In a recent email correspondence with a friend, I mentioned that I don’t bike very much in a big volume week because it doesn’t count as full-time. This fueled the following dialogue:
If you ride constantly for an hour, why wouldn’t you log an hour?
When you go down a hill while skiing you are gliding. When in a tuck however, you are still required to use strength and balance. When on a bike, especially on a road bike, a downhill does not require as much. Biking is also non-weight bearing; your body does not have to hold itself up because you are on a seat. Both of these factors move biking further away from being applicable to cross training for XC, which is why many athletes count bike training as little as half-time.
It has been a long debate with coaches for me, since I feel as if I am in L4 every second of a mountain bike ride and most of my road rides are trying to catch the pack in front of me. I have long since given up the argument and simply count races at 75% time and rides at 50%. Some recovery spins (on a road bike), I don’t count as time at all but make sure to note the activity.
Are there other activities that you don’t count, or log only partially?
There is a debate on how to count strength in a log. Some athletes log half-time because you do an activity and then rest. Some count 70% or even full time because rest is necessary and maybe heart rate is still up... Our team brought up this question to our coach and we did a field test to figure it out.
Our coach took lactate tests throughout a strength workout, taking blood samples from all athletes during both rest and active times. 4-6mmols of blood lactate is typically L3 (threshold). This is the highest effort that your muscles can clear all lactic acid. Much higher and you start to feel “the burn” which is acid pooling in your muscles and you move into L4 (race pace).
Throughout this strength session, some of our readings got up into the 12mmols! Mine were between 6 and 8 and only lowered into the high 4s during rest periods. We determined that during that strength protocol, not only should we count the whole session (100% time), but consider it a hard workout. We would not want to schedule it just before an important race, for example.
Because of that test, I log my strength as full time, marking half in L1 and the other half as L3 (even though my lactates read into L4 at times).
As far as other activities counted as partial time, I always stop my watch when I stop to refuel or talk to a coach. The hike up Hyndman mentioned in a previous article was logged as 5 hours. That does not include lunch at the summit or swimming in the river.
Spenst usually takes about 45 minutes but I count it as 30. We do it as a group and sometimes I am waiting for my turn to jump hurdles and the like. I don’t get too carried away with starting and stopping my watch, I just estimate the on-time.
How would you count this?I have not figured out how to count something like hot yoga or tele skiing. These are activities that are definitely not XC ski specific, but I do them so rarely that they really make me sore! Hot yoga might not be cardio, I will admit to that, but if it makes me unable to walk the next morning it has got to be some sort of strength. So far, I note that I did an activity like yoga but have not counted it in my overall total time.
Does this count?Anyone out there have any insight? I realize that this article might be a bit controversial (especially saying that biking shouldn’t be counted 100%) so feel free to comment and get a discussion going. I think the most important thing when keeping a log of hours and activities is to keep it the same year to year. You will be comparing yourself to yourself more than to others in the end anyway.
Game on!
20 comments:
Kate, very interesting point about the role of cycling in xc training. Your point about it being non-weight-bearing is valid and quite convincing. However, I wonder what a guy like Billy Demong would have to say about riding as training - dude races himself into shape on the bike all summer, rarely (as far as I know) clicking into the rollerskis. To his credit, Billy's been training at a world-class level ever since he was in his mid-teens, so he can get away with some non-traditional training. Different strokes for different folks, perhaps?
test
Test worked. Billy is a Nordic Combined skier. It is true that he's very good at Nordic Combined, and also at cross country ski racing alone. But is he skiing at a world class level as a cross country athlete? No, and it's not close. So I don't think the argument that it works for Billy holds water.
I have an old , early 90s Bianchi Volpe pseudo-quasi-toy cross/hybrid/touring bike. There are very few hills around here (Coastal Maine) that are long enough to keep me from pedaling harder. I'm usually as tired after a downhill as a moderate uphill. Maybe I just have low-power legs. Regardless, I definitely count this time! If you're bike is too fast on the downhills, switch to a mountain bike (or swap out for a larger chain ring) and work harder!
On counting time: why not weight your actual time by HR, then you don't need guestimates. And you could talk for 5 minutes and not have to stop your watch. The weighting could be average HR over the entire session, or you could do a moving window over 1 minute (or 10 sec or 5 minute) intervals. You could standardize by say you L3 HR, so that your weighted time would be on the order of your actual time. Way too much work for me (although the number crunching would be fun) but then I'm not training for anything more than back-of-the pack.
Interesting, I usually count full time on a bike simply because most riding in Wyoming is Either uphill or into the wind, my HR very rarely drops out of zone 1, or even to the lower edge on downhills. If I go on a long ride with a large sustained climb and then come back down (i.e. 20-30 minutes downhill) I won't count that down time. But if I say coast down a hill that takes less than a couple minutes, I count it.
For weight training, I actually don't count it at all. Does the amount of weight training you do change from year to year? I've watched mine for a while, and it stays pretty steady. I just let it be and worry about counting and changing the rest of it. In my opinion, the only reason to keep track of weight training time is to add up your "total" training time, which is really only good for comparing against other athletes, which just leads to "pissing contests," i.e. "I trained more than you did, I'm tougher!" I see that as being rather counterproductive, I mean, that's why we race, right?
My time doing general strength definitely fluctuates throughout the year, Howdy. I get into a really solid 2-3x/week rotation in the summer and fall, but it never stays at that level throughout the race season. I do still get into gyms while on the road but it is not for as long or hard. I try to stay sharp without tuckering myself out for the races.
Good idea, Prof. I think my HR monitor even counts time spent in each zone. I could just toss anything below a certain rate. I will try to figure it out for tomorrow's run, thanks for the idea!
This sounds like a philosophy I once heard from Ed Hamel, and I didn't agree then-and still don't. Everyone can log time in their own way, but logging biking as half time seems excessive. There's no way you spend half the time on a ride going downhill(unless you climb amazingly fast or descent incredibly slow) Going down a hill is going to take a lot less time than it took to go up...If you want to be exact...take out a stopwatch on a ride and add up all the time you spend "coasting". It won't be half of the ride time.
If you were a bike racer would you increase the time on skis by 100%? Probably not. I think you hit it on the head when you said that the log is for you. When you log by sport and HR level (or other intensity measure) you have the data you need to compare one year to another or to compare to someone else if you are so inclined. If you are spending too much time sitting on your road bike and coasting downhill or standing around listening to the coach yammer, the data will show too much sub L1 time. The data will tell the story. You might learn more by logging everything. The data might show too much time is being spent in "easy" mode. Time that might be used for something else.
If you want to make the downhill more ski-like, lift your tail off the saddle and tuck. If it's not that steep, gear down and go.
I love the idea of 'tucking' on the downhills. Definitely going to give that one a shot, thanks!
Kate, you should have probably heard of Carl Swenson...he was world class at both MTB and XCski (though a better skier for sure).
The answer to the downhill questions is simple...you pedal. Pedal fast. Pedal hard. Coasting is for sharp corners and for adjusting your chamois. That's it.
None of these comments address Kate's other point that even if you are working in L1, cycling is not weight-bearing and thus not as applicable to Nordic skiing. Yes, you are still stressing your cardiovascular and aerobic systems, but the benefit to the load-bearing muscles (and joints/tendons) is not the same. That adds up to cycling being less applicable and less worthwhile for an athlete looking to develop these systems. For a dude like Swens or Billy D, those systems are pretty solid already and largely require fine tuning over the summer, not basic development.
I would agree with Middle Prof on this one. For example this weekend I went with a ride with three of my friends around upstate NY. We all ski race and add cycling to the mix over the spring and summer. we went for 2:45 total and I had an avg HR of 146 peak of 192. I had 15:10 in zone 1 with an avg of 115, 47:22 in z2 avg 134, 1hr12min z3 avg152, 27:38z4 avg 171, and 1:22 in z5 186. I would not call it a hard ride by any means but we were taking turn leading the way up some big climbs. Personally I don't break it down in to levels when I enter it in to my log. I think sometimes people get a little to caught up over the numbers exspecialy this time of the year. I think you need to look more closely at your training come oct,nov, but during the spring and early summer their just really hours!
Good subject that those of who train think about. Becky Scott reported that she didn't log hours or know how many hours a year she trained, but had a plan and followed it (presumably recording notes for each workout). I took her point to be that worrying about counts and arithmetic adjustments is beside the point.
The problem can be seen by your coach's strength workout lactate test. Interesting tidbit, but what does it matter? The workout is as you've chosen it to be, i.e., does it fulfill your plan and needs. Depending on your goals and style, you can make a strength workout more or less aerobic or even anaerobic.
One can adjust figures to their mind's content (self contradictory?), and there are readily available charts by activity to help (e.g., http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist.htm, http://www.drmirkin.com/public/Ezine022904.html). But then again, what's the point? If you don't know that road cycling is not a replacement for using all fours, then adjustments won't help, and may even hurt if overtraining is the result. That said, climbing hills on a bike is weight bearing and uses many of the same muscles as skating. And to the degree that it's not strongly weight bearing, it provides an excellent aerobic variant for the mix.
Are you a member of AXCS? The lead article in the latest XC World Digest by Havard Skorstad notes that six hour over-distance workouts at a lower HR than what training experts call basic endurance intensity may not give the same effect as the latter, but definitely will make you fitter.
For many people, myself included, keeping a log serves first as a motivator, second as a record for comparing races and similar workouts, and finally for looking at distributions of workout types/hours over time.
This is an interesting question. I wonder too, how Lance Armstrong logs his running miles, or Haile Gebrselassie logs his swim laps, or Michael Phelps logs his cycling?
I think the most relevant thing Kate said is that whatever you choose should be consistent for YOU. In my log in addition to time in each zone, purpose, all that, I keep track of what type of activity I was doing so I can go back and look at, say, the number of bike hours I've done each year and look at trends and what not.
But the point about it being for YOU - my 600 hours is probably not the same as somebody else's 600 hours, and that's perfectly fine. As long as MY recording method is consistent from year to year, I can track (and plan) my personal training development. Obviously filling my log with "junk" hours (like spending 12+ hours a week on a bike doing easy spins) is going to have a dramatic impact on my "hours" if I cut it all out suddenly, but I think that most athletes can be pretty honest with themselves about what it is they are doing, and as long as they are consistent, their log will reflect trends and patterns so they can see what went right and where they can improve.
After all, that's the point of a log isn't it?
I was also thinking about what training should be counted as hours after I saw a coach's description of the Z1 workout he recommended: hiking, cycling, walking, or shopping. SHOPPING? Ridiculous. Should I long every minute I'm on my feet, or do I have to carrying a heavy shopping bag? So this is the secret behind having impressively high hours.
In regards to cycling not being weight bearing I have to disagree. It is certainly low impact but when you push into those pedals there is a opposite reaction that would seem to be weight bearing too me.
In terms of keeping hours. I don't think it really matters as long as it is consistent which seems to be the general consensus here. That way you can look back at the year and consider what you would like to change for next year. However I prefer to decide on my goals for the season, and discuss it with a coach and my training program will be designed around that. As long as I am able to complete the training as instructed I will expect to attain the goals I set, if not I would expect some input from the coaches as to why? I will not be any stronger in the race season if I count my cycling or weight training as 50% or 100% the work has been done and I know what it was.
Quantifying training mainly by hours is crude at best. Using a time percentage factor for different sports would seem to only make things worse. Besides time, using both intensity and pace variation for a workout is key. The advent of powermeters for bikes has created a whole new dimension for quantifying cycling training, though of course measuring power for snow/roller skiing isn't possible. Nonetheless, I think the info developed around power-based cycling training has wider applications. Trainingpeaks.com is the hot bikie software (I have no affiliation/interest with them). Holy smokes, there are far better tools than guessestimating time.
As a physiologist and coach, my major issue with cycling as training is that it takes more time to get the same aerobic benefit. Compare your level of exhaustion after a 2 hour run to a 2 hour ride. For instance, the training stimulus of a 1 hour Zone 1 bike ride is approximately 90% of the training stress of a 1 hour Zone 1 run, which is approximately 95% of the aerobic stress of a 1 hour Zone 1 XC Ski. So if every week you do your 2+ hour Zone 1 OD workout on a bike, you won't see as great an improvement as if you were to do your long workouts running or rollerskiing. In incorporating road biking into your training you must account for this.
It is also interesting, Alan that you mention the ability to log how many seconds you spend in each training zone while biking with a PowerTap. In a research study I conducted looking at elite master's cyclist's training distribution over a 7 week period, the athletes spent 7-17% of their total training time at 0 watts. They were coasting for 7-17% of their total riding tim!. Combine this with the lower training stress of biking, and you've got to add some time to your bike riding to compensate, or count it as less in your training log.
However, as has been pointed out, logging hours is purely for tracking your own progress (and for pissing contests). So is this a moot point? I know from athletes I coach, that their winter ski results improved when they cut the percentage of their total training time spent on the bike from 25% to 10%.
At the US Pro cycling championship in Philly, a pro rider I know recorded 1 hr 20 mins of coasting for the 6 hr race. He also spent almost 60 mins over his threshold power (FTP). This is a good example that cycling efforts (especially racing) are highly variable, much more than other sports. If we don't count the coasting for total time, then shouldn't we count the minutes spent over threshold as "extra" time? Using power-based analysis answers this with metrics like TSS, IF, etc.
My point being that attempting to normalize hours between different sports is not very useful -- and likewise that using hours as an absolute benchmark is flawed.
Alan Cote
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