Why Counting Calories and Avoiding Cramps is Harder Than You Think | Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast 497
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Welcome to the Ask a Cycling Coach podcast presented by TrainerRoad and coach Jonathan Lee. We have our CEO, Nate Pearson. Hello. In person yet again. It's good to have you. I want to go over some things really quick because today we're going to talk about burning calories, cramps, high heart rates, just a few questions. And then on top of that, I also want to follow up. Last weekend, I was in Bentonville, Arkansas for the final round of the Lifetime Grand Prix. Good times. It was...

We saw there's so many people that listen to this podcast or use trainer road. I'm super grateful that you all like took time out of your day to like, come say hi, or tell me your story, Tim, I'm thinking of you from Alabama is amazing. Uh, Tim mentioned the fact that like started listening to the podcast, using trainer road, lost a bunch of weight. He was there to do the a hundred mile gravel race.

Super nice. You lost significant weight. Yeah, yeah, big amount. I can't remember the exact number, so I don't want to like, you know, throw it out right now. You were closer to 550? It was in like the 200s. 200 pounds. Yes. Yes. That's a lot. Yeah, yeah. And just amazing. It was so cool. And there were so many people. Like when we were walking through the expo area and everything else, it was like hard to move through things. And that was just so cool to see all of you.

Uh, is, is awesome. In fact, there's one funny story. I was walking through the expo with, uh, Matt beers. Uh, we've become quite close and we're walking through and chatting and you explain who Matt Spears is for those who don't know marathon mountain biking. Yeah, exactly. Uh, multi-time, I think three time Cape epic winner. Um, he's marathon mountain bike is like his, his focus, but he's many times South African champion. Yes. With like a five,

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like 500 watt FTP, a horse, like a proper horse, just a huge, huge horsepower. Cause the horsepower is like 700 really close. Yeah. And, uh, but we're, so he's very recognizable, very tall, everything else he's, you know, covering his specialized stuff. Cause he races for specialized and.

We're walking through the expo and a woman comes up and she says, hey, can I take a picture with you? And I thought it was for Matt and it was for me. And then I was like, yeah, absolutely. And then I was like, do you want Matt to take the photo? Kind of like jokingly because like, of course, I thought – and she was like, sure. And like gives a phone name for Matt to take the photo. But then it gets even better. We take the photo. We're done. And then she says –

I'm just so excited for you. You have the whole thing wrapped up this weekend. It's awesome. And super excited for you and Sophia. It's just, you know, best wishes. And then I walked away and then I was like, oh my gosh, she thought I was Keegan.

So whoever you are listening to this, I'm so sorry. You probably like showed the photo to your friends. You're like, I met Keegan. And they're like, who's that guy? So not only was Matt Beers taking the photo, but also I'm not Keegan. That's funny. So how did Keegan and Sophia do? Yeah, man. So Sophia crushed it, like raced it super aggressively and then wisely as well. Like she kind of needs to like –

She can do that where she races aggressively and she can kind of thin the field a bit, but then she's really savvy with how she races and like where she positions and kind of how she influences the whole group too, with like how she's riding. She just really, she's very smart and she's racing that way too. She won, uh, she crossed the, cause there's this narrative and the results back it up from the previous years that Sophia would start seasons, super strong, like winning unbound. Right. And then toward the end of the season, it wouldn't be as strong.

There's this narrative out there like, oh, Sophia can't finish a season strong. She peaks and then she's fragile and she can't hold it.

So she crossed the finish line. And when she was crossing the finish line, she had her arms up and then she did the shush thing as well at the end. It was very good. She's a star, man. She has star power. It was pretty great. I figure, too, sometimes people haven't heard every episode that we've done. And they might not know when you say Sofia who that actually is. Sofia Gomez, Cape Epic winner. Sofia Gomez Villafane. That's hard for me to say. That's a great accent for you, I think. And then she is the partner of

Keegan Swenson, who was the top like, uh, marathon mountain biker in the U S correct. Correct. That's right. Yeah. And she's a, she's an Olympian. She races, she's from Argentina races for Argentina as well. Uh, just an incredible athlete. And she, yeah, unbound pretty much all of them, all the big ones basically. And, uh, so she won and she wrapped up the overall and then Keegan was there. He wrapped up the overall, but, um,

The racing is really interesting, Nate. And it's, it's actually kind of like in a strange way of relatable for you and I, because we've raced in NorCal road racing and how a NorCal road racing. Typically there's a team in our region called Mike spikes. And then there's a lot of potholes. Oh my gosh. That course, by the way, is scary. Like the dust, um, this year was really dry. The dust is so intense that you can't see anything at all.

That's scary. And the way that the dirt falls apart there on the dirt roads is it's kind of like if you've ridden on – driven on like dirt driveways where when some – like they've developed like potholes in the dirt where it's like a really sharp ledge in the dirt that kind of like breaks and chunks out. And there's big rocks in there that fall out too and –

Man, there were so many flats, and it just looks like the most terrifying thing to be riding in that front group at like 37 miles an hour or something down a slightly downhill section. And you can't see. It's probably hard to even see the helmet in front of you. And you have no clue what you're going over. It's like pretty sketchy. Yeah.

The way that it's similar also to the NorCal stuff is that, you know, and it's probably relatable for a lot of you, where you have like one really strong rider or maybe like a small strong team or something and they just dominate. And you know they're going to win. It's annoying. So what you do is you just, you mark them. And there's no other like, you know, in game theory and thinking of cycling from that perspective, it's really interesting when there's like seven different possibilities for a win with different people. Yeah. Yeah.

Because then it's like really engaging and interesting and dynamic. But when there's just really one scenario that's so obviously going to be the case, it's boring. And right now the – Like Legion. Yeah. They're just going to win the sprint. That's a good point. And like in the Lifetime Grand Prix right now, it's everybody just goes in knowing that Keegan's going to win.

And they're, they Mark Keegan and Mark Matt beers. And Matt really, if you look on paper, if you're an odds maker, you wouldn't say Matt's one to Mark, but when you have an FTP that high and your mat and he's just, he is who he is. Right.

So the past this year, it's really changed and unbound. We saw it and everything else where the field entirely marks just one rider and that Keegan's really strong. And if there's a decisive course, he can beat them even at that game. But otherwise the entire field versus Keegan, it's not going to go Keegan's way. Yeah. Like it's, it's just too much.

So, and in this case, it was the entire field. A good friend of mine, Dylan Hollinger, which shout out Dylan, got 19th overall. He's not a pro cyclist, works a full-time job. And he races in NorCal. And he said that, and he's raced Tulsa Tough. He's raced like all the, and like all the biggest road races in the US. And he said that from the, when neutral dropped at that race for the first hour, it was like five laps to go in a crit when legion's on the front.

And he said that it was any time Keegan or Matt went, that's exactly what it was. And he said it was, you know, he almost everybody I spoke to for the first hour of that race, they got an all-time power PR. And it was because Keegan or Matt were trying to get away. And the field wouldn't let them. The field wouldn't let them. And they'd drop back, and it would just boom, absolutely nothing. At one point, there were four riders off the front that I've genuinely never heard of. Like, I have no clue who they are. They let some really good riders like Alexi Vermeulen go up the road, and of course Alexi's going to win.

Um, but it's really interesting. So Keegan ended up, I think fourth in this one. Um, but this is, uh, we're going to start to see a change, I think, in how gravel racing unfolds. Uh, there's a lot of rumors of people bringing in like teams, like big brands coming in and like taking their pro road riders and saying, Hey, we have one gravel rider that we really have invested in. Um, all of you guys, you want to come over and do this stuff too. We'll pay you a lot of money. You'll come over here and you'll ride support. And like, it seems like, Oh, why wouldn't they do that?

Right? Yeah. It's going to be like road racing. Totally. As long as there's drafting, it's going to be like road racing. 100%. And there's a team, Ponermal Studios, put together a team this year where it's not like any sort of A-listers. They're really good athletes, but they're probably not going to be the ones that on their own are going to win.

but together they've been really clever because they're the only team that's really racing like a team and they have this really easy quote board game where there's only one way to win which is Keegan so it's really easy to strategize against that for this team and they're sending guys up the road and

crucial times and they're really playing it right and they're I would say punching way above their weight in results so it's kind of interesting because we're about to see a big shift I think over the next few years you can imagine that first hour or two if Keegan had teammates he wouldn't have to chase anything down it would just sit in the field the whole time yeah and you just keep doing that until people are tired and then you go yes

Or you have an extra, like one other teammate who is good, and then they go, you know, when everyone's tired, they go solo. And if they win solo, that's awesome. Yeah. But if not, then you counter, and then you win. I'm really surprised that they don't do that or people don't work as – yeah, there's no rules, right? None. Like if Keegan gets some friends together and be like, hey, let's work together. But also it's that like –

Everyone's a, what do they call it? The solo... The spirit of gravel. No, the solitaire or frontier. Privateer. Privateer. Everyone's a privateer. So it's hard to...

If you're not sharing the purse, the prize money, or you're not getting paid a salary, because that's what they get paid. Like, they have to win to get money, right? That's it. And that's kind of the hard thing is that there's not really enough money being invested into this quite yet. To have a team of five. To have a team, exactly. Yeah, the winning prize purse. I just saw the Carson City off-road check we have here. Keegan won $5,000. Yeah, exactly. So you split that between five people. Yeah. I mean, $5,000 is tough for travel and mechanic and all that already. Oh, totally. But the Lifetime series, though...

is a big payoff. Pays way more. What's the series? 30, 40,000 for winning the series. But then every race or most of the races along the way, they have additional prize purses that you get.

And then all these athletes, too, negotiated within their contracts if they have good contracts and an agent, probably that sort of thing. They're going to have bonuses in place with like a bonus cap. And if they perform at a specific level throughout these events, they might be able to get that. That's where the real money comes from is sponsorship. Same with like what Jordan got, a billion dollars from Air Jordans. That's super fascinating. Yeah, way more than his career. Yeah. I know that's an outlier, but still. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's kind of an interesting time for that whole space. And, um, but for what it's worth that weekend, if you're a bike person, like Scrabble biking or mountain biking, that's one of the more fun weekends you could go to. There's so much going on. The whole entire town is designed for bikes. It's like, it's beautiful. The restaurants are amazing, like really good food. And there's so many trails and there's like giant rideable, like Burning Man art basically, but it's designed to be like a rideable art piece. And like,

It's crazy. It's just a next level. It's a really fun weekend. So if you ever have one picked out, go big sugar. It would be really fun. So would this be a course that you'd want a fork on your gravel bike? I think so. You can't see and there's the potholes? I think so. You have less flats then, right? Yeah, and you could just like – you think you could relax so much more. Like that sort of like just tension that you carry. I know about it. Yeah. It really slows you down. And I feel like –

How many millimeters? Most people were running 2.4 tires on the front, 2.2 to 2.4 on their gravel bikes. That's a mountain bike tire. They're running mountain bike tires, yep. And then they were running out back. They were running like 2.2 mountain bike tires that they could fit them or like 2.0s or as close to 50s as they could. If you're below 50s, you didn't even want them. It's just completely changed. Why not ride like –

a light cross country bike, like an Epic or something with flight control. Yes. Yeah. Why not? I'm sorry. Yeah. Um, why not, uh, ride that? Like the only difference is the wide bars, but also it's easy, but if you're in a group, like the wide bars are so comfortable for long ride, they're more comfortable. Yeah. And, uh, it's just sketchy though, when you're riding with a bunch of people with drop bars and you have wide, it's really easy to like, they don't want to get hooked. Like, uh, I almost feel like you're safer on

Yeah. Because the wide bars, you get your elbows out and people don't get that as close to you than getting close. And you don't want to... Yeah. At least when I was at two, I think people didn't want to get underneath me. Yeah. I think it's more likely. I...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that if you have wide bars and you get tangled with someone, you're way more stable having your hands out wide on the ends than kind of like scrunched in in the drops. Yeah, the drop bars too can get tangled and it's really hard to get untangled. Why would you want drop? I don't understand. I know there's an arrow thing, but you can get pretty – I don't know what the difference in watts is, but –

We need to do a whole lot of questioning, I think, because everyone's starting to question tires, right? And now we're showing and we're seeing that even 2.4 well-designed tires on these 25 or 30 millimeter width, 25 to 30 millimeter width internal rims,

all that stuff, it's actually faster than gravel tires that are smaller. And the weight doesn't matter as much as we think, unless it's super steep. And in reality, chances are you're going to be spending very, uh, a very small portion of your day on the super steep sections, a very long section of your day on all the other stuff where it is faster. So fast too. I know like there's so Sophia, I just saw that she averaged 19 miles an hour for her race. Right. Um, which is thoroughly impressive, um, on like such rough terrain the whole way.

And I think that if we're questioning on tires and we're questioning on suspension and we're like, no, a softer is faster and we're changing all these things, but...

I really do wonder our drop bars actually faster. And it'd be great. Like, and I feel like that would be a really easy test. Like do one where it's just the bike and then do one with bike and rider and then test different widths as well. There we go. Josh Croxton. I'm sure you're listening to this. He does great tests for, um, for, uh, cycling news. Uh, he does fantastic tests and, uh, this would be a really good one to do. Like we should question the assumption that drop bars are faster.

I think that like on gravel, how many people do you see stay in the drops for the majority of the race? Oh, like hardly any. Hardly any, right? Especially now because hoods have been redesigned so they're longer. Yeah. And then everyone has this setup. You know, Pete was ahead of his time. Yeah, you're already dropped. Yeah, you run everything so low that you're already dropped. And the reason you do that is because you have just way more control when you're on the hoods and more dynamic position. Whereas when you're locked into the drops, you're really stuck down low. And your back's not like 100 miles on gravel. Your back is just going to die. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. And then the other thing is like on mountain bikes, they're usually, they're not designed as much for arrow and like the cable routing and stuff, but I think that's improving too. And I don't, my, my Epic doesn't have a single bit of cable showing like, you know, it's other than, I guess the front brake is the only one, but mine's, it's all set up and it's so sleek now because the brake levers don't hold your cables pointing out. They hold them parallel with the handlebars. So like my,

My cable doesn't actually go anywhere that doesn't have frame directly behind it, my front brake cable. And then there's no other cables visible. There's got to be some kind of stuff, but not like – I just think it's not as beneficial. I agree. We've all seen that. You put out more watts later in the race when you're comfortable by far than if you're uncomfortable.

Yeah. I could even see like, imagine you have a, just not as wide a handlebars because if that's the difference between here and here, just come in a little bit. And then you, you also get a dropper post. Yes. So when you are descending, it feels amazing. Um,

Yeah, I think it makes a whole lot of sense. I have my Epic there. I had flight attendant on and I had it in the position of plus two bias, which means it's more firm, less likely to unlock. And it was perfect. It was like nice and efficient and smooth. And then anytime a bump would come up, it would just be perfectly smooth over that bump. But all the gravel bikes beat you, right? Because you're on a mountain bike. Well, I wasn't racing. You know, I was just hanging out. But yeah, no, I think it would have gotten smoked regardless. No, I'm just joking. I have rid...

I rode most of my gravel races on an Epic and it was by far for me, the best choice. And I never was like, Oh, I couldn't get arrow enough on the really fast parts. I could just tuck myself in and it felt great. Um,

And there weren't that many of them. Then the really, most of the time you're in a pack anyways. So I just kind of duck my head down and you're getting that draft. Yeah, yeah. Man, unless you're really, really strong or really inefficient, chances are if you're just an average person doing a gravel race, you probably spend a huge amount of time in a draft, in which case the aerodynamics really don't, their impact is lessened to perhaps not even a measurable amount. We're beating this down, but like not having the mental load

of trying to dodge every single, like looking ahead for every single rock and just being like, I have 2.4s on and I'm just on a mountain bike and I'm going to chill. And then also having everyone else do that and just watching them. Yes. And a little bit of like, oh, that looks hard, but I don't have it. There's like more joy knowing that you're not doing something that if you made a different choice you would have to do.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's good to take a pragmatic look at it like that. So, uh, this weekend's Kona as well. I bet there are tons of you doing Kona that have used train road. It's amazing. It's the men's race. I should say in Kona, you know, two, I'm going to say this again.

I know what it is, but what is Kona? Because there could be so like used to everyone knowing what these things are. I had a good point, Nate, Ironman world championships. And it's on the historic traditional course. That is the one on the big Island of Hawaii. Um, and now they split it up so that every other year you get to race in Kona. And then the other year you race in Nice. Um, it seems like the athletes really look for most athletes look forward to Kona. Yeah, exactly. This year, women raced in Nice men racing Kona next year. It'll flip flop.

That's a good idea. Oh, yeah. I think so, too. For those who don't know, the women's race was always influenced by men's and age group men. It would be fast. And then even on the swim, there could be drafts. And then on the road, there's drafts. And it's just much better to have a pure women's race. And then the men's pros wasn't really influenced by it. But like you said, too, you were telling me they could fit more age groupers in Kona. Totally. Because...

There's less, you know, there's only one gender there. So the other gender. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it's probably better for the island. You and I have ridden there quite a few times and it's pretty tense with some of the locals there. And I think that lessening that might be a little bit better. Yeah, just twice as many. I don't know if they notice. Twice as many flip-offs. The women are usually pretty good on the roads. Yeah. I'm not sure they notice the difference really, but I guess they would notice the difference if they had all these age groupers.

And it was doubled, you know, and said they've, you know, maybe, maybe it's just kind of the same for him, but anyways, good luck to everybody racing Kona. I'm going to be watching some interesting points from that. Nate, uh, Magnus Ditlev said that he is going to be taking in 180 grams per hour on the bike, uh, throughout that. Now he's rumored to have like an FTP around like four 95, 500, uh,

Um, which I'm going to put this really quick. This is on the forum. If you go to train road.com/form, you can check it out. Um, w there's a Kona thread on there and we're all voting on like fastest bikes with fastest swims, but kind of going back to like the athlete thing. A lot of them have like bonuses in place if they can be the fastest in the swim or fastest in the run. Some people go just for that. Yeah. They do it. Then they're like ripcord and they just have a really long bike ride in hot and hard conditions and are long run.

But, um, something interesting on this. So, uh, Magnus did live less. So FTP assumed around four 85, let's just say it's probably a bit low. Honestly, he's probably higher, which is just bonkers for me to think about. He's really tall. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, so I wouldn't be surprised if his bike power as a result is between three 75 to three 90 over that course. Yeah.

which is just crazy. It's 112 miles and he would do that in four hours. If you look at just the mechanical work that he would be producing, it's somewhere between 5,200 to 5,600 calories that he burns on the bike leg alone in four hours, which is just insane. So then when you look at that and him taking in like 180 grams per hour,

It's actually seems like crazy insufficient. Cause that's, even though that's crazy in and of itself, like taking in 2,900 calories in sugar over a four hour bike ride is crazy, right? Like that's, that's impressive, but over a day would be, but then he's burning possibly like even more than what I'm saying here. Cause these are kind of conservative numbers. Like he might be burning almost 6,000 calories just on the bike.

And it's kind of funny because somebody chimed in, there's a really good question, um, from Joe on, or maybe it was from power 13 on the forum. And he basically said like, is he taking all that in to be able to like kind of bank it to then help on the run? Cause that was the traditional logical theory. But we talked to Dr. Faffenbach about that. And he's like, think about it logically. It doesn't make sense. Like your body isn't storing any glycogen. It's just burning hot.

And when, if you're taking something in like that, it's not going to be like, oh, I'll store you for later in the muscles. It's like, especially when you're riding at that power, the taps are open and like everything's draining out. So he's either using that or he isn't using it. And it's causing some sort of gut distress is kind of the assumption that we have.

But they aren't banking it for the run. It is a whole lot harder to take in higher calories on the run because of all the jostling. It's like you're going to be depleted just how much are you going to be depleted. And that's what you're kind of going for, the least amount of depletion possible. Yeah. Which is still going to be a lot. This kind of brings up like a point of diminishing returns. Back to like Matt Beers too in the sense that like –

you know, a high FTP, we all dream about it, but at some point you kind of get to a spot where there do like downsides occur, you know, like with, with how much power they're putting out. It's such a hard, hard problem. Having a really hard time. Let me tell you about it. Well, my biggest, well, in life used to be so hard. The other part though, that people don't talk about enough is the heat because three quarters of the, of the calories you burn goes to heat or the kilojoules. Um, yeah, like we're not very efficient.

And if you – especially at a hot place like Kona, bigger riders already have problems. And then you have more area for evaporative cooling. But putting out that much more power is that much more energy and heat on your body. And it's easier to overheat. There was like – I remember when – I'm blanking on his name now. He was a bigger –

Maka. Maka, yeah. Yeah, when he used to race, he would talk about that. He was too big. And that was like, you're too big to win. Obviously, he's not. Yeah. But that was the thing that you had to be a small person. And it makes sense to be able to have easier cooling. Yeah. But also, things have come a long ways for helmets and clothing and stuff.

I'm really curious to see like all that. This is, it's kind of cool. If you're a cyclist, uh, tune in to watch Kona this weekend. I think it's on like outside online or something like that, or Ironman TV probably, but you can, this is where we'll see the things because triathletes like are willing to try and test things that cyclists because of vanity would never be willing to do. And this is where we'll see a lot of things that will be used later on. So I'm really curious to see how they're dealing with cooling, um,

Um, how they're doing different things this year, a bunch of riders. Now the Norwegians are in their crazy stretched out Superman positions where like they're you typically on a TT bike, want your elbow to be not too far in front of your shoulder when it's in that rest position, because it's really hard to hold that takes a bunch of Latin engagement really hard on your shoulders, your core. And it's the sort of thing that will distract you and not allow you to put out the power you need to, but then also just wear you out for the run afterward.

But these guys are like, and I'm showing it online or on YouTube right now, but their arms are like almost flat. And it's totally different. Their backs are flat, their arms are high, and then they're just like really far out in front. Who would be a rider? Yeah, I'll pull open some pictures for you, and then we'll put them up on screen too so then you can see them.

But it's kind of like this Grandma Bree of Superman position that we've heard of. That was the fastest. Yeah, exactly. And it got outlawed. Yes. And it's totally changed. The UCI hates fun. Yeah. Yeah. So here is Gustav Eden. I'm going to send this over. I'll drop it into our chat, Nate, so then he can see it here. And it's pretty –

You'll see. He's pretty darn stretched out. And I'll put this up on screen so everyone can see it now too. Very stretched out. And I'm not sure how you hold that position for 112 miles in that wind. That looks so painful. At power. And look at how tight his hip angle is too. I don't understand that. But these athletes, like— How tall is he? He's probably around my height, I would assume. He's somewhere around 5'10", 5'11". So— How does he see? Because, like—

If you put your head up, your neck angle is going to be so severe. It's a really good point. That's going to hurt. You see it now. He's looking at his front tire. Just in front of it, kind of. I guess it's closed course. It's, what, 10 meters for drafting? Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be like so much. It's like a line that you can follow. Yeah. The biggest thing to me, too, is the hip angle there is just so tight because he's so far forward and flat back. Yeah.

Um, man, it's, but the thing is these two athletes in particular, Gustav Eden and Christian Blumenfeld, they are not going to like haphazardly throw something at the wall and see what sticks on world championships day. Like they're, they're very measured. So I assume they've worked on this, but it's pretty wild to see.

So it'll be really interesting to see the race and good luck to everybody doing it. It's an amazing weekend on the note of racing. Nate, can we talk about the podcast race? You mentioned that a couple episodes ago. Yeah. A bunch of people we've posted on the forum about like which ones we should do. There's a huge amount of interest, particularly from people from Australia. They're coming out in droves. Yeah. The three peaks challenge for years. Yep. That's the one that they keep talking about. They say we need to go do.

Um, a bunch of people it's like Australia and Michigan, Michigan has no better evangelist than like Iceman. Yeah. That one of the Margie Jessic. Um, I'm not doing Margie Jessic. I just want to put that out there. Everyone that I've spoken to that has done it says that it's, I mean, it's a truly miserable day on the bike and it's kind of like a David Goggins sort of thing. Like, you know, like be miserable for a really long time. And then that in and of itself is like a, an achievement, but I don't want to do that.

Um, and then on top of that too, I'm not going to do like, this won't be a mountain bike event that I'm gonna do next year. What we're talking about is a race that I'm going to prepare for. We're going to talk about, uh, share the experience the whole way through that I'm going to do next year. I've done a lot of mountain bike focused stuff next year. I think I'm going to do BC bike race. They invited me, which was really cool. And thank you to them for inviting me up for that. That'd be great.

Our daughter will be old enough. I think that we can do a camping trip, like in an RV up there for a week and she'd actually have fun. So I'll be doing that next year. No mountain bike this year, no triathlon this year. That's like 2026, 2027. I want to do a full distance. That would be cool in 27. So, uh, but this is a road one. Uh, I think we should put it to a vote on the forum, Nate, like put up a poll. What do you think?

get people's ideas are going to be in it. Yeah. Okay. So there's a whole lot of different races that people have suggested, but, and I put up like a whole kind of a list of ones that are like are interesting or that I've heard of.

There's tons of them. Yeah. So there's, yeah. Uh, so I think that there there's, we ride Flanders. There's the Perry Rube one. Um, isn't there one that you can do both within two weeks? They're within two, they're within a week of each other. You go there and then I would be there for a handful of days before one, and then you'd be there a whole week and then you do the next one. And you go put those as one race. Okay. So you have to do both. Oh man, that would be intense.

So both of those. And the thing I don't know about Flanders, if anybody can help me, there's like 270 or 40 kilometer distance. That's a big day. You're doing the big day. This is your job, John. There's 170 kilometer distance and then like another one.

I, I, I want to make sure I do whatever is the most competitive one. So let me know which one is the most competitive. I can't really tell. Yeah. Not like, cause like unbound has the XL. Yeah, exactly. That's like kind of a 350. Yeah. That's not really the one that everyone does though. Yeah. I would assume that everyone does the, the full thing at Flanders and that's the one, but let me know if that's wrong. Um, there's okay. In addition, there's a bunch of gravel races too, like Finland gravel, um, unbound obviously is one. Um,

There's the BWR races. There's trucker. That's a really big one in Europe. You do road stuff though. I know I want to do road too. Right. I think Flanders or Flanders and, uh, Rubea road sound pretty great road though. Oh yeah. Yeah. Mostly. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, aside from that, I've been, I've heard that ride London sportive is not one to do, but.

Marathon de los Dolomites, I think is how you say it. Marathon of the Dolomites. Yeah, yeah. That one sounds and looks absolutely incredible. There's also the one that's the Strada Bianchi Gran Fondo, which that one looks also like, if you can ask where my heart is, that one looks amazing. And that's where I would want to go. They also have Le Tap de Tour, which I feel like should be the most famous one, but I never hear anything about it. It's the Tour de France like Fondo, but you never hear anything about that.

Uh, and then, yeah, I guess aside from that, the other big one, the one that's been suggested by tons of people is loaded jaw here in the United States. That's Logan to Jackson. It's a 200 mile road race, really popular one here in the U S and I've never done it. Um, so let me know if there are other ones we'll put up a poll. If there are other events, let us know down below in the YouTube description here, and then go to the forum. I'm going to link to it in the description high up so you can see it.

We'll do a poll. And then can you have veto rights on this, but wherever the poll says I go? Is that how this works? Yeah. Do you have – on three peaks, do you have to do all three peaks? I think so. Yeah. You might be able to do less. It's a big day. I think it's like 150 miles or something. Yeah. It's 4,000 meters of climbing. Yeah. So it's like a proper 16,000 feet of climbing almost day. So it's a big day. I think you should just do the Urbex.

Flanders won and Three Peaks. That would be a... Because they're like ones in March and then... Yeah, Three Peaks is later on. Or then Three Peaks is later on. Yeah. Peaks Challenge. No, it's in... Oh, wait. April. April. Oh, that's too close. Well, that's really close. That's really close. Not too close. You can just...

Tell everyone how you'd peak for a 2A race. Sorry, wife. I mean, if you're good at one, you're good at the other. Yeah, that would be pretty rough to be able to do all that on the family. Yeah. Let us know which ones. Let's vote. And make sure you include Ram. No. No. Nate is not. No. Not doing Ram. It'll be a good time. I also am going to be doing a handful of gravel stuff, but like separately, this was going to be, that's not this. This is going to be the main focus is this one for my season. So it'll be a lot of fun.

Uh, let's get into some questions. This one's from Richard says based on recent podcasts, this is a question to John. Um, Nate, this is the podcast that we just did, uh, with Dr. Jose are at the, and Sarah, where he did that. He followed or collected data from, uh, women's tour de France cyclist.

And when they did doubly labeled water as the measuring technique, it's this really expensive technique where you drink this special water that has two different things in it that bind to different things in your body. And based on what you are getting rid of, uh, they're able to understand actually how many calories you burn. It's the most accurate you can get without being in like a closed space.

Right. So it's way more accurate than any other method that they have, and it's very impressive. It's very expensive. And they did this for a woman in the Tour de France. So they have – and they had access to her power files and everything else, and it's a very interesting study. I linked to it down there too, Nate. If you want to click on it, you can check it out.

Um, but within this, here's what Richard says. Thanks for the research podcast on the women's energy expenditure paper. I couldn't wrap my head entirely around some of the numbers and particularly the expenditure of 7,500 kilocalories per day or calories per day.

It seemed very high for the volume of writing done, looking at the figures quoted in the paper, her 20 minute power was two 89, assuming 0.9, five to give approximate FTP of two 74.5. So he goes through and he basically like runs all the numbers and he's like, I don't get this. This can't add up. He says, um, when he's talking about the biggest day that, that this athlete had, he says that the numbers just don't add up.

And then he basically says, would be, they'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on this as I feel this sure would be something that you would have picked up on too. And asked after the podcast, great work as always. We also got this question, a few of these questions this week, because people looked into the study. And if you'll remember at the end of the study, I, or at the end of the podcast, I said, I have some questions afterward because I didn't want to unlike doing math live on air. It doesn't make for a good podcast content.

And I wanted to make sure that I understood it first. So yeah, link to the study. And I want to go over some basics really quick that can help you understand studies like this in some different terms. First, within the study, if you look at table one, within that, you can see that it states that there's mechanical work and gross metabolic work. So mechanical work is what we measure with a power meter. It's measured at the pedals. Gross metabolic work is the assumption of the total metabolic cost.

to produce the mechanical work. And most people, they assumed in this case an average gross efficiency of 19%. And if you reduce what they had in this case of their power of 3,898 calories that they burned, and you reduce that by 19%, it's pretty darn close to 3,099 what they had. That's a low efficiency though, right?

Yeah. So they say in some cases that like, you know, I think that the window that I've seen is like 17 to 24 or something like that. Yeah, we thought like 23, 24, but I don't know. I think with us average people, we're probably a bit higher, you know, whereas this athlete, you know, one of the best in the world in this case, finished 10th at individual time trial world championships 10 days later, by the way. Is it that way or is it the opposite? I thought higher efficiency. Oh,

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They should be like higher. Yeah. I should be like 15. You should be 15. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. So 17% or 19% is what they assumed there. So that's the difference. If you ever see like gross metabolic work labeled, that's because they're trying to take into account the lack of efficiency that they have and they're trying to figure out what the difference would be there. Now...

Uh, but the numbers still don't add up. Cause if you look at that gross metabolic work, and then you look at the basal metabolic rate of this athlete of around 1700 calories, that brings a total calorie burn based on how we calculate it just by adding up these two numbers of 5,643 calories. And they move the rest of the day. What's that? Yeah. So this, and this is the key thing. So their energy intake was 4,517 calories. So that soon assumes that they would be at like an 1100 calorie, like deficit at the end of the day. But as Nate said, it's,

Not only do you move around more, but there's a whole lot more that goes on with the body when you're in the middle of a grand tour. So you're recovering from the previous days. It's so much work. Yeah. Like you're hungrier after you do it. Like the next day when you do a ride, you're so much hungrier. Yes. Your body's wanting more calories. So this is a great example of them having something really measurable with power data.

And then they have another thing that's very accurate or proven to be accurate. This doubly labeled water. And they said on average, it was 7,500 calories per day is what this athlete burned based on the doubly labeled water. So it's bridging the gap in between that, where we actually start to see the fact that like, oh,

Maybe if I'm just calculating everything, but like I burned this many calories during my workout. So that plus my basal metabolic rate is what I need to eat and nothing more that that's probably putting you in a tricky situation where you're not getting enough calories. Cause in this case, 7,500 calories is what they averaged, like average out across the week per day is what they burned. So in that case, this athlete is even on this specific day, up to 3000 calories in the hole at the end of the day.

based on what they consumed and what they took in for all their food off the bike and on the bike.

Uh, this athlete did end up losing 2.2 kilograms through the end of the race had increasing performance as well through the end of the race, which is really interesting. And it challenges a bunch of narratives, but this is like, I think that this is the difference here. Um, and it's super important for us to keep in mind. There's these phenomenons that are talked about, like the afterburn effect after you train, you have heightened metabolism. And the reason you have heightened metabolism is like you said, Nate, like you're just trying to recover, like your body's building, it's doing a lot of work.

Um, so this is why I think it's always tougher than we think to just make it a straight across equation of calories burned and workout plus basal metabolic rate. If you're doing that and you're trained consistently, like a lot, you might be putting yourself in the spot where you actually are in like an energy deficit chronically, you know? For sure. And just think about like, um, in a gravel race, all the extra work, um,

Or even a road race. Just keeping your body upright on the bike, that doesn't get measured in the power meter. And think about being in that position for four or five hours versus sitting in a chair, how many more calories that would be. Because your back starts hurting for a reason because it's tired, right? Yeah. You're using it. And thinking of like Gustav's position, that has to be a huge amount of energy just going to – that's a plank. That's a hard plank to hold. Yeah.

Just like take your neck and raise it up and down every five seconds for four hours. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. They've seen like they've done studies where people just who like fidget with their leg, how many extra calories and it's significant. It's significant. Like a thousand. Yeah. Yeah.

There's this study I saw back in college where they had people eat like I think extra 2,000 calories per day or something like that for like two weeks and they measured. Everyone got bigger besides one person, one – I'm assuming ADHD guy. And they – he didn't eat any weight at all. And he still ate everything and they assumed it was because –

he was just always fidgeting and he just had more energy. So he just fidgeted more and he just the whole time, just, you know, drumming on the table and like moving his legs and stuff. Uh, yeah, that's, that's a lot of energy. Oh yeah. Huge amount. And then also on top of that, like the conditions in a stage race too, like, uh, it, it,

I don't know if this is the case, but I've heard plenty of times in Grand Tours that they don't stay in great hotels, that it's hot, so their body is trying to deal with a lot of discomfort all throughout this whole thing too. There's a lot to keep in mind, but I feel like this is hopefully a bit like this might help some people relax a bit about this that tend to be more numbers-oriented and feel like they can't break that number.

Uh, in this case, this is great evidence to show that like, we can try to measure things as close as we can, but a very reliable metric shows that there's more to calorie burn than we just assume with these simple numbers. That study like disproved a huge amount of things, or I should say maybe challenged a bunch of assumptions. And this is one of them that like, where as simple to work out is just like, you know, X plus Y equals that. Um, it's pretty cool. It's a really, it's like a landmark study, I think, and something that's really interesting to see moving forward. So, yeah.

Okay, Nathan's question.

It says, uh, Hey, all used to be a chronic cramper, but thanks to this podcast, I had an experience to cramp from 2018 to 2021 says a truly glorious chapter in my life. What did you do? Yeah. Tell everyone. Yeah. Uh, he does actually go over that. So Nathan says, but a bit later in 2022, when it seemed high carbon takes became the topic to shore. I started to experience them once again. I'm a systems engineer by trade and firmly believe there is a reason for every problem that can be discovered through analysis.

or through thorough analysis, he says. But I'm stumped on this one. Let's analyze what removed the cramps from 2018 to 2021. I typically cramp toward the end of really hard races and hot weather. I got a sweat test and found out I was losing about 1,250 milligrams of sodium and 1.25 liters per hour. That's a lot. That's a lot.

I think that Alex Wilde was like almost 2,000 milligrams of sodium an hour, which is crazy. But this is a very high sweater. Like this is high sodium loss and high volume of fluid that you lose as well.

Since this discovery, I've matched and exceeded these intake rates and it completely erased cramping. So maybe that's, if you're listening to this and wondering, maybe that's a good thing to check off. Now let's look at what's happening now. I'm still taking in 1,250 milligrams of sodium and 1.25 liters of fluid per hour. And he says that this is validated with a recent sweat test that my rates have not changed.

I'm also taking in 90 to 120 grams per hour of carbohydrate, and all of this is consumed through a combination of NeverSecond's C90 Drink Mix S200 Sodium Booster and their gels. That sodium booster is like a one cap, I think, is 200 milligrams of sodium, and it has the...

It starts with a G and I can't think of the name, but it has something else in there that's proven through research to help you retain glycerol, and it's helped you hydrate better. And then he also says he takes in their gels. So it sounds like there's some sort of mix there. All that together is how he gets to those levels.

I'm cramping at the end of races or hard efforts. The only thing that has changed since 2018 to 2021 is that my FTP and performance has gone up substantially. I don't have a train road account for you to analyze the data, but I went from 4.1 Watts per kilogram up to as high as 5.2 Watts per kilogram. Currently at 4.9 Watts per kilogram. That also has me at the front of the amateur fields and some of the biggest gravel races in the country. Whereas before I was a mid pack cat three.

These cramps have occurred at the end of every single big race of 2024. And every year they have become more frequent. The weirdest part is it seems I'm not alone. All the guys I'm battling with also seem to be battling cramps at the end of these races.

So do you have any thoughts on what could be causing this phenomenon? I do have thoughts. I actually reached out to Keegan on this too to get his thoughts too. You want to just say mine first or yours first? Yeah, you go first. Here's what I think is the racing at the front of a gravel race is going to be way more dynamic and way more punchier than you would at the back. And the same...

like repeatability, especially going hard and going anaerobic is way different than your cat three. And you just like kind of coast through where you're like, kind of like sweet spot and some threshold. And if you had a train road account, um, I would do more of the, yeah, might be 5.5. But, um, but also as you get closer to these races, it'd be more of a, like, um, dynamic training at the end to make sure that you're good with those repeated efforts. Um,

Yeah, because there's got to be some attacks and more surging and punching, especially then in the beginning also. And that beginning stuff, as we just talked about with Keegan and Matt, that happens at lower ranks too to be able to get the –

just positioning for those first climbs, right? Or sketchy things when you're in a pack. Yeah. And the, the, the harder you go, the more that'll impact you later in the race too. Yeah. So I would maybe argue that your race efforts aren't like your training efforts and especially that those kind of dynamic and hard hitting.

That's a super good box to check. Really good point, Nate. I kind of have like a... And I agree with that perspective. And I have like another layer on top of that. And this is backed up by Keegan too. So for any gamers out there, you'll be familiar with the concept of overclocking. I probably can't describe it very well. But Nate, can you describe like what overclocking is? Yeah, you take your CPU and it runs at a certain megahertz and you go into the BIOS and you set it higher, which has risk of the thing melting. And you got to have... If it gets... Because you...

It's set to a certain speed so that it doesn't overheat. People have like special fans or like water cooling on their CPU to make it go faster. So yeah, it's, it's high, low reward, high risk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that forgive the, maybe this is me and misunderstanding it a bit, but I think that taking in high carbon take has allowed us to overclock ourselves a touch.

Meaning that like, um, we're seeing, I'm seeing personally, I shouldn't say we as in like, it's some large thing, but I can say for sure that I have seen this and a lot of top end athletes have seen this too. Great evidence of this is in the study that we were just talking about that athlete for three and a half hours at 0.9, two I F. Like that's like very impressive, right. To be able to do that. We're seeing higher intensity factors on races than we used to see.

Uh, and I think that a lot of this is when you are taking in more carbohydrate like that, you're adapted to it. You're well-trained all that stuff.

It allows you to ride it like a fulfill more of your potential. It allows you to push your body further than you would have. Yeah, exactly. And I think that there's a certain point where like, like you said, it's dynamic racing. It's super hard. We're like, I don't care how well fueled you are and everything else. You're, you're really damaging your muscles. It's really hard work on them and they're going to give out. And I think that at the front of races where like, this is really fast racing at the front of this, this is like, you know, cream of the crop sort of thing.

When you're up there, you're pushing that hard and everybody around you, they're also pushing that hard and they're fueled and they're kind of overclocking to be able to do that. I do think that's why cramping is more prevalent than it used to be. And I think that this isn't, and I asked again to Keegan and everything else, and he agrees and he has the same concept and other riders also agree. And they think that it's enabling everybody to push harder.

And as a result, everyone is experiencing cramping more. Like at the end of Big Sugar, I think I can't think of an athlete that I didn't see coming in like either pinching and palpating a specific spot because it was cramping and athletes were talking about it. It's just it's common. I think it's because we're kind of overclocking ourselves, carbs. Granted, maybe there's a catch-up point here where hopefully if we're fueling ourselves adequately, that allows our fitness to increase. I think it would be the opposite. Yeah.

What do you think? I mean, if you didn't eat enough, you would be more likely to cramp. Yeah, I do think that too, right? I mean, if you aren't taking it enough. But I think that it just allows people to go deeper and push harder and damage the muscles perhaps even more as they're doing it. I think maybe to argue my point more, it gets it so that later in the race you are feeling better to do dumber things. Yeah, yeah. And then so you can like be more sporadic and stuff, more dynamic in the racing when maybe if you were more tired, you wouldn't do that. Yeah.

There's a whole lot to be said about that level of like, yeah, that specificity for what you're going to focus or what you're going to face on race day. I want to see like a power file. Yeah, right. Yeah. And especially the heat too. When you say that the, what I don't also doesn't make sense to me is your power has gone up so much yet you are sweating the same amount because what we just talked about in the last segment,

The more power you do, the more heat is outputted, right? And then you're gonna have probably your body should respond more to sweat in order to maintain the same internal body temperature or you're overheating. Like one of those things has to happen. So the fact that you're still at the same rate of fluid

I don't think your sodium intake or the sodium rate, I don't think would change, right? You can sweat more, but the sodium still comes out the same rate. Correct. Andy Blow was mentioning that it's largely genetically controlled in terms of how much sodium you lose, but the volume fluctuates more frequently. And two, when you do those, like the liters of fluid per hour lost, it's not something you can just do on the trainer or in like...

You've got to go out, in my opinion, out on the road in similar conditions and do that and then measure your whole body weight with all the stuff that you're carrying and then afterwards and then measure how much water and the change of that. And you can't pee. Because when you're riding outside, the speed of the evaporative cooling is going to make a big impact on how much you sweat versus inside. The temperature, that's all going to impact. I think I got up to like

Was it two liters per hour or something indoors? Yes. Like a ton. Dumping. But I was cursed with that high FTP. So it's just one of those things you have to live with. No, I'm just kidding. Nowhere near. It's funny. My high FTP is like there all day and during. It's like what Magnus writes for a bike. Like zone two. Yeah. It's insane, right? Yeah. Now it's like my one minute power. Yeah. I rode once this week. So we'll see what feels right again today. Nice. Nice.

But yeah, I think that's another thing to look at is just to challenge that thing that it does not make sense that you're – if everything else was equal and you're putting out more power, that your 1.25 liters of fluid per hour is the same. And also as you're more trained, usually people do also sweat a little more.

So, but he was already well trained before. So like 4.1 to 5.2 is already, you're like in the 98th percentile to the 99.99 percentile. Sharpening a razor. Yeah, exactly. I, I, this is a, and this is another assumption that's not science-based or anything else, but let's hear it. I'm here for this. Uh, I, I'm not sure that sweat rate in terms of sodium loss too, is as static as perhaps we think. Like, I think that,

Like you said, based on the conditions that we're in, I feel like I've witnessed that it changes, not just with me, but with other individuals. But also sodium. I honestly don't ever remember having sweat stains, like salt stains, on my kits prior to 2019. And 2019 and stuff, that's when my FTP was higher. That's when I started taking in a bunch of sodium. That's when I started being more focused on that sort of thing. And

Now, if it's any sort of ride, if it's longer than two hours, I got sweat stains. And salt stains, and everyone does. That's pretty normal to have these salt stains. I think that's changed, whether that's because we're taking in more. And if we're taking in more and it's showing on our kit, I would assume that we're actually pushing out more sodium than we used to if it didn't show up before. But I think that it's a bit more plastic than we think. And based on the conditions and what you're riding in,

I really do think there's a case to be made for really altering how much volume you're taking and sodium you're going to be taking in. And that should not be just static to 1.25 liters. And that's just what I do every time, you know, because you could also be like water, like taking in too much if it's really cold and you're not going to be losing that much.

And if you're taking too much, it's going to make you need to pee. It's going to, you're going to be carrying extra weight that you don't need to, whether it's inside your body or in the bottles. So yeah, I think it's like, uh, we might be in the early stages of just kind of like, oh, we should actually take in salt and liquid at a specific amount. And later on, we're going to figure out that we actually can be way more detailed with it and nuanced.

So that's my thought there. Um, I think that it's largely based on the work you're doing is really demanding of your body and whether that's because the race is really hard, whether that's because you're allowed to push your body even further because of the high carbon intake.

I think that that's what you're getting down to. I mean, Nathan, you're cream of the crop. You're like front of the pack. Thank you. Did you submit this, Nate? Yeah. So I think that's kind of the direction that I'm leaning toward is the work part. It seems the most logical. Okay. Last question on this one. Nick says, I'm 50 years old and I've consistently trained for the past 14 years. I've had a personal coach and used TrainerRoad.

I've noticed an observation during training and races that my heart rate average and maximum heart rate have been increasing over the past three years. And this is at 50 years old. And my performances in races are my performance in races has been consistently good. Is this increasing heart rate representative of improving fitness? And is there anything that can be inferred based on this observation? I put this one in here too, because I wanted to ask like you, Nate, like

Have you seen, because typically they always say that it's like 220 minus your age, you know, that's like the general guideline for your heart rate. And I wasn't saying that you're an old person. But no, what I'm getting at is, have you seen that like steady decline in heart rate max over the years? You have like a hummingbird heart, right? Since I stopped doing a lot of endurance work, I don't really know. It's still pretty high based on kind of recent workouts. But yeah,

while I was training, Noah would kind of just stay up and even raise. And I think, of course, Nick, talk to your doctor. This is non-medical advice, all that sort of stuff. But what I have understood is, Nick, what you want is the difference between your resting heart rate and your max heart rate to be giant. And it looks like you are increasing that, and that's showing your body ability to be able to, like,

dynamically respond to racing. And again, talk to a doctor, but I would say this is a very beneficial thing for your heart, and able to operate at both points. And I bet you at the same time, Nick, your resting heart rate has gone down. And I bet your blood pressure has gone down. And I bet you look at the rest of your blood, and it's probably great. Those would all be signs of getting fitter. Yeah, I went to...

The Mayo Clinic, a while back I had sinus infection stuff and I did this executive program there. And I was with the cardiologist there and he was like, you're off the charts, blah, blah, blah, with all the heart rate stuff. And that's what he – I think he's actually the one who told me because I was scared with the high heart rate. Some people are lower. And he – now that I remember it, it was him, that we do want the big range in it. And there was also something in my heart that they looked at that was like a sign of –

something really bad. But he said, when it's in athletes, it's like the way my heart flexes back. I said on the podcast a long time ago that that was like a sign of cardiovascular disease. But because it was paired with my fitness, it wasn't an issue. Gotcha.

So make sure you. That's kind of interesting thinking about that. Like your heart is probably working hard to be an athlete and it's also probably working hard if you're truly unhealthy, obese, that sort of thing. And as a result, it's probably. It wasn't even that. Might be some similarities. It was the way that the heart like came back after it pumped. Oh, okay. Um,

While I was under – I don't remember exactly. It was like six years ago. Yeah. But there was a podcast where I talked about it. Cool. This is – Good luck. Dick through. There are a lot of podcasts where we dug into like trying to track down Nate's chronic sinus infection issues and everything else. Okay. So this is kind of an – I've seen –

I saw like the textbook decline of like one to two beats per minute every year. And I saw that like across the board. And I'm like, again, I'm like center of the bell curve guy, like 220 minus your age does work out for me. I know it doesn't work out for everybody. But once I got COVID, I got like a eight, seven,

beat drop in my max, which is pretty crazy. And then ever since then, it's been like three or four beats per year. And my heart rate max does, it's not that high anymore. I used to be like a high one nineties sort of person, um, way back when. And now I'm like, I rarely see one 80. Um,

Really? It doesn't get that much higher. Yeah. So it's pretty interesting. I am actually due this year to go through and get a full comprehensive cardiovascular evaluation. And I would recommend everybody do this too. If you're like an athlete over 50, I think it's a really good idea if you haven't had it. And it's to make it like a regular thing. For sure. My doctor...

or just my normal family doc, he recommends it for everybody. And for athletes, he recommends it more frequently. And within that, you'll probably get an electrocardiogram, an echocardiogram. And then in some cases, you might do an exercise stress test, which by the way, it won't feel very stressful for those of you that are used to doing a ramp test or something. It's not a ramp test. It's just like when you're exercising, like jogging on a treadmill or something, they're going to be looking at what's going on. And then in some cases, they'll also do like a blood test. And

So like if you can do that, then you can probably check off anything. Cause Nick, in your case, like you would want to check this off being a 50 year old athlete. You wouldn't want to make sure that you're in good health. Um, and assuming that's the case. Yeah. Like this is probably a sign that you are like positively adapting to training, that you're getting better as time goes on here.

But there's kind of some interesting things here that we're learning about heart rate that aren't necessarily, that maybe contradict something. So this is interesting. It was on the podcast with Peter Attia and Tadej Pogacar. And he was asking Tadej about some of his training and everything else.

He asked him about his resting heart rate and his resting heart rate. He wasn't remarkably low. Like there's rumors of John Tomac being like 20 beats per minute. You know what I mean? Like back in the day and with Tadej, it wasn't that low. And he said that, yeah, like, you know, if I'm training a bunch, my resting heart rate, isn't low. It's elevated. And, and I think that that contradicts in our minds. We think like, oh, that person's super fit. They probably have a really low resting heart rate. And if you don't have a low resting heart rate, you might be thinking I need to get fitter.

Um, and if your heart rate's going, your resting heart rate's going up, you might be thinking I'm not doing enough. I need to do more. When in reality, it might be that way simply just because you are, you're fatigued, like you're chronically dosing your body with training. And I think that that's a big misunderstanding that exists there. And also like, if you're very fresh, you're likely to see a higher heart rate than if you train consistently, because once again, your heart is just, it's under more load, more consistently, and it's a lot tougher for it.

And the other side of it too, is while your heart rate at X Watts is a very common thing that people use as like a marker of like, oh, well at 200 Watts, I was at 150 beats per minute, but now I'm at 140 beats per minute. So that means I'm way fitter. That's like the assumption.

And I think that it can be generally used as like an indication of like long-term training adaptations, but it's definitely not a perfect indicator. And I think that this is an example, Nick, in the case of, you know, you're saying the fact that, you know, your heart rate has gone up, but you're not talking about it being any sort of specific number. If it's just a few beats or something like that, it's within like five beats, it's probably relatively inconsequential.

But if it's something that's really big, then yeah, I would get it checked out. But heart rate is just so tricky. I'm just looking through past RAM tests and even back to 2020, sometimes I'd be 187 as a max heart rate and other times it'd be 191, which that's a good difference. And I think it is due to freshness. And if you think about your heart rate dropping over time, if you just looked at said like your power to heart rate ratio,

Your heart rate would always drop, right? So therefore you're always getting fitter. But that's not the case. Yeah, agreed. This brings up an interesting point. This week I was going through and looking at a study, and I just copied it in so you can check it out here, Nate, and I'll link down below so people can see it.

Um, this is kind of similar to actually what we spoke about with the study with the nutrition and the, when the pro female cyclist and the tour de France, uh, this is by Nicholas Bordeaux and, um, it's daily cardiac autonomic responses during the tour de France and a male professional cyclist. I'm not going to go into depth on this because I'm still analyzing this research and I want to make sure that I fully understand it. But an interesting takeaway is that this one, um,

This study basically found that like, yes, there were correlations in some cases, but HRV, because that's the thing that they're measuring here. HRV was not reliably serving as an indicator of performance potential throughout the tour for this athlete. And this is like across the board, this is more and more consistent from what I'm seeing in terms of HRV not being used as like a performance predictor. And also just frankly, a lot of noise with heart rate data and trying to,

to interpret what the heart rate data means in terms of am I getting fitter or am I ready to train or am I over-trained or anything else, it's a lot tougher than we think. And I think that there's an entire almost industry set up where it's like you are ready to train if your heart rate variability says this or if your resting heart rate says this.

And I think that it's, we're starting to see now with more and more data coming out that it's nowhere near that cut and dry. I think we always, like, it's one of those things that, like, I want to believe that there's. Wouldn't it be great? Yeah. And so the setback HRV is heart rate variability. And so you need your heart rate. Let's say it's 80 beats per minute.

And it's just going, and you have 80 beats per minute. But it's not exactly hitting the same on... Let's do 60 beats per minute. Yeah. Every second. It wouldn't be every second that it's exactly going to hit. Heart rate variability is measuring the time in between beats that it changes. So if it was... Sometimes it may hit at 800 milliseconds, and other times it would hit at 120 milliseconds. That'd be a big... That's too big of a heart rate variability. But it might be something like 980...

and that would be like a 40 HRV, because that's the spread of where the heart rate was. And the idea with this is that a high variability, if there's a lot of changes, means you're more fresh and your body is more able to respond to changes. A low variability...

Um, the idea was that you're are more tired and your body's just kind of like hanging on and trying to just like the sympathetic, the sympathetic side of things is having so much intervention on, on your body that it won't allow the heart to just freely operate and beat as it wants to and fluctuate. Instead, it's,

more regimented because it's trying to recover. Parasympathetic is recovery. And then sympathetic is the side where if you have low HRV, in other words, less variability and the distance between beats, that's because there's more sympathetic intervention going on there because it has more control, more clamp over everything. I would think of the other way. Like it's your body's like, I need to rest. I almost swore. Your body's like, I need to, that's what my body says to me. I need to something rest. Um, so therefore I'm not going to let you be

Yeah, I can see that.

greatly influences what it is. So that's like the different watches to measure it or rings or whatever to measure at different spots. That's right. And then you could get different numbers. And then the idea, though, is that you get an HRV, you wake up, and it goes, you're ready. That's right. Kind of what lost me on it was, like, we did a 24-hour race.

And the next day, my recovery was like, you're ready to go. You're at 90-something percent. And I don't think I slept that night or slept like two hours. And I don't know of a time I've been more tired in my life. And I would think that my heart would be –

You'd think, right? At a low HRV. Yeah. It's tricky. And the thing is we can always find an example of when it like paralleled perfectly and when it doesn't work. That's why we use science. Yeah. But it's just interesting to see that as more and more data comes out. Because that's the real thing is that we should look at kind of averages, so to speak, across all the data. And that should drive us toward the direction of understanding and understanding.

In this case, this is an interesting study and we'll go over it more in detail and on a future podcast here is I kind of wrap my head around and make sure I thoroughly review it. But.

I guess going back to this question that we have from Nick, just heart rate, it's a great thing to pay attention to, or I should say have, and to consider. But it's tricky to actually judge any training decisions off of. And I don't think that because your heart rate is going up at the age of 50 that it means that there's a health issue either. But it's absolutely worth it to get those things checked out and then talk to your doctor about it.

For all the rest of us in this situation, assuming that we are healthy, all that stuff. Yeah, I think that small fluctuations in your heart rate isn't a big deal. I wonder if that combined with other data, if it could be helpful. I don't know, but we will hopefully see someday. But yeah, I'm not like writing it off that it's not going to work at all, but it just hasn't.

Like you said, more research comes out and you question it. Correct. Yeah. And this is, they also, to be fair to you, there's a lot of different calculations you can do with the heart rate variability value that you get instead of it just being the actual measurement between the longest space between beats and the shortest space. They do like these really crazy averages and these different things where they weight everything appropriately that are supposed to help it with measuring in the sleep cycle, all that stuff. But even when those measurements are used-

it still isn't like a perfect one-to-one correlation of a predictor of performance or fitness or anything else like that. There's a lot of other variables too. So many. Just like what you ate.

Oh, totally. The other day on a ride, a long, awesome ride that I did, I took in 150 milligrams of caffeine throughout that course of that ride, which is a ton for me. That's like, I'm like, yeah, I'm like a rocket at that point. So, and just taking that in and going through on that ride, I took in enough water by the numbers. I should be fine there. My heart rate was just like

crazy, like pegged at the end of that ride. It was also on cloud nine, but like, uh, but it just pegged at the end of the ride. Yeah. Yeah. 150 milligrams of caffeine over here. It's all I need. So, um, but yeah, I think that that's like, um, you know, if I judged by my heart rate there and I was looking at this sort of like your power X Watts, it'd be like, Oh, at the end of four hours, your power at like tempo pace or endurance pace, or your heart rate was just so high. That means that you weren't fit and it was too hard of a ride. But the

The cool thing is, is looking at, uh, what we have and train a road and it didn't give me a red day because it knew that like, no, you're okay with doing that sort of thing. And instead of just gave me a yellow down the next day. So like I had a hard interval workout scheduled and I totally, you know, I shouldn't have done the big long ride the day before had a hard interval ride and it just changed out to be just a 90 minute endurance ride. It was like, perfect. Like, so

So I think that there's more practical ways because that's just looking at my training history over time, and it knows how I'm adapting and adjusting, and it's more complicated than I'm making it seem. There's a lot of stuff under the hood. But I think there's more practical ways to go about understanding your performance than trying to lace in heart rate data to figure it all out. Yeah.

If one variable of name. Yeah. Sign up for trainer road and check it out. It's an amazing tool to have. The, uh, I thought about this. We have in trainer road, we have two signup spikes. One is now in the, the North Northern hemisphere fall. And the other is January 1st. And I think it's two different people who show up on race day. The people who start now in like the end of October or in actually some people already started like September, September 1st is like the first real uptick and

And then the people who start January 1st. Yeah. So be the person who starts. I want to be a September. Yeah, September 1st. And then you have that extra few like.

Um, phases under your belts and much higher FTP and everything's easier. And then you race easier and you're happier and you're like, wow, this is amazing. I think we've all got to that race where you're like, Hey, if I just had three more weeks, that'd be amazing. Well, motivation to try it out right now too, by the way, uh, Nate, we just launched, uh, you know, internally it's, it's basically cross training sync. So, uh, all of your activities, whether it's a hike, yoga, standup, paddleboard, swim, run, strength training, uh,

whatever you record and upload to Strava and now shows up on your train road calendar. And then it will make adjustments to your next work or your upcoming workouts based on what you've been doing. It understands novelty. You can even go in with strength training and you can say like, oh, actually that strength training session was all upper body. So it's, and then train a road is going to understand the fact that, oh, okay. So it's not as taxing as if it was just a big leg day and it's going to treat that differently. It's super cool. Uh, it's there for all athletes. You can give it a shot right now. Um,

- It's your whole profile of workouts now. - Yeah, it's really interesting to see too because then you can go back in your calendar and you can kind of see

days when you went and you did that run and, you know, cyclists in the off season that think they're a runner all of a sudden, and they throw in a run, you can see how that impacted you because you can go back and in, in, in the past, you can see, oh, that day was red. And that's why I felt really bad. Oh, that day was yellow. And that's why I didn't perform quite like I thought I would have. Uh, and now that you have all the whole picture of your activity data, not just your bike training, it's really cool to see it. And it makes a whole lot of sense. So,

It's pretty cool stuff. I have a yellow day today. Oh, you do? Yeah. Nice. Cause I did too much strength training yesterday. There you go. So you're going to have an easier workout on the bike today. I just got an easy hour. Nice. See, that's how it works. It's pretty awesome. Thanks everybody. Submit your questions at train road.com slash podcast. Go to the forum, check it out. We're always posting stuff on there, whether it's talking about racing, talking about, uh, athletes are asking their questions that they have. It's super fun. It's a good spot to be. And we'll talk to you all next week. Thanks. Bye-bye.