Cadence

This post was prompted by surfing over to Tri-Daddy's house and discovering there are some misconceptions about cadence. I'll cover bike and run cadence as best I can.

Always remember, I am not USAT-certified, nor am I an exercise physiologist, but I have sucked up a lot of information, and if called upon, can verify most anything I state as "fact."

Bike Cadence
A "good" bike cadence is generally accepted as 85-95RPM. Does this mean that no matter what gear you are in or what sort of terrain that that is what you should be at? No. Does it mean that if you are comfortable at a higher cadence that you are doing something wrong? No. How about the reverse? No again (unless you're a triathlete; see the Run section--if you're a pure cyclist, lower than 85 can be effective--think Jan Ullrich).

Just as you will encounter different terrain on your average ride, so will you apply different cadence numbers to match that terrain. Try climbing a 20% grade at 95RPM! Well, it CAN be done provided you have the right gearing, but that's something else. Your average, comfortable cadence should be what you naturally fall into when you are doing a relatively flat time trial ride. If you can use your gears to stay around that same cadence when climbing or descending, even better. What does this mean? When you are preparing to do a non-flat race course, you should change your cassette to match your strength and the course.

People who ride a lot in Florida (which is even FLATTER than Illinois, I've heard) usually run an 11-23 or even 11-21 cassette (standard front double chainrings for a tri bike are 53-39--if you don't know what these numbers are, head on over to Sheldon Brown's wonderful website and read all about gears and even what he has to say about cadence). Here in Illinois we call that configuration suitable for riding "tollway overpasses," meaning that for the duration of the ride, the steepest "hill" you will encounter is a road passing over one of the many tollways. I run an 11-23 cassette on my tri bike for most of the riding I do within about a 50-mile radius of home.

People who ride a lot in actual hills may run a 12-25 or a 12-27 cassette to enable themselves to stay relatively close to their "best" cadence even while climbing. When I go up to train on the Ironman Wisconsin course, or when I take a trip to ride on actual mountains, I put that 12-27 cassette on. One rule I do have, though, is that if I am going to run my disk wheel (my beautiful, sexy Hed 3D), that it has to be a course I can ride with the 11-23. Although that may change this March at Ralph's--stay tuned!

Certainly if you are going to do Ironman racing for several years, you will want to have access to more than 1 cassette if you plan on racing other than the notoriously flat Ironman Florida course (which I will probably ride on my disk with the 11-23 or maybe the 12-25). There is no shame in having some bigger gears that enable you to keep a good cadence going (which will help moderate your heart rate as well) over all the terrain, and especially if you do a multiple-loop course like Wisconsin, while you may not use all those gears for the first loop, you will be glad you have them on the second. Changing cassettes is really easy, too--even Crackhead can do it herself!

All that being said, you will develop comfort zones of different cadences that you use under different conditions. For example, into a headwind, you may be more comfortable staying in your pre-wind gear but just reducing your cadence (of necessity). Or you may shift down in order to maintain the same cadence. You will find what works for you. You will probably warm up at a higher cadence and easier gear, and then when you are warmed up, shift into a higher gear and perhaps reduce your cadence a bit. Side note: the same is true of watts--you develop a "menu" of wattage ranges that you use under different conditions and at different points during an Ironman ride.

Where you need to be careful is when climbing hills. My coach has written something on how to climb hills; if I can find it I'll put it here or provide a link. At any rate, watch what happens when you stand up when climbing. Your cadence drops, and odds are your heart rate increases. If you are very light (under 2.3 lbs. per inch of height), you won't pay as much of a heart rate penalty when standing; nevertheless, you should limit the amount of time as much as possible.

Here is where I should insert a diatribe on the benefits of using a Power Meter on the bike, but I think I've done that enough in prior posts. Whether or not you have a Power Meter, during an Ironman ride what you want to do is keep your total effort expended on the bike to a minimum (using superior fitness, however) to enable you to run well. One of the places people typically throw away effort is when climbing. At the base of the climb, they exert too much effort, which spikes your heart rate so much that you can't recover until you've crested the hill and then some. If you can control the spiking, you will have power to spare as you reach the crest, and then you can zoom on by the sorry bastards who blew their wad at the beginning of the climb.

Why is 85-95 such a magic number in triathlon? Because 90-95RPM is also accepted as a good run cadence. If you ride at 90-95RPM's most of the time and you run around the same cadence, it makes running off the bike a piece of cake! Really. It is just not that big of a deal. If you only average 70-85RPM on the bike and try and run, it's going to be a tough transition.

How do you work on getting your bike cadence in the range? Practice. You can do what are called "spinups." You've seen these in my bike workouts. Basically, you shift into a gear that allows you to pedal really fast, hold it for about 30", and then go back to a "regular" cadence for 30". Repeat as many times as necessary. If you've never done them, it's good to do a ladder of 105, 110, 115, 120, 125 RPM's, respectively, so you get a feel for what the different cadences feel like. This should be part of your bike warmup. You can do this riding outdoors, too. It gets your legs used to pedaling fast. If you don't have a cadence readout on your bike computer, be nice to yourself and get one. Or count your pedal strokes. I find it easier to "hit the number" if I can see it rising on the bike computer. By the way, all Power Meter devices have a cadence readout :)

Run Cadence
90-95RPM is generally accepted as a good run cadence. The faster your speed, the higher your cadence will go; but when you are warming up or running easy to steady ("steady" is about equivalent to your Ironman pace, if you are well trained and very fit), it should be 90-95. Again, some of you physiologically will fall into something higher or lower than this; that's fine as long as it accomplishes your running goals. But, if you are having trouble getting faster or running more economically (and Ironman running is certainly about economy if nothing else), then working on your cadence can really provide benefits.

The first thing you do is measure where you are now. You might be fine. What you do is count your left- or right-foot (whichever is your favorite foot) for 30" and double the count. If you're way below 90, odds are you can benefit from cadence work. If you're right at 90, you may still want to do form work weekly that helps you maintain your cadence. If you're over 100, you may actually be too high, but I wouldn't worry so much.

Let's say you are on the low end. How do you work your way up? Practice! When you first do it, your heart rate will elevate. This is normal. You are making your body do something it is not used to. It doesn't feel "right." You may be making yourself run faster than you are accustomed to. So elevated heart rate is normal. But trust me, after a few weeks, your heart rate will come right down to where it would be if you were running the same speed "before" you began cadence work.

You shouldn't work on your cadence for an entire run. A good way to start teaching yourself is after you've warmed up for 10', start out with 5' of strides work. Strides are about running with good form and good cadence. For now, we'll just focus on cadence. Run for 30", counting foot strikes, then walk for 30". Repeat 5 times. When you are running, think "quick feet." You should naturally shorten your stride somewhat in order to achieve the higher cadence. It will feel strange, but trust me, you'll get used to it. For each of the 5 repeats, focus on one other element of your run form. High knees, elbow drive, foot strike under body, pick foot straight up using hamstrings, etc. You can both do this and also count your foot strikes. You will eventually look forward to these! After a few weeks, increase the strides time to 10' of 30" strides, 30" walking.

Once you fall into a good cadence, you can switch to 30" strides, 45" walking. You will learn to run quickly with good form, and then once you lock onto that feeling, you finish up your run.

Inserting strides into a run does 2 things: it "reminds" you of running with good form and cadence, and it keeps the intensity of the run slightly down, which is good when you're in the last 12 weeks of Ironman training. If you're running 5-6 times a week, one or two might be strides sessions to keep your volume up, while lessening the probability of injury.

Once you lock into your good cadence, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to maintain it, and then when you do a random cadence check during a run, you can see if you're maintaining form. It's especially important as you do long runs that you are able to keep up your cadence. One of the secrets of not slowing down too much during an Ironman run is to keep your cadence up. As you tire, it's normal to want to shuffle more and more. The less you shuffle, the less you slow down! Everyone slows down somewhat as the Ironman marathon progresses; those who slow down the least usually do better overall.

As your fatigue builds during an Ironman run, typically your hip flexor (iliopsoas) muscles want to give out. 112 miles of biking can do that do you. OK, so maybe your stride has to shorten up a bit, but you can still keep the same cadence. One of the techniques I used during Ironman Canada 2 years ago, and that is something I use in any 1/2 Ironman or Ironman race now is I would count my foot strikes. When I grow tired, it helped to give myself a goal of "500 strikes before I take a walking break." Or 1,000, or whatever number I thought I could count up to. Invariably, I would lose count and just keep going longer than I thought I could. But I also then knew about how many steps I would get in a mile. Whatever, it worked like a charm. Even though I slowed down somewhat, by keeping tabs on my cadence, I didn't slow as much as I might have if I had just let myself revert to slogging through.

So the deal with run cadence is to establish it, work on it once or twice a week specifically, and then periodically check it, especially towards the end of your runs, to ensure that you are maintaining it. If you find your cadence dropping 5 or more RPM's by the end of your runs, it could mean several things: you started out too fast, your training is exceeding your fitness or you are just really tired. During Ironman training you will spend plenty of time running on "tired legs," in fact you will just plain be tired. By learning to run economically, though, you will slow down less than you would had you never given a second thought to good form and cadence.

Bottles and Fluids and Powders--OH MY!!!

I train for Ironman triathlons, so I drink A LOT. I'm not talking about alcohol here--I'm talking about fluids taken to prepare me to train, to drink while training and to recover from training.
Today, Christmas Day, in the morning was "bottle patrol," as I like to call it.

I use Endurox R4 as a recovery drink, and I typically mix 8-10 bottles at a time and put it in the fridge. I am not the type of person to mix one bottle per day. I am also not the type of person to wash one bottle per day, so I will accumulate 6-8 rinsed Gatorade bottles (I mix my Endurox in those; having done 7 Ironman races and I don't know how many 1/2 Ironman races and assorted other triathlons where they give those green screw top bottles away, I have about 20 of them) . This morning I mixed up 7 bottles, as that's as many as I will need between now and Goofy. I usually only use Endurox R4 on days when my total training is 1.5 or more hours.

I also started "packing" for Goofy Challenge today, so that means making baggies or containers of powders to take with me. I put 6 scoops of Endurox R4 powder plus a spare scoop (I wash and save extra scoops for taking to races and out of town training weekends) into a deli container. I have yet to be questioned about the powders in my luggage when traveling, but I know someday somebody will think I am a drug lord carrying mass quantities of cocaine.

When I first began doing triathlon, I could see the huge amount of cash I could spend on Gatorade alone, so one of the concessions I make is to mix up 20-oz. bottles from powder. The blue bottle in the photo is hand-mixed. I use these 20-oz. bottles for my swim sessions and occasional short run sessions on the treadmill. This morning I mixed up 5 of these bottles--I refilled all the clean bottles that were used the previous week.

I am not taking any Gatorade with me to Disney, so I did not need to make a bag or container of powder to transport. But I did do this for a business trip just a week ago--I didn't want to carry the mixed stuff with me because of the weight, so I put the powder into a baggie and brought an empty bottle with me. I also put Endurox R4 powder into a green Gatorade bottle. Unfortunately, the hotel room didn't have a fridge, but I made do with a trash can filled with ice to chill my fluids.

The orange Ironman Florida bottle in the photo is filled with defizzed Ultra Violence. I keep one or two of these Ironman bottles in my fridge for those occasions where I think I'll need the boost during a workout. I WOULD just chill 24-oz. bottles, but I can't find them anymore at any local grocery stores, so I've taken to buying cases of cans of Ultra Violence and emptying them into a few of my bottles from my vast collection.

For Goofy Challenge, I'm going to wear my Fuel Belt both days, and the bottles will be filled with defizzed Ultra Violence. Not having the time to go buy and defizz the stuff when I get to Orlando, I'll be bringing it with me. Ideally, I would have bought 24-oz. bottles and then just defizzed them, but I can't find those anymore, so I had a brilliant idea last week. I had bought some "diet" Ultra Violence sometime this past summer, I don't know why, it's just not the same without the sugar. Anyway, I didn't toss it, and I thought, well I'll just empty some of those bottles and refill them with the GOOD stuff. So this morning I emptied 6 cans into 3 bottles, and the bottles get to sit out tonight and defizz, then they go into the fridge tomorrow without tops on for another day, and then finally I'll recap them and they will wait patiently to board the plane to Orlando. I am also packing a small funnel that will be used to fill the Fuel Belt bottles. I also have a collection of funnels used for filling various sized bottles.

One more fluid-related thing I am taking to Orlando is Glycoload. This is a pure-carb powder that you mix how ever much of you want and drink it prior to working out. My rule of thumb is to use it before any workout lasting at least 2.5 hours. So I will definitely want it the morning of the Disney marathon, and I'm going to do a half serving (one serving is a lovely 100 grams of pure carbs) the day of the 1/2 marathon. Again, I am not premixing this stuff, so I put 3 scoops of it into a Ziploc baggie to take with me. My preferred loading powder is Ultrafuel, but I can't find it locally again, and the Glycoload is about the same, so I'll just use it until I run out and then I'll go hunting for Ultrafuel again. I love drinking this stuff--I absolutely cannot sip it, so I mix a serving into 12-16 oz. of water, and it's DOWN THE FUCKING HATCH CHUG-STYLE. YOU go ahead and put 400 calories of pure carbs in your stomach and see what happens! First you want to gag, and then you go into an insulin coma--your body has to pump out mass quantities of insulin to get all these lovely calories circulating in your bloodstream. But, the stuff works like a charm--it's best taken 2-3 hours before you begin your workout, and in the case of 1/2 marathons, marathons, 1/2 and full Ironman races, I am always glad I had the extra calories in me. It's always easier to get the calories in BEFORE the workout, and especially when I'm just running, I don't like a lot of stuff in my stomach.

If and when I ever live with a man again, we will need to get a second fridge. Right now I have my system down--I can store 10 mixed bottles of Endurox R4, 8 bottles of mixed Gatorade, 12 cans of Ultra Violence, 6-12 bottles of "baby" Gatorade (more on that later), 12 bottles of beer, and 4-6 tall bike bottles filled with whatever in my fridge at one time together with my dinner for 2 days, bread, cheese, lunch meat, coffee and whatever else needs refrigerating quite comfortably. PLUS I have a small fridge downstairs in the bar where I chill 32-oz. bottles of Gatorade for my longer workouts.

Baby Gatorade--these are 12-oz. bottles that when I first saw them in the grocery store a couple of years ago, I thought, "Who the hell would drink only 12-oz. of Gatorade?" Huh, ME, dumbass. First they became "something with carbs to drink on the drive home from a long bike ride," then they started appearing as "a small enough bottle that I could carry in my hand for an up to 1-hour run," then they began appearing as "bottles that could be filled with Ultra Violence and stashed in transition and special needs bags at races." Funny how something I initially viewed as useless turned out to be so incredibly useful!

I am an incessant recycler, so all the plastic bottles I buy either get washed and reused (32-oz. Gatorade bottles make good ice for use in the cooler either when doing a multiple out-and-back long run or for keeping recovery fluids cold while out on a long bike ride--fill them almost to the top and stick in your freezer) or recycled. One summer I saved up all the cannisters from the Endurox R4 and Gatorade powders and I had this HUGE tower after 6 months of training. I can only imagine if I saved ALL the bottles and stacked them somewhere. I clearly should own stock in the Gatorade company!

Then there's the bottle washing. I could hire help just to wash my fucking bottles, there are so many of them when I'm training hard. This is why I have 3 aerobottles for my bike, so that I can get through 3 rides in a week before I have to wash one of those. I have 4 Polar bike bottles for the same reason. I HATE washing dishes. Even loading the dishwasher. I just hate it. But at least every time I use a bottle I do rinse it out, so it's not like I'm growing mold in my kitchen (not most of the time, anyway).

Nobody ever tells you about all the bottles you will have to deal with when you train for an Ironman. I'm just providing a public service here :) Actually, the thought of the bottles makes me laugh hysterically. It is such a defining element of being a hardcore endurance athlete, for me anyway. I love my bottles! Right now I love my bottle of beer, though. See, now here's another angle on the bottle thing. After Goofy Challenge, I am off alcohol totally except for once a week up until Ironman Brazil in May. Although something tells me I will have straying periods, such as when Shelley and I beat ourselves into a pulp and perhaps after Ralph's 1/2 Ironman. Oh well, I'm human; I'm doing the best I can.

May the bottles be with you!

Weekly Training Totals

Swim: 4,950 yards in 1.75 hours
Bike: 2.78 hours
Run: 4 hours
Strength: 2.93 hours (actually includes next week's main session)
Total Hours: 11.46 (23% decrease from last week, taper time!)
Stretching: 1.55 hours
Average Sleep: 9.21 (highest since beginning my training year in September)
Accomplishments:

• Achieved highest FT watts on bike
• Got a lot of sleep to get my body rested and recovered for Goofy Challenge
• Kept up a good amount of stretching
• Resisted the urge to overeat
• Set up an epic training weekend with Shelley
• Achieved fastest swimming T-pace

Today's Workout: I'm Both Scared and Excited!

Today I looked at what my coach posted for my workouts the week beginning 1/2/2006, the week of the Goofy Challenge. If I do everything on there, and based on how fast I think I can run the 1/2 and full marathons in Disney, I will knock out close to 10 hours of running that week!!

I have NEVER IN MY LIFE run that much in a single week, so in addition to just the weekend being a big, humongous deal, the whole entire week will be a never-been-done-before-by-Crackhead week. What the fuck did I get myself into? Yet when I looked at the workouts, I was smiling in this schizophrenic, crazed sort of way. Perfect!

My coach has me doing :40 runs M/W/Th/F that week. Why? RUN, FORREST, RUN!! The week of Ironman Canada 2004 I ran almost every day up until the race, and had my best Ironman time (and IM marathon) ever. I repeated that performance 7 weeks later at Ironman Hawaii. So the more often I run, the better for me.

YIKES!!!! Not to worry, though, each of those :40 runs has about :15 of strides in there, so they won't be high impact runs or anything, and then several race pace repeats. I am totally pumped!

I decided to do my big strength session today, since I have the day off, and then next week I will do the same thing on New Year's day, so my body has plenty of time to recover from the session before Goofy.

12:05PM Lift 2x15, weights down, 1:16. The workout felt just fine, as I had nothing else to do today. I found out I should start doing deadlifts (Romanian) again, as it seems to stretch out some truculent muscle in my right back. I did my movement prep/stretching routine just before I lifted, and I was able to get through every single exercise in The Core Performance Movement Prep routine. I must say that book rocks, and every week I see a new level of flexibility that I haven't seen in years. I know it's good, because my muscles have never felt as good as they have lately. And I also changed one of my strength exercises by doing it on the stability ball.

Life is good!

Yesterday's Workout: Counting Down

I got plenty of sleep again (I'm garbaging up on it this week--it's one thing I'm really GOOD at during taper), but dilly-dallied in starting my workout. I had to get started no later than about 10:15 so that I could make it to the Y and get on a treadmill before it closed at 1PM. I figured everybody and their brother would be vying for treadmill space since the day started out raining.

10:22AM Bike 1:30, run :30. The bike was fun--this was only my 2nd ride this week (tapering, you know), so I knew I'd have plenty of energy and power. The ride was structured as WU: 15' Easy MS: 2 x 15' (2') at Half IM watts, 20' Steady, 1 x 15' at Half IM watts CD: 10' easy. Hah! I can do Half IM watts all day--or at least for 56 miles :). I was right about my leg status and power. I easily averaged 140 watts for each HIM interval and about 125 for the Steady. These are about 5-10 watts above what I would normally do for these intensities. I knew that riding a little harder, in the big scheme of things, was going to do no harm. I did not drink my Infinit mixture--I didn't need the caffeine for such a short and easy ride, and I didn't want to risk not being able to sleep soundly, as that is one of my taper priorities.

When I got to the Y, I was right--every treadmill had a body on it. It made me slightly angry that at least 1/2 of them were occupied by walkers--there's a perfectly good indoor track that they could use. But I guess, you know, it's important to be able to WATCH TV ALL THE TIME!!! OMG there are even TV's in my grocery store now, and it pisses me off. I like being in the grocery store and looking at all the good food possibilities (and some of the bad ones, I must admit) in my own little meditative way. There is plenty of noise in this world, don't you think? Are people's lives that boring that they need constant entertainment and stimulus? Shit, exercise people, and then you will really appreciate silence. OK, sorry about that rant (I can appreciate people walking on treadmills, I guess), but I should form a committee against the proliferation of unnecessary TV sets.

I spotted someone I know walking, and she's a runner, so I figured by the amount of sweat pouring off of her that she was finished. Thankfully, I was right. We chatted a little too long for me to consider my workout a brick (I ended up with a 14' T2, but that's OK), being Christmas eve and all, and then I got to work.

Wow, did my legs feel great. 1/2 hour less biking than last Saturday, an easy day on Friday, Thursday essentially off, it was almost like I hadn't been on the bike at all. My HR was nice and low, too. I am (pardon my French here) FUCKING FIT. I didn't need to run hard, but I could have. My mental governor told me to keep it aerobic, so I did.

After I finished, I showered and headed home and ate lunch. I forgot to mix Endurox R4 before I left, so I decided to just forget about it. I'm tapering anyway; I can get by without it.

I then headed out to get a gift card for my parents at a restaurant, then I went to a sporting goods store to try and score some clothing for Disney, and finally to the grocery store (of course, complete with TV's).

I got lucky at the sporting goods store--almost everything was marked down, and I got a white long sleeve shirt for $9 that I can wear and toss if I need to, a pink one same deal, a technical hot pink Nike long sleeve shirt that will just be a good basic thing for my pink collection, and a really close fitting Nike pink and white top that I may wear for the 1/2 marathon in Disney. When I picked stuff out to try on, I took size Small and Extra Small into the dressing room. Well, folks, I am Extra Small. Funny, I don't think of myself that way. I figured the Nike stuff would run small, but the XS was just fine.

The grocery store run was for fruit, Ultra Violence and a few treats. I got some goat cheese, herring in wine sauce and a small sushi platter. The goat cheese is really not something I need right now during taper, but I can pace myself and have a little bit today and tomorrow and not be too worried about it. Oh yeah, THANK GOD THERE ARE TV'S IN THE GROCERY STORE.

When I got home, I immediately dove into the sushi. I could feel myself becoming hypoclycemic after only having a tuna fish sandwich after my workout (and it was my homemade tuna salad, which I hadn't made I think for like 5 years--it's the BEST), but it was getting near dinner and I needed to eat a full meal, but I threw caution to the wind and had 4 pieces of sushi.

I have to mention that on Friday night I was going to cook these meatballs, but ended up not making them because I made the tuna salad late in the day and ate lunch really late and then I didn't feel like cooking. But, the ground sirloin was defrosted, and I LOVE GOOD RAW BEEF, and I could have eaten a 1/2 pound of it, but had nearly a small hamburger raw and then ended up just sauteing some for a snack later, eaten with lots of ketchup and salt. Mmmmmmm......

Yesterday I DID cook the meatballs, and they are almost a meal all by themselves--they are really strange--the sauce is whole berry cranberry sauce, sauerkraut, chili sauce and brown sugar--and the meatballs are meat, eggs, bread crumbs and Lipton Onion Soup Mix (anyone who wants the recipe just email me). I typically make these during a week of light training or tapering. Sometimes I'll eat a tortilla or two with them, but last night nothing, even though I had bought a couple of giant baking potatoes to eat with them. I really don't like potatoes that much, and I will ask for them maybe 3 times a year when going out to dinner. They just don't do much for me, except they are good place to put a LOT OF SALT! I do like salt!

I spent Christmas Eve by myself. All my friends are married or live out of town, and my family has always been dysfunctional this time of year, which sort of sucks, but I'm used to it now. I did feel a little lonely, but was still thankful for everything that I have, particularly my health.