HEAT TRAINING: Get Your Buns in the Oven

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."  Although quite a famous quote (*bonus points if you knew Mark Twain did NOT say this), I think we live in the ONLY part of the country that is actually cold enough to cause us to bump up our thermostats in the  "summer" months.  While the other 49 states are experiencing one of the hottest weather patterns in history, our coastal fog keeps our climate at a balmy 55-65* nearly all year.  

With that said, we spent the weekend in Chico, CA.  The climate could have only been compared to walking directly on the surface of the sun - or riding mid-pack at a Velo Promo race in August.  We melted, and personally, as a girl who grew up riding bikes in the belly of steamy Midwestern summers, I couldn't help but wonder when I had become such a pansy.

It turns out that a handful of Human Physiology researchers at the University of Oregon had a study recently published about this very topic.  They found out that significant physiological gains could be achieved in trained cyclists (weekend warriors beware) by doing 90-minute easy rides in high heat for 10 days prior to competition.  Yes – 90 minutes, in 112 degrees, for 10-days straight will apparently make you crazy fast (possibly also just crazy).

Here’s what they did: Super-smart researchers measured a power-monitored TT performance (Cat. 1 and 2 cyclists) over a 60-minute full gas effort - both at a 55 degree controlled temp, as well as a 100 degree controlled temp.  Then they sent the athletes out into the heat to literally spin their legs in Zone 1 for 10 days in extreme temperatures (>100 degrees), and then replayed the initial assessment.  The surprising results?? Not only did these heat warriors have an 8% performance improvement at the high temperature, but they also had a 6% improvement when they returned to the lower temperature.

By this point I know my teammates – who seem to love epically hot and difficult races – are wondering what’s next.   Well…the researchers concluded that one would still need to train "fast" in normal or cooler conditions, but that a fitness boost could be achieved by training easy at higher temps.  Much like altitude training, one needs normal amounts of oxygen to see performance gains, just as they need normal temperatures to keep body temps under control at high exertion levels.  But, they found that if an athlete can "train cool and taper hot," they will get the boost that they are looking for - increased blood flow through the skin and expanded blood volume allowing the heart to pump more blood. 

This study referenced in today's blog was published in the October issue of The Journal of Applied Physiology (2011).

  

Muffin Tops and Cookie Bellies.

It's not an easy read. In fact, it made us take a hard look at our favorite mid-morning snack...  <insert any delicious baked good from Cibo here>, despite spending plenty of hours on the bike per week.

Author Gary Taubes' concept, however, is very basic: 

Simple carbohydrates are driving America's obesity epidemic. 

Eating and drinking refined carbohydrates increases insulin production, which is a hormone that encourages energy storage (yes... by "storage," we actually mean fat).   Unfortunately, that makes little of the food's energy available to the body to power it through what's next in its day.  Your body recognizes that it's running low, and hits the "I'm hungry" trigger once again - restarting the cycle and perpetuating "storage" in the average sedentary American.  

If you're thinking about cleaning up your diet this summer or jumping on yet another juice cleanse, we recommended starting here first. Thank you, Gary Taubes for an eye-opening read. He sums it up below in a very cool flow chart....

WINE LEGS: Not an urban legend....

Inspiration for this post was drawn from the fact that Rosenblum Winery just pinged a "case special" into our inbox, and we had 12 bottles of zinfandel split out amongst our office for purchase faster than you could hope to make it to the bottom of this blog entry.  As a Bay Area company, we are very lucky to be located just 60 short miles south of some of the best grapes in the country.

With this in mind, one of our teammates in the peloton (and professor at UCSC) recently forwarded us an article worth sharing from the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport - a subtle reminder that for days when we've had a TOUGH workout (on the bike or in the weight room), it might just be better to literally "keep a cork in it."

The article concluded that not only does alcohol magnify "the severity of skeletal muscle injury - delaying the recovery of strength in the following 24h period," but that it can STILL impact muscle performance up to two days later.
 

WINE LEGS: They are no urban legend, folks - making pedal strokes all over the country as flat as a pancake. They DO exist.
 

Although we hate to say it, we might start saving the smaller celebrations (It's Tuesday!) for our day off the bike.

Bikes, Drugs, and Rock & Roll - for LIFE

Lance is banned again (guilty or not) - now pulling the sport of triathlon into the doping limelight. We understand both the power of competition and the pressure to perform, but it seems that when the concepts of winning and money join forces, really talented athletes make some really BAD choices. We just can't help but wonder what the "right" answer is for athletes busted for doping.

An interesting piece on NPR recently caught our ear:
Should athletes who dope face a lifetime ban?

A physiologist out of the University of Oslo, Kristian Gundersen, shared that their studies solidified that muscles actually DO have a memory of their former strength - and while perhaps not permanent, certainly it is "very long lasting."

NPR went on to discuss steroids and doping "methods" of all shapes and sizes, which facilitate the adaptation of significantly more muscle nuclei - with growth hormones expediting their production.

Gundersen then concluded: "And then, I guess, it's reasonable to suggest that exclusion time after [a] doping offense should be forever."

Some things should be "for life" - we personally fancy bikes as one of them.  As for a doping offense?  Please, get out of our peloton.  

Booty Power - GET SOME.

Like you, the KitOrder office is obsessed with getting faster, squeezing out more watts per pedal stroke, and finding super-foods/equipment to catapult us from tech nerds and Cat. 1/Cat. 2 racers to olympic athletes as quickly as possible.

The truth is that we know what we do REALLY well (tech), and we know that we have plenty to work on (the cycling part), but we ran across this awesome "anatomy of the pedal stroke" diagram recently, and it reminded us why it always comes down to the buns.

Forget the calves, and leave your hip flexors at home.  The booty is a powerful thing.....  We're going to work on ours this summer.

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