Fitness questions and answers for August 2, 2004

Form & Fitness Q & A

Got a question about fitness, training, recovery from injury or a related subject? Drop us a line at fitness@cyclingnews.com. Please include as much information about yourself as possible, including your age, sex, and type of racing or riding.

Carrie Cheadle, MA (www.carriecheadle.com) is a Sports Psychology consultant who has dedicated her career to helping athletes of all ages and abilities perform to their potential. Carrie specialises in working with cyclists, in disciplines ranging from track racing to mountain biking. She holds a bachelors degree in Psychology from Sonoma State University as well as a masters degree in Sport Psychology from John F. Kennedy University.

Kelby Bethards, MD received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University (1994) before obtaining an M.D. from the University of Iowa College of Medicine in 2000. Has been a racing cyclist 'on and off' for 20 years, and when time allows, he races Cat 3 and 35+. He is a team physician for two local Ft Collins, CO, teams, and currently works Family Practice in multiple settings: rural, urgent care, inpatient and the like.

Fiona Lockhart (www.trainright.com) is a USA Cycling Expert Coach, and holds certifications from USA Weightlifting (Sports Performance Coach), the National Strength and Conditioning Association (Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach), and the National Academy for Sports Nutrition (Primary Sports Nutritionist). She is the Sports Science Editor for Carmichael Training Systems, and has been working in the strength and conditioning and endurance sports fields for over 10 years; she's also a competitive mountain biker.

David Fleckenstein, MPT (www.physiopt.com) is a physical therapist practicing in Boise, ID. His clients have included World and U.S. champions, Olympic athletes and numerous professional athletes. He received his B.S. in Biology/Genetics from Penn State and his Master's degree in Physical Therapy from Emory University. He specializes in manual medicine treatment and specific retraining of spine and joint stabilization musculature. He is a former Cat I road racer and Expert mountain biker.

Since 1986 Steve Hogg (www.cyclefitcentre.com) has owned and operated Pedal Pushers, a cycle shop specialising in rider positioning and custom bicycles. In that time he has positioned riders from all cycling disciplines and of all levels of ability with every concievable cycling problem.They include World and National champions at one end of the performance spectrum to amputees and people with disabilities at the other end.

Pamela Hinton has a bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology and a doctoral degree in Nutritional Sciences, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She did postdoctoral training at Cornell University and is now an assistant professor of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia where she studies the effects of iron deficiency on adaptations to endurance training and the consequences of exercise-associated changes in menstrual function on bone health.

Steve Owens (www.coloradopremiertraining.com) is a USA Cycling certified coach, exercise physiologist and owner of Colorado Premier Training. Steve has worked with both the United States Olympic Committee and Guatemalan Olympic Committee as an Exercise Physiologist. He holds a B.S. in Exercise & Sports Science and currently works with multiple national champions, professionals and World Cup level cyclists.

Richard Stern (www.cyclecoach.com) is Head Coach of Richard Stern Training, a Level 3 Coach with the Association of British Cycling Coaches, a Sports Scientist, and a writer. He has been professionally coaching cyclists and triathletes since 1998 at all levels from professional to recreational. He is a leading expert in coaching with power output and all power meters. Richard has been a competitive cyclist for 20 years

Andy Bloomer (www.cyclecoach.com) is an Associate Coach and sport scientist with Richard Stern Training. He is a member of the Association of British Cycling Coaches (ABCC) and a member of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES). In his role as Exercise Physiologist at Staffordshire University Sports Performance Centre, he has conducted physiological testing and offered training and coaching advice to athletes from all sports for the past 4 years. Andy has been a competitive cyclist for many years.

I'm a 24 year old bike racer, 5'9" and 130 lbs, who started racing this summer. I've been riding seriously (150-220 miles a week) for the last year and a half now, and I've noticed my resting heart rate, which is in the high 50's, is still higher than a lot of bike riders who take their training less serious than I do. My question is, can a resting heart rate be a determining factor of HR training zones as well as max HR? For instance if I keep my HR at 128-136 during a 4 hour ride I feel like I haven't done a thing, and I recently did a time trial where I kept my HR between 192-194 for 25 minutes without going into the red. Is the fact that my engine idles a little fast going to affect my ability to improve?

I agree with Dave that resting HR need not be factored into your training zones. Nor should it affect your capacity to improve. The same is true of max HR. However, it may be useful to track your resting HR over time to see if it changes with the quality of your training/recovery. For example, if you feel tired and your resting HR is significantly elevated (~8-10bpm), it is an additional sign that you need better recovery and should rest.

I want to address a misconception about diuretics as well as to discuss caffeine. If some chemical or environmental stimulus is a diuretic, you can't make up for it by drinking more water. The effect of a diuretic is to change the levels of various hormones such that the amount of water that your body will keep is reduced. You always urinate away excess water consumed. A diuretic resets the threshold beyond which water is considered excess. You could offset the effects of a diuretic by simultaneously consuming an anti-diuretic, like salt. However I don't know that the net impact on performance would be good, even if the normal water balance was restored.

For many of us, a strong cup of coffee or a can of full-test soda pop comes under the heading of one of life's little pleasures. Some of us simply enjoy the experience while others of us simply shouldn't operate heavy machinery, or try to converse, until we've had at least a second cup. You know the type-the co-worker holding the well-seasoned mug with "death before decaf" emblazoned on it. So, whether to moderate or abstain is what a friend of mine might refer to as a command decision. For sure, you don't want to consume more than 2-9 mg of caffeine per kg of body weight. Exceed this limit (about two cups of strong, brewed coffee) just before a race and, as Scott suggests, you could get so stimulated that you'd find it harder to focus and could be a hazard to both yourself and your competitors.

I have a tendency to get rather severe cramps and general tenseness in one shoulder after riding for any significant period. The pain builds slowly after a period on the road (about an hour) and then becomes progressively more severe. It abates after a period of rest but its cause clearly remains after the symptoms subside. I suspect it is due to some underlying misalignment. Are there any stretches or exercises which you would recommend to combat this problem - it is affecting my desire to ride.

There are probably a thousand reasons why your shoulder will hurt on a bike. The health professionals on this site can offer you some good advice regarding that. However, one reason that one shoulder and surrounding tissues can be under pressure on a bike is because of the rider not sitting square on the seat. This is common. If you sit with one hip forward of the other when riding, you will drop and / or rotate that hip forward with every pedal downstroke on that side. The typical unconscious way of coping with this challenge to pelvic stability on a bike, is to throw the shoulder further forward on the hip dropping side, and often to straighten the arm on the same side.

I am a male, 24 year old, Cat. 2 cyclist who experiences perineum and penile discomfort after races and time-trial efforts. I have been riding bikes all my life, but until a stage race earlier this year where I spent many hours riding the nose of my saddle in breakaways, I had never felt prolonged numbness or discomfort. My perineum was ferociously tender and my penis was numb for multiple days after the race. I took periodic standing breaks throughout the races, but in order to keep up the pace, I was often kept in the saddle longer than I had wished.

I am 40 yrs old, started with cycling in 1989 and have been at it since then, from the beginning I have had a problem with painful toes after about 2-3 hrs of riding, and only happens from cycling, never had it from running or walking. I have used various different types of pedal systems and cycling shoes and this does not seem to make a difference. The problem gets worse as the season progresses, when I pick up my training times and distances in spring the problem is not too bad - perhaps nothing or takes longer before it becomes painful. As I progress into the summer and have built up more time the problem seems to occur easier (takes less time for the pain to become unbearable).

The pain eventually feels like someone is hitting my 3rd and 4th toes (big toe being no. 1) with a hammer, It is not constantly there, it seems to come in waves, the longer I ride the shorter the gaps between and more painful it is. It occurs in both feet but always starts in the LH foot first. Lately I can feel some slight pain afterwards on the bottom of my LH foot. This leads me to believe it may be a problem with my metatarsals, I remember from earlier days when I was doing triathlon that a podiatrist said my metatarsals are dropping. Question is: I would dearly love to be able to cycle longer distances but the pain is getting unbearable, is this situation treatable and what should I do? Is it possible to have orthotics made for cycling?
Jack Hyde
Switzerland

The area of your problem has nerve plexus that can cause the problems that you have encountered if they are compressed. First order of business is to mark the centre of the ball of your foot on the top of your cycling shoes and then position the cleat so that the mark is slightly in front of the pedal axle when the crankarm and shoe are forward and horizontal. This may alleviate or minimise the problem. If doing this makes no difference or not enough difference, find a podiatrist with experience in cycling related matters. Someone like this shouldn't have a lot of trouble coming up with a set of orthoses that relieve the pressure from the affected area.

Several of the cross-country skiers who are on my high school team (16-17 years of age) are excellent cyclists. As a cyclist myself, I am all for their using cycling as cross training during the spring and summer, and early fall. I worry, however, about the number of races in which they compete and the potential for burn out. One cyclist who has tremendous potential (17-years old just moved up to a Cat. 2 and finished in 6th place in the Cat. 1/2 division of the State Road Race Championship, 10th place yesterday in the Tour Abitibi) at one point earlier this season raced 7 times in 9 days (no he was not involved in a stage race...we are talking about 7 different races). While none of the races were ultra long, one was a 78 mile road race effort. Although this was a race heavy period, I would estimate that over the course of the rest of the summer he has raced at least 3-4 times per week. When I have spoken to these young men about their racing schedule, they have indicated that the races were primarily training. However, looking at their results which have consistently in the top ten places, I doubt whether they are really using these efforts as training. As a cross-country ski coach, I would not race a skier of this age more than twice a week so as to ensure ample time for recovery. Although I realize that the sports are somewhat different and that there will be individual differences in the levels of physiological stress each cyclist's body will take, what is the ratio of training to racing that you would suggest for 16-17 year-old juniors?

My second question is of a personal nature. I am a 49 year-old Masters competitor (Cat. 3) currently preparing for a rather hilly stage race in seven weeks (The Green Mountain Stage Race). I live in the mid-west and have access only to relatively short hills (.25 - 1 mile in length). I regularly do hill workouts on what I have available climbing a series of 5 different hills three times each before doing an easy spin recovery as I move on to the next. I am wondering, however, if there is something I should add to my hill training given that the prologue of this race is a 7-mile hill climb and one stage has several long climbs of 3 miles in length that have quite steep gradients in some sections (the last 300 meters of the race is somewhere between a 17-19% gradient). Should I be incorporating some longer efforts into my training and how is this best done given the limits of the terrain to which I have access? I do have a Cardgirus trainer into which I could program "pseudo hill climbs" of this length but there seems to be a difference between climbing real hills and working out on a trainer with the resistance set at a high level. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Steve Hogg had several comments recently about foot numbness and cleat positioning. I suffer numbness similar to that described by the reader Steve responded to 7/30. It's nothing that prohibits me from riding/racing, but I'd certainly like to alleviate it. I don't believe my shoes are too small, as I have room to wiggle my toes normally. His suggestion about moving the ball-of-foot center forward makes sense, and I'll try it. I have a dual question, though: 1) The cleat on my left shoe is already positioned about 2mm behind that on my right, which sets my left foot farther forward. If I don't do this, my feet feel as if I'm pushing on a different part of my sole for each side. Is this normal? (the same applies to my mountain biking shoes--Sidi Dominators size 37.5) 2) Taking the above into account, I'm not sure I could get the 7mm forward setup he recommends for my size, as my left cleat is already pretty close to the back of the adjustment area. I currently wear Sidi Genius 4s size 38. I previously wore Carnac Altitudes size 37, with the same situation present.

To answer your first question, it is 'normal' for a lot of people to have their cleats set up differently on each shoe. Most people have two shoes the same size and dimensions but don't have two feet that are perfect mirror images of each other. Essentially, what you need to do is position the cleat so that each foot is in the same relationship to the pedal axle fore and aft taking into account that very few people have feet the exact same size and shape or place them on the pedals at exactly the same angle. From what you say about both feet feeling like you are pushing with the same part of the foot even though the cleat position is slightly different, is not unusual at all.

My query is about any suggested exercises to help overcome muscle fatigue that I experience in the top of my hamstrings/lower glutes during long hard rides. During hard riding, I do not feel that my cardiovascular fitness is limiting me (ie I am not having to stop or slow down due to being out of breath etc), instead I find this fatigue in these muscles is my first limiter during training and racing.

I'll let others appropriately equipped help you with the stretches but the solution to your problem is quite simple. Pain in the area you mention when riding hard is a function of the seat being too high. The top of the hammie, bottom of the glute is the giveaway. It only occurs when riding hard because under serious load we drop our heels more relative to our natural technique under lesser load conditions. Consequently, the leg is stretched out more and the pain you experience in the area you experience it, is the result. If the hammies were being overloaded generally, the pain would be more in the belly of the muscle. Dropping your seat 5mm should make a noticeable difference. If the problem is reduced but doesn't totally disappear, drop the seat another 3mm.