your boyfriend's sandwich. Drink a glass of skim milk. See what happens. You might see your ribs filling out a little, and that might frighten you, but please remember: We men like a woman who's obsessively fit and trim, but no one wants to bang a concentration-camp prisoner. Harness the power of your misery and poor body image. You've got a good thing going with that. But just don't go too far.<?:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" />

You're better off skipping breakfast and riding fasted for a short while, like 45 -60 min, but the effect is small, and not worth the deprivation in my opinion - just ride an extra 30 min The timing of eating is important - insulin levels are highest 30-60 min after eating a cho-rich meal. Raised insulin inhibits fat oxidation, so reduce this effect by eating soon after the start of exercise. A study I did showed very slight differences in fat oxidation when riders ate from the start of exercise or from 90 min into exercise, but studies that had the riders eating before exercise showed supression of fat oxidation.

explains a lot.. i'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

if 60 % is the upper limit of what you can do for long rides, that fine - there's always going to be a tradeoff between intensity and distance - but you're not going to get the greatest fatloss that way, unless you really do ride 25 h + per week. plus you wont get any faster, so 60 % is a bust - unless your fitness, like mine, means that more than that means knit one skip one.

Stickers aren;t going to do it, a hearts and minds operation will. Give time and money to PPA or CSA or drive alive to put adverts in print or on tv, aimed at cyclists as well as motorists - so many cyclists ride like absolute cretins and wonder why they get knocked down or abuse. Start a cyclist education program, approach your local municipality and ask them to put lega signs up warning of cyclists, or ask ppa to do it, they have better access to govt. Something more productive than stickers would be to thank motorists that cut us some sluck - once theyve recovred from the shock of a thank you wave they might even be inspired be nice to other cyclists.

ok the short answer is, go for as many hours as you have/can bear/will be domestically allowed without removal of conjugal or credit card rights. See my previous postings on fat oxidation, but for highest rate of fat oxidation, ride at steady 70-75, even 80 % mhr. Do that 20-25 h/week nd see what happens.. Do consecutive days so that you ride in muscle glycogen depleted state and burn more fat, but still take 50 g carbs per hour form the start of exercise. If you skip brekkers and ride an hour without any carbs you'll burn a few grams more fat, whoopee, rather have brekkers and be a friendlier person. Mix it up so you dont die of boredom, so throw in a hilly ride and a fast tempo ride (80-85 % mhr) per week as well.

depends, as all good scientists say. from what i remember about the col d'aspin, specifically, spinning out my 53-9 on the descent, i think 15 km/h at 217 watts is very generous, unless you weigh 45 kg, so something isn;t right with that power. OOps, sorry, justsaw the alt gain now..You can get a good check of what it should be, cos you can work out the approx power from total weight, slope and speed, assuming no wind. 217 w in an absolute sense is pretty low for climbing, but it would be good if it was say 85 % of you maximal power. what's your 20 km power on the tacx? What weight of you+bike have you entered on the system?

Lefty, your bad manners are matched only by your ignorance. Come back when you have learnt the difference between fact and opinion, as i don't have the inclination to spell it out for you. Given how long people have doing core strength trianing, funny how there are no studies showing it increases cycling power output. The point is being horribly confused here. No-one from the orthodox scientific community (or just the common sense one) disputes that core training is good idea, and it will help back pain, comfot, whole body fatigue and so on. But to state as fact that it increases cycling power is either just unsupported by any evidence - not anyone's opinion - so your believibg it or saying it doesn;t make it so. This really is getting futile. Next we'll be hearing those idiotic nose strips improve performance..

in cycling most of your power is produced indirectly by the core?? There is a serious logic problem with that statement right there.. To correctly phrase, most power is is produced directly by the quads. A stronger core will not reduce fatigue in the primary muscles per se! While it might have some appeal as an idea, where's the evidence to support this shaky premise? You'll have to show some evidence that supports this line of a stronger core will somehow change the recruitment of the primary muscles and so result in their fatiguing less.

Well, i'll add my vote to the "opinion reserved" column. I see ibike has coyly revised their statement about accuracy from +/- 5 % (i.e. 10 % range, exactly the same as polar, i.e. uselss for high-end and accurate training) to "comparable with other powermeters... blah blah "Comparable" is not a unit of accuracy! A steel bike bike is comparable to a titanium one after all.. Maybe the upgraded version is better? wait for some test results.

windbreaker: I cramp when I am pushing the limits BUT I have also cramped during warm-ups without any recurrences during the race or training session - figure that one out. I mostly cramp AFTER a steady state effort. For example I cramp regularly after the Smits climb down the back stretch (high speed, high cadence). hmm thats a new one.. sounds like your golgi tendon organ - the spring referred to earlier that sets the tone of the muscle - is the problem. This is one of the theories of the natural or unstressed cramper. The change of mode fromm pushing up a hill to spinning down the other side supports this idea.