Shooting for 600k -- My Ultracycling Setup

Tomorrow I'll be attempting by far the longest ride of my life to date: 600k (375 miles), with 24,000 feet of climbing.  My previous record is about 250 miles.  If all goes well, I'll finish in 28-30 hours.  40 is the limit.

Adding to the intimidation factor is the fact that it'll be entirely unsupported -- I'll be riding alone.  Honestly, I'm a little apprehensive, but I suppose it's just a question of keeping the pedals turning.   I'm planning to ride straight through the night, which will be a first for me.  This is all in preparation for the 1200k ride I'll take on in Alaska in 3 weeks.  In that ride, the plan is to ride an initial chunk of 600k before bedding down for a bit, so tomorrow's ride is something of a dry run.

Tomorrow's route isn't something I just made up.  Instead, it's a "permanent," which is essentially a brevet, complete with control points and the like, that one can arrange to ride alone at a designated time.   My route tomorrow will take me from Haymarket, VA, west through Marshall and Middletown, and then south to Clifton Forge, which is a stone's throw from Roanoke.  And then I'll come back, hopefully before work on Tuesday.  :-)

Over the months and years, I've tried a lot of different bike setups for ultra cycling rides from 200k-400k.  This is not a "racing" setup by any means.  Instead, it assumes I'll be unsupported, and the priority is on comfort and durability for the long haul, complete with anticipating any reasonably foreseeable contingencies.  For my ride tomorrow, I'm doing a dry run of something very close to the setup I'll use in Alaska.  Since I know several people who have expressed interest in ultra cycling, I wanted to explain my setup.  Rather than write 375 pages, though, I thought a video might make the most sense!

Listed below the video I link to certain items I discuss.  Please let me know if you have questions about anything.  I didn't talk about the many things I've tried and chosen to leave home, which is a worthwhile topic in of itself.

Magnic Lights -- note that this page shows the older, initial Kickstarter design

Dura Ace Tubeless Wheels

Hutchinson Sector 28 Tubeless Tires

Hed Clip Lite Aerobars -- mine are an older version

Banjo Brothers cue sheet holder

Revelate Designs Gas Tank

Exposure Lights Strada (front light) -- with triple-cell backup battery.

Exposure Lights Joystick (helmet light)-- with single-cell backup battery.

Arkel Randonneur Seat Post Rack with Tailrider trunk bag

Anker A2 USB battery

Should one race two Ironmans in a year?

It's that crazy time of year once more: Ironman signup season, and especially for people on a team, it's easy to get swept up in the enthusiasm (or peer pressure, depending on one's point of view).  It's like a perverse sort of adult Christmas morning, hitting refresh on one's web browser in the desperate hope to have the privilege of paying $700-$1,200 in order to compete in an Ironman a year out.

Lately a couple of newer athletes have asked whether it's feasible to compete in more than one Ironman in a year -- Ironman Lake Placid in July and then Florida in November, or perhaps CDA/Arizona.  It's tough to know how to answer this question.  I've done it twice, IMUSA/Cozumel in 2009, and then Wales/Cozumel in 2011, and I have distinctly mixed feelings on it.

As an initial matter, I firmly believe that most athletes these days jump too quickly to Ironman from short distance races.  It's almost like people view Ironman as the only race worth doing, or at least as the clear "ASAP" goal, even if the goal is only to finish under 17 hours.  I don't understand why.  If the goal is to do your best at Ironman, as opposed to merely finish it, the optimal approach almost certainly is to spend at least a couple of years training very hard and competing at shorter distances first.  It's much easier to add endurance to speed than to add speed to endurance.  Almost every top-level Ironman triathlete was first a world class short-course triathlete, and the same holds for marathoners, who often were tearing up the 5,000m or 10,000m distances before going longer.  People who move quickly to competing in Ironmans often find that they don't get much faster in the course of training for those events.

On a personal note, I don't think that there's anything inherently more impressive about Ironman races than Olympics or half-IMs.  Going all-out in shorter races is painful as hell, and people who do it successfully must be hard as nails.  It's also possible to have considerably more of a life outside of the sport.  I think there's a great argument for simply focusing on short-course races for a long time.

All of which is to say, before deciding whether to sign up for two Ironmans in a year, I think it's worth asking seriously whether it's in your best interest to sign up for even one.  Assuming you're firmly committed to racing at least one Ironman, my view is that racing a second one doesn't require too much more, at least physically.  If one were to race IMUSA in July, it's easy to take two or three weeks off, and then to ramp up the training again in mid August, and to push through November or whenever the second race might be.  There's the risk of overuse injury, of course, but I don't think this is dramatically higher simply because one does a second Ironman a few months after the first.

But this isn't to say that I think doing a second one is a good idea.  Rather, the point is that the chief sources of difficulty in adding the second Ironman are mental, emotional, and social, rather than physical.  When you're signing up for races a year out, a two-Ironman season sounds exciting and romantic.  But consider the reality of how triathlon training is often structured.  Ironman athletes often are told spend the winter training for a marathon, and then to roll the running fitness over into triathlon once the weather warms up enough to make cycling outdoors enjoyable.  In practice, someone might start training in December for a March marathon.  After the marathon's done, you're staring directly at triathlon season, and the ramp up to the first Ironman quickly begins.  After the July race, you takes a couple of weeks off, and then you train intensely again through the second Ironman in November.

Add up all of the training and racing commitments, and you find yourself training hard from December of the first year straight through November of the second year.  I'm about as motivated as athletes come, but I'll tell you that this is not trivial.  Even if you're not injury-prone, training at that level requires regular sacrifices of your social or family life, and it is virtually impossible to keep motivation from flagging.  It's quite likely that, after you race a marathon and the first Ironman and is staring at the second, you won't be jazzed about 120-mile bike rides and 20-mile runs.  The second Ironman can easily come to seem more like an arduous obligation, rather than a fun goal.  And, because you've already finished one Ironman, it's all too easy to take the training for granted since the fear factor no longer looms as large.  As a result, the second race often doesn't go very well.

In sum, in my experience, there's nothing more likely to kill your enjoyment of endurance sports than to train for an Ironman for which you're not enthusiastic, and that enthusiasm very difficult to predict a year or more out.  If you do make it through the second Ironman successfully, it's very likely that you'll be extremely burned-out afterward.  The most natural thing will be to take a few months off, only to find the next spring that all of the benefit from the work you put in the year before has disappeared.  It can be extremely frustrating.

To be sure, there are some people who can train for Ironman after Ironman without batting an eyelash.  They simply love the lifestyle and there's nothing they'd rather be doing.  I think, however, that such people are a small minority, and it's very dangerous to ascribe those characteristics to yourself before you've been around the sport for awhile.  Most people simply need to recharge their batteries, to reconnect with family and friends, to read books, to travel without a bicycle, and generally to do other things.  I don't mean to judge either type of person -- different strokes for different folks.  It's just that you should be honest with yourself about which camp you're in, and it's very difficult to know that you'll be motivated to train for two Ironmans before you've even trained for the first one.

If you do decide to commit to a two-Ironman year, my view is that it might be a mistake to train for a marathon during the winter before.  Instead, you might be better off training for a hard 5k or 10k.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is mental: if you're going to be training for two Ironmans in a row, the chief difficulty is going to be motivational, so don't tap that well any earlier than you need to.  Three-hour runs during the dead of winter can be extremely draining, and it might be better to spend the winter on short, fast training that isn't as much of a burden on your life.  The second reason is physical: if you're is training for two Ironmans, then you're probably not going to get much faster in that time.  You'll get get better at going longer at a steady effort, but training for Ironman is not the way to get fast.  In fact, it may actually make you slower.  The general philosophy of periodization is that your training should get more race-like as the goal race approaches, and for Ironman, that means very long runs and rides.  The flip side of the equation is that, the further you are from the goal race, the more you should be focusing on other limiters.   Spending the winter really working on top-end cycling and running speed can pay huge dividends once it comes time to go longer.

On the subject of winter marathons, a couple of years ago the guys at Endurance Nation put out a couple of videos explaining why, in their view, people training for Ironman should consider not running a winter marathon.  This view is controversial, but I personally agree with it.  Here's the first:

And here's a follow-up:

Admittedly, although these videos reflect my personal views, I haven't always practiced what I'm now preaching.  Last year I trained very hard for a winter marathon, and in fact I wound up running two, at Shamrock and Eugene.  I then went on to race Ironmans Wales and Cozumel.  The reason I ran the marathons, though, was that I had a specific goal of qualifying for Boston, and that goal was entirely unrelated to my desire to do well at Ironman.  Indeed, when I got back on the bike in May, after my second marathon, I was utterly useless for a couple of months.  It was not pretty.  It's also true that I finished Ironman Cozumel utterly demoralized and injured; I took fully two months off of training, and really wanted nothing to do with endurance sports for quite awhile.  It's not an outcome I'd recommend pursuing.

In all, I'd suggest making enjoyment of the sport the highest priority.  Life's too short to do anything else, and certainly you should be careful not to get swept up in others' enthusiasm.  Make the choice for the right reasons, and be honest with yourself about why you're doing it, what you're sacrificing to make it happen, and what you're trying to get out of it.

A great transition video

We triathletes are always trying to figure out how to get from one sport to the next as quickly as possible. Often we do too much -- the key is simplify, simplify, simplify. Even for those who know what they're doing, though, sometimes it's helpful to see how the pros do it, and here's a great, clear video that explains the whole process.

Filliol's Tri Swimming Tips

On his blog, renowned coach Joel Filliol posted a list of twenty triathlon swimming tips that strongly resonated with me.  I'd copy them here, but I'm not that kind of blogger.  I'd strongly recommend checking them out at the hyperlink above; I'll be rereading them periodically.

How I Smashed Personal Records in 2011

"Hell, there are no rules here -- we are trying to accomplish something."  -Thomas Edison

2011: Groovy, baby.

As the year draws to a close, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the past 14 months -- what I've changed, what's worked, what hasn't, and what I might do differently for next season.  ("14 months" isn't a misprint: I started running 6 days a week for the spring 2011 marathon in November of 2010, and then trained straight through Ironman Wales and Ironman Cozumel.  It's been real.)  I changed a lot of things for this season, and most of them seem to have worked out; after plateau'ing for two or three years, this year I set personal-best times in the marathon (by 26 minutes), 10k (by 5 minutes), and half-Ironman, and I was on pace for a 1-hour+ Ironman PR until my wreck late in the bike segment.  Other successes were a personal-best Ironman marathon run time at Wales, and an AG-best bike time (by 2:40) at DC Tri.  I finished the year a faster swimmer, cyclist, and runner than I've ever been, and it can't all be due to the Elliptigo.  It's time to take inventory, and to figure out how to finally nail that elusive Ironman.  As Mr. Edison put it, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."  But what the heck: none of this would be any fun if it were easy.  It's only by honestly appraising myself that I've gotten anywhere, so it's time to think things through once more.

There were four broad areas of change in 2011: (1) Changes to training methods; (2) Changes to bike fit; and (3) Changes to nutrition and diet; and (4) Changes to philosophy.  But, anterior to any of those, an important fact is that I headed into last winter's marathon training fully rested, because I really didn't train very hard in 2010.  Last year, a bad bike wreck in May left me pretty beaten up for a month, just as the season was getting into swing, and my bike frame was broken in a couple of places.  I didn't wind up getting the repaired bike back for six months -- until winter -- and, without it, my motivation to train was pretty low.  For the first time in five years, I didn't race Ironman and didn't train diligently.  One obvious result is that my race performance was pretty poor, but another result is that, by the time it came time to train for the Spring 2011 marathon, I was physically and mentally prepared to throw myself at the training in a way that I hadn't been in a long time.

CHANGES TO TRAINING

It's about training hard so the race feels easy.

November 2010 to March 2011 (Shamrock Marathon training).  For the first time in years, I didn't train as a triathlete.  I didn't do a single bike or swim workout in those five months.  I was burned out on the cycle of riding on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, running on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and swimming on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  That schedule had gotten me a long way, but I wanted to dedicate a few months to being a single-sport athlete and seeing what I could do if I applied myself fully to a single sport.  So, I followed a pretty aggressive, 6-day-a-week running plan from Endurance Planet that really put the screws to me.  It peaked at around 70 miles a week; included two track workouts, a hill workout, and a long run each week, along with "easy runs" of 7-10 miles twice a week; and featured a level of intensity I'd never experienced before.  The long runs, for example, maxed out at 23 miles with miles 11-22 at marathon race pace and the last mile all-out.  There was a track workout that included 8x1600 at a 6:06/mile pace.  It just really crushed me, and toward the end of the program, I was struggling to hit the times on some of the critical workouts.  I was getting faster, but by the end of the program, I was very tired of running all the time.  Shamrock marathon went well: a 3:15, down from a prior personal-best of 3:33.  Still, I'd hoped for something a little closer to 3 hours, and even though 3:15 technically qualified me for Boston by a whisker, it was unlikely I'd actually be able to register due to the new "faster qualifiers get first priority" system.  So, I quickly signed up for the Eugene, OR marathon in early May, only six weeks out, to see if I could do better.

March and April 2011 (Eugene Marathon and tri training).  I knew I could run faster at Eugene than I had at Shamrock, but I was just sick of running all of the time.  With only a six-week turnaround between the races, I knew timing would be tricky, so I decided to back off of the running volume and to start cross-training once more, i.e., training as a triathlete.  I scrapped the hill workouts and fast-finish long runs, and instead threw in two hard bike trainer interval sessions each week with tough 15- or 20-minute transition runs immediately afterward.  I resumed swimming twice a week.  And I also started doing yoga 3x/week at work, and lifting weights regularly for the first time in years, usually a 30-minute circuit twice a week including core work, squads, pull-ups, hamstring curls, and a few other things, all with pretty heavy weight.  (I also continued to commute by bike at an easy intensity: call it 75 minutes per day.)  My running volume dropped from 60's per week to 30's, but I definitely felt much stronger and balanced heading into Eugene, and it showed: I ran 3:07, felt great, and grabbed a Boston slot.

May 2011 through November 2011 (triathlon training and ultracycling).  The contrast between Shamrock (where I'd been a pure runner for five months) and Eugene (where I'd run less and included cycling, swimming, lifting, and yoga) convinced me that there are many benefits to cross-training.  The experience of lifting regularly, in particular, was a breath of fresh air: I just felt stronger, tougher, more balanced, and healthier.  I remembered that, for the first year or two that I trained for triathlon (2005-2007), I'd hit the gym regularly, and it was only after I started to neglect strength training (2008-2010) that I'd had cramping problems in long events and encountered my plateau'ing performance issues.  The yoga was also a revelation.  I can't say that I enjoyed it particularly -- I found it somewhat dull -- but there was no arguing that I swam, cycled, and ran better after I started hitting it regularly.  With greater hip flexibility came better extension when running, and thus more efficiency.  With greater shoulder flexibility I was able to hold a narrower position on the aerobars on the bike, and I could get an earlier "vertical forearm" in the pool that in turn helped my catch tremendously.  So, through the rest of the year, I made lifting and yoga mandatory parts of my regime.  I also made changes to the way I trained for each individual sport.

My favorite part of the swim.

On the swimming front, I swam twice a week, as I'd done in past years.  The problem was that, although my swimming was pretty solid, I'd felt for a long time like I wasn't making any progress.  I could swim three times a week or once a week, and either way, my Z4 pace per hundred yards would settle into the low 1:20's.  It wasn't much of an incentive to get up at 5:00 a.m. to swim.  But this year I did find something that allowed me to have a pretty big technique breakthrough: the Swim Smooth Catch Masterclass DVD. To my mind, it has an exceedingly clear way of explaining and illustrating certain concepts I'd struggled with previously; in particular, it explains ways to think about how things should feel so that you can tell when you're doing it correctly.  

From watching the DVD a couple of times, two things became clear: my catch needed a lot of work (I didn't grip the water well), and I was a severe overglider (my stroke rate was far too low).  I was efficient in the water, but I didn't have much propulsion, which is why my times in rough outdoor swims never seemed to live up to my times in the pool.  I began swimming with a metronome with the goal of increasing my stroke rate by 10-20%, and incorporating a lot of sculling, "doggy paddle" drills, and single-arm swimming drills.  At all times, I made sure to get my palms facing the wall behind me as quickly as possible.  The results were almost immediate: I could cruise in Z4 at speeds approaching what my previous "sprint" speeds had been.  I just found another gear.

Computrainer Time Trials: You'd better go to 11.

On the cycling front, things were tough for quite awhile: after not doing a bike workout for six months, I was sucking wind on even mild rides.  I didn't start bike training until April, so I had to try to get as fast as I could as quickly as I could, and my approach was to crank the intensity up and hang on for dear life.  Twice a week, I'd do interval workouts on the Computrainer that literally had me lying on the floor gasping at the end.  My track workouts suffered a bit as a result, but I figured that, after all of the marathon training, my running would be there as long as I could get off of the bike with some snap in my legs.  I've found that my running fitness doesn't readily translate to cycling fitness, but that cycling fitness does do a lot for my run.    

I also paid better attention to periodizing my twice-weekly trainer workouts.  I let my long outdoor rides on the weekend satisfy any need I had for base training, and instead cycled my trainer workouts between pretty intense (Z4 threshold efforts) and extremely hard (Z5b Vo2-type) intervals.  I rotated these types of intervals in blocks: two threshold workouts a week for six weeks, two Vo2 workouts for four weeks, and then back to threshold.  The idea is is that lactate threshold is very trainable, but it takes a long time.  Z5 work gives a very quick return, but the work ceases to pay large returns after a few weeks.  Alternating them seemed like the perfect approach, so that's what I did.  The intensity was very high, but the overall volume of cycling wasn't: I only rode long on a couple of occasions, including the Mountains of Misery double-header (78-mile Wilderness Road Ride and 128-mile MoM double-metric) and the Diabolical Double.  

I run faster with color coordination.

On the running front, I simply discarded all extraneous volume.  My miles per week figures were low -- perhaps 3 runs a week, totaling something in the 30's -- but I kept the quality from the marathon plan.  My track workouts were usually 10x800, 6-8x1600, or 3x3200 at a very hard pace, and with relatively short rest.  Perhaps most important, I made it mandatory to do a short transition run after every trainer workout, whether I wanted to or not.  These 2-mile runs, I think, gave me a tremendous bang-for-the-buck in terms of training time, and I found myself running faster off of the bike than I ever had before.  I found that it was critical to think of the runs as just part of the bike workout; if I thought of them as "bonus," I'd have a hard time getting off of the floor after the last trainer interval.

One other wrinkle to my run training was that, from April through Cozumel in November, I performed all of my track work on a treadmill set to a 1% incline.  When the heat is in the 90s over the summer and the humidity feels like a tropical island, it's extremely difficult to get in quality training: you're training for heat at the same time that you're trying to rip off fast intervals, and the blunt fact is that it's often one or the other.  For me, it's simply impossible to run the same times when it's 90 degrees as when it's 40 degrees, and I wanted to make sure that the quality didn't suffer simply due to the temperatures.  I got my heat work in, but I did so on the long runs and, in particular, during long summer rides like Mountains of Misery, the Diabolical Double, and my long August training week.  I think it worked for me, and I got quite a lot of looks running sub-6:00 mile repeats on a treadmill in the Main Justice building, which is populated primarily by 50-something professional nerds.

CHANGES TO BIKE FIT

I got a new bike this year, a Speed Concept 9-series with Di2 shifting.  Meet Reo:

I did a lot of experimentation with my fitting before I chose the size bike and stem, because I wanted to ensure that I could get more aerodynamic than I was on my previous bike.  I even took a weekend trip to California to get certified as a Fit Institute Slowtwitch (FIST) bike fitter, and while there, I had my own position reviewed by Jordan Rapp, John Cobb, and others.  The result is that I got much more aerodynamic: my drop from saddle to armpads went from 9 cm to 14 cm, and my arms got narrower.  Below are pictures taken in 2010 and 2011 -- the difference is obvious.

2009-2010: Wide arms, split hands, high head, wind hitting the chest.

2011.  Lower and narrower, hands together, nothing extraneous.

2011 from the side.  I think I can get a bit lower, but it's OK for an IM fit.  Gotta get my hands up a smidge.

One thing I love about the new setup is the visor, which I had custom-installed on a Specialized TT helmet.  It saves time in transition and affords really terrific visibility, especially out the top, which is important in my newer, more aggressive position.  I'll never go back to shades if I can help it.

CHANGES TO DIET AND NUTRITION

My eating habits saw perhaps the biggest change from 2010 to 2011.  I've always eaten reasonably well, but in October of 2010 -- just prior to the start of my marathon training -- I decided to do a 30-day cleansing diet.  For 30 days, I drank nothing but water and green tea, and I ate nothing but salad and lean meat.  I quickly came to realize that, even though I'd never eaten much fried food, I had been abusing my system in countless ways, from sucking down large quantities of coffee and taxing my adrenal system, to pounding Diet Coke and indulging my sweet tooth with gummy bears and Swedish fish.  I'd grown accustomed to eating huge bowls of popcorn whenever I watched anything on tv.  I'd rarely eaten much salad, and my consumption of pure water was minimal.  Before every workout, I'd have gels or bars.  I was, in short, a typical carboholic triathlete.

Top 20 Fueling Myths

The cleansing diet made me realize that I didn't need a constant glucose-and-caffeine drip in order to function.  In fact, I felt streets better without those things: no afternoon crash, better mental clarity, higher quality sleep, and just feeling clean.  I decided that there might be a considerable amount of low-hanging dietary fruit (sorry) if only I could figure out how to integrate a more paleo-like diet with serious endurance training.  Serendipitiously, I discovered what I consider to be one of the most valuable training resources I've found in years: Ben Greenfield Fitness, including the associated podcast and books.  I think the e-book he released recently, Top 20 Fueling Myths, is perhaps the best use of $7 in the endurance world, and the podcasts are required listening for anyone who takes this stuff seriously.  I'd been around the Ironman world for long enough that I thought I knew the answers: make sure you eat a little bit before a morning workout, eat many small meals throughout the day to keep energy levels and blood sugar steady, have a mix of carbs and protein immediately after every workout, never risk finding yourself under-fueled, yadda yadda.

After listening to the entire available library of back podcasts and reading a few of Ben's books, I've become convinced that all of these accepted ideas (and many more) are wrong, or at least incomplete, and I've made huge strides this year by often going out of my way to do the opposite of what the received wisdom would suggest.  In fact, in the course of two months this spring, I went from 9.5% fat to 5.0% fat, as measured by a DEXA scan, and did it while training for 2-3 hours a day and without losing a gram of lean muscle mass.  That's incredibly valuable, because estimates are that each pound of body fat lost translates into a 2-second-per-mile increase in running speed.  Even if it's an approximate number, losing 10 pounds could equate to about 20 seconds a mile, or about 8 minutes in a marathon -- time that was crucial in chasing Boston. To make it happen, I changed a number of things from the way I'd always done them.

Godzilla salad plus grilled chicken.  I have a big refrigerator.

First, I changed my nutrient intake.  I viewed food as fuel, not pleasure, so I changed what I ate and ate less of it in general.  I cut out processed food, fried food, refined sugar, and grains almost entirely.  That includes eliminating soft drinks completely.  No more sandwiches with sun chips and a Diet Coke for lunch.  No more personal pizzas.  Instead, I lived off of salad, fruit, and lean meat.  My strategy for doing this was pretty simple: each week I'd make a massive salad in a serving bowl.  I used organic ingredients wherever possible, and these salads truly covered all of the bases.  A typical one would be a massive amount of baby spinach, topped with red peppers, mushrooms, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, black beans, apples or pears, walnuts, almond slices, and a sprinkling of chia seeds.  I'd also grill up a few pounds of organic chicken breast or wild-caught salmon.  Each day, for lunch, I'd pack some salad (to which I'd add avocado each day, to avoid browning) and some lean meat, occasionally with guacamole.  That would be lunch.

Typical lunch and snack: Living Fuel shake, salad with avocado,
chicken breast with guacamole, and apple slices with hummus.

Given that most of my intense workouts occurred right after work, I also brought some light snacks for the afternoon.  On the day pictured to the right, these snacks comprised a bag of organic apple slices ($1 at Costco) with an individual-size package of organic hummus ($0.25 at Costco).  Finally, I would include a Living Fuel Supergreens shake, which is about 400 calories of the cleanest, most nutrient-dense nutrition one can imagine.  I found that, by eating lunch around 1:00, and then having the shake and apples with hummus about 3:00, I was ready to cruise by 6:30 or so, when I'd have my treadmill workout and bike ride home, or my ride home and then Computrainer brick workout.
I've never measured precisely, but I think this stuff is probably on the order of 1300 calories.  That might sound like a lot for lunch and a snack, but I consumed less per day than it implies, due to change number two.

Second, I changed my nutrient timing by practicing regular intermittent fasting.  The notion of fasting is probably anathema to many endurance athletes, who often are accustomed to eating constantly for fear of underfueling.  But it turns out that there are myriad health benefits to periodic fasting, including significantly reducing blood cholesterol levels, triglycerides, weight, blood sugar levels, and risk of coronary heart disease.  This is not an outlying article: for a thorough discussion, Mark's Daily Apple provides links to countless other other articles and the underlying studies, including ones that explain that calorie restriction is convincingly correlated with increased longevity.  Counterintuitively, fasting even triggers the release of a flood of growth hormone.  Perhaps best for endurance athletes, it teaches your body efficiently to burn fat as fuel.  Here's an interesting, accessible read that dispels many myths about fasting, and other worthwhile articles can be found here, here, and here.

If I got hungry, I'd drink some water.  Mmmm, water.

So, fasting and calorie restriction seem to be healthy.  But as an endurance athlete, I knew I needed to fuel myself.  That's why I decided to give intermittent fasting a try. Intermittent fasting is what it sounds like: instead of fasting for a day, or a week, one fasts frequently for shorter (but still meaningful) periods.  The Leangains website explains several different ways that one can integrate an intermittent fasting regime into a training regimen, but there are some common threads, including a fast of 14-20 hours each day, including for a couple of hours before bed.

I went from 9.5% to 5% body fat in two months, and lost literally zero lean muscle, by practicing intermittent fasting, plus eating nutrient-dense food, for five days a week, 16 hours a day.  In practice, this would mean I'd have a moderate dinner, typically salad plus lean meat, at around 8:30 at night (after my evening workout).  By 9:00 p.m., I'd be done eating, although I could still have water and tea.  I'd go to bed around 11, then wake up at either 5:00 (for morning swim) or 7:30 (for days with no swim).  In either case, I'd have a cup of coffee (because the caffeine is helpful to rev up fat-burning metabolism), and water, but no calories.  I'd then swim (or not), pack my lunch, and bike to work at a leisurely, fat-burning pace.  At work, I'd sometimes attend a light yoga session, and otherwise would have water and tea until 1:00 (16 hours after 9:00 pm).  I'd then eat lunch (salad and meat), and then my afternoon snacks (Living Fuel shake and apple with hummus) before my hard evening workout, after which I'd have an early dinner.  That's it.  On the weekends, when there are longer rides and runs, I'd eat normally -- no fasting here, because it's important to recharge every now and then -- but I'd still try not to eat for a couple of hours before bed, and I'd sometimes go on long rides with about half the number of gels I usually take.  The purpose, as always, was to teach my body to burn fat efficiently.

Green tea: No longer just for green-tea drinkers.

I expected a lifestyle of intermittent fasting to be tough.  And, indeed, sometimes it was.  But I discovered a number of benefits beyond the fact that weight fell off of me like water.  A chief benefit was that, in order to stave off hunger, I'd drink huge amounts of, yes, water (which I never had before) and green tea.  These quell the appetite very effectively, and they're hugely beneficial in their own right, including for weight loss.  Green tea, in fact, is very nearly a miracle substance for fat-burning and health generally.

Second, although sometimes I felt a little sluggish, overall I felt amazingly good -- light, clean, and generally just better. Hunger wasn't a cause for alarm; instead, I viewed it almost like a familiar companion, a sign of progress. The biggest challenge was starting the tough afternoon workouts, be they track or trainer.  I'd often find that, even though I'd eaten a good amount a couple of hours before the workout, my blood sugar wasn't where I wanted it to be; during warmups, I often suspected that I'd have to quit halfway through the first interval because I just wasn't feeling it.  Almost every time, however, once I dug into the workout and got my blood pumping, I'd find myself just crushing it.  I had to force myself to fight that initial mental battle, but once I did, the results were simply incredible.

In addition to the paleo-esque diet and intermittent fasting, I adopted a well-researched and fairly extensive supplement regime.  Each day, I'd take the following: fish oil, Vitamin D, magnesium, CapraColostrum, Extreme Endurance, CLA, cayenne pepper, green tea extract, resveratrol, acidophilus, evening primrose oil, coenzyme Q-10, and beet root powder.

Finally, the last aspect of getting to race weight was just living with an eye on the goal.  I work on the fourth floor of a building with very tall floors, and I never took the elevators.  At restaurants, I'd stay away from the bread baskets and desserts, except for the occasional unadorned berries.  And heck if it didn't all work a treat: in February, I weighed 170 pounds; in late April, 157 pounds.  I drifted into the low 160's during tri season, but the feeling of lightness and power remained, and my results showed it.

Changes to Philosophy

The last big thing I changed in 2011 is that, for most my most successful races, including the Oregon marathon and Ironman Wales, I raced purely on feel: no wattage, heart rate, or pace.  I ate when I wanted nutrition, drank when I was thirsty, and generally just tried to relax and absorb the feel of the race.  In Eugene, I wanted to run under 3:10, so I ran with the 3:10 pace group for the first 10k, and then picked up the pace a bit, and just ran by myself for the last 20 miles, taking what the course and my body gave me.  On a couple of occasions, I saw race clocks and literally looked another direction as I ran by, because I simply didn't want to know what my time was -- I'd go as fast as I could go that day, no more and no less.  But I wouldn't let my brain get in the way by seeing a time that was "too fast" or "too slow."  The result: a 3:07, good for an 8-minute PR and a Boston slot.

Sometimes, in races, ignorance is bliss -- and maybe a ticket to a P.R.

I took the same approach at the Musselman half-IM.  I raced the sprint hard on Saturday, and then raced the half on Sunday on a very hot day.  Despite the heat and a very hilly run course, I managed a 4-minute run PR for the distance, again with no watch.  And I repeated the feat in Wales, smashing my run PR by 40 minutes after one of the hardest bike rides of my life.

I don't think that this is coincidental.  I'm a believer in specific training, whether by wattage or pace or heart rate, because training sessions are designed to push us a certain amount, no more and no less.  If the object is to execute a threshold run, it is not better to run faster than threshold -- it simply generates more stress on the body and inhibits recovery.  Races, though... well, those are different.  There, the question really is, how fast can you go?  And what I'm realizing is that sometimes I can go faster than I'd think, but only if I don't let my head get in the way.  In my post on 10 Ironman Tips, I provided Ken Mierke's article on the Hedonic Mode of racing, where he talks about "focusing on feeling, not on numbers."  I find that, when I wear a watch or have a computer, I'm constantly looking down and trying to figure out whether my numbers are "right," or attempting to manipulate them in a certain fashion.  In doing so, though, I think that sometimes I fail to listen to what my body's telling me, and I'm realizing that the body knows what's going on inside it better than any computer ever can.   When I don't wear a watch when I run, I notice animals, kayakers, other athletes, and whether I'm thirsty; when I do wear one, I'm often so focused on the digital display that I can't remember half of what happened in the race.  That's a shame, and it's one I'm not going countenance in the future, especially when it might slow me down.

So, that's how I got faster in 2011.  In the works: what I plan to change for 2012.

Ten Last-Minute Ironman Tips

This pic has nothing to do with IM.  But doesn't it make you feel better about it anyway?

Ironman Cozumel is ten days from now, so each day between now and then I'll be circulating a concrete Ironman prep or racing tip to my teammates on Team Z.  Since some of these might be of broader interest for anyone staring down a daunting endurance event, I'll also post them here in realtime.  They're primarily directed toward first-time Ironman racers, but many of them are things that even burned-out, cynical old vets would do well to remember.

1. Butterflies. It's great to have butterflies!  If you're not nervous heading into a race, it shows that you're not focused on it or your head isn't in the right place.  The best pros will tell you that they're nervous heading into every race they do.  Embrace it!  It shows that you're invested, excited, and ready to go, and your best performance is only possible when you're a little on edge.  How many things in life make us feel this way?  Not enough. So enjoy it while it lasts -- it'll be over before you know it, and you only get a first time once.  
2. Pre-Race Sleeplessness.  Don't worry about your sleep the night of the race.  Many, many athletes -- even some of the best -- are simply too highly wound to get a full night's sleep the night of the race.  You may find yourself tossing sleeplessly at 11:00 pm, getting increasingly stressed out about your breakfast wake-up drawing ever closer, and worried that your lack of sleep could undermine months of hard work.  And, of course, the more you worry about it, the harder sleep becomes.  The last thing you want to worry about on race morning is whether your lack of sleep has set you back before the gun even goes off.  Here's the good news: the amount and quality of your sleep the night of the race isn't critical.  Some pros hardly sleep at all.  Instead, what matters most is your sleep two nights before the race.  So, if your race is Sunday morning, make sure that you hit the sack early on Friday, and don't be the first one awake on Saturday morning.  Once Saturday night rolls around, get what sleep you can, but don't fret it -- your work is done, and you'll be good to go even if you just wind up watching a movie or reading a book.  Don't take it from me: The source of this one is Paula Newby-Fraser, 8-time winner of Ironman Hawaii, and the triathlete that many would name as the greatest of all time
3. We Aren't Calorie Camels.  When we taper for a race, the volume of exercise decreases substantially... but our appetites don't.  It's easy to justify overeating, or filling up on pizza, ice cream, and pasta (i.e., foods with a lot of calories but little nutritional value), on the theory that we're preparing for the big race.  But the simple fact is that we can't store infinite calories like a camel for a week or two before an event, and what we eat a week out has no bearing on our race day performance.  The fact remains that, at most, we have 1500-2000 calories of glycogen available to us when we're "topped off," and anything beyond that gets stored as fat.  We can easily top-off our tanks simply by shifting our normal caloric intake -- that is, our basic calorie needs assuming no heavy training -- a little in favor of carbs for a couple of days before the race.  Thus, instead of eating mainly salads and lean meats, we can start focusing more on things like pasta and sweet potatoes.  But we don't need three plates of pasta or five pounds of potatoes.  There's nothing wrong with cutting loose on the dietary front for a little bit -- just wait until after you cross the finish line to do it.  When you get to the line light and lean, your body will thank you for it.
4. Throwing Up Isn't a Disaster. The statistics are that something like 70% of Ironman athletes experience G.I. distress at some point during the race. That's simply because it's very hard to get everything right: Drink and eat too little, and you could run out of gas. Drink and eat too much, and you can get a little bloated and unsettled. The result is that a substantial number of people wind up heaving or throwing up on the side of the road at some point during the day. I've certainly been there myself. Today's tip is simply that, although it might be alarming to get physically ill during the race, it is not the end of the world if it happens. In fact, if you find yourself getting sick to your stomach, throwing up might be the best thing you could do -- you'll probably feel much better in very short order. Getting sick isn't a sign that you're falling apart physically or that there's anything wrong with your fitness, and it doesn't mean your race is in jeopardy. Instead, it simply means that your system is disagreeing with your nutritional game plan at the moment, and suggesting you try a different approach. So just think of it as hitting your system reset button, and start to rebuild: drink a little bit afterward, and when your stomach settles, eat a bit, and go from there. For the next little while, discard the race plan and just eat and drink according to what your system tells you it wants, no matter how strange its messages might be. It's perfectly possible to have a great race despite being in bad shape for a few minutes, so don't get rattled if you go through it. It just makes for an even more epic race report!
5. Rev It Up with V8 Juice.  Over the course of a long Ironman, one of the challenges is to keep race nutrition palatable; there's only so long one can drink flavored sugar water (Gatorade) between hits from flavored sugar packets (gels) before your system says, "enough!"  And, in hotter races, you'll probably find that you're craving something savory to counterbalance all of the sweetness, at least temporarily.  There is, fortunately, a wonderful thing that accomplishes just these goals: a small can or bottle of V8 juice.  Here are the ingredients: water and and tomato paste, and juices of celery, beets, parsley, lettuce, watercress, spinach, plus salt and seasoning. You get great things like Vitamin A, C, E, B6, potassium, calcium, magnesium, all without any fat, protein, or anything that might upset your stomach.  You also get a 420 mg of sodium per 8-ounce serving.  Best of all, when it gets warm, it tastes perhaps even better than it does cold -- think tomato soup.  There aren't many calories in it  (50 per serving), but you may find that, once or twice during an Ironman, drinking a bottle of it will reset your palate and suddenly make all of that race nutrition appealing again.  In Cozumel 2009, this stuff basically saved my life.  So, consider getting a bottle or two (it's available everywhere, including Cozumel), and sticking it in your bike and run special needs bags.  You might not need it, but then again, you may find find that it's exactly what you're in the mood for.  Of course, needless to say, don't drink it for the very first time on race day -- there aren't any strange ingredients, but you should at least try a couple of bottles in the days before the race, something that will help to top off your electrolytes in any event.
6. Meditate on Your Inspirations.  Ask anyone who's been around Ironman for a significant period of time, or who has raced a number of them, and he'll tell you that almost every athlete in every Ironman goes through a very bleak period at some point during the day.  These events are unique in their ability to run you through the whole gamut of human emotion: anticipation, hope, despair, exuberance, depression, love, frustration, and gratitude.  This means it is very likely that, at some point, you'll be suffering mentally and physically, with the finish line hours away, and you'll wonder what possessed you to do such a crazy event.  This phase will pass; indeed, you may be surprised to find that, 15 minutes later, you're tearing up with joy and pride in what you're accomplishing.  In the meantime, the trick is to realize that your brain is messing with you.  To prepare yourself for this, in the week leading up to the event, set some time aside to reflect on the specific, and very personal, reasons why you've dedicated months or years in order to race Ironman.  We all have them; no one does something like this unless there's a drive behind it.  Perhaps you, or someone close to you, experienced a personal tragedy that compelled you to live life to its fullest.  Maybe, at some point in your life, someone told you that you'd never amount to anything.  Maybe you told yourself such a thing, and you're proving yourself wrong.   Maybe you're racing for a deeply personal cause, or because you realize how fortunate we are to have the chance to do something so remarkable.  Maybe, to paraphrase Pre, you don't want to sacrifice the gift.  Whatever your reason, spend some time in the days leading up to the race actively reminding yourself why you're there.  And then, when the tough moments in the race come, recall those reasons vividly and intensely.  Picture the reasons, hear them, and feel them.  You may find suddenly that you're ten miles down the road and flying.
7. Before you walk, try speeding up.  It sounds crazy, but it can help.  12 hours into an Ironman, muscular fatigue can reduce many people's run to little more than a plod.  If you normally run to 9:30/mi in Z2, you could easily find yourself running 11:30/mi, a pace you haven't practiced, and for which your muscles haven't become efficient.  It may well include too much vertical bounce, which recruits quads tired from the bike, and not enough horizontal thrust, which recruits relatively fresh flutes and hamstrings.  Therefore, it could be the case that you're not too tired to run, but that you're just too tired to run in that unpracticed, inefficient manner.  So before you're forced to walk, try accelerating for a minute -- break from the plod, and dive yourself horizontally with a quick cadence.  It could be that you have more in your tank than you thought.
8. "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."  -Theodore Roosevelt.  Sometimes our best performances come just after things look their most bleak.  I set a 40-minute Ironman run PR in Wales, on the hilliest run course I've ever encountered, after a bike ride that broke me so badly that I literally got off the bike for two minutes at mile 90 to try to rally enough to make it up the climb I was facing.  Last weekend, in Arizona, Kendra ran a seemingly impossible 3:21 and qualified for Kona, but only after (i) hitting her hand so hard in the swim that it appeared to be broken, and (ii) losing 20 minutes on the bike due to two flat tires.  Finally, in Rev3 South Carolina, pro Meredith Kessler finished third after breaking her seat on the bike and riding out of the saddle for the last 18 miles.  There are countless other examples out there of this phenomenon.  In each instance, it would have been very easy to throw in the towel mentally, and no one would have questioned that decision.  But doing so would have been an incredible tragedy because all three races will be looked back upon as tremendous personal victories; indeed, the triumph over adversity is a big part of what's meaningful in this sport and lifestyle.  So follow Teddy Roosevelt's advice: do what you can, with what you have, where you are.  Take it a step at a time, and let the future take care of itself.  Your best day may lie just ahead. 
9. "Everybody's got plans... until they get hit."  -Mike Tyson.  It's great to have a race plan; it brings assurance and gives you something to execute.  Just remember that Ironman is, in some sense, an adventure with an incomplete map, and each one brings a different twist.  This is, I think, a good thing: a big part of what makes these races fun is that you learn something new about yourself each time.  So don't be alarmed if you find that your race plan -- whether it be pace, nutrition, or something else -- isn't going quite the way you expected.  On one level, it means you have to do some thinking, but on another, you can view the setback as a liberation, and as permission to live the adventure a little bit.  You might figure some things out that ultimately make you a stronger athlete.  Maybe you suddenly start craving something wacky like Oreos on the run -- something that you'd normally never consider eating.  Maybe you try one, and find that you feel a lot better afterward.  You've just learned that your body is smarter than any plan, and that's the real tip of the day: Listen to yourself, and listen closely.  Don't ignore the experience you've accrued, and by all means, go with the plan until you have reason not to.  But the plan is not a set of commandments, so don't be afraid to roll with the punches and listen to yourself.
10. Have fun!  It's not a cliche, but instead is a large part of the secret of going fast. Here's an article by Ken Mierke from a couple of years ago that explains why. (Reprinted with permission.)
    
    
    MANIPULATING PSYCHOLOGICAL MODE FOR 
    OPTIMAL TRAINING AND RACING
    
    
    © 2005 by Ken Mierke
    
    "Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back...play for her." - U.S Olympic soccer star Mia Hamm
    
    I once coached an athlete through qualifying for the Navy SEALS. He was a serious triathlete, a regional champion, but his real goal was always the SEALS. After years of training for this goal, we sat down for a strategy session right before he left to take his big test. As we were leaving, I said to him, "Have fun." He was furious with me. He had worked so hard to prepare for this test, and he thought that my telling him to have fun meant I thought that he wasn't taking it seriously. Serious and fun are not opposites ? in fact, they can and should go together. Learning to bring these together on race day will lead to peak performance.
    
    Every athlete has had workouts and races during which producing and sustaining high heart rates was so challenging and exciting that the pain and effort almost went unnoticed. Other times, eight two-minute hill repeats can seem intolerable. Often, the difference between these two experiences is the mindset, or psychological mode, in which an athlete begins a workout or race. Few athletes understand what a powerful force this can be in training and racing. Even fewer realize that psychological mode is something that can and should be manipulated.
    
    Every athlete has an optimal level of psychological arousal for peak performance. If psychological arousal is too low, the athlete will be under-motivated and won't perform maximally. If arousal is too high, the athlete will suffer from anxiety, which can impair race performance. Instead of forcing yourself to gear down psychologically to avoid becoming too anxious before a race or workout, you can learn to activate a different part of your psyche that thrives on higher arousal, to maximize performance.
    
    
    Achievement mode
    
    Racing and very hard workouts tend to activate what we refer to as achievement mode. While in the achievement mode, athletes want to succeed: to climb faster, pass their rivals, win the race, set a new
    personal best. Unfortunately, this is not the ideal mode for racing or for hard workouts. When in the achievement mode, athletes find high arousal produces anxiety and low arousal produces feelings of peace. Of course, racing and hard workouts are extremely high arousal situations, both physically and psychologically. Maintaining high physical and emotional intensity while in this mode triggers frustration and increased perceptions of both exertion and pain, even while the athlete is performing well.
    
    As an exercise physiologist and coach, I realize the importance of structure in training, goal setting, and using numbers to control an athlete's training. I also realize that these numbers can take on a larger-than-life role in the athlete's mind and become more detrimental than beneficial. I remember one cyclist I coached who set a 45-second personal record in a 40K time trial in his first podium appearance, but was infuriated because he could not hold the heart rate he had planned to. Annual training plans, heart rate zones, periodization, and all the structured, goal-oriented, number-oriented tools, which are useful for preparing an athlete for peak performance, are intrinsically related to the achievement mode. These things have their time and place, but on race day the preparation is done and it is time to shift modes and go race.
    
    
    Hedonic mode
    
    The second psychological mode is the hedonic (pleasure-seeking) mode. In this mode, athletes swim, bike, and run to the point of exhaustion simply for the joy it brings. When in this mode, athletes find high arousal to produce feelings of challenge and excitement, while they find low arousal to be boring. This is the ideal state of mind for racing and high-intensity training, but it is not an attitude that comes naturally at these times. The pressure of performing well tends to shift serious athletes into the achievement mode at the times they most need the benefits of the hedonic mode. While we all enjoy racing and hard training, we also have goals. We train hard and race to make progress to ACHIEVE. Success is not measured by pleasure, but by results. Learning to shift into the hedonic mode at appropriate times, even though it will not be natural at those times, is critical to producing your best performances when you need to. The achievement mode is appropriate for workouts that demand discipline or must remain low intensity. Longer rides and runs with strictly controlled low intensity demand the discipline and patience provided by this mode. An athlete in the hedonic mode would find these workouts endlessly boring. Ever attacked a hill during a long base phase workout that was supposed to be kept aerobic? We all have. This is the hedonic mode kicking in. Specific work on pedal-stroke technique and other important workouts that demand concentration, but require minimal intensity may also benefit from this mode. The low intensity and arousal are not stimulating to the athlete engaged in the hedonic mode.
    
    
    Focus on Feelings, not on Numbers
    
    While heart rate, wattage, and miles per hour can be critical in training, sometimes used almost exclusively to govern workout intensity, I prefer to have athletes rely more on perceived exertion during races. Heart rate and wattage can be useful gauges, but overemphasis on the numbers tends to shift athletes out of the ideal psychological mode for racing. I like to teach my athletes to become intimately acquainted with how their body feels at the intensity level which will be required in their racing and to seek to reproduce those feelings on race day. Using heart rate, wattage, and even laboratory test results improves training efficiency. During this training the athlete needs to remain tuned in to perceived exertion, even as he trains by numbers, to learn to accurately and consistently perceive intensity on race day. Prepare by the numbers; race by feel.
    
    
    Enjoy the moment
    
    Did you ever watch Michael Jordan score 50 points in a basketball game and see the huge smile on his face? Was he smiling because he scored 50 points or did he score 50 points because he was smiling? British psychologist Dr. Michael Apter's research says the answer to both questions is yes. Great athletes in every sport are at their best under intense pressure. They fall into the hedonic mode instead of the achievement mode and the high arousal brings out their best. Great athletic performances are expressions of the joy of the sport. If you lose touch with that because of the will to achieve, your performance will suffer.
    
    
    Don't "Psyche Up"
    
    We do not like the idea of our athletes getting "psyched up" for races. This method of increasing arousal shifts them into the achievement mode and generally does not produce great performances. Athletes who have trained hard and long for an event will naturally be aroused come race day. The investment in training ensures this. Artificially increasing this is neither necessary nor beneficial.
    
    
    Race Day is "Payoff"
    
    I like to remind athletes that they invest an enormous amount in preparing for races. They train hard and with discipline. They avoid late-night partying. They eat a healthy diet. I like to have my athletes perceive race day as the payoff, something to be looked forward to, not as the final exam to be dreaded. This kind of attitude shifts the athlete toward the hedonic mode, which brings out their best on race day. Many great performances have resulted from an athlete thinking that he has stored many hours of hard training in his legs and race day he just "lets it out."
    
    Understanding how, when, and why to shift to the appropriate psychological mode for different workouts and races enables an athlete to enjoy discipline and control when appropriate and to relish the challenge, effort, and pain associated with high-intensity workouts and races when that is required.

Reconsidering electrolytes for Cozumel

For years, I've been convinced that, as a "salty sweater," it was necessary for me to take in considerable amounts of salt during hot-exercise training and racing.  At Mountains of Misery this year, I took in nearly 800 grams an hour for the 10-hour ride in 85-degree sun, and felt great.  Likewise, at Musselman Half, I PR'd the run on a very tough course in extremely hot conditions, and I was taking a similar amount of sodium (among other things).  Recently, though, I've begun to rethink whether it's all necessary.  Joe Friel has been convinced for years that we can basically do without electrolyte supplementation as long as fluid is consumed only to thirst, rather than to excess.  His position relies heavily on the research of Dr. Tim Noakes, an interesting interview with whom can be found here beginning around the 35-minute mark.

At Ironman Wales last week, I decided to give Noakes a try, and I took in no sodium beyond what was contained in four gels.  For hydration, I had water, and for calories, CarboPro 1200 and gels.  The course and conditions were simply macabre -- a race report will appear here soon -- but I nonetheless set a 40-minute run PR without a hint of cramping.  I'm still trying to figure out what I think about it all heading into Cozumel in two months.

A useful video on descending technique

Every couple of months, I lead a clinic on descending technique for newer triathletes on the team.  This video gives some extremely helpful illustrations of many of the topics we cover.  Many thanks to whomever created it!

Damon's Bicycle Gearing Guide

Newer cyclists often have a hard time understanding fundamental principles relating to bike gearing.  It's an important subject that has a massive bearing on one's enjoyment of cycling, and I struggled for years to find a clear and concise explanation of how things work.  Failing to find anything like what I wanted, I wrote one myself, which is available here.  Enjoy!