Giving credit to the ones that made the effort in this world is very
important in order to continue as humanity.
Umberto Eco is related to triathlon, as well as Jan Frodeno, Kristen
Sweetland, Chris McCormack, Simon Whitfield, etc., because we are the result of
what happened before us and what people thought and taught about things.
In his brightest novel: The name of the Rose, most
likely you saw the movie. Umberto Eco
taught us how to have a scientific and logical thinking to improve our life. It
is very difficult to believe that there is a relationship between Johannes Gutenberg,
the inventor of the printing press; Steve Job, the internet; and Umberto Eco
when he explains about how the information was hidden from the rest of the
people in his book, The Name of the Rose.
He explains that his book The Name of the Rose could be read by any
mortal and everyone gets different information according to where they are in
their evolutionary thought process.
Jorge Luis Borges, the one who read “everything” was chosen by Eco to
represent the “blind chief monk character” in his book.
Nobel Prize omission
Borges was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, something which
continually distressed the writer.[9] He was one of several
distinguished authors who never received the honour.[77] Borges commented,
"Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition;
since I was born they have not been granting it to me."[78] Some observers speculated
that Borges did not receive the award because of his conservative political
views; or more specifically, because he had accepted an honour from dictator Augusto Pinochet.[79][80]
Eco mentioned that “Borges
needs to pay his dues.” In his book, Eco
mentioned that George (the blind old guy: Jorge), was trying to hide the
information and saying that the second book of Aristotle which talks about “laughing”
was lost (nobody knew that the second book of Aristotle talked about laughing
in the Middle Age). In psychoanalysis, laughing
is not permitted, because we cannot be serious about the process of psychoanalysis. Wikileaks and Snowden reacted against the hidden
information, but the difference is that in the Middle Age whoever wanted to know
the information did not consider themselves heroes but players who enjoy the
game of learning.
I will give you the information about Kitzbuehel,
Austria. This last ITU triathlon has
changed the paradigms of triathlon.
Cycling became the main sport of triathlon. Triathlon has been evolving from swimming to
running to bicycling. The best cyclist
was the winner, running and swimming were irrelevant. Kristen Sweetland was brave enough to show
his wattage, 288 watts average over the course of 11.5k, seven of which were
uphill, 51 kilograms of weight. This
gives an average of 5.54 watts/kilogram.
Alberto Contador has been the fastest cyclist going uphill according to
a calculation done: 7.6 watts/kilogram going uphill during the stage of Verbier,
Switzerland, in 2010. We can
extrapolate, not using the Ferrari curve but the curve of watts over flat
surface done with computer:
At 70 kilograms, the value for Brownlee would be 395
watts for the same time measured by Kristen during her race. Knowing that
Brownlee went 17% faster, and following the curve of watts above, this
corresponds to 425 watts which represents 6 watts/kilogram during the race
as an average.
Guess what? Brownlee had one of the best techniques in
the race that he learned from his environment in England. There is a club in his town that has a
beautiful article regarding how they train going uphill:
Hill climbing techniques
Techniques to make you a
better climber
Cadence.
- Cadence refers to how fast your feet go around on the pedals and it lies at the heart of cycling whether on hills or flats. Most cycling computers measure cadence in revolutions per minute (rpm) although cyclists will often speak of cadences of 90 or 100 and leave out the “rpm”. There are two basic approaches to cadence: Spinning and mashing. Spinning means pedaling in a small (easy) gear at a high cadence while mashing is pedaling in a big (hard) gear at lower cadence. In very rough terms, spinning will generally build cardiovascular fitness and endurance while mashing will build strength and bulk. Mashing is also more likely to produce muscle and joint (especially knee) injuries. As a very general strategy, spinning is usually better than mashing although there are so many different kinds of riders and different kinds of road conditions that there will be many exceptions to this general rule. The typical recommendation is to spin at cadences of 85 to 105. This may be a difficult cadence for new riders to maintain but it is good to practice until you can comfortably ride in this range. When climbing, it is best to spin at a high cadence in a small gear. Many times you may find yourself climbing in your smallest gear so you can’t shift into an easier gear and spin at a higher cadence. However, as your fitness improves or the gradient of the hill lessens you can begin to ride in bigger gears. When this happens, work on achieving a higher cadence on the climbs before you work on climbing in a bigger gear.
Maintaining a steady effort.
- If there were one bit of advice that I would hold out as the holy grail of long-distance riding technique, this is it. The idea is to put forth the same amount of effort consistently throughout the ride. One way to do this is to maintain a steady cadence. You adjust for changes in gradient, road conditions, wind, fatigue, etc by changing gears and keeping your legs going around at the same rate. This means that going downhill you gear up into bigger gears and accelerate; going uphill you gear down into smaller gears and decelerate. Many riders try to maintain a constant speed rather than a constant effort going uphill. They tend to exhaust themselves on the steeper parts of the hill and then lose momentum on the flatter parts of the hill. On many hills the gradient will become a bit less steep for the last section before the crest. The rider who is focused on speed will ramp down their effort as the climb becomes less difficult. When they back off the effort they often back off too far, lose momentum and slow down. The rider who is focused on maintaining a constant effort will kick into a higher gear when the gradient eases up and fly over the crest.
Pedaling in a circle.
- As much as you can, try and exert force all the way around the pedaling arc, not just on the downward push. Push down, pull back at the bottom, lift up and pull through at the top. This is not as easy as it sounds and it is a skill that takes a long time to master. However, climbing is difficult enough without trying to do it with only part of your available muscle power. You’ve got a whole leg and 360 degrees of arc to move it through. Use the whole thing. Pedaling in a circle is impossible if your feet are not connected to the pedals. It’s much harder to do with basket-style toe clips because when you pull back at the bottom of the pedal stroke, you pull your foot off the pedal. You really need clip less pedals to take full advantage of pedaling in a circle.
Gear shifting.
- This is perhaps the most difficult hill-climbing skill to develop. When there is load on the chain, such as when you’re climbing a hill, downshifting to an easier gear puts more strain on the chain and the shifting mechanism than shifting up to a harder gear. You’ll often need to downshift to an easier gear during a climb but if you don’t do it soon enough, there may be so much stress on the chain that you can’t make the shift and then you’re stopped dead in a gear that’s too big to get up the hill. On the other hand, if you downshift too soon, you lose your momentum which can turn an easy climb into a hard one in the blink of an eye. You can feel this happen if you downshift to an easier gear and suddenly your feet are spinning on the pedals and meeting very little resistance. It’s all about timing. The trick is to relax your pedal stroke for a brief instant and shift into the easier gear a split second before you have to so that you can put forth the same effort throughout the climb. The only way to get good at this is to practice. There’s nothing like a perfect climb where each shift comes smoothly at precisely the right moment and you feel like you’ve just flown over the hill as if it wasn’t there.
Climbing is hard but learning to climb is worth it.
Drop your heels.
- To get a sense of what this feels like, move your leg so that your foot is at the bottom of the pedal stroke. With your foot in this position, keep the ball of your foot motionless on the pedal and tilt your foot so that your heel is lower than your toes. You’ll feel the stretch in your calf muscles and Achilles tendon. Try and keep your foot in this position all the way around the pedal stroke but especially on the downward push. Keeping the heels low brings more of the hamstrings (the muscles in the back of the thigh) and glutes (the muscles in the butt) into play. These are very powerful muscle groups – use them to get you over the hill. Pedaling with the heels dropped is relatively easy when your feet are attached to the pedals by clip less pedals. It’s much harder to do, but still possible, if you are using basket-style toeclips or no clips at all. Many riders tend to point their toes downward which puts less stress on the hams and glutes and more on the quadriceps (the large muscles on the front of the thigh) and calves (frequent calf cramping is a good indication you’re pointing your toes down). This tendency can be accentuated by the use of toeclips. If you’re doing this, try to break the habit and drop your heels when you climb.
Change working muscle groups.
- As you labor up the hill the muscles you are using will become exhausted as waste products produced by your straining muscles accumulate faster than they can be carried away in the bloodstream. It doesn’t take long to clear these waste products if you can make less use of the muscles for a moment. You can’t coast on a climb, however, because you’ll lose your momentum or come to a dead stop. The solution is to briefly work different sets of muscles throughout the climb to give particular muscle groups precious time to recover. There are several ways to do this. If you typically ride with toes pointed down or feet flat, drop your heels for a bit to bring your hamstrings and glutes more into play and give your quadriceps and calves time to recover. Likewise, if you usually ride with your heels dropped, raise them so your feet are flat or point your toes down thereby taking the load off the hams and glutes and shifting it onto the quads and calves. Shift forward and back on the seat. Sitting on the front of the seat accentuates the quads, sitting on the back accentuates the hams and glutes. Stand up for a brief interval and then sit back down. Just before you stand, shift into a bigger gear and then shift back to the smaller gear when you sit down. You will have more power when you stand and if you stay in the smaller gear you will lose momentum. Use these techniques for 10 to 30 pedal strokes periodically throughout the climb to buy recovery time.
Remain seated while you
climb.
- Standing is terrific for short bursts of power or for a change in muscle use (and hence a bit of muscle recovery) on a very long climb. However, it is less efficient than sitting and will tire you out faster in the long run. You will be stronger at the end of the ride if you climb sitting at the beginning. Less efficient to begin with, standing becomes much more inefficient if your technique is not good and good standing technique is much harder than it looks. Many riders with poor technique weave back and forth across the road when they stand and thrash back and forth, twisting at the hips. This wastes a lot of energy (which you will wish you had 20 miles further on down the road) and is hard on the lower back possibly leading to back soreness or tightening on long rides. Experienced riders are likely to disagree with this advice to climb while seated because standing on the climbs is a standard practice among advanced riders. Having developed the ability to climb efficiently while standing is one of the many skills that separates the advanced rider from the novice. If you stick with road cycling, you’ll learn to climb in a standing position but when you’re just starting out, I think it’s better to learn to climb efficiently and well while sitting before learning the more difficult skill.
Keep a loose, relaxed grip on
the handlebars.
- As you strain up the hill it’s easy to grip the handlebars harder and harder. White knuckling the handlebars like this can lead to numbness in the hands. More importantly, the tension in the hands will spread up the arms to the neck, shoulders and chest. Tightness in the chest will restrict breathing which will reduce oxygen consumption. Oxygen is essential for both removing waste products and bringing fresh supplies of energy to your working muscles. Your legs will tire more quickly and you’ll have a harder time finishing the climb if you are not breathing freely.
Keep your momentum as long
as you can.
- On short or rolling hills keeping momentum is often the difference between an easy climb and a hard one. If you are approaching a hill from a flat road, build up some speed on the flat so you hit the bottom of the hill moving fast. Maintain a constant effort when you hit the hill. As the gradient steals your momentum, down shift to easier gears to keep your momentum going as long as you can. You will quickly learn to recognize the point on a climb when your forward momentum dies and the climb turns into a pure grunt and you’ll want to prevent that from happening for as long as possible. If you are riding a series of rolling hills, make use of the preceding downhill to build momentum for the next uphill. Don’t coast on the downhills. This will come naturally if you are trying to maintain a constant effort as you will be gearing up and accelerating throughout the downhill. If you want to put out extra effort, squeeze out every last bit of speed you can on the downhill where it’s relatively easy so you don’t have to work so hard on the following uphill. As your skills increase you will find that you can fly over hills that once gave you trouble by building the speed you need at the base of the hill and by conserving momentum through the climb by downshifting at just the right moment.
Ride with rhythm.
- Many climbs are too long or too steep to be conquered with momentum. When you’re on one of these, try and find a rhythm that you can ride at comfortably. Essentially this means finding a cadence that feels right and then using your gears to maintain that cadence as the gradient fluctuates over the course of the climb. The right cadence will feel like a natural, comfortable rhythm. Shift into a bigger gear when the gradient relaxes and into a smaller gear when the hill steepens to maintain that rhythm. Don’t worry about what other riders are doing, find your rhythm and stick with it.
Don’t coast after the crest.
- There are going to be times when you crest a hill in agony. Your legs are screaming for relief, you are in oxygen debt and panting uncontrollably, and all you want ot do is make it stop. You’re over the top and now gravity is your friend as it carries you down the other side. You can coast for a minute; it’s your reward. Don’t do it. Keep your legs turning and shift into a higher gear so that you’re getting some resistance from the pedals. The terrible burning feeling in your legs is produced by the buildup of waste products in the muscles you just overworked. If you coast and stop using the muscles, those waste products just sit there causing you pain. If you continue to use the muscles, gently in comparison with what you just did while climbing, the contraction of the muscles will squeeze the waste products out into the bloodstream where they can be carried away. If you keep pedaling, the pain ends sooner.
Practice on every hill.
- It doesn’t matter how long or short the hill is or how large or small the gradient is. You can always find something to practice and it’s easier to be successful on the small hills than the big ones. Use every hill as an opportunity to get better. Success on the small hills today will lead to success on the big ones tomorrow.
Never quit on a hill.
Never.
- I don’t really know if this is sound advice or not. It makes sense and it works for me but anecdotal evidence like this is never worth much. Here’s the advice anyway. You’re going to suffer on climbs. Maybe you went too fast on the early part of the climb and went into the red zone, maybe you blew a shift and killed your momentum, maybe you just don’t have enough left at the end of a long ride to take the climb in stride. Whatever the cause, you are going to suffer. The temptation to give up on the climb will be overwhelming. Don’t do it, fight to the end, pay the price. Suffer. A lot of learning to climb is about training the body but some of it is about training the mind. To be the kind of rider who doesn’t quit, you have to practice not quitting. If you’re a road rider for any length of time, sooner or later someone is going to challenge you on a climb. If their skill and fitness levels are so far beyond yours that it is no contest, they’re a jackass who has no business challenging you in the first place. Ignore them. However, if the riders are close in skill and fitness it usually comes down to heart and will. Who will endure the greatest amount of suffering and not break. If you have refused to quit on every hill in the past, you know that no matter how bad it gets, you’ve been through it before. You didn’t quit then, so don’t quit now. Believe me, the first time some guy challenges you on a hill and you break him and drop him in the last 100 meters of the climb it will all have been worth it.
We have written
about the technique while cycling and there are some other writings in the
internet but no matter how much we talk about if there is no culture regarding
what we are supposed to do or not; it is difficult to imagine or visualize what
we talk about.
Cycling
training: research shows cyclists should aim for fast pedalling rates on both
flat and inclined routes
Why pedalling fast is more efficient for the cyclist
Elsewhere we have explained that cyclists are usually more efficient on
both hills and flat terrain when they pedal quickly (at about 80-85 rpm) rather
than at slower cadences. Now, a newly published paper suggests that the greater
efficiency may be related to the rapid rate at which glycogen is depleted in fast-twitch
muscle fibres during slow, high-force pedalling.
To determine the actual effects of slow and fast pedalling on leg muscle
cells, scientists at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Wyoming
recently asked eight experienced cyclists to cycle at an intensity of 85% VO2max for 30 minutes under two
different conditions. In one case, the cyclists pedalled at 50 rpm while using
a high gear. In the second case, the athletes pedalled in a low gear at 100
rpm. They were travelling at identical speeds in the two instances, so the
athletes’ leg-muscle contractions were quite forceful at 50 rpm and moderate –
but more frequent – at 100 rpm. As it turned out, the athletes’ oxygen
consumption rates were nearly identical in the two cases, and heart and
breathing rates, total rate of power production, and blood
lactate levels were also similar.
However, the athletes broke down the carbohydrate in their muscles at a
greater rate when the 50 rpm strategy was used, while the 100 rpm cadence
produced a greater reliance on fat. The greater glycogen depletion at 50 rpm
occurred only in fast-twitch muscle cells. Slow-twitch cells lost comparable
amounts of glycogen at 50 and 100 rpm, but fast-twitch cells lost almost 50% of
their glycogen at 50 rpm and only 33% at 100 rpm, even though the exercise
bouts lasted for 30 minutes in each case. This rapid loss of carbohydrate in
the fast-twitch cells during slow, high-force pedalling probably explains why
slow pedalling is less efficient than faster cadences of 80-85 rpm. Basically,
as the fast fibres quickly deplete their glycogen during slow, high-strength
pedalling, their contractions become less forceful, so more muscle cells must
be activated to maintain a particular speed. This activation of a larger number
of muscle cells then leads to higher oxygen consumption rates and reduced
economy.
Admittedly, this scenario – in which slow pedalling preferentially pulls
the glycogen out of fast-twitch muscle cells – may sound a little odd to you!
Fortunately, the paradox isn’t really too troubling; after all, slow pedalling
rates are linked with high gears and elevated muscle forces, while fast
cadences are associated with low gears and easy muscle contractions. Since
fast-twitch fibres are more powerful than slow-twitch cells, the fast twitchers
swing into action at slow cadences, when high muscular forces are required to
move the bike along rapidly.
On the other hand, ‘fast’ pedalling rates of 80-100 rpm are not too hot
for the slow-twitch cells to handle. Slow-twitch cells can contract 80-100
times per minute and can easily cope with the forces required to pedal in low
gear. Another possible paradox in the Wisconsin-Wyoming research was that fast
pedalling led to greater fat oxidation, even though maximal fat burning is
usually linked with slow-paced efforts. Basically, the higher fat degradation
at 100 rpm occurred because the slow-twitch cells handled the fast-paced,
low-force contractions. Slow-twitch fibres are much better fat burners than
their fast-twitch brethren!
Fortunately, there’s a bottom line to all this: during training and
competition, cyclists should attempt to use fast pedalling rates of 80-85 rpm,
both on the flat and on inclines. Compared to slower cadences, the higher
pedalling speeds are more economical and burn more fat during exercise.
Ultimately, the high pedalling rates also preserve greater amounts of glycogen
in fast-twitch muscle fibres, leading to more explosive ‘kicks’ to the finish
line in the closing moments of races.
(‘The Effect of Pedalling Frequency on Glycogen-Depletion Rates in Type
I and Type II Quadriceps Muscles during Submaximal Cycling Exercise’, European
Journal of Applied Physiology, vol. 65, pp. 360-364, 1992)
So, Wikileaks and Snowden, it does not make a difference to disclose
information because people do not want to use the information; or simply, they
just do not want to know. Everybody
knows that somebody is watching us and we should behave accordingly (correctly). Everybody knows that training correctly is
possible but we do not do it, especially regarding cycling. Spinning versus en
force, as the French would say, it is not accepted even when we see it. Look at Andrea Hewitt, Mario Mola and Brownlee,
they are well-trained from what we know and the best performing technique.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire