Fast Talk

Welcome to 2021. And what better way to kick off the new year than to answer some questions from our devoted listeners.  Today we take on a series of questions that deal with a dilemma many athletes face: deciding which rides or workouts to sacrifice when you’re short on time.  We tackle a question about zone 1 rides and whether you get them on the mountain bike.  We also discuss how to change the type of rider you are, and if it can be done, based on a question from a listener who wants to become a punchy rider. Finally, we field a question about the differences between structured and unstructured intervals. Are there any downsides to getting your intensity in so-called unstructured ways? Our guest coach today is Hannah Finchamp. You may know her as a member of the Orange Seal Off-Road Team, but she is also a board-certified athletic trainer and a certified USA Cycling coach. She has degrees in both athletic training, focused on injury prevention, and in exercise science.  Let’s dive into the discussion. Let's make you fast!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the best of 2020. What a year it’s been. In so many ways, 2020 was a challenge—sometimes big, sometimes small, but always a bit more challenging. The same goes even for this humble podcast. But we stay connected, virtually, across time zones, across international borders, and despite waves of pandemic disruptions to bring you what we think are some incredible conversations with exceptional minds in the worlds of physiology, medicine, nutrition, sports psychology, and, of course, cycling. Who, specifically, will you hear from today? I’ll drop some names: First, there’s world-famous physiologist Dr. Iñigo San Millan, who also happens to be the head of the training staff of UAE-Team Emirates, the team of Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar.   We’ll hear from the coach of America’s most talented cyclists, Jim Miller.  A “best of” episode wouldn’t be complete without the incomparable Dr. Stephen Seiler.  We’ll also hear from outspoken, sometimes sassy Sebastian Webber of INSCYD. We’ll get words of wisdom from the legend, Joe Friel. We’ll hear from Fast Talk Labs contributor Julie Young, and we’ll catch up with incredible athletes, including climbing sensation Sepp Kuss and national champ Ruth Winder. All those guests and many more, today on Fast Talk. There are several themes that come out in this episode, a function of the fact that we kept revisiting these topics throughout the year. One thing Fast Talk has taught us, and we hope you as well, is that by discussing these topics with intelligent guests, we develop a better understanding of where training science and practice converge, and where it’s headed.  Some of the themes we’ll touch upon include leaving complexity out of your intervals, the execution of workouts and using feeling versus data, and ranges versus specific numbers. And much more. The Fast Talk team has enjoyed every minute of creating this show for you—likewise, we’ve loved sifting through our collection of episodes from the past year to gather the best of 2020.  Thank you for your continued support. We couldn’t do it without you. So here’s to 2021 and... a return to bike racing?!? Let's make you fast!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is yoga just fancy stretching? Nope. Today we’re going to go into the specifics of why cyclists should consider yoga, from the physical literacy it can provide, to the strength and conditioning element it offers, from the potential for an improved inflammatory profile to better recovery and relaxation.  It turns out yoga is far more than fancy stretching or breathing techniques, it can be a powerful tool to aid health and performance.  No episode about yoga would be complete without an overview of the many varieties of the practice. It often comes down to a simple question: How do you like your peppers: mild, medium, or hot!? We walk through the six major types of yoga and when each is the most appropriate, given the time of year, your ability, and your training load.  Finally, we’ll discuss the risks of doing yoga. There are some, but thankfully they’re minor and can be easily avoided. Our featured guest today is Sage Rountree, an internationally recognized authority in yoga for athletes and an endurance sports coach with certifications from USA Triathlon, USA Cycling, and the Road Runners’ Club of America. She is the author of The Athlete’s Guide to Yoga among serval other books on yoga. We’ll also hear from eSports racer Jen Real, racer, Paralympian and coach Jen Sharp, and our very own Colby Pearce for more thoughts on the benefits of yoga for athletes. Now, select your pepper...  Let's make you fast!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time to bust some myths about nutrition. Head coach Ryan Kohler and Coach Trevor Connor both have degrees in nutrition and decades of experience working with athletes on all manner of sports nutrition topics.  Together, they discuss some of the major misconceptions that regularly enter any conversation on what to eat when training and racing.  Are macronutrients all that matter?  Do carbs make you fat?  Do you need fancy race food?  How do you know if you have a food allergy?  What really causes cramping?  Is a pasta party the best pre-race dinner?  Can you “train” how your body hydrates?   We answer all these questions and many others as we explore some of the most common misconceptions in sports nutrition.   Let's make you fast!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What a strange and chaotic year it’s been. Despite the disruption to our lives, times like these afford us an opportunity to look farther ahead. It just may be that, from a training and racing point of view, this is just what some of us have needed.  That’s because, sometimes, you can see greater gains by looking not just at next year, but by gazing two or three years up the road. Whether you’re just starting in endurance sports, or unsure of what 2021 holds, looking through a telescope rather than a microscope can help you develop in new and powerful ways. There are certain physiological gains that take mere weeks to develop. We’ve touched upon those elsewhere. On the other hand, some very important changes will only take place over the course of years: your aerobic engine or stamina, for example, which involves structural changes. So if you have the opportunity to look farther ahead than ever before, how do you create the right training plan? Must you give up racing? How do you measure progress on this timescale? How big a role does trust in the plan play in proper execution? How much volume can you safely add over the course of two or three seasons? Those questions and so much more on today’s episode. Today’s guests are the renowned Dr. Stephen Seiler and one of his Norwegian colleagues, Sondre Skarli. You’ve heard Dr. Seiler on the program many times before, but Sondre will be new to this audience. Formerly an elite speed skater, Sondre is now a sports scientist consultant at the Norwegian Olympic Committee and Federation of Sports—basically he’s a great coach on the Norwegian national team, working with a diverse set of endurance athletes. Of note, he became the head coach of the Norwegian speed skating team at the age of 28.  This episode is very conversational; we’ll take our tangents. But there are a great number of important points throughout the show. And with that, let's make you fast!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The off-season can be one of the most productive times of the year: It offers the opportunity to reflect on last season—to assess what went well and what could be improved—and then to look forward, and strategize about how to progress, both in your training and racing. Today we’ll focus on the art and science of how to set goals and incorporate them into your training. Coach Connor starts us off with a discussion of how to determine your goals, first by performing a season assessment, which feeds his gap analysis, which in turn yields a goal-setting strategy.  Coach Ryan Kohler joins us for the second half of the show to describe his SMART analysis—that’s S for Specific, M for Measurable, A for Achievable, R for Realistic, and T for Time-bound—before explaining his method for incorporating that information into macrocycles and then into mesocycles. The offseason isn’t just about sitting back and relaxing, although you should do a bit of that too. This time of year is perfect for putting in some homework, being honest with yourself about where you’ve been and where you want to go, so that the coming season can be as successful as possible. And with that, let's make you fast!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We believe modern coaching doesn’t optimally fulfill the needs of the modern athlete. That’s why we’re introducing our community, education, and coaching membership, Fast Talk Laboratories.  So often athletes are given templated training plans. But what if he or she gets sick? Or work gets stressful? That athlete will likely do more harm than good simply pushing through and sticking to the plan. In response to that methodology, we’ve created a virtual performance center, a place for the insightful athlete to be guided to their best self.  We have collected the many tools available to modern athletes in one place, offering curated and validated knowledge—through articles, videos, workshops, webinars, forums, and the list goes on—from some of the finest minds in sport science: Dr. Stephen Seiler, Dr. Stephen Cheung, Julie Young, Colby Pearce, Grant Holicky, Jess Elliott, to name a few. We’ll be adding new contributors all the time, and you can be sure they’ll also bring clarity and sophistication to their contributions. Let’s detail our Listener, Library, Live, and Laboratory member levels. Listener: We are now producing transcripts of every new Fast Talk podcast episode—plus our catalog of over 135 existing episodes and 27 Cycling in Alignment episodes. What does that mean for Listeners? Searchable podcast episodes, references, and resources. And, of course, you can read along or scan ahead, if you happen to be a faster reader than listener.  Listeners will also begin to receive our weekly newsletter, which will keep them up to date on new episodes, special guests, and opportunities to send in questions for new Q&A episodes. We also have plans to periodically release a few of our most popular training science videos and articles—but only for members.  Our next membership level unlocks a whole library of content, which is why we’re calling it our Library Membership. For our Library Members, we have created training science articles, a whole library of video content, and a moderated forum. This is content like the fundamentals of sports nutrition from Head Coach Ryan Kohler and a workshop on why cold temperatures affect performance from Dr. Stephen Cheung. The Forum is a place to discuss recent episodes, ask questions, and get answers from Trevor, Ryan, and our very smart members.  Live membership is really the heart and soul of what we’re offering. This level includes all the features we’ve already introduced, plus a whole suite of Live Events including social group rides, structured live workouts, live Q&A sessions, and live webinars. Trevor’s and Ryan’s experience in training centers and the group-style approach will shine. This level also includes group coaching and a monthly question answered. Our Laboratory Membership will open in January. This is our premier coaching level, and of course it includes all the benefits of the lower levels. We believe it’s a vast improvement over existing coaching programs. Our athletes and listeners are not typical. They are intelligent, motivated, and they don’t need email nannying, which is what we often see in endurance coaching. They also don’t really need templated training plans, which we believe are counterproductive for higher-level athletes.  Instead, our Laboratory Membership is a new concept that we call Endurance Mentorship. What does that mean? Well, it’s based on the idea that you already know the basics—but wouldn’t it be great to have an elite coach to answer your questions? Plus, with periodic testing and guidance, you’ll experience the best of what Fast Talk Laboratories has to offer as a virtual performance center. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amos Brumble is a New England legend. Is it because of his racing palmarès? His charm? His collection of guinea pigs? Or all of those things? We find out, and then we dive into some listener questions.David H. of Seattle, Washington asks: “Suppose a 55-year old athlete is training with a heart rate monitor and perceived effort and recovery scales and is able to train between 10-16 hours/week. No power measurements. The athlete's goal is to maximize performance on gravel races—about 100 miles and about 10,000 feet of climbing—which, with the exception of the first 20 miles or so, basically means a long time trial effort. Given that goal and training context, how would you recommend that a training plan be structured? I ask this question because so much of the discussion on your podcast references power. I understand why, but I don't have a power meter in part, for cost, and in part because heart rate is enough 'quantification.' I'm interested in the meaning and aesthetics of riding hard.”The next series of questions on low-cadence work comes from Ray Farris:“My impression from your podcast is that the low cadence sessions talked about in the session were fairly short efforts at high power. However, Steve Neal of the Cycling Gym, whom you have had on Fast Talk a couple of times, seems to like to give his athletes sessions of several intervals of 20-40 min at low cadence at tempo power, generally 83% of FTP, subject to an 83% of max heart rate limit on power. And I just watched a Lionel Sanders YouTube video in which his coach had him do multiple sessions of 40 minutes at 50-60rpm at what I roughly estimate is about 80% of FTP.What’s the thinking about these types of interval workouts? 1) Do these build FTP? 2) Are these “hard” workouts in the Seiler polarized model? Do they have a place in a polarized model and if so what is it and when is it in terms of periodization blocks? 3) Do these raise the athlete toward his theoretical VO2 max, but at the cost of lowering VLa max? Does this trade-off even matter for anyone other than pro level sprinters?”Our next question comes from Russ Sanka, in Bristol, Tennessee. And it’s a good one for anyone who has a desk job. He asks:“What can I do at a desk job to aid in training/recovery? I have been using a stand up desk and a desk cycle I would like to hear your opinions and the research on the subject.”This next question comes from Ivan S. from Milan, Italy. He asks:“I love to ride my fixie in the ‘off-season’ to train on. I feel like it helps me with training and strength that I can’t get on a geared bike. Is this true? If so, what am I gaining and how does that help me when I go back to the geared bike?”Our final question comes from Peter Burghardt. He asks:“Can you address 'lunch ride syndrome'—the tendency to go out the door and immediately hammer down because you've only got 45 minutes. Do you have suggestions for lunch ride workouts of an hour or less?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you ready to go long? Today we want to introduce you to the fascinating world of ultra-distance cycling.  While there isn’t a true definition of what “ultra” means, and some of our guests like to say it is a state of mind more than anything else, for the sake of this discussion we’re talking about multi-day bikepacking events; randonneuring events which range from 200 kilometers up to 1200 kilometers, as in the case of the granddaddy of them all, Paris-Brest-Paris; and ultra-cycling races like RAAM, the 12- and 24-hour Time Trial World Championships, cross-state records, and the list goes on.  What are these events? How do you prepare, physically and psychologically, for these feats? What’s it like to ride when sleep-deprived? What should you eat out there on the lonely road? That, and so much more on today’s show. Our featured guest is Matt Roy, someone who has been competing at ultra events of all kinds for over a decade. Some of his accomplishments: Matt holds both the Maine north to south and west to east cross-state records, he holds the Saratoga 12-hour course record, he won the Trans-Atlantic Way pairs division in 2018, finished the Paris-Brest-Paris in 2019 and has completed more than 27,000 kilometers of brevets since 2007. His list of accomplishments goes on.  I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that also holds his Ph.D. in immunology from Harvard and now works in CRISPR and gene editing technology... a conversation for another episode. Joining Matt on the show today is his friend and colleague Nick Legan, the road brand manager for Shimano, who is also an accomplished ultra-distance cyclist, having completed Tour Divide and the 12-hour Time Trial World Championships, among other races. He’s also a tech and gear guru, having formerly served as the tech editor of VeloNews magazine as well as a professional mechanic for WorldTour teams.  We also hear from Jose Bermudez, another accomplished ultra-distance cyclist. As he says, his modest claim to fame is that he’s the first, and still the only, person to have completed RAAM, the Tour Divide, and the TransAm, a self-supported bikepacking race across the U.S. He’s also raced the 350- and 1000-mile Iditarod events in winter. Not only does he race, he also coaches: Jose is a USA Cycling Level 2 coach. Irrelevant though still interesting is the fact that he is a professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University. I’ll ask it again: Are you ready to go long? Let's make you fast!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring back a former frequent guest, Colby Pearce, who has since graduated to his own show, Cycling in Alignment.We start with a discussion on crank length, determining what you need, and how consistent you should be across your, presumably, fleet of bikes.That leads to a discussion on power imbalances, what constitutes an issue when it comes to imbalances, and what you can do to correct them if they arise.Next we turn our attention to CBD, and address its claimed anti-inflammatory effects. Is this something we want, or something we want to avoid, so the body’s natual inflammatory process can take place. We discuss.Finally, we’ll take on the topic of returning from injury, both the psychological and physical ramifications of that long process.All that and much more today on Fast Talk. Let's make you fast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices