Stuff about cycling ...
I started doing resistance training ‘seriously’ when I got to High School. Those of us who participated on the school sports teams were required to take a class called ‘conditioning and fitness’ for P.E.
Conditioning and fitness class met in the school weight room.
Yes, I’m talking about Strava again. Yes, I use Strava, or at least I try to, I’ve not had much cooperation from my GPS device as of late, but that’s a different story. I use Strava, and I think it’s cool, and I like that it gives me all manner of climb data that I can look at, and track over time to see how much slower I’ve gotten.
I have read numerous articles written by the author, Lyle McDonald, on his website BodyRecomposition.com, and always found them to be well researched and written in a clear, understandable fashion. Though McDonald has never shied away from slogging through the biochemistry where it was warranted, I’ve never found it to come at the cost of clearly conveying the ideas presented.
This book is no exception.
Back in 2004 I had purchased a polar heart rate monitor, a model 725 something or another, which probably served as my gateway drug to becoming a journaling junkie. That Polar HRM was in service until 2011 when the infrared download thing-a-ma-jiggy quit working and I could no longer download the data from the HRM. The whole time I used the Polar, I never had to do anything other than replace the batteries, and I don’t recall that I had to do that very often, though I do remember polar being persnickety about how that was supposed to be done.
The whole training thing is based on applying a training stimulus and then recovering from it, whereby your fitness is improved and you are able to withstand a greater training stimulus.
If the stimulus isn’t large enough, you won’t improve. If the stimulus is too great, such that you can’t recover from it, you won’t improve. There is this fiddly bit where the stimulus and recovery have to be balanced so that you make progress over time.
With the recent announcement of bike companies becoming wind tunnel enhanced the cycling world is all a twitter. It all seems very exciting, and has definitely gotten quite a bit of attention.
Coming from a physics background, and a theoretical one at that, I am legally allowed to minimize problems down to something mathematically workable, whether or not that mathematical model has any basis in reality what so ever.
At one time in my life I worked as a mechanic at a car dealership. When I first started working there the used car manager would run all the used cars that were being considered for stock on the lot through the shop, where a mechanic would go over the car and present a list of items that needed attention. Once presented with the list, the used car manager would determine what would be done, and whether to sell the car on the lot or send it to auction.
Yes, yes this is another training book. What can I say, they keep printing them, and I keep reading them.
This particular training book claims to be “a user’s guide to the most cutting edge knowledge in cycling science… written by world renowned sports scientists working at the forefront of cycling research”, it says so right on the back cover. Backing that claim up is the fact that the book is edited by Dr. James Hopker PhD., and Dr. Simon Jobson PhD.
First, an admission, this investigation started out as something completely different, and never does come around to the original question. You see, my last order from Ucan, all in, including shipping came out to $4 US per package of their chocolate recovery drink mix.
If I did the maths correctly, that’s more than 12 cents per gram of their oh so special, scientifically engineered, carbohydrate type stuff…
Sometimes life seems to conspire against you, what with Sod’s Law and all, but hey, as Nietzche says ‘what does not kill me makes me stronger’, so perhaps these sorts of things should be looked upon as opportunity, I dunno…
