Currently I am struggling to avoid “training”, and trying to have a 4-6 week period of free time. My coaches tell my to “Stand down!” and take a break from my “beefy”, successful season just completed. It seems I have a flaw in my character. I am so used to just progressing from one IM training cycle to another (having gone through 16 in nine years), that I need outside objective experts THAT I AM PAYING FOR to get me to stick for more than two weeks with an easy does it, wait till the New Year training “plan”. I’ve gotten so amped by my success at AZ, and by my recent ability to turn around from Kona to Tempe, that shear momentum would just have me out in the garage banging through 75 minutes of 80+% intervals on the bike, and 4-6 one mile intervals on the track or treadmill at 10 K pace.
The GUILT I feel at “just” swimming for 45 minutes twice a week, biking to work 90 minutes round trip twice a week, going on a leisurely 30 mile group ride on Sat AM, and simply jogging around the neighborhood is almost too much to bear.
I suspect I have an additional hang-up: the feeling of a finite athletic life-span in front of me – I don’t know when my last season will be, as I see the numbers in my age group fall by more than half every five years, down to under 40 now for most IMs. I can rationally see that getting the rest now will lead to my being one of those 40 (or 20 in five years), instead of falling by the wayside as so many other of my contemporaries I have seen. But old habits give me the feeling that I will lose it if I don’t ramp back up NOW. MUST RESIST!
So, I daily try to find alternatives to actual exercise. Last week, it was doctor appointments and sweeping the front parking area of a year’s accumulation of dead maple leaves. And of course, decorating the house for Christmas is good for a bit of distraction. Holiday shopping is all online now, but, even so, that can kill an afternoon.
Yesterday, I had a professional bike fit for the first time in a decade. Among my other experiments for my race at Kona, I tried lowering my arm rests about 1/4” (5 mm), and I think that may have played a role in the bad cramps I got after 4+ hours. Then, in Arizona, despite my stellar time and ultimately successful race, I kept getting the feeling that I was tilting somehow to the left as the hours wore on. New cleats for my shoes, new cranks and arm extensions, to say nothing of the micro errors which probably have crept in after dozens of trips in the aluminum flight box – all of these have introduced slight deviations from whatever ideal fit I may have had ten years ago on my bike when it was newly custom built for me by the fabricators at Merlin in Massachusetts.
I drove 60 miles up to Kenmore, at rush hour. Normally the trip would take a bit over an hour, but I arrived at 10 after 9, leaving at 7:30. Why go so far? Corpore Sano is a sports oriented physical therapy service, run by Eric Moen. Eric has long had a special interest in cycling and racing. He has paired his biomechanical and athletic knowledge and experience along with Retul, a sophisticated computer-based system to measure precise body motions while cycling. This would not be a bike fitting where the guy at the shop watches me ride on a trainer, and measures my knees and hips with a glorified protractor, then plugs in generic numbers to get my saddle height dialed in.
For two hours, Eric talked with me, examined and stretched me, recorded my cycling after pasting little velcro dots all over my skin, fiddled with my cleat placement and saddle height, explained esoteric measurement of rear foot pronation and lateral tibial movements, and … well, my mind was boggled with the depth and precision of what I went through.
First, he interviewed me about my recent racing history, as well as my entire athletic background. My bike’s history was also probed. Then, adopting his guise as a PT, he quickly assessed my range of motion and relative joint stiffness through each my my lower limbs.
When I examine patients, I sometimes wonder if they feel suspicious or reassured that I can so quickly get the information I need during a physical exam, without a lot of extraneous prodding and poking. I certainly had both those feelings with Eric. In a micro second, he was able to tell with great specificity the difference in flexibility between my right and left legs, and zeroed in on some subtle left leg issues I am vaguely aware of, but had no clue as to their anatomic origin.
Next we turned to actual cycling. My TT bike was placed in a CompuTrainer, which rested on a rotating platform. After a ten minute warm up, while he fiddled with the Retul system and watched me from all angles, he then recorded the infrared light motions from those eight velcro tabs on each side. Instantly, the computer spit out a page for each side, showing the maximum and minimum angles for my ankles, knees, hips, lower back, shoulders, and elbows, as well the relative positions of my elbows, back and hips. Also, the lateral/medical motion of my knees was simulated.
I don’t profess to really understand all that we was telling me as he related the computer measurements to his findings on physical exam and my recent history of odd sensations at Kona and Arizona. For example, my right knee seemed to have too LITTLE lateral/medial motion, while my left leg was off in other ways. All I know is that he ended up changing my cleat position and dropping my saddle a couple of millimeters.
When I got back on the bike, for re-recording, several magical things happened from these subtle changes. First, things did feel noticeably easier while peddling. Second, I felt I was listing a little to the RIGHT. I suspect that I was actually now upright, and that previously, I had been ever so subtly lurching to the left.
Eric used some coded language which I didn’t really grasp, but may come to understand over time. He noted that I was not getting “over the top” very well with my left leg. This created a larger dead zone in my peddling circle on that side. It may be due to flexibility issues on that side with my hamstring, piriformis, and hip flexor muscles. While that is certainly correctable with more tweaks to shoe angles and bike position, changing my body would probably be preferable to changing my bike position, as the endpoint would probably have me up a bit higher, with more chance for increased wind resistance. So he gave me a series of stretches to work on, in hopes I could get the improvements needed that way.
Some conclusions on this experience. First, it cost $300, which is a bit more than usual bike fittings. BIke shops will charge between $150-$250, and rely on someone who is first and foremost a cyclist – a mechanic, salesman, former racer, shop owner – someone who has an intuitive understanding of bike position, but has little training or background in biomechanics and organic repair. Second, Eric embodies a unique combination of three elements and seamlessly weaves them into a holistic approach to “bike fitting”. He has a long history in physical therapy, and especially PT aimed at getting cyclists back on the bike after injuries. This gives him the ability to “read” the body and intuitively feel just what might be out of kilter with one’s biomechanics. And, he is using the Retul computer system which takes the guess work out of understanding both the static and dynamic positioning of a cyclist in an aggressive time-trial position.
Was it worth it? While the changes he made to my shoes and bike were subtle, the deep understanding he had of what might have gone wrong in Kona was extremely reassuring. I now feel that I am as “low” as I can be, given the geometry of my bike and the capacity of my body. Any improvement in reducing wind resistance will need to come from dropping my head, not bending my back forward more. And I have an additional route forward to improvement through some dedicated flexibility work on specific areas in my lower half. This should strengthen and even out my pedal strokes.
I feel I got a top-of-the line, professional grade dynamic “bike fit” analysis which viewed my body and my bike as an integrated whole, and provided clear, specific ways to cycle faster without necessarily increasing my effort level at all. “Free speed” is the dream, because at my level, the cost through harder training of getting faster is getting more and more difficult. Next up in the “free” speed quest: new hubs, front and rear, for my wheels. The front one is shot, the grinding noticeable to anyone who picks up the bike, and the rear one is to be replaced with a PowerTap, one of those power meters which will let me train harder more precisely, and race more intelligently.