Summary:

What is cycling durability, how do professional cycling teams measure it, and could it be more important than your FTP or VO2 max?

In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA coach and exercise physiologist Ben Treble to unpack emerging research into one of cycling's hottest performance topics: durability and fatigue resistance.

Fresh from the Science & Cycling Conference in Barcelona, Ben shares insights from unpublished data presented by Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe, exploring how WorldTour teams are attempting to identify riders who can continue producing high power after thousands of kilojoules of work.

Because having a big FTP or VO2 max is one thing. Being able to produce that power after several hard hours in the saddle is something very different.

Ben explains how cycling durability can be measured by comparing fresh power with power produced after significant accumulated work, why elite riders can experience remarkably little power decay, and why some amateur cyclists may see substantially larger declines.

We also explore an emerging metric involving four-minute torque, which Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe has investigated as a potential predictor of durability in younger elite riders.

But does the same relationship exist in recreational and Masters cyclists?

Ben has started analysing real-world data from Masters cyclists competing in UCI Gran Fondo events — and his preliminary findings don't necessarily match what is being seen in elite riders.

• What does "durability" actually mean in cycling?
• Why FTP alone doesn't tell the whole performance story
• How professional cycling teams test fatigue resistance
• Fresh vs fatigued five-minute power
• Why accumulated kilojoules matter
• How much power cyclists lose after several hours of riding
• The difference between FTP, VO2 max and durability
• Why WorldTour teams are investing heavily in durability
• How durability is being used for talent identification
• What the "compound score" is
• Four-minute torque and its potential relationship with durability
• Unpublished insights from Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe
• Why elite cycling data may not translate directly to Masters cyclists
• Ben's preliminary analysis of Masters and UCI Gran Fondo riders
• What recreational cyclists can learn from the latest durability research

If you've ever felt strong at the beginning of a ride but watched your power disappear after three or four hours, this episode explores the science behind why some cyclists maintain their performance better than others — and how researchers are trying to measure it.

Ben is also looking for additional Masters/UCI Gran Fondo cyclists willing to contribute training and racing data to his ongoing analysis.

📧 Contact: [email protected] 🌐 Road Cycling Academy: https://roadcyclingacademy.com

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.836) Welcome to the RCA podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists, and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster, and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I'm joined by the RCA's science geek who's now based out of Switzerland, Ben Treble. And as per his nickname at the RCA, Ben has been at a cycling and science conference in Barcelona, and he's got some unpublished data from one of the world's biggest cycling teams, Tour de France teams, that he's going to share with us.

So this is a bit of a an inside scoop. Are you allowed to share this info, Ben? Or like are we gonna get it in a bit of trouble here? They didn't say anything.

Ben Treble (01:02.848) I didn't see the first like two minutes, so Okay. That was often my trick. I mean, if they gave us a and there's no NDA anyway. I'm not sharing photos of it, it's verbatim. Some of this I feel like let's just do it.

Cam Nicholls (01:05.112) Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (01:16.514) Okay. Good.

Ben Treble (01:17.826) But hot topic, hey? it's on durability.

Cam Nicholls (01:22.414) Okay, and which team are we talking about? Which Tour de France team?

Ben Treble (01:25.696) Red Bull Bora Handscrow. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So David De Klerk from Red Bull, I think he's one of their performance managers. He may also be a coach, I can't remember. Sorry, David. he gave a very nice presentation in Barcelona on some of the work that they're doing with some metrics to measure say durability and and performance.

Cam Nicholls (01:28.437) look at.

Ben Treble (01:55.116) beyond the the standard metrics of say threshold and stuff. So this is actually very big business in the World Tours, which is we would bucket it under talent identification or talent ID. Why is this important? When you're a World Tour team, you have a budget and at some point you have a pipeline of riders and the performance of those riders or finding the next Tade Pogachar, that becomes one of your biggest goals. Can you find the next Tade Poggachar?

And how do we know if a rider's going to be good in the future? How do we measure that?

Cam Nicholls (02:28.29) Well what are the standard mechanisms for testing durability now? Because to me it's such a untangible because durability is the ability to produce, you know, high bouts of power essentially after long periods, long fatiguing periods in the saddle. So is is there a standard testing protocol? Because I guess, you know, what what we hear is, you know, often in articles on online is the twenty minute FTP test.

But that's not a durability test.

Ben Treble (03:01.344) You might argue in some cases that in part a threshold test. It could be a ramp test for FTP. It could be a multiple maximal efforts for critical power test. Ultimately those are testing your threshold, which still represents durability. How much power can you push for how long?

Cam Nicholls (03:20.152) Twenty minutes, yeah.

Ben Treble (03:21.44) It's still a a durable marker. But I think the difference is those things were always trying to measure, at least in my books, the gold standard threshold, which was metabolic, your lactate steady state, MLSS. Right. And this is very difficult to test well. So people come up with easy tests you can do from home that they found some correlation to MLSS that was actually really poor. And that's how we came up with FTP.

That's my that's my nutshell history that scientists will debate forever.

Cam Nicholls (03:55.352) So is there a gold standard dura durability test?

Ben Treble (03:58.76) No. You know, it's been a hot topic for the last two, even three years at Science and Cycling Conference. And I don't think anybody has agreed on a single test that says this measures durability. There are multiple tests out there. Some of them are quite similar. I would say the most common type of testing to look at durability and assess it would be to do a ride where you

deplete a certain amount of kilojoules. So let's say you have to deplete, I don't know, 2,000 kilojoules, 3000 kilojoules, 4,000 kilojoules. And then you have to do a maximal effort at the end. And they look at, let's say, let's just use five minute power, for example. They get you to do a fresh five minute power test. Like what is your best five minute power you can do in a fresh state? Then they go and do these, you know, depleted efforts.

And then you have to try and do your best. How close to this five-minute fresh power can you get? And what is the percentage decay in this power? Now, different teams and different riders use different durations of this. So this is where we see differences in the Jubilee protocols and why there's not a single one necessarily. For GC riders, they might use a longer, they might use your 20-minute power. So you go do a 20-minute fresh test, you do a depleted ride.

If you're a world tour writer, it's probably going to be even 4,000 kilojoules because that's closer to what you would have in, you know, a hard hilly stage. And then what is the decay in your power, your 20-minute power? And that is something they see. They talk about this in Tade Pogachar a lot. That's where he's different to a lot of other riders, right? His decay in like 20 it was quoted somewhere. His decay in his 20 minute power.

After like four thousand kilojoules is only one percent.

Cam Nicholls (05:56.738) Huh.

Ben Treble (05:57.912) course. You and I are probably like minimal fifteen percent, twenty percent declines. Amateurs can be thirty plus percent decline in their power after doing only say two and a half thousand kilojoules, not four thousand. That is a very big difference. So that's probably the most common method of durability testing that I've seen across the conference and different teams and what's used. but I would say there is no single standard protocol

There's big questions even around this protocol. So we don't have to go too far down this rabbit hole. But for example, when you do let's say you have to do three thousand kilojoul depletion, you can deplete three thousand kilojoules by doing, you know, five hours of zone two, or you could do it by doing high intensity efforts for one and a half hours.

Cam Nicholls (06:47.676) Of course.

Ben Treble (06:48.93) You know, doing a fresh versus a depleted, doing another twenty minute test at the end of high intensity intervals for two hours versus four hours of zone two, those are very different depletions that lead you into this. So this was a topic that was brought up by David in his presentation, as he said something they're working on is trying to find a way to standardize that depletion. But at the moment they predominantly use training data because it's too difficult to pull writers out and say,

literally go do a 3,000 kilojoul depletion and do this effort. They typically get them to do a training ride or look at training data where they did a 20 minute PB or close to after a big day out.

Cam Nicholls (07:29.524) Okay, that makes more sense. So what what was the inside scoop?

Ben Treble (07:34.37) Yeah, let's chat about it. So on that topic, what was presented? So we'll start with something that's not Red Bull on their own came up with, right? So beyond the standard measures of performance. So the joiner, there's a thing called the joiner model of performance predictors, which predominantly looks at efficiency, VO2 max, and threshold. Durability is considered this fourth element that needs to be added to this classic model of performance predictors that was.

Put together by a scientist called Joyner. But how we measure it is the big question. Red Bull and a bunch of other scientists came up with an idea called compound score to start with. That was their first, I would argue, attempt at measuring durability to some respects. And compound score is easily calculated as it's your absolute power output. Typically they use five minutes. So let's say you can do 300 watts for five minutes in a fresh state.

And then you multiply it by the same five minute power, but in its relative form. So you would take your 300 watts, divide it by whatever your weight is, let's say 70 kilograms. So then you just multiply the absolute power by the relative power five minute. And you get this score. It could be anywhere from say, I don't know, a thousand up to three thousand, roughly, right? And they came up with a table of benchmarks that kind of says depending on your score, this would be where you sit. And they found some

relationships between high people who had high compound scores typically got more podium results.

Cam Nicholls (09:08.014) What do you mean compound scores?

Ben Treble (09:10.008) So what I just talked about, so the compound score. Yeah. Yeah. If we look at your absolute five minute power output multiplied by the relative power output, so watts per kilo, you get this score. And let's say it's two thousand points. Yeah. People who had this higher number were more likely to get a podium in a race. Yep. And they said, well, we know that the joinum model alone is not predicting like if you have a high VO2 max, it doesn't tell us that you're going to get a podium result anymore.

You need to have a high VO2 max, but it doesn't tell us if you're going to win the race. Hmm. So they're saying what else is contributing to people winning? So they're trying to measure that. That's this and that means when they know how to measure that, they could potentially in talent ID find the new Tate pogger chart earlier. That's where this is coming from.

Cam Nicholls (09:58.914) Okay.

Ben Treble (10:02.414) So they started with compound score. they found a relationship between higher compound scores and results that was not found with, say, just pure watts per kilo threshold, VO two max, those other measures that are more, let's say, traditional. Mm-hmm. But then they started to see some differences where it didn't necessarily predict race results, especially in juniors. And they're saying, Okay, maybe there's something else to this. We need to look at other metrics. So

Let's dig into the study. What was presented? So, David, really what they're looking at here. So we're going to go back to the sort of durability test we talked about before, where we have a decay and the Red Bull team are using their five minute mean maximal power. So the fresh five minute power versus their depleted five minute power. And they take a percentage of this decline. So maybe it's two percent, 10%, whatever it is.

They take that percentage decline and compare it against other variables to try and find a relationship. Is there something that is able to identify who has smaller decline or decay in their mean maximal power? The reason they use five minutes is because five minute mean maximal power is a very good indicator of your VO2 max. So you might be able to argue the decline in VO2 max after

3,000 or 3,500 kilojoules is also a very important contributor to performance. So what they did is they looked at they used 3,000 kilojoulle depletion for the under 19s and they did three and a half thousand kilojoulle depletion for under 23s. So they have a fairly large pool of riders in their database and they looked at all the training data and they compared this decay percentage to fresh four minute torque value in Newton meters.

Cam Nicholls (11:58.776) Today's podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy. I know from personal experiences that one of the most frustrating things as a recreational and amateur road cyclist when you're wanting to improve is putting in more time and effort on the bike, but never reaching the level you know you're capable of. So often people start riding more because they think that's the answer, but the harder they work, the more frustrated they become because the results just don't match the effort.

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Your life with coach support throughout the entire program. And the results speak for themselves. Recently, we've had Ryan come to us wanting to improve his tour to Brisbane result. That's a UCI qualifier. And following his custom 12-week plan, he didn't just crack the top 20, which was one of his goals. He actually finished third overall on the podium, calling the program, and you can see this on our Google Reviews an absolute game changer.

Steve increased his critical power by 35 watts in 12 weeks. That's a 15.7% improvement. And he enjoyed the coach experience so much that he actually continued with one-to-one coaching following. So if you've had a gut full of putting in the work without getting the results, you know you're capable of. We'd love to help. Head to the Road Cycling Academy website and check out

Cam Nicholls (14:17.888) Our 12 week custom training plan. And as a thank you to our listeners of this podcast, for the first five people, use the code RCA ten and you'll receive 10% off. Once those five spots are gone, the offer ends. Let's get back to the podcast. Okay. So how do people know what their fresh four minute talk value is in Newton meters? Not something I've looked at before, Ben.

Ben Treble (14:44.524) Yeah, do you have a power meter can?

Cam Nicholls (14:46.902) I do, yes. Asioma.

Ben Treble (14:48.942) Do you spin the pedals? Then we can measure torque. So your power meter, well, when to measure power, you essentially have to have velocity times torque. That's that is power. It's velocity times torque. So people who spin more need less torque to produce the same power. And then people who have slower cadence, so they s they spin less, they're producing more torque to achieve the same power as the spinners. Yep.

So this is when we think of people who are more aerobic, right? They can lean more on this producing power through the cardiovascular system by spinning more, right? High cadence. And then you get the people like probably more you and me. we have more muscle mass. So we probably naturally lean more towards producing our power from a torque component of the equation, right? We have more type two fibers. So that's the torque component. If you have a power meter, pretty much every modern power meter is going to be calculating.

Talk or at least estimating it. Some power meters are better at measuring torque through the whole stroke cycle, but to get a four minute average it's they're probably pretty much every power meter is measuring this.

Cam Nicholls (16:00.616) So for the layman out there, and I'm certainly a layman, the four minute talk number is gonna be different to your four minute power number because it's not taking into account how much you're spinning. Yep. So now you can go back to what you were saying before I interrupted with my question.

Ben Treble (16:10.51) Correct.

Ben Treble (16:16.472) Yeah. And if you think of torque, where is it also coming from a little bit? If you think of people who do this low cadence or high torque training, it's often about improving the fatigue ability of the fibers and the motor units in the muscle itself. Right. People who can tolerate higher torques often have like the the muscle fibers can tolerate more fatigue. Yep. So that's why they were like, okay, this let's look at the relationship between torque.

And the decay in the mean maximal power. And they found a strong relationship here. So that for the scientists who are listening, the R score 0.49, P score was 0.03. So they found a, in terms of science, that is a good relationship between fresh absolute four-minute talk value and the percentage in decay. So people who had higher fresh four-minute talk values had smaller percentages in the decay.

of their main maximal power.

Cam Nicholls (17:17.643) Okay.

Ben Treble (17:18.594) And that was across both the 3,000 kJ depletion in the under-19s and the 3,500 kJ in the under-23. David Declerc, who did this presentation, didn't present data on the world tour riders themselves, but he indicated it's going to be published soon. And I imagine it's kind of indicated it's gonna share the same story, but they looked at using a 4,000 kilojoul depletion in the Elite Riders, and I think it had the same story. So

What else was interesting in his presentation? They didn't just look at fresh four minute talk. They looked at your relative torque. So a bit like your relative power. This is torque divided by your body weight. And they found no good correlation here, which is quite interesting. So your relative torque had no relationship to the decay in your five minute power, which I just thought that to me was actually a very interesting.

thing that I I thought I kind of expected it would at the end of the day. They also then, if you remember we talked about the compound score before, they looked at the decay in five minute power percentage against compound score and found no strong relationship. So what does this mean? It means that the compound score, it's important for predicting performance success, but it doesn't correlate to durability. They're separate from each other. So his

summary on this was compound score is good to measure and it's good to measure performance capacity. And then looking at absolute fresh four minute talk values was a good predictor on your decay in five minute power in terms of V2 Max. So they are now looking for riders who have both good compound scores and high fresh four minute absolute talk values. And they're thinking the four minute talk value might become one of the key markers to measure durability.

Cam Nicholls (19:15.232) Interesting. So, you know, that's pretty pretty good insight from a professional level. If we're amateur recreationals, which I think most of us are listening to this and I certainly am, what can we glean from this? Like what what can I take from this to implement into my own cycling? Or is it is it more about how much attention and focus pro teams are giving to durability now and trying to find durable riders?

that it should really be a focus in my own training too.

Ben Treble (19:48.748) I think that's why I wanted to start with the context of the talent ID, right? So there's a very big emphasis in the world tool. Why does durability matter? It's about finding the next writer and getting value for money in their budget and trying to find the next big thing. We know durability is important. We probably don't really know how to quite measure it yet. and when we think of amateur writers like you and me and most of our audience, I was sitting there in the room thinking, this is amazing.

Like I've got plenty of writers who come to me and say, you know, I want to improve my durability. And we come up with some individualized ways to try and measure it. And I'm thinking, this might just be what I've been missing. Like maybe I have to just be putting a bit more emphasis on fresh four minute talk values. And I was like, but this will be easy to test because I have quite a few masters writers. I can look at their data and say, do I get the same relationship?

Cam Nicholls (20:35.328) Okay.

Ben Treble (20:45.706) that David De Klerk has found. So I'm going to give you a little bit of unpublished, unofficial, and very small sample size data. So take this as you want. But I'm collecting more data. So if you're listening to this and you are a UCI Fondo writer and you've been training for a year, get in touch because and you're willing to share your data. I would love to add you into this little research project. The more data, the stronger the insights get and the summaries. So but long story short, Cam.

I do not get the same findings as David De Klerk with Masters Riders. There's so far at least in my small sample size, there's zero relationship between decay in five minute mean maximal power and fresh four minute talk value. I'll let that sit with you for a second.

Cam Nicholls (21:32.984) Go, h how many riders have you been able to look out data wise? Eight. Okay.

Ben Treble (21:37.762) I got eight. And to give you an idea, I mean I think David Claklerk, they had around twenty-three from memory, he said. So eight's not bad. I wouldn't say it's amazing, but in terms of the performance, real-world values, it's not bad. Yes. To give you more context to that sample size, I had they're all male. I didn't have any females, unfortunately. They were a mixture of podium performers. Yep.

People who qualified. So this is at the the Tour of Brisbane. And I had riders who did not qualify. So say mid-pack or even towards backpack. And so I think there's a really nice mixture of performance abilities. There was obviously a range of age categories within that. And it's just it's interesting because I looked at both how do these values compare to how close they got to a qualifying race time and also

performance race time. So how far away from a podium performance time were they and also the qualifying time? And there's just no I couldn't find any relationship between fresh four minute talk or relative four minute talk or compound score to their performance.

Cam Nicholls (22:53.396) Okay. And this is all data. You did you get y these you know, these people that you looked at, you didn't need to get them to go and test, did you? The the data was already available. Just from their tr their training data.

Ben Treble (23:02.456) Yeah.

Yeah, I can use WKO and pull out their you know, I can create I just created a little dashboard in WKO that looked at fresh four minute talk values.

Cam Nicholls (23:13.834) WKO is a is an application inside Training Peaks which is a bit more advanced for all those people that are wondering what WKO is.

Ben Treble (23:22.304) Yeah. And then I created a graph for the five minute like decay percentage on mean max full power. So kind of easy to pull the data out. One thing to note, I did not use a like a three thousand or a three and a half thousand kilojoul depletion. Most masters riders are rarely hitting those numbers. In fact, I looked at two and a half thousand and also two thousand kilojoul because on average, in the end, I used two and a half thousand because on average

It was almost spot on. Two and a half thousand kilojoules was the depletion across that sample size at tour of Brizzy for the event. So I don't think a three thousand or three and a half or even four thousand kilojoulle depletion is relevant for masters riders in terms of UCI fondos, because for the most part, the race is not even getting close to hitting those depletions. So what we care about would be and what's more relevant is between two and two and a half thousand depletion in Masters riders.

The UCI fondos are often shorter and less intense than World Tour racing. So I tried to make it very specific when I looked at it, but also because most of them just don't have the data. Like you there's no five minute effort that they've done after 3,000 kilojoules because heaps of them have just never done it.

Cam Nicholls (24:38.868) If there is a recreational and amateur out there that wants to lean into your your study here, Ben, and maybe get involved, what's the best way for them to get in contact? They just contact the general RCA email and then we can forward it across or do you wanna give do you wanna give your personal details away here?

Ben Treble (24:54.414) Yeah, I mean they can hit up the RCA for sure and that can get passed on to me. You can also reach me at my RCA email, Ben at RoadcyclingAcademy dot com. Also happy for you to hit me up on Instagram. I have a public profile. it's nothing super exciting. If you're it's just Benjamin Treble would be my handle if you search me. yeah, you can reach me on either of those forms.

Cam Nicholls (25:19.192) Yeah. Well we'll we'll we'll link those in the podcast description as well if people want to get involved because it's it's it's quite it's interesting what you're doing and it's an emerging, developing space. And obviously, you know, while pro athletes and that they do their pro things, their expertise and their their frameworks can definitely be leveraged to advantage in what we we do, you know, with our members and athletes at the at the Road Cycling Academy. So yeah, that's really interesting. Ben, is anything else that you wanted to add there?

Ben Treble (25:49.868) No, I'll probably leave it there and stay tuned because I have some hypothesis and some other insights from the masters data that surprised me in terms of what predicts performance at UCI fondos. So stay tuned.

Cam Nicholls (26:06.318) Alright, that's great. Well, yeah, as mentioned, if you if you want to get involved in what Ben's doing, we'll drop the details to get in contact in the podcast description. And Ben, thank you for sharing. That scoop was very interesting. We'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

How many carbohydrates per hour do cyclists actually need — 60g, 90g, 120g or even 150g?

Professional cyclists are consuming more carbohydrates than ever, with reports of Tour de France riders pushing towards 120–150+ grams of carbs per hour. But does more carbohydrate actually mean better performance — and should recreational and amateur cyclists be trying to copy the pros?

In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA coach and resident science geek Ben Treble, fresh from the Science & Cycling Conference in Barcelona, to discuss emerging research into high-carbohydrate fuelling for cycling performance.

Ben breaks down where the traditional 60–90g of carbohydrate per hour recommendation came from, how glucose and fructose are absorbed by the body, and what the latest research suggests happens when cyclists increase their intake to 120g or even 150g per hour.

They also discuss why simply eating more isn't necessarily better, how professional cyclists periodise carbohydrate intake depending on the demands of each stage, and why gut training may be one of the biggest untapped performance opportunities for amateur cyclists.

In this episode:

• 60g vs 90g vs 120g vs 150g of carbs per hour
• How much carbohydrate cyclists actually need
• Why 90g/hour became the standard recommendation
• Glucose vs fructose absorption explained
• Does 120g/hour improve cycling performance?
• Why 150g/hour may offer little additional benefit
• What Tour de France riders are really consuming
• How the pros periodise carbohydrate intake
• Gut training for cyclists
• Why amateur cyclists often eat less than they think
• How to gradually increase your carbohydrate intake
• Fuelling hard sessions vs easy Zone 2 rides
• When lower-carbohydrate or fasted training may still have a place
• How better fuelling can improve performance and recovery

For most recreational cyclists, the goal isn't to immediately chase 120 or 150 grams per hour. As Ben explains, consistently reaching around 90g/hour during demanding sessions and events — after progressively training the gut to tolerate it — can already represent a significant opportunity for improved performance and recovery.

Road Cycling Academy helps recreational and amateur cyclists train smarter, improve their performance and get more from the limited training time they have available.

One-to-One Cycling Coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/

12 Week Custom Plan: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/cycling-plan-custom/

#CyclingNutrition #CyclingTraining #Carbohydrates #CyclingPerformance #RoadCycling #CyclingPodcast #TourDeFrance #EnduranceCycling #SportsNutrition #CyclingScience

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.826) Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I'm joined by the RCA's Science Geek based in Switzerland now, Ben Treble. And Ben has recently, as per his Science Geek nickname, been to a science conference in Barcelona. And he's been to a number of presentations, seen some research, which I believe is yet to be published. And we're going to dig into some of that. And it's relating to carbohydrate intake. Now,

I know this is not new news, Ben. Is it taking more carbs to help you improve your cycling performance? So it's not so much about that. It's more about the level that we should be targeting now, which is therefore, I guess the research is becoming more specific to okay, is it ninety grams good enough? Is 120 grams good enough? Should we be looking at 150 grams? Like, where do we shut the door?

I believe that's what it was relating to. Is that is that correct, Ben?

Ben Treble (01:30.028) Yeah, it was looking at I mean, I think this is just a hot topic. It came up at another conference as well after Science and Cycling, which was at Barcelona. But I think an enormous amount of research in nutrition has only historically looked at, say, either zero, sixty or ninety. Ninety was for a long time considered the if you want to say the ceiling or like high carb intake. Now we have some research that looked at

a hundred and twenty grams per hour. And I would say there is coming soon, there will be some published research on a hundred and fifty grams per hour as well. So hot press. What is the takeaway at the end of the day? You need to fuel it's very individualized for one. And two, you need to fuel for whatever your your efforts are. But I personally I wouldn't be at this stage anyway, thinking even

Dreaming of a hundred and fifty grams per hour.

Cam Nicholls (02:32.01) Okay. So what about let's back the bus up. So for a long time ninety was considered, you know, that's where we should be targeting for optimal performance per hour, ninety grams per hour, four R intense training sessions or four hours when we want to go go hard, whether it's a group ride, whether it's a fondole event or whatever it might be. And of course, if people are out there listening and th and it and thinking to themselves, Well, ninety just sounds ridiculous, or even sixty sounds ridiculous.

and maybe this is a conversation for another day, but you know, don't start there. You've got to work your way towards it. But let's just say somebody's at ninety grams now, they've been training, they've worked their way up towards ninety grams per hour for the key sessions. Is there any science which says actually suggests that if you actually then worked your way from ninety to one hundred and twenty grams per hour? And then we can touch on one fifty shortly, is there much of a performance?

benefit f to increasing from ninety to one hundred and twenty? Should I be looking at that, Ben, as I'm now training for Masters Nationals, starting to increase my carb intake? Yeah, am I going to benefit from one hundred and twenty?

Ben Treble (03:39.584) If the duration and the intensity is high enough, these I think it's worthwhile if you have the capacity to do the gut training and your gut can handle it, at least to test if your gut can handle ninety to a hundred and twenty. I think the reality is that for a lot of people, to be honest, especially amateurs, they really struggle even just to do ninety. It's eating a lot of food. It's a lot of gels or a lot of bars or a lot of whatever combination you want to use.

And that was also really clear. So there was a couple of presentations. There was one that was quite interesting from I don't know if they were, sorry, if they were a researcher, I can't remember the name, but they were from precision hydration. So take this as you will. There's obviously some commercial bias, but they have collected, went and collected over the last couple of years enormous levels of data on carbohydrate utilization across cycling events, triathlon events, like a bunch of endurance events and running events.

And they compared age groups and genders on what were people actually managing to eat during these events. And for the most part, a large majority of people were in the like 40 to 80 grams per hour. Which tells me two things. One, people often think they eat eat more than they actually do in the event. Two, a lot of people struggle from an amateur point of view, and this in my coaching is something I've experienced.

They struggle with gut issues and they struggle with the the logistics, like taking my hand off the handlebars to get gels out of my pocket to eat, and then it's a bumpy road or a descent, so then I'm not eating, or I drop the gel. Like these factors are impacting their ability to get 90 grams per hour, maybe more than anything else. So practicing eating on the bike is probably a big takeaway from this. But let's back this up. Where did the like 90, 60, 90 grams?

come from. I think it's kind of important to just reestablish some of the basics. So I am now talking about we eat food. This predominantly what we're caring about here is the sugars, the carbohydrates. How do those sugars go from being in your gut to producing ATP or energy in the muscle? Right? Step one is they have to get absorbed through the gut into the bloodstream. The blood then transports the sugars to the working muscle group to to utilize.

Ben Treble (06:04.166) For the sugar to be absorbed through the gut into the bloodstream, there are some things that are called transporters. And different sugar types have different transporters. So the SGLT1 transporter is the glucose transporter, and it has a ceiling. It's rate limited. This is biochemical math. It's around 60 grams per hour. So you can take in 200 grams of glucose if you want. Doesn't mean your body's

Actually, going to absorb the 200 grams through the gut any faster. That's kind of this is still very solid science that has not changed. The second transporter we care about is the GLUT5 transporter. This was a big revelation in the science many years ago because we realized actually fructose, which is a a different type of sugar to glucose, has a different transporter.

That means that if we take, for example, 60 grams of glucose, and we can now take, say, 30 grams of fructose, because it's going through a different transporter, we might be able to get more sugar into the bloodstream and to the muscle. So that's and there was typically thought to be around 30 grams per hour, was the limit of fructose. But that was more so due to the fact that's just the amount that the research papers picked in the first days, and it was also that's what

The participants could tolerate without GI issues. Keep in mind in science world, you know, they're not necessarily bringing in gut-trained athletes. They're bringing in normal people who are not gut trained. So they can't go and give them 50 grams of fructose because they'll get GI issues and pull out of the study. And that is where the we went from 60 to 90 grams per hour. That's where that kind of came from, because we went from just glucose.

To the glucose and fructose, we have two transporters. 60 and 30 grams was your 90 grams per hour. That has evolved. We realize that the gut is highly trainable. You can most likely take in quite a bit more fructose, but your limiter is probably more around your individual gut tolerance than anything. So some people are able to tolerate 50 grams of fructose. And probably the transporter sealing is rate limited around 50 to 60 grams per hour as well.

Ben Treble (08:26.092) And that's what gets you to this hundred and twenty grams per hour sort of carbohydrate rate that we start to see now. So the main presentation was from Bernardo Nortz. He's from Liverpool University in the UK. And I got a couple points for you, unless you have any questions yet, Ken. Are you with me?

Cam Nicholls (08:44.36) I'm I'm I'm completely with you, yep. Cool.

Ben Treble (08:47.882) so some key points from the study. So exogenous oxidation, this is carbohydrate, so exogenous oxidation and whole body oxidation rates across the that range from 60 to 120 grams per hour had pretty minimal difference. So this again, this still supports the notion for the most part that these rate limiters in the transporters in the gut still exist and they haven't changed. So people taking 150 grams per hour.

question becomes what other mechanisms are occurring or what other changes beyond taking more sugar through into the bloodstream are occurring that help improve performance? Like because we know people who say, I do 150 grams per hour, who don't have gut issues, say that their performance is better. Maybe it's not because they're getting more glucose or sugars into the bloodstream, but there's something else going on.

That helps improve performance, right? I think that's kind of an important part. So

Cam Nicholls (09:50.936) So what what could that be? What's the hypotheticals being thrown around?

Ben Treble (09:54.85) Yeah, well this is what this paper looked at, which is exciting. So the major difference, right? Now if we think of when you produce energy, it's fueled predominantly from, in layman's terms, carbohydrates and fats. So if you were to say you produce a hundred watts, I don't know, at sort of a a very low intensity, let's say it's around fifty fifty. Fifty percent of that hundred watts is produced is fueled from carbohydrates and fifty percent is from fat oxidation.

There is a crossing over point where the fat oxidation, like you you you you need more carbohydrates than fat, and this crossing point in this balance between the two fuel sources, the timing of this crossing point is what shifts with these different carbohydrate rates. So it occurs later in duration. So if we go from between sixty to a hundred and twenty grams per hour, the carbohydrate oxidation rates were

not scientifically different. There were very small differences. But the difference was prolonging the crossing points at which you have this crossing point from fat and carbohydrate oxidation rates, which is a good thing. So essentially comes to that verbatim that you're reserving some of your glycogen for later, right? Because you're doing a bit more fatty oxidation.

There were no differences at all between 120 to 150 grams per hour in whole body carbohydrate oxidation. So there are small differences from ninety to one twenty, which you could argue at a high performance sense is worthwhile chasing because we want to chase those one and two percenters. But they had no difference from one hundred twenty to one fifty. So I don't I'm yet to see evidence that shows why one fifty is worth chasing. And the general

feeling in the room from any of the real hardcore scientists was ninety to one twenty is kind of where you need to focus. This one fifty world is not worth it.

Cam Nicholls (11:55.968) Right. So so why do you think you know you hear about some of these Tour de France riders and and triathletes pushing even one fifty plus? I've I think I've heard one sixty, or even perhaps even more. W are they just doing it because it's it's a challenge? Or are they doing

Ben Treble (12:15.148) I think it's a combination of things. One, I think their guts are highly trained, including the fructose transporter system. I also think that at a hundred and fifty grams per hour, they're taking it for a very short period, right? They're not taking hundred and fifty grams for the full eight hours necessarily at a you know, a G C stage day, right? Like a queen stage. And they're certainly not taking 150 grams per hour every day.

That was very clear. There were a few case study presentations from world tour teams on what their riders were actually taking during grand tours. I think there was actually a really good case study on Jai Hindley, I think it was. They kind of took the name out, but I'm pretty sure it was Dry Hindley. And on their, you know, their easy rest dates for the GC guys, so keep that in mind. On a flat stage, they were only taking in, say, 60 grams per hour. And then on a on a hilly stage, maybe they were going to the ninety.

potentially if it was a hard hard one, move it up to 120 during hard periods of the race. And then on queen stages is all their key days is when they were trying to lift it to maybe say 150. So it's very periodized and individualized. They had riders who only go up to 100 because it's what they tolerate. So I wouldn't say 150 is what everybody is taking and they're certainly not taking it every day. But the media

catches it right and they come out and say, everybody's doing one fifty all the time or one writer gives some verbatim in an interview at some point they were taking a hundred and sixty grams per hour or something and it gets taken out of context, I think.

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Cam Nicholls (16:17.144) For the first five people, use the code RCA ten and you'll receive ten percent off. Once those five spots are gone, the offer ends. Let's get back to the podcast. Yeah. So it's interesting what the preliminary research is suggesting from your session in Barcelona at this science expo was that yeah, the difference between one ninety and and one twenty is is marginal.

And the difference between one twenty and one fifty is don't even worry about it.

Ben Treble (16:51.79) Pretty much. And the I think the difference maybe what we'll see is there'll be I mean, there's more signs coming out. And I think what we may find is the difference between one twenty to one fifty. I don't think we'll ever see a difference in whole body oxidation rates, but I think what you might find is and what the theory is is that your glycogen resynthesis rates are faster post exercise. And this is something that

Grand Tour riders or people doing multi-day races, this becomes important, right? Because you how fast can you replenish your muscle glycogen and your liver glycogen levels for the next day? So that's a very important. But for the large majority of amateur riders, especially I think in our community, they're doing single day events. And so that's not actually as important for them. So they don't need to risk GI issues for that, in my eyes, for the most part.

Cam Nicholls (17:49.526) Yep. And let's face it, you know, going back to the standard the gold standard ninety is is still quite challenging to get to. even I'm sh you know, struggle as I'm ramping my training back up. I haven't done much training in the last, I'd say, twelve months and therefore haven't been doing any form of gut training. So I think I was doing maybe sixty to eighty grams of carbs at the local group ride on Saturday and I was I was struggling. My gut didn't like it.

So it's I know it it takes work, but I I also know that if if you do it properly for our even recreational and amateur level, you know, the benefits it has for us with our recovery for the next day's training, and also to mitigate, you know, what a lot of recreational and amateurs tend to do is don't eat enough around training, then they snack in the afternoons and they they make poor decisions with their their eating because they haven't fueled their training session properly. And that

There's a whole other factor of weight management, which I know a lot of recreational amateurs are trying to, you know, achieve, you know, drop some weight, get stronger on the bike, and then therefore periodizing and getting, you know, your carbohydrate strategy around your training sessions and going that high carb for your actual session, but before and during during has a lot of benefits. So from your experiences working with recreationals and and now, you know, seeing more research, you what are you thinking is is a good place to land?

For the general Joe Blow, who's, you know, training to beat his mates or training for a fondo event, is ninety the is is where we should be looking at?

Ben Treble (19:22.186) Ninety for me is still kind of a let's try and get you to ninety. Don't even worry about one twenty or one fifty. Most people struggle to get to ninety. So Yeah. And in my experience working with athletes, they often think they're eating more than they are. And when we really talk about, okay, what did you eat on this ride? Let's count the gels. Let's factor in that for the most part when you eat a gel, you're not eating the whole gel. You can't use two hands and squeeze every gram out of that gel packet. There's usually a couple grams left in every one of them.

And once you start to do that, you realize, you took forty to sixty. You weren't even close to ninety. So and then they try ninety and maybe you get gut issues like you are, Cam. And so it's becomes a bigger focus of the training. So we might do a block of training where the primary focus in that block is not as focused on say power or some specific intervals. Of course we still do some key sessions, but it's really to say, okay, this work out.

Your main focus isn't to hit every interval perfect. Your focus is eating on the bike. And we're gonna spend a little bit of time to find that limit where you get jihad issues. And let's say it's 70 grams per hour. You had to go to the toilet, couldn't ride anymore. Okay, we found your limit. We back it off 10 grams per hour, and we do that for a week. Let's say it's 60. And then the next week we're gonna try 65.

And then the week after, and I just look at trying to get you up five grams every week. Maybe we can try ten gram increases per week. Depends on the athlete. But essentially that's part of the gut training process. So and I generally find in a single block you can get most people from sixty to like eighty or ninety. And this has a measurable difference on performance and recovery.

Cam Nicholls (21:06.614) Yeah, we we see it time and time again. And it's interesting. I I run these performance breakthrough calls. They're called at the RCA where, you know, people book an hour of my time to to go through just what they're currently doing, with their training, identify low hanging fruit opportunities with their training and you know, I normally give them four or five things that they can implement, or three three or four really, things they can implement straight away and

Often this is at the top of the tree because it's surprising how much research is out there about, you know, high carb intake, how many people are talking about it, but there's still so many people not doing it. They're like, but surely that doesn't that's not gonna be relevant for me. I'm just a General Joe Blow who's training for just a, you know, local club race. It's like, as you said, the performance gains

at that level, our level, are still significant. So, you know, everyone should be leaning in. But it's interesting the key takeaway from this conversation is, you know, don't get carried away with what, you know, you're hearing, you know, in the cycling news after the latest Tour of France. You know, 150 is probably never going to be achievable and probably not beneficial from what you're saying as well.

Ben Treble (22:24.92) have one of my athletes who did go a bit crazy on the fueling because when he went from 60 to 90 the performance improvements were wild and he went from nine 90 to 110 even 120 and he he had further improvements and so he thought I'm just gonna I'm just gonna see how much I can eat. Let's see if I keep getting improvements. And he started eating, you know, trying 150 and he could tolerate 150. Like it was

He didn't get GI issues. I don't I would argue he didn't necessarily get a lot more performance benefit in terms of energy. Perceptually, I think, you know, he had sugar in his mouth, so maybe the neurotransmitters, he got some sort of activation from this, which he noticed. But ultimately, when we worked with him and his nutritionist on this, he worked out actually and he was overeating for some of the sessions. So that was also like if we think about what I said earlier with the propello.

Some of those guys on the easy stages are only doing sixty grams per hour. So they're still fueling the work that they're doing. So you have to really think about what session you're doing today and are we fueling for the work that we're doing and the planning ahead for the s session the next day. So I don't think it's as simple as saying, let's get to ninety or a hundred and twenty grams per hour and that's the end of the story. It's the periodization and the timing of that is just as important.

Obviously, if you're going through a gut training block, you might go ahead and know, okay, we're going to do a little bit of overeating because each day and every session we want to try hit 60, 70, whatever your buildup is. And that's on purpose because that's part of that goal. But yeah, I think I'd be careful about once you kind of hit and find a good level, you don't necessarily need to take it every ride.

Cam Nicholls (24:17.472) No, exactly. Yeah, for for your key sessions when you're wanting to perform your intensity sessions, if you're doing a cruise with a mate, if you're doing a zone two ride for a couple of hours, you know, either don't, you know, you probably don't need any or minimal. I know I did two hours zone two this morning and and some people would argue that you should be taking you know, a little bit of carbs for that, but I didn't because I also like to have sessions where I don't put any sugar in my mouth because it just

That's just who I am. And you know, may maybe there's a fat adaptation component to not putting any sugar in on a zone two ride. And I can even out, you know, the the high carb key sessions with sessions where I don't take any carbs and that just works for me. So you're like it's dependable on the athlete. But I think the key takeaway for people is, yeah, with this high carb strategy we're talking about for amateurs and recreationals, it's for your key training sessions.

Ben Treble (25:14.05) Yeah, fun fact, there was you know, I think the the low carb diet or the fasted training was very popular many years ago. That hasn't completely disappeared. So it's completely disappeared from the the media story that's out there around carbohydrate crazy, 150 grams per hour. but talking to some people on performance teams from the World Tour at the conference, there is still a place and time

To do either partially fasted or fat max training where you have lower carbohydrates. It's certainly a very small window of your training where it's appropriate. But as you said, like let's say, for example, a base a base period, there is advantages to doing, I think, some fasted, or you at least start fasted and then progressively increase some carb intake if it's long enough to look at fatty oxidation.

So

Cam Nicholls (26:14.326) Yeah. I mean I this morning it was interesting because I'm kind of building my fitness back and I almost used not eating as a bit of a benchmark because the two hour zone two ride that I did this morning, I actually started to crave some carbohydrate and feeling like I needed it at about an hour and a half, hour forty five. So with about fifteen to thirty minutes to go. Whereas I know once my I've

continue to re s reestablish my aerobic base engine and become better at utilising fat as energy, I'll do that two hour ride and I'll have no cravings for carbohydrate. And I could probably go two and a half hours. So it's almost like a bit of a a a benchmark for me, knowing how efficient I'm getting at, you know, using fuel for energy, particularly at an aerobic state, by not eating.

So yeah, just just an anecdote from from my perspective on on that. And yeah, I'm I I'm all up for having sessions where you don't have anything, particularly if it's if it's under an hour and it's and it's recovery or zone two focus. I don't think there's any need at all.

Ben Treble (27:18.86) Yeah. I'll leave you one with one last tidbit which I thought was interesting from the presentation from Bernardo. In their research, they actually found there was very minimal gastro differences between sixty and one twenty grams per hour. For example, like they had a I think there was a group of about twenty five or thirty, so still small sample sizes. But within that, I think only one rider experienced some gastro issues going from sixty to one twenty.

I found this interesting because that's not been my experience in the field with amateur athletes. I have had athletes go from 40 to like 60 and had issues with this jump. So I would almost guarantee if I had taken them from 60 to 120 in one go, they would have experienced gastroissues. so I th I just thought that was an interesting thing that the study found.

there was minimal gastro issues from sixty to one twenty. but they did have issues from one twenty to one fifty.

Cam Nicholls (28:26.134) Absolutely. Well, thanks for sharing, Ben. I think we can all kind of land on, yeah, if you if you're a recreational and amateur and you're leaning into the, you know, more carbohydrate intake, aiming for through gut training, 90 grams for your key sessions is going to be a good target. But of course, if you want some support with that, as Ben has referenced many times during this discussion,

That's one of the things he supports his members through th through the coaching that he does. It's not just about training, it's also about nutrition and carb strategy and and and supporting that strategy, you know, over the course of many months. So if you're interested in in working with a coach, not only on your training, but also on your nutrition strategy, make sure you check out the RCA's website. Go to www.roadcyclingacademy.com and check out one to one coaching.

Thanks for your time, Ben, and we'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

What can recreational cyclists learn from the cooling strategies used by the Tour de France peloton?

In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA coach and exercise physiologist Ben Treble to unpack the science behind cooling strategies, heat acclimation, hydration and performance.

With the 2026 Tour de France being one of the hottest on record, riders were seen using ice baths, cooling gloves, slushies and cold water immersion before stages. But do these strategies actually improve performance, and are they worth using for amateur cyclists?

Ben explains the physiology of riding in hot conditions, why heat dramatically reduces cycling performance, and the evidence behind practical cooling methods that everyday riders can use before and during training and racing.

Whether you're preparing for a gran fondo, summer road race, Zwift event or simply trying to survive hot weekend rides, this episode is packed with practical, science-backed advice.

• Why the 2026 Tour de France put cooling strategies in the spotlight
• What happens to your body when you ride in hot conditions
• How heat affects power output, recovery and endurance performance
• Heat acclimation vs simply riding in hot weather
• Ice baths, cooling gloves and pre-cooling strategies explained
• Do Slurpees actually improve cycling performance?
• The truth about pouring water over yourself during rides
• Cooling vests, ice socks and cold towels
• Does menthol actually help?
• Practical cooling tips for recreational and Masters cyclists
• Common mistakes riders make when racing in the heat

If you're looking to perform better in hot conditions, improve your endurance, or simply understand the science behind what the professionals are doing, this episode is for you.

Learn more about Road Cycling Academy coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com

Podcast Sponsor: https://onekloudx.com.au/

#cycling #cyclingtraining #tourdefrance #endurancetraining #heattraining #cyclingperformance #roadcycling #granfondo #masterscycling #hydration #cyclingpodcast

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.826) Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I am joined by the RCA's science geek based in Switzerland now, Ben Treble. And today we're going to go through well, I wanted to ask Ben about the Tour de France, actually, because it's just been and gone. And there was a lot of scenes of riders with their arms in icy water or arms and hands in icy water. And I was like, that's interesting. Cooling strategies, Ben. But does this like

relate to, you know, everyone that's watching them, we're all recreational and amateurs at the end of the day. Like, should we be paying attention to this? Like, is it something that, you know, the mere mortal should be leaning into? Should we be dunking our arms and hands in ice before we go out for our rides?

Ben Treble (01:13.91) I think you should pay attention to it, Cam. How feasible is it for an amateur to pull off the same strategy though, at a fondo race? Probably pretty limited.

Cam Nicholls (01:24.43) True. So why should I be leaning into it? What does the science say about the cooling strategies? Especially when it's hot, of course. Like, you know, if you live in Canada and you're you're riding in the middle of winter, you're probably not gonna worry about it, are you?

Ben Treble (01:37.706) No, not necessarily. You're probably worried about hypothermia instead. Yeah, look, I think the tour is a pretty special case this year. I'm over in Switzerland and we've we had some pretty severe heat waves even here for Switzerland, which you'd think as an Australian I would be pretty well well established to cope with, but it was I can tell you it was some of the hottest periods I've gone through.

The two are I think I read this stat the other day. The two are averaged in the first two weeks thirty point eight degrees. Now, that may not sound super crazy, but to be an average for two weeks where every day is over thirty, the previous record was twenty-five point nine in twenty-two. That is enormous. Like to have a a two week average temperature to be four degrees higher than the last record.

To me that's what stands out the most. Anyway, so it was an extremely hot start to the tour. In fact, the majority of the tour. Stage eight was hitting forty degrees. They cut stage nine short because of the extreme heat protocol from the UCI, which I think is a it's a good thing it's in place and it it worked and whatnot. Yeah, what else did we read that was pretty interesting before we get into the real physiology of it? Picnic post NL put up

that they were going through twenty eight bottles per rider per stage, which was three times the normal number of bid-ons that they use.

Cam Nicholls (03:12.704) Well, crazy.

Ben Treble (03:14.902) So safe to say, I think why does this matter? Well, for the Aussies back home who listen to this, they're you probably used to the heat and probably already put in place a fair amount of attention to being able to ride in the heat safely. Maybe they already do some heat training potentially, or they at least think that riding in the heat is their heat training. Maybe not. you'll find out later.

And you know, what else can we do to cool down in the meantime? So I think there's a lot in this, Ken.

Cam Nicholls (03:49.198) Can I just like my little anecdote that I'd like to share at a recreational and an amateur level? Yep. And it's not even cycling, it's triathlon. I know we shouldn't be talking about triathlon on the Road Cycling Academy podcast, but I'm going to. So I've done the Noosa triathlon the last two years. It's the the biggest Olympic distance triathlon in the world. It's big event. I don't do very well because I'm not a very good triathlete, but on the run.

Not last year, the year before, the first year I did it. my daughter gave me a little bit of ice. I just put down my back. Because it's very hot in Noosa during November when this is on. Like I'm talking, you know, like early 30s, high humidity. By the time you're doing the run, which is a five kilometer run, you're getting quite hot. I had my heart rate monitor on. She gave me the ice. I dropped it down my tri-suit and it went down my it actually slid down my spine essentially. But I noticed my heart rate dropped.

Probably three beats, which may not sound like a lot, but when you're pushing threshold when I was I guess essentially during a ten kilometer run, which is what I was doing. It enabled me, I I noticed that all of a sudden I could run at a faster pace. So the next year, which was last year, I got it to drop me ice on the way up and on the way back. And it was almost instantaneous, like energy. Even though I was, you know, I wasn't consuming anything. It was just

The heart rate dropping and the ability to to go a little bit higher. So I see what the pros are doing and I'm like, yeah, I completely understand why they are doing it just from my own little baby recreational experience at the Noosa triathlon.

Ben Treble (05:31.03) Well, let's find out why why that may may have helped you out from a few different angles. Maybe I thought it's good to talk about I think a lot of people talk about the heat and they don't necessarily fully maybe understand what's actually happening. We know that when you ride in really hot weather, it affects our performance. You feel hot and you know, generally your your core body temperature starts to go up at some point and affect your performance.

Cam Nicholls (05:36.439) Okay.

Ben Treble (05:58.626) But I don't know if we really quite talked about this, or people don't necessarily go too deep on it. So that's what we're going to try and do a little bit here, at least to begin with. So let's talk about what happens when you ride a bike. So that could be in the trifulone or for most of our audience, masters athletes. You can think of your body as a as a space heater. So when you produce, so you push the pedals, right? You're going to produce energy. And

Only about 20, maybe 25% of your energy from metabolism that fuels those contractions gets converted to mechanical work. The remaining sort of 75 to 80% of that energy gets released as heat. So yeah, exercise raises our heat production above rest rates about 10 to 15 times. There's a big range because there's huge variance across, you know, say untrained to

well-trained and elite athletes. So I'm giving you some pretty broad ranges, but it's for a reason. You know, during strenuous exercise, your active muscles are going to produce potentially 100 times more heat than at rest. Right? So what does this look like in numbers? Well if say you're sort of a a general rider amateur, let's say you know between 250 to 350 watts, this would be like an above threshold effort. You're probably producing anywhere from 800

To 1200 watts of heat, right? So if you're a master's rider, if you're at a lower wattage, say 180 watts, you're still producing another 650 watts out of in terms of heat. If you're to talk in watts, I know we love watts. Let's talk watts instead of percentages. So I'll let that sit with you for a second, and we can take it a little bit deeper when we talk about. You know, I have a great textbook, one of my favorite scientists, George Brooks.

His exercise book is a bit of a Bible. it goes a little bit more in depth, right, and starts to talk about one of the best ways our body cools down is through evaporation. Now, if we didn't have that evaporative cooling, right, and there are circumstances where it's not functioning very well, your body temperature rises about 0.2 degrees per minute. And in terms of moderate exercise,

Ben Treble (08:22.828) This could result in thermal injuries within like 15 to 20 minutes. So you could say it's about one degree every five minutes increase in your core temperature. So and your core temperature has a very finite range before it starts to become a problem. I'll let you sit with that. We can go a bit deeper if you really want. We can talk about the heat balance equations. Maybe we don't need to go about that. But essentially there's a lot more involved in terms of your

Your body is like a heat sink, a lot of people use that term, or it's like a heat storage device, and at some point it hits its maximum, can't store any more heat, and it has to start getting rid of it. And in response to that, it has to do a few things. All right. So when we talk about heat storage, the things that become part of the equation are metabolic production, so energy production, you've got convection, conduction, and radiation. Those are all

Positive or negative variables in the equation. And the final one is evaporation, which is the only one-way street in terms of cooling and heating the body down. All those others, so metabolic production, convection, conduction, radiation, can both get rid of heat but also increase it, right? And there's a tipping point. So the only thing you end up leaning on at the end of the day there is the evaporation. So

That means that evaporation or evaporative cooling in terms of physiology is one of the most important areas we have to focus on as athletes. So let's are you ready to keep going? Is that sit well with you? Any questions?

Cam Nicholls (09:59.476) Yeah, th well there's definitely a lot more to it than you kind of you know, consider when you're either training or when you're doing a an event, because, you know, let's face it, no matter where you are in the world, events for recreational and amateurs are are typically in summertime. And as a result of that, there's a propensity for it to be really hot and and often i it is. But am I considering what's actually happening physiologically when I'm like heating up?

Like you've described? No. I'm not. I'm just thinking about how many more carbs can I get in? How much more power can I put out? Versus, you know, how could I maybe cool myself down right now?

Ben Treble (10:40.398) And I think it's it's probably a little in depth for some people, but it's also really important to get a handle on it because it might help people understand and pick between what might be a little bit more low-hanging fruit in terms of cooling strategies, which ones are worth your time investing in, and what ones are maybe less and people have different circumstances, right? If you're doing a hill climb time trial versus a road race or a crit at night

Those are t or an indoor, maybe you want to do a Zwift race, these all present very different situations that may change like which cooling strategy is more appropriate for you. So yeah, glad you're sticking with me. we'll keep going with it. So in terms of proportions across evaporation, right? Let's say you're at rest. Radiation is about 60%, evaporation is about 25 and convection is about 12%.

In terms of where's the heat coming from during exercise or if you're in the heat, let's say, I don't know, you go to the sauna, something like this, evaporation suddenly becomes the principal mechanism, right? So when the ambient temperature starts exceeding your skin temperature, your body starts absorbing heat via radiation and convection. Right. So in terms of this, the heat equation, suddenly we're not losing heat.

Through radiation convection, like at rest, your body produces heat to survive. And it it gets rid of that heat through radiation convection. But there's a flipping point to which instead of losing heat via those methods, it actually starts absorbing heat. And so the only thing you have left to get rid of the heat is evaporation. In terms of numbers, useful or not, maybe, but every gram of sweat that evaporates removes around

0.5 to 0.6 kcals. So why is that interesting? If you remember those watts we talked about before. So at 180 watts, it was around 650 watts of heat. If you need to get rid of a thousand watts of heat, you need to evaporate one and a half liters of sweat. Suddenly it's like that's a lot of sweat that you need to kind of get rid of to drop that kind of heat, right? Now if you're not

Ben Treble (13:09.022) acclimated. So if you're not heat acclimated, so a normal person, your sort of the ceiling of sweat rates is around that one and a half liters per hour. Athletes that are heat acclimated can have sweat rates up to four liters per hour. So very big difference in terms of the ability and why is a sweat rate kind of important because it's about this evaporative heat cooling

procedure, right? So heat training helps really raise that ceiling a considerable amount. So if there's probably one key takeaway in all the numbers in the last five, 10 minutes, that would be one of the big ones. What's one of the big outcomes from doing heat acclimatization? You can increase your maximal sweat rate and this improves your ability to evaporate sweat and cool your body down. Something that is interesting to note

So there was some research papers from Barnes in 2019 that did looked at sex differences in sweat rates. So men do typically average their s they're typical, so rest sweat rates are higher than women. So 1.13 versus 0.83 liters per hour. So it's probably just a side note for the the women listening. I would caution that's probably just mostly due to body size, but yeah.

Typically women have lower sweat rates, so your ability to evaporate the heat is also lower. And because the the heat sink, the physical body is smaller, it has less heat storage to start with. So food for thought for women out there, I would say it's pretty important for all people to consider heat training. you still following me? You ready?

Cam Nicholls (15:01.57) Yeah, yeah, I'm still following you. So I'm I'm I'm starting to get a little bit well, not confused, but conflicted in my mind whether I should be doing heat training or be trying to cool myself when I'm in the heat. Or maybe both.

Ben Treble (15:16.532) Yeah, well, I mean, long story short, I would say the heat training precedes the event that you're targeting and this will help you operate better. And you can still do Yeah. I would say the heat training should be done riding in the heat is not necessarily heat training, so to speak, in my eyes. Okay. It is one thing to do, but it's not people who say, I just ride my bike in summer and it was thirty degrees outside

This is good, but it's not not doing as much as you think. Yeah. Particularly when we look at s if you do any sort of heat training. We'll get into this later, but typically you need to probably at least a week's worth of heat training to see any real change and adaptation. And the decay of those adaptations is like two to three weeks. It's quite quick. You can extend that with maintenance work, but generally speaking, let's say summer finishes.

Cam Nicholls (15:49.538) Mm.

Ben Treble (16:12.952) Your heat adaptation's gone in like two weeks. Right. So you hit summer again and it's gonna feel brutal if you haven't done anything through the winter. Cycling has a very big advantage, which is nice though, because we get this additional self-generated airflow. Obviously, when you ride, you have the wind effect. Keep that in mind when we're talking about evaporation, because it means that when you're on climbs or you have a headwind.

where the the the wind effect is low, it becomes you're more at danger, right? Because the evaporative effect drops massively. And you probably notice that if you do a a nice ride in summer and you hit a climb, the pace drops right down. Let's say it's for us mere mortals on a steep climb, maybe anywhere from six to ten kilometers an hour. at this speed you probably feel like you heat up super quick suddenly.

Even though the ambient temperature outside hasn't probably changed at all. And that's predominantly because you lost this this the evaporative cooling has dropped massively because the airflow's gone. Now, something else to keep in mind when we talk about sweat rates is water that drips off you doesn't do anything for you. So when you're riding the bike up the hill and you've got buckets of sweat dripping off you, that in itself is not

evaporative cooling, right? It's just water lost. In fact, it means it's not, it's not a good thing necessarily. So the evaporative cooling, the way it works is the water is on your skin and it's evap it's evaporating because your skin is hot. You know if you get some water and you put it on a hot pan outside and it dries. Your skin, your body is so hot and when it sweats, this water on the skin evaporates because of the heat from your body, not because of the heat outside.

And that process is drawing the heat off your body and then getting rid of it. That's the evaporative cooling mechanism that we we need predominantly. So if the water, your sweat, is just dripping off your skin, it's not staying on there to actually absorb the heat from the body and take it away. So dripping buckets of sweat doesn't necessarily mean your evaporative cooling is working amazing. So where does all this go in terms of performance? What happens?

Cam Nicholls (18:29.717) Mm.

Ben Treble (18:35.146) when we do do heat training, right? So we just talked about what happens when you hit the heat, why it's really important, evaporative cooling is the main thing to take away. We have different sweat rates. Ideally we want to increase the sweat rate to improve our ability and the sealing of our evaporative cooling in terms of the heat equation. What happens when we do do everybody talks about doing heat training and increasing blood plasma volume, but what else is happening when we do heat training, right? So

Almost every system gets some adaptation. So your cardiovascular system, essentially the mechanism, you're going to get more blood flow to the skin and less blood flow to the muscle. That's also something interesting. So if you think about performance, you're going to get reduced cardiac output, your stroke volume goes down, your fatigue earlier, right? You've got less blood flow going to the working muscle group. It's instead getting redirected to the skin to try and cool it down.

Your thermoregulation, so you're gonna with heat training, you'll get increase your sweat rate. interestingly, your plasma volume can go down depending on what you're doing. Your electrolyte imbalance also kicks in, right? So this is a negative thing. So if you're riding in the heat, right, as part of that high sweat rate is your your plasma volume goes down, right? You're actually sweating out plasma volume. You get impaired dissipation, you get dehydration, you get.

cramping risk. That's all part of thermoregulation. Your central nervous system, right? So when you're hot and you're struggling in the heat, what's happening? Well, your neurotransmitters are getting altered. So you'll probably get reduced motivation, your RPE goes up, your ability to make decisions, and your reaction time goes down. This is these are reasons why we care about improving our ability to perform in the heat, beyond, you know, I guess some of the

reasons people talk about. From a metabolic point of view, your carbohydrate oxidation goes up quicker. Right? So you become more glycogen depleted and you'll actually start to produce more lactate quicker. So obviously this lactate is both good and bad. Depends at what point at the intensity and duration you're at. But that would result in earlier fatigue and potentially if the intensity gets high enough, more lactate is a bad thing. So it it's a contributor to

Ben Treble (21:04.204) metabolic acidosis. Your muscle function in the heat becomes impaired contractually. So you get this altered excitation contraction coupling process. What that means is essentially is you just get less strength, which means less power, but also you're going to get more muscle damage. So your recovery time from rides in the heat, which was significant, goes up. Obviously if you ride in the heat, you've got this hydration

I think we don't need to go into that too much, but yeah, fluid loss, you lose your plasma volume, there's a heat illness risk that gets concerned with that. Psychologically, I don't know, you've ridden in the heat cam. Do you find it harder?

Cam Nicholls (21:47.266) Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, when I first moved to Sunshine Coast from Victoria. So Victoria, for those of you not in Australia, is typically a lot colder. Well, it is a lot colder. You get the dry heat there, so summer does get hot, but there's nothing more depleting than a you know thirty-two degree day and eighty percent humidity, like combining heat and humidity. It's so draining. And I I I did find when I first moved here in particular the first year or two, the summers really drained me.

physiologically, like I I was taking a lot longer to recover and probably had to back off my intensity and volume a little bit to accommodate the shift in in environment. So completely yeah, hear what you're saying in terms of you know, the impact it can have on recovery. Yeah.

Ben Treble (22:35.726) I think two key takeaways from here would be heat doesn't just impact our cardiovascular system, right? If we talk about blood flow, cooling the body down, it's also impacts the muscle function quite directly. So this contractual excitation coupling gets reduced, right? So your legs are also worse at the muscle, huh? So it kind of it it hits you in a lot of sides. And the second one is another downstream impact we get from the heat.

Is it often impairs your GI function? So people often get gut issues in the heat. And it may not necessarily be because they had the wrong food or too much food. It's probably because your ability to absorb water from the gut decreases when you're in the heat, right? Which changes the asthmology and the ability to then absorb food. So that's because the body's moving water.

And your blood plasma is changing. So all these things, right? The blood flow is also getting redirected to the skin and the working muscle. The stomach is not getting enough blood flow. And I think this probably explains a lot why some people, particularly in hot triathlons, they have nutritional blow ups that don't necessarily make sense. They assume it's because they ate too much food or they just had a something it was the food. It's not doesn't it's not always the food.

So that's something for people to think about in the especially in the triathlon world. Maybe the Noosa tri is a pretty hot one, I think. Or Kona.

Cam Nicholls (24:05.78) Yeah, Kona is definitely a hot one. So the pros are obviously training in the heat. They're preparing for hot tour de France, maybe not to the level of what they've each just experienced, but you know, they're obviously prioritizing the cooling strategies more these days than perhaps they did in the past. Is would that be fair to say? Or is it was it just because this was a really hot Tour de France, it was more front and center?

Ben Treble (24:30.082) I think it was also just you know, when you had Net Company Ineos, is that their name? They at the the Team Time Trial, which was the first stage, you know, they just had this image of a bunch of riders with their hands at the the starting ramp in big plastic tubs of water. Later latter to the which this this didn't quite do the media rounds as much, but you may have seen it. Tom Peagcock at some point had his hands in these

Fancy looking mitts.

Cam Nicholls (25:01.42) Yes, I saw that.

Ben Treble (25:02.956) Yeah, and that's it's essentially trying to do the same thing but with technology. So yeah, they're just trying to cool the body down through some sort of more practical methods, at least in the Pro Peloton. I think teams have invested more money in this in the last couple years, especially as budgets have gone up for some teams. because it is getting hotter. Like there's sort of no no two two ways around it, but

A lot of summers we seem to break new records and if the race is getting hot, at the end of the day, performance is what matters for the propeloton. So if the environmental conditions and heat becomes the biggest limiting factor on performance, that will end up getting more money, more research and more attention than has been on, say, aerodynamics in the past, right?

Cam Nicholls (25:55.724) Before we continue with the podcast, I wanted to thank one of our team sponsors, OneCloudX, a company that's headquartered in the Gold Coast, Queensland, but they have a national presence and they provide software solutions to small to medium businesses that need support with financial management, planning and budgeting, advanced manufacturing, warehouse management, supply chain optimization, and analytics. They also specialize in multi-entity and operationally complex.

environments across manufacturing, distribution, construction, education, and services. And they go beyond core enterprise resource planning solutions like NetSuite and Epicor, which they do provide. But on top of that, they're layering automation, warehouse management solutions, and AI-enabled workflows to drive measurable operational outcomes. They're also a supporter of local Australian cycling and we're very grateful for that. So if you're a

Small to medium sized business in need of what I've just described, please check out OneCloud X and we'll drop a link to their business in the podcast description. Now, back to the podcast. Yes. So those cooling strategies before the race like starts. I I kind of the the one thing that confuses me is if you've let's just say hypothetically you've you've done the heat training, you know, you're super fit and you're about to start a hot race and

You stick your your feet your hands in these gloves to keep your hands cool. But then you're gonna go do a you know, in our case, a three or four hour fondo event and get really hot during it by using those gloves before you actually start the ride just to cool yourself down before you get going. Is that really gonna be doing anything?

Ben Treble (27:34.87) Yes. Potentially. It might be for a short period, right? But think think about it, your body's like this, this heatsink, and it has a ceiling, right? And let's say I I'm gonna s come up with some numbers for for betum, but let's say you don't use the gloves, your body's gonna be, I don't know, the heatsink is filled to fifteen percent. Then you start the fondo and at some point, maybe two hours in, you hit the ceiling, right?

Cam Nicholls (27:36.93) My guy.

Ben Treble (28:03.042) And then you have to kind of back off the intensity because your body has to redirect its resources to cooling itself down. Let's say you use the gloves instead of starting at 15%, but you're starting at now five percent. You're just delaying the point at which you hit your heat ceiling. So you're probably still gonna hit your heat ceiling and at some point you would still struggle, but you're just prolonging it. But that might be the difference between staying with I don't know, staying with the group.

that made it through to the qualifying sprint out and the group that didn't.

Cam Nicholls (28:35.31) True. So what could be there for? I mean, it's pretty obvious, not obvious, but I think, you know, people would have ways and mechanisms to keep themselves cool, whether you're using traditional forms like just ice or whether you're, you know, using modern gloves. But what about during? I mean, you see people just dropping water bottles on themselves. I'm thinking of the you know, the Australian National Titles in which is run in January. It's always very hot. There's always scenes of prose, you know, just

Pouring water down there, you know, all over them. Is that doing anything? Like, should we be doing that if if we've got a spare water bottle to pour on ourselves?

Ben Treble (29:12.876) Yeah, it's not a bad thing. It's probably important to note for the most part, and it's still beneficial, but a lot of that is probably more about your perceptual cooling, which does have a it's more psychological. Yeah. Let's go, let's dig straight into cooling strategies because it's a pretty good topic, huh? I'm gonna run through if anyone's listened to my podcast before with you, I do like the AIS for those listening, that's the Australian Institute of Sports.

Cam Nicholls (29:24.715) So psychological.

Okay.

Ben Treble (29:42.712) They do a lot of frameworks on this. sort of did a bit of a summary of it. So we've got some of the cooling strategies that they would recommend. So I'll run through them sort of just one by one. And they talk about the

Cam Nicholls (29:57.87) They have like groups, you know, when we previously discussed the AIS and we talked about supplements, they've they've kind of got your A supplements, which is like your caffeine, your creatine, your beta-alanine. and then you've got your your B and your C supplements, which are like either emerging or, you know, have dropped out because, you know, there's been more research and they've realized it actually doesn't do a hell of a lot. So with the cooling strategies, is it like categorized like that or it's just like here are all our cooling strategies?

Ben Treble (30:26.286) They just kind of put them in a big table to some respects. What they do do is talk about what methods are good for pre-event, during events, and post event. And then they kind of give them a general, you know, grading what's slightly better than the other. So we'll go through them. Highlight, they call it the mixed method, which is using multiple cooling strategies so that affect your internal and external like heat.

This is probably the best way to improve your overall experience at a hot event and ability to reduce the performance effects from the heat on you. So keep that in mind. We'll start with cold water immersion. This can be good for and for post. So cold water immersion gets like some of the biggest ticks as a an effective rapid cooling mechanism.

And you can take this in lots of different ways. So this could be, you know, if you need to cool down the entire body, obviously an an ice bath or a cold water bath, like full immersion is is one of the best ways to do it. You would have seen this at the tour. Some of the teams now have a an extra bus or a van, and in the back of the van they've got, you know, the little blow up, you know, bathtub and that they put ice water in it. So the riders finish a stage, jump in the back of this van, or they or they just bring them out.

You know, they the little blow up tubs. There's a bit of a joke because there's a few videos of Remco with his rubber duckies. the team threw some rubber duckies in the back of the van in the the cold water tubs. So they were using the full body immersion for post and for pre, they were using, particularly at the time trial, they were using that, you know, the forearms and the hands are good because they have an awful lot of your veins and all your capillaries. It's very dense. So there's a lot of blood flow.

Cam Nicholls (31:58.563) Huh.

Ben Treble (32:22.678) through there and that's where we can cool down the blood really quick and really effective, right? Like you can really effectively cool your core body temperature down just by putting your hands and forearms into cold water. So that's what you're seeing. And they have obviously the the fancy version, Tom Piccott has the expensive technological ones, which are kind of some cooling mitts that you stick your hands in. Or you can have the the cheap, easy version which is a bucket of ice water. Dunk your hands into it.

The nice thing about that is if you're doing a warm-up right, because it's kind of important at the start of an intense race. Like if I thought of say Amy's Fondo at Lawn, where you start with that climb and you're kind of cold to some respects. In a perfect world, like you're kind of sitting on a trainer next to the start shoot, keeping your your muscles warm because your muscles need to be warm to go hard and not

have a problem, right? So the the real trick with these time trials is how do you keep the muscles warm and the metabolic systems, like your aerobic system needs to be up and running and ready to go from that first pedal stroke whilst keeping your core temperature down. Right? So that's what brings us to I guess let's talk about cooling vests.

Cam Nicholls (33:38.339) Hmm.

Ben Treble (33:45.624) This is actually something you see a lot in the propello, right? And I think you even start to see it at some amateur events because it's easily accessible. They're pretty pricey, I would say, for what they are. But the cooling vests that you can buy, you probably buy them off Amazon now. it's probably only good for pre events. I wouldn't use it for of course during, and I definitely wouldn't use it post. Though I have seen some people in the propello using it post, so that's interesting.

Cam Nicholls (34:13.045) Why would you definitely not use it post?

Ben Treble (34:15.509) Yeah. Because at the end of the day, post ride, your body's gonna be very hot. Right? When you're pre-ride, your heat sink hasn't filled up yet. You're just trying to keep it the starting point as low as possible. But post, let's say your heat sink's already full, then you and your your most important method for cooling at that point is evaporation. And you go put on this plastic vest that traps heat and reduces your evaporation. I don't think it's it probably feels good.

But it would actually I think it would reduce your body's ability to lose that heat pretty quick. Rather than it'll probably feel good and cool your skin temperature down, but it's actually probably gonna prolong your core temperature reduction. And it's for sure gonna block the evaporative effect. So you're just gonna reduce your your skin temperature, right?

Cam Nicholls (34:59.054) Okay.

Cam Nicholls (35:07.086) Probably aligns with what what they say about saunas now, like when you leave a sauna, they all recommend that you let your body naturally come back to its core temperature versus forcing it back through jumping in a cold ice bath or having a cold shower or something like that. Whereas, you know, two, three years ago you'd never hear that. But when I go to my local sauna place these days, Noosa City Cave, they and even T H seven, yeah, that the the best approach when you've really heated your body up is to let it

Come back naturally.

Ben Treble (35:38.818) Yeah. Yeah, the body's pretty smart, it's pretty effective when you let it do its own thing to some respects. So if you stop putting it in that un let's call it an unnatural environment, which would be doing intense exercise or going into a sauna, when you take it out of that, you know, in let's say it's a an unnatural environment, but it's natural. it's not normal environments that it's gonna work pretty well to cool itself down. So let's keep we'll run through so that's cooling vests.

Something that I think you see a reasonable amount in the propello that the amateurs could use better, possibly, is the the slushies or the the ice slurry, as it's often called.

Cam Nicholls (36:22.626) This sounds good. This sounds more up my alley. Go to seven eleven before a race and just munch on a slurp. You get the sugar hit too. I like this one.

Ben Treble (36:25.752) Yeah.

Ben Treble (36:32.374) Yeah, me too. I'm a big fan. It's good for pre and for post and it's potentially good during. The science on this was I looked into it was was probably quite interesting because the AIS the recommendation though is for this to be effective, you need quite a lot.

you need to drink a lot of slushy. It was like, you know, around more greater than seven grams per kilogram. Right.

Cam Nicholls (37:01.868) Okay, that's a lot. Of of you just slushy ice. Not necessarily sugar we're talking here, yeah.

Ben Treble (37:04.803) Yeah.

Yeah, you're talking about, you know, easily half a litre plus.

Cam Nicholls (37:12.876) Okay, well that yeah, that's so it's it sounds good in theory, but it could require a lot of pull it stops during a Fondo event. It's gonna slow down your peaks time.

Ben Treble (37:21.718) Yeah, so I mean it's very effective, but for it to be effective from the science, my textbook from Brooks goes further and says it's between eight to ten grams per kilogram. So that was also an interesting difference between the AIS and some of the other science out there. So I would say probably the the range is between seven to ten grams per kilogram of ice slurry that you would need.

Best used when sweat can't evaporate on its own. So if you're riding and it's a very fast-paced ride where there's a lot of wind effect, at least having it during is probably only going to have a psychological effect. So it's not a bad thing. I don't think it's going to do do necessarily too much negative, but there's probably a time and place for during, but definitely something that could be used pre, right? To keep your heat sink as low as possible before you start.

But you also probably need to know that for that to really work, you have to have quite a lot and you probably need to factor that in in terms of, you know, practice. Make sure your stomach can tolerate it so you don't get a gut issue, right?

Cam Nicholls (38:31.562) Yeah. But it's also like, you know, if people are are aiming for their high carb intake pre, you know, it's it's it kind of falls into that as well. So maybe it's it's you know, there's two positives to it. One is if it's a hot race or hot event, you're getting the cooling component and irrespective, if you're if you're trying to hit what does the science say? One to four grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight, you know, two to four hours before an event, it's very hard to to achieve four grams.

Per kilogram of body weight, almost impossible. You know, but if you're getting an extra, you know, on top of what you're already doing, if you're sitting on the start line with a slurpee in your hand, full of sugar. Yeah. You know, it's gonna help help you with that, irrespective of the cooling component. Are we gonna see fondos next year? Everyone's gonna be standing there with slurpees at the start line. I like it. That'd be a great pitcher.

Ben Treble (39:17.614) Exactly.

Ben Treble (39:25.942) There's business idea for you, Cam. You need to have not the not the coffee cart, but the slushy cart at the start of the fondo.

Cam Nicholls (39:32.578) Yeah. I think so.

Ben Treble (39:35.394) Sell half litre bottles of slushy to people.

Cam Nicholls (39:38.456) Let's have a chat offline, Ben. The RCA Slurpees at the Fondo events.

Ben Treble (39:43.042) I like it, huh? We could put something else in there to help it out. Hang on. Okay, so we're gonna keep going down my list of cooling strategies. So the next one most people have probably seen it at some point, at least at time trials, which would be water misting. This is you know, you if you I know some cafes in in Australia have them, right? Like the water misters. If you go to the plant section in Bunnings, they also use the water misters. So

The water mister is good pre-per like during. Obviously during is difficult and post, but if you've ever seen people sometimes you'll see people like put the hose in the air with the water that creates water mist when the riders go through. Like this is actually like some riders probably don't like it, but it it is a good thing. So if someone offered the water spray in my face from the team car on a hot day, I would take it. It is better if you combine it with a fan.

Because you're going to get a like a wind cooling effect with the water. And this helps keep the water on the skin instead of dripping off. And it improves the evaporative process. Right. So yeah. Water misting with with fans improves both the physiological and perceptual markers for cooling. So that's a that gets quite a few ticks. Obviously, there's a fair bit of equipment and logistics required to pull that off.

Cam Nicholls (41:10.806) Okay. Yeah. I prefer the slur. I'm still on the slur. Slurpe's my number one at the minute.

Ben Treble (41:15.19) I lost you at Slurpes. Okay, let's keep going. probably something simpler, which we already talked about, but it comes in the bucket of cold towels or cold packs. I would put the ice socks in the same category. So it's good, like reasonably good. I wouldn't say it's amazing for pre-tactics. It's pretty good during, and it's okay for post. So why is it only okay pre and post?

'Cause it's predominantly only cooling down your skin temperature. Predominantly. So it's pretty hard to wrap your whole body in a cold towel or keep the ice on something like your hands and your forearms while you're cycling. It's not very practical, right? So the at the end of the day it's mostly cooling the skin temp down. You typically can only put it behind your neck.

And if you're very unlucky to be a propello rider, you weren't even allowed to use this during the time trial because the UCI said that might be an aerodynamic advantage. Which was a bit of a a shock to a lot of people. So yeah, I think this is but this isn't it may not necessarily be the best out of all of them, but it's often pretty cheap and pretty accessible. Like it's

Cam Nicholls (42:17.378) Well

Ben Treble (42:33.44) It's something that I think a lot of amateurs could pull off. Like if if you're at certain ultra events, you could probably put some ice socks in a little SC in the support car and grab one at some point if you're overheating. You could if you're lucky enough to have a friend to come support you at your event and they're at one of the the fueling stations, they could have some ice packs with them and you get a rubber band, you put it around your bottle and they could even hand it to you and do a drive by.

If you if you're one of the riders who wants to focus on time and not stop, you can even do the drive by from your mate on the side of the road. So I feel like it's pretty, pretty cheap and accessible to pull that one off. The Science was something I didn't sort of think about necessarily, but they actually recommend that you use a chamois fabric because it holds the water without dripping, which will improve the evaporation. So yeah.

I'm not sure how that compares to the pantyhose, which is probably the most common Ice SOC used material. fun fact is you probably know Cam because you might have seen the budget for the RCA Provelo team, but pantyhose are not cheap. So if anybody has a a cheaper alternative that works the same, that's accessible at a petrol station, let us know.

Cam Nicholls (43:55.277) Yes.

Ben Treble (43:57.154) okay, last one on the list at least from the AIS. It's probably an interesting one you might not have thought of, but menthol. This one is almost only really useful for during the event, and it's entirely for perceptual heat changes. So psychological. But yeah, menthol it can be actually put in two ways. It can be sort of like people have it in sort of some cooling creams.

And they put it on the working muscle to cool the skin down, or at least it's a perceptual cooling. Your skin feels cooler. I've even seen there was at some stage people were putting menthol into a like a drink product. And they even targeted Swift racing because they had a lot of cooling issues with indoor Swift races. And they were putting menthol product into sort of some sort of drink mix. So you had that cooling effect. I think this one's probably the lowest

If we had to grade them all, this would be the the lowest on my list. But it's just it's one that made the list, which I thought was interesting.

Cam Nicholls (44:59.97) Yeah, okay.

Cam Nicholls (45:05.314) Yeah, and look, I I think what might, you know, be relevant for, you know, recreational and amateurs out there listening is, you know, it depends what season you're in, of course. So Aussies might be listening to this now, you know, we're in the middle of winter thinking, yeah, don't worry about it. But if you're in you know, Europe, the US or that part of the world, you know, it it's very relevant. You know, just pick a training session. It maybe even if it's just on the indoor where you where you're getting quite hot, or if it's if it's a hot Saturday ride.

And just trial one of these strategies and and and see what it does. Because most I'm of the belief most recreational and amateurs ignore this kind of level and and just don't do anything. But from what I've seen in my own little world is you know, the impact on your rate of perceived exertion, which is in correlation to what's happening to your physiology physiology, is significant and it's instantaneous. So

I mean that's th that that would be my I don't know if you've you think differently, Ben, my th my thought for people listening. Give it a try on your next hot training ride, one of these strategies and and see how you go. And if you do notice you can produce more power, you do you know, you do notice a drop in in your rate of perceived exertion, then maybe it's something to consider for your next event.

Ben Treble (46:24.162) Definitely. Yeah, I'll bring us back to the the top of the list, right? So the first thing I talked about was the mixed method. Now, if you think about the lovely media craziness around the Tour de France or even just looking at summer racing in in general these days, if you think about the list that we just went through, what do you see the most? You see the mixed method, which is using a multiple methods through that list, right? They're using cold water immersion.

They're using slushies, they're using water misting, they're using cooling vests, they're using ice socks. They're pretty much using everything on this list. The only probably warning I would put out there, which the AIS raises around menthol or some that are perceptual, psychological only methods, which was pretty much just menthol, was when your perceived heat is dropped, physiological, you're still hot. So

What they found is that some riders just rode harder because they perceptually they thought they could, but actually they just cook themselves quicker. So there's maybe a flip side to all of that when we're talking about it. And yeah, something else that's for at least for the Aussies, very easy to try. One of my favorite things, which is not fully on the list, but maybe a version of it, was on hot summer days on a long ride.

The first thing I would do is go to the 711 gas station. First thing I'd do is actually I would I'd go into the the ice cooler outside the station and I would actually go sit in it.

Cam Nicholls (48:03.105) Right.

Ben Treble (48:03.874) I'd just open that door and go sit sit in with all the buckets, the bags of ice to cool down super quick. Then I would go in and I would grab my 7 Eleven slushie, like the big one, half a liter. Then I would go back to the ice box and for the next five minutes, drink my half a liter of slushy while sitting in an ice box, finish the slushie, then I'm grabbing the loose ice in the bottom of the big ice box, the ice, chucking it down the back of the jersey, and then getting on the bike.

Cam Nicholls (48:34.198) Wow, but some of those ice boxes are a bit small and perched up and like climbing into one of those could look a bit odd if you're kind of at a petrol station. So perhaps let's not recommend that one. But each to their own Ben if you want to do that. Yeah. It's it sounds it's ticking a lot of boxes.

Ben Treble (48:51.628) If you're really hot, like if you're getting to the point where it's you almost can't it's a bit dangerous, right? Which can happen quickly. I think that's a a little a very brief note. Like once you heat up, once you hit your ceiling in terms of heat sink, you can quickly become too hot. That it's it's not healthy. So you actually it's important to cool the body down. And that's a very effective way. like whole body immersion in the ice box. So yeah.

Cam Nicholls (49:18.766) It's a it's good one to leave with. Yeah. So is is is that the list, Ben? Are are we done? Because we've gone pretty deep there on on technical analysis of why it's important and and what people can do.

Ben Treble (49:32.632) Yeah, I think we'll save the the heat training for another time. but that's probably the continuation of this this topic.

Cam Nicholls (49:39.8) Yes. Well, of course I know you're working with some of your members, Ben and and our other coaches at the RCA are working with their members on not only, you know, heat training and cooling strategies, but also, you know, carbohydrate strategies as well. So if you're out there listening and you're thinking, yeah, I wouldn't mind blending in some of the strategies discussed today into my own training, you know, working with the coach can be a a a really

effective way to blend these in and target certain sessions and and certain events with the right strategy. So if you're if you're interested in working with a coach, make sure you check out the RCA's website. Go to www dot roadcyclingacademy.com and check out one-to-one coaching. Thanks for your time, Ben. We'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

If your goal is to beat your mates on the weekend bunch ride, this might be the most effective workout you can add to your training.

In this episode, Road Cycling Academy founder Cam Nicholls and Head Coach Ryan Thomas break down one of their favourite interval sessions for recreational and amateur cyclists. Rather than targeting a single training zone, this workout combines VO₂ max efforts, sweet spot intervals and anaerobic repeats to replicate the demands of a real-world group ride.

TP Virtual Ride: https://tpvirtualhub.com/84191

Free PDF: https://shorturl.at/Pw2rp

You'll learn:

• Why most indoor cycling workouts don't prepare you for fast bunch rides
• How hard-start VO₂ intervals improve your ability to respond to attacks
• Why sweet spot efforts in the middle of the session build fatigue resistance
• How anaerobic efforts on tired legs improve your finishing power
• The importance of durability and race-specific training
• Why Ryan recommends riding in Level Mode instead of ERG mode for sessions like this
• How to progress this workout over a 4-6 week training block

Whether you're preparing for your local bunch ride, a gran fondo, criterium or simply want to become a stronger cyclist, this episode explains how to train for the unpredictable nature of real cycling—not just structured intervals.

If you'd like to ride this workout with us, we'll also show you how to complete it on TrainingPeaks Virtual. https://tpvirtualhub.com/84191

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.826) Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, which is also on YouTube. Today I'm joined by the RCA's head coach, Ryan Thomas. And I think we're going back-to-back bro science videos here because we're going to talk about the best workout you can do to beat your mates. And this isn't really there's no science literature on this one, is there? No. This is just from us doing, you know, RCA for now about six or seven years, working with recreational and amateurs, digging into the science and

Coming up with a workout that we think that people can do that I did actually yesterday. I'm still a little bit fatigued from it, to be honest. but a workout people can do in on a week to week basis for a maybe a six week block or something like that, if they're looking to to beat their mates. So if people want to do this workout, just know that we've we're gonna be hosting this workout on Training Pegs Virtual, which you can do with us next week. So we'll drop a link below to that. I also

Did this workout on Training Peaks Virtual yesterday. So I've got some questions about it, Ryan. But what is the workout first?

Ryan Thomas (01:27.17) Yeah, well it's we've done so many different workouts and we're always prescribing something. It's a mix of like a blender that we might have seen on Wahoo system, bit of Bunch ride style, a bit of

Cam Nicholls (01:36.088) They have the mini blender and the big blender. I've done them both on Wahoo system. Or is it Wahu X these days? I can't remember.

Ryan Thomas (01:42.03) Yeah, they're incredibly challenging, right? Like you by the end of it, you're on your hands and knees. So it's kind of thinking about what you need to do in a bunch ride or you're riding next to your mate, like how do you get up that climb and they're like, you're starting to drop and you're starting to get a half wheel and it's like it's really challenging. Yep. I've kind of mixed together a bunch of different physiology, but essentially it's fatiguing you and making you stressing your body enough that by the end of it you're gonna have to go really hard on fatigue legs.

So this particular workout's one version of many that we can do and that we can create. And there's many different adaptations, but essentially we do a warm up, do a ramp, up to threshold, activate. And then in this particular one, we've got two hard start VO2s, which I really like. It kind of gets we prime our VO two system, we get our oxygen consumption really hard in the first minute, and then we settle back down into low VO two and where heart rate stays really high and it's but it's still really hard on the legs for four to five minutes. Yep.

Do that twice, recover, and then we get into some sweet spot tempo for two by eight minutes with a short recovery in there. So kind of what you would do in a bunch ride, for example, you've done a couple of hard efforts and then you're settling into a nice pace, settling, rolling turns. And then the final set is one minute anaerobic effort. So in a bunch ride, it's like where that split happens. Usually in a bunch ride is like that really hard one minute effort. Recover, go again, and then go again and again until you until you can't go anymore. So

kind of mimicking that really hard end of a bunchie. Okay.

Cam Nicholls (03:09.966) Cool. So before I give you my feedback on it, I've got some questions about the ride. Yep. Let's keep in mind that, you know, based off previous conversations that we've had, because this kind of does contradict a little bit some of the conversations we've had about targeting specific zones and spending six weeks there. Yeah. This is kind of like all the zones in one ride. Go smack yourself. So make sure that, you know, if you want to get the most out of these, you've have sort of periodized, you know, through, you know, your lower end aerobic zones. Maybe spend a bit of time on threshold. Yep.

You know, if you really want to get the most out of it. If you don't care about that, fine. But I just wanted to preface that because it does kind of this workout is a bit of everything. Yeah. Right. It there's a reason for it because bunch rides or races or events, they're a bit of everything. And a lot of times people do the training and they're doing, I'm doing the over unders, I'm doing VO two session, you know, max workouts. And but they're sustained and they're they're they're predictable. This is like an unpredictable interval session, if that is not a co not a contradiction in itself. So

Ryan Thomas (03:53.046) Hundred percent.

Ryan Thomas (04:06.232) Yeah, it makes sense.

Cam Nicholls (04:09.228) Yeah. So what I liked about this workout, let's talk about the first intervals. Yep. Was that if you think about getting dropped in a bunch ride or or you know being on the limit, what happens? And I even hear this from recreational amateurs. I hate it when people attack. And then, you know, it's like, why are you training that? You know, and this is kind of doing a big effort where people will attack and then going back into quite a hard effort. So it could be like, you know, someone's attacked in the bunch and everyone's accelerated.

And then you gotta get on the wheel because you know there's a couple of guys driving it. So that first couple of intervals I feel replicates that to a certain degree.

Ryan Thomas (04:45.186) Definitely. Okay. Yeah. And it's a strategy you can use across any type of interval, like a tempo interval or a hard start anaerobic interval or a hard start threshold. And I use this quite a lot. Yeah. It's really good physiologically, but it's very applicable what you do on the road.

Cam Nicholls (04:59.918) Okay. The next two intervals that you sp spoke of, which was the probably for me, maybe bottom end sweet spot. Yeah. Tempo. Yeah, around 300 watts for eight minutes. I've been doing a lot of tempo work recently. So I've I found or sweet spot work because I'm not really training for anything and I like just to sit on because particularly from a weight management perspective, I'd rather than do zone two, I'd rather do tempo or sweet spot because I know I'm just burning through some more calories.

Ryan Thomas (05:09.582) Three hundred watts, yeah.

Cam Nicholls (05:28.866) Because I'm not doing enough volume at the minute. Yeah, it's different to the actual you know I'm

Ryan Thomas (05:31.126) One way to think about it.

Do what I say, not what I do.

Cam Nicholls (05:37.09) Yeah, exactly. But I've been doing a lot of work, so I actually found this kind of quite easy this part. So I was curious to get your perspectives. Maybe it's just because I conditioning myself for this, I found a little bit easier. Other people may not. Is it designed to be a bit easier or like what's the purpose of the sustained efforts in the middle?

Ryan Thomas (05:53.356) Yeah, I mean this is one iteration is probably the first type that you would do. And and I would increase this up to threshold. Okay. So in the progression, we want to make them harder and harder. If you're doing the s exact same workout for two weeks, three weeks, it's probably not gonna give you much more, right? And you're gonna get pretty comfortable with it. But the next week, so next week go and do them at threshold. Do those eight minutes at ninety five to ninety seven percent. Or I'd go to a hundred percent if you're feeling good. And I think the one caveat for this type of workout is you do it in level mode as opposed to erg mode.

You can probably get a bit more out of it if you're feeling good. Yeah, so go I'm personally as a writ as a when I'm riding on the trainer, I'm rarely in eark mode. I'll go in level mode. This podcast

Cam Nicholls (06:25.23) I doing erg mode.

Cam Nicholls (06:34.158) The podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy. If you're a recreational or amateur road cyclist and you're stuck on a frustrating performance plateau, feeling like you need some guidance, but you're not quite ready to dive straight into one-to-one coaching. At the RCA, we've created something called the 12 week custom plan, which we believe would be your perfect next step. It starts off with an upfront deep dive call with your coach who will understand your goals, your riding preferences, what your not negotiable rides are.

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Right. I'm always in erg mode. I love erg mode. I don't have to think about it. I know you people should be doing level mode. But it's just like well what that's what's practical for me right now.

Ryan Thomas (08:10.862) Yeah. So the benefit of level mode in that situation, if you were sitting at three hundred watts and you're like, Well, I'm pretty comfy, like maybe my sweet spot's three thirty today. Like I'll let's lift three thirty and let's three thirty. Okay. There's no negative to that. It's just what your legs are on the day. Or maybe your physiology aligns better to that. So that's a benefit there.

Cam Nicholls (08:28.718) So it was two eight minute sort of sweet spot efforts. Yeah. With a three minute recovery or was it four minute three. Three minute recovery. Yeah. And while I was doing that, I I was thinking that I was like, so I've got three anaerobic efforts coming up. Four fifty watts on an indoor trainer in erg mode is quite difficult for me right now. So I was like, okay, maybe we're doing this now because if I was doing something more challenging, I'm not going to get through that. So the final intervals was a minute at four fifty watts. Mm-hmm.

Ryan Thomas (08:34.401) Yeah, sure.

Ryan Thomas (08:52.184) Yes.

Cam Nicholls (08:58.496) And then two was it two minutes recovery and then a minute on? Yes. Two minutes off, a minute on. And once again, I was surprised I got through this okay. But I I'm I was thinking like, you know, bunch rides, group rides, where do people often get dropped? It's at the end when it's like like I think about our Tuesday World Champs where I live in Noosa. It's the one minute or 45 second climb up, you know, the final the final climb, which is maybe, you know, after people have got about an hour in the legs where they pop. So I was like, okay.

I've done these initial, you know, intervals which were quite challenging. Ones in the middle, okay, they were sus they weren't that challenging, but they fatigued my legs to a certain degree. I'm now doing these three hard efforts on fatigue legs. So it's kind of like, you know, durability that a lot of people don't necessarily train. And I I felt like that's why you put them there.

Ryan Thomas (09:48.3) A hundred percent. And I think a lot of people who are just choosing a workout on wherever or making a workout up, you would usually do hard stuff at the start, right? 'Cause that's when you feel good. You want to do hard stuff at the start. That's when you the le the least amount of fatigue in the legs and you can pr probably produce more power. But this type of work or beating your mates around the block or in the bunchy or in a race or whatever, it it's you're never getting dropped in the first five minutes or ten minutes of a of a bunchy or riding with your mates. It's in the last hour.

Or in the last fifteen minutes of that group ride where that one minute, thirty second punch is really important. Yes. And you can progress this. So level mode, if I was doing this workout, I would do if I was in level mode, I'd just go as hard as I can for a minute. And th if I'm four fifty or five hundred watts, it wouldn't really bother me. And as a coach I wouldn't really matter because what we're trying to achieve out of that is what's your ability or how hard can you push after an hour or forty five minutes of intervals, what can you get out of the legs? And we'd

The reason that you wouldn't do this too much early on in a prep or whatever is that if you're pushing that really hard, it's gonna take a couple of days to recover from that type of anaerobic work.

Cam Nicholls (10:53.822) it's quite fatiguing. Yeah. So while I got through it, you know, reasonably unscathed, and I said to you off camera, I'm actually kind of doing this workout myself. Not the one you prescribe, but I'm making my own one up where I do I'll start off with a s I kind of periodized through the designs. As we talk about, I'll start off with, you know, zone two warm-up, sweet spot effort for 10 minutes, recovery for five, then I'll do over-unders threshold for eight, ten minutes, then I'll recover for five minutes, then I'll do 3015s.

And then I'll recover for five minutes and I'll do an all out 30 second effort. Yeah. And that's kind of my blender. So you yours is a bit more re reverse engineered, which is probably smarter for bunch rides, was bunch rides start off hard. Yes. whereas my, you know, my version not so much. So because I've been doing this workout, so I can just stay conditioned for the local group ride, I found it relatively not easy, but not as challenging as I probably would have if I hadn't done this workout before. But those one minute efforts from a musculoskeletal perspective, while I wasn't cardio, I wasn't

failing, like later that afternoon and even this morning, I really felt it in the legs. Which I and a lot of people don't do that kind of work on the trainer, I don't find the anaerobic work. They do the VO2, they do the threshold, but they don't do the hard thirty second or one minute pretty much max.

Ryan Thomas (12:07.106) Yeah, and it's important for if you don't have a local bunch ride, for example, if you're just on the indoor trainer or you're not doing any any online racing, then this type you'll never get this type of stimulus. Right. Like you're never getting a really hard effort after an hour or an hour and a half or however long you're doing. But yeah, it's really important. For someone who's ra like I race every weekend. I do a one hour race every weekend. And at the end of that race you're emptying the tank. And that this is what the type of stuff you're getting. But if you're not doing that type of work, then

Not really training that ability to suffer after all when you're already fatigued.

Cam Nicholls (12:38.252) No, and don't they say this w this is the kind of work that wakes up dormant muscle fibers? Yeah. We're activating more more muscle fibers that are there to be used. Cool. All right. Well, if you would like to join Ryan and I and do this workout, we're gonna do the exact same one or are you gonna mix it up for the next one? I will do the same one.

Ryan Thomas (12:46.658) Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Ryan Thomas (12:55.394) I think we'll do the same one. We'll do the same one and well I'll make the ranges a little bit better. And then use level mode so you can go a bit harder, I

Cam Nicholls (13:04.02) Use level mode. You can do your your coaching over the over the chat. You can push some people as we're going through it. Yeah, we'll put a link below and we'll catch everyone in the next show.

One of the biggest mistakes recreational cyclists make is relying on estimated FTP numbers from Garmin, Strava or Wahoo to determine their training zones. If those estimates are wrong, your Zone 2 training could be missing the mark—and limiting your aerobic development.

In this episode, Road Cycling Academy founder Cam Nicholls and Head Coach Ryan Thomas discuss a simple "bro science" method that can help cyclists estimate their true Zone 2 power without needing a formal FTP or Critical Power test.

RCA 12 Week Custom Plan: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/cycling-plan-custom/

You'll learn:

• Why estimated FTP numbers can lead to inaccurate training zones
• How to use heart rate and power together to validate your Zone 2 intensity
• The one-hour Zone 2 test almost every cyclist can perform
• What heart rate drift (decoupling) tells you about your aerobic fitness
• Whether you should train to power or heart rate during endurance rides
• Why easier Zone 2 training is often more effective than riding too hard
• Practical advice for cyclists training 6-12 hours per week

Whether you're training for your next gran fondo, trying to increase your FTP, improve endurance or simply become a stronger recreational cyclist, this episode provides practical, evidence-informed advice you can apply immediately.

If you'd like to try the Zone 2 test discussed in this episode, we'll also be providing a downloadable guide linked below.

#cycling #zonetwo #FTP #endurancecycling #cyclingtraining #roadcycling #cyclingcoach #cyclingperformance #masterscycling #hearttraining

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.826) Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, which is also on YouTube. Today I'm joined by the head coach of the RCA, Ryan Thomas. And today we're gonna do some bro science, Ryan. Because at the end of the day, with recreational and amateur road cyclists who we deal with, you know, guys that are training six to maybe twelve hours per week if they're lucky, busy lifestyles, jobs, families, you name it. You know, sometimes people just aren't gonna do testing. Yes.

Ryan Thomas (00:36.91) Knuckle down. Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (00:56.832) work out their numbers. They're just not going to do it. I've we've recently implemented a quiz at the RCA where people fill out this questionnaire, three minutes, they get presented with results on where we think they should be focusing their fitness if they want to increase their FTP. And off the back of that quiz, if people say they're looking for some tailored advice or maybe want to work one on one with a a coach, I offer a call. And as part of that call, it's just like an intermediate step if people are maybe coaching's too much to jump straight into, they just want to have a chat with somebody.

So I've been speaking to a lot of recreational and amateurs and through that conversation I've learnt that yeah, people are just taking an estimate off Strava or Garmin or or Wahoo. Is that commonly what you see when you bring people on board?

Ryan Thomas (01:37.548) So common. Yeah, super common. There's a lot of AI predictors out there. Yep. That will give you a rough number. But yeah, like we just spoke about in another podcast that you may or may not have listened to. It's a lot of estimating it doesn't tell you much.

Cam Nicholls (01:51.246) Yes. Yeah, exactly. So as a result of that, you know, people are getting a zone two number from this estimated FTP. And, you know, often it's external to the fact that they're a lot of them aren't actually doing exclusive zone two work, which is perhaps another rabbit hole for another day. The number that they're getting for their zone two power is inaccurate. And zone two is probably like the mainstay that we wanna be working.

You know, in our cycling, no matter where we are in our journey, whether you're doing targeting an event or you're doing off season work, you're always doing zone two. Yes. You always want to keep topping up the aerobic engine. So it's arguably the most important number you should have.

Ryan Thomas (02:34.094) Yeah, definitely. You agree? Yeah, well cycling at the end of the day, it's and it's an aerobic sport. Like it's and if you're cycling for more than f two minutes, then it's aerobic. So the easiest way, less stressful, most the least stressful way to boost that aerobic engine is zone two work and a lot of it.

Cam Nicholls (02:43.096) Yes.

Cam Nicholls (02:51.544) Yes. So if we're gonna give somebody an idea of what their their zone two power should be, and if we're using FTP, obviously we use critical power at the RCA, which is perhaps a bit left of field when you think about the whole recreational and amateur cycling community. Most people are talking about FTP. So that's why we're talking about a little bit more. But so if we look at FTP, what number should we be looking at if we're trying to target our zone two power?

Ryan Thomas (03:17.122) Yeah, anywhere from sixty to seventy percent. The actual zone two zone is fifty five to seventy four percent of your threshold or your FTP. So anywhere in there. Usually we when we set zone two work, it's usually sixty to seventy percent. Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (03:32.6) Yep, okay. So here's my broscience hack, Brian. Yeah, yeah. Which I haven't really told you about. And I'm keen to get your thoughts. If somebody hasn't done their any formal testing, they've taken an estimate and they think they're doing zone two. Here's what I'm going to recommend to them without them having to go do a test. This is kind of a test, but it's a much easier test than doing an FTP test. jump on an indoor trainer, okay, if you've got one, or go to a trainer.

Ryan Thomas (03:36.76) Tell me, I'm I'm interested.

Cam Nicholls (04:00.462) crit track if you've got one or somewhere where you can just pedal consistently for an hour. Yep. Take your what you think is your sixty five, seventy percent should we be targeting upper end zone two for this one hour test? If it's a one hour test, testing your aerobic

Ryan Thomas (04:14.668) Yeah. Yeah. I would say sixty five, just go in the middle.

Cam Nicholls (04:17.484) Okay, 65%. So go sixty-five percent of your FTP for this test, right? We're pedaling consistently. We're making sure that we're not compromised by heat. We haven't had a bad sleep. We haven't had eight coffees before we do the test. Nothing is going to affect the heart, right? And then make sure you're wearing a heart rate strap. Okay. Key. Key. Super key to this test. Okay. Because what we want to do is see where our heart rate lands once we get maybe 15, 20 minutes into this one hour test.

Ryan Thomas (04:34.734) Yes.

Cam Nicholls (04:46.35) So if you're doing it out, you know, on the road or on on the trainer, make sure you warm up for the first five, ten minutes. And then once you get to the ten, fifteen minute mark, we want to be hitting sixty-five percent of FTP. Then we want to see where does the heart rate land. Now, to calculate your zone two heart rate. If people haven't done FTP testing, I'm gonna tell you right now they haven't done lactate threshold heart rate testing. No. Yeah. But most people know what their max heart rate is, roughly.

Ryan Thomas (05:09.566) Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (05:14.53) I could still argue that it's probably not their max heart rate because to get your max heart rate, as you know, you need to be three hours deep in a heart event where it's hot and you're climbing and you're on someone's wheel and you feel like you're about to have a heart attack. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. When was the last time you did that? You know, it doesn't happen all that often. And some people have never done that. So maybe you could argue that people should add three to five beats to what they think their max heart rate is. But anyway, close. Just trying to take your max heart rate, sixty to seventy percent.

of max heart rate is your zone two heart rate.

Ryan Thomas (05:45.73) Yeah, a bit higher for for max. it's usually around seventy, seventy five for a heart rate, or eighty even, based off your max heart rate. no, that's the threshold.

Cam Nicholls (05:56.054) That threshold. It's seventy, sixty to seventy percent. Yes. Yes.

Ryan Thomas (06:00.034) I don't use heart rate zones. I don't use max heart rate. everyone's doing testing, so fine. This podcast

Cam Nicholls (06:01.75) You don't use Max Right though.

Cam Nicholls (06:07.63) Is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy. If you're a recreational or amateur road cyclist and you're stuck on a frustrating performance plateau, feeling like you need some guidance, but you're not quite ready to dive straight into one-to-one coaching. At the RCA, we've created something called the 12-week custom plan, which we believe would be your perfect next step. It starts off with an upfront deep dive call with your coach who will understand your goals, your riding preferences, what your not negotiable rides are.

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According to the internet, sixty to seventy percent. And look, there may, you know, as we know with all sorts of zones, there are different variations and different formulas. So maybe for this conversation, we'll just say stick with around 70%. Yep. So we've got a upper end range of maybe the conservative number of sixty to seventy percent. When you get fifteen to twenty minutes into this test, looking at your power, sixty five percent of FTP, where's your heart rate land? Is it around seventy percent of your max heart rate?

Or maybe a bit below or a bit above. If it's around there, then you're probably at your zone two power. But if it's a lot higher, if it's 80, 85% of your max heart rate or a lot lower, if it's 50% of your max heart rate, then fair chances are you've got the wrong zone two power. Now there are caveats because you might, let's say, land at 70% of your max heart rate at 20 minutes in, and then at 30 minutes in you start drifting and you drift by 15 to 20 beats.

Ryan Thomas (08:19.531) Agree.

Cam Nicholls (08:31.574) Once you get to the end of that hour. So if that happened to somebody, what would you suggest is going on there? Not in zone two. Or you're unconditioned at zone two for that particular power. So you would drop it back maybe next time you go do that test. Because this is a good zone two ride anyway. This is not yes, we're turning it into a test, but people should do this ride probably once or twice a week anyway. Exactly. And if you want to go longer than an hour, just do the test for an hour and then keep riding. Yeah.

Ryan Thomas (08:36.654) Yeah, you're not in zone two.

Cam Nicholls (08:58.136) But yeah, the next time you go do this, maybe dial it back to 60% of what you think your FTP is. So you get to a point where your heart rate's kind of sitting around 70% of max heart rate for the full hour. Yep. And that's it. That's my bro science hack to to work out your zone two power. Of course, if it's the other way around, if your your max heart rate's 50%, you know, if you land at 50% at 20 minutes, then you need to increase your power. Yeah. But you want to be ultimately getting your max heart rate.

Around seventy percent of max heart rate, sixty five, seventy percent of max heart rate for that hour consistently, and that's probably your zone two power. And once you've worked worked it out, then you can work on it. Yeah. And you can work on extending, you know, to ninety minutes to two hours without seeing so much drift. But you know you've got at least maybe not a bang on number, but it's a lot better than, you know, taking this estimate and just assuming.

Ryan Thomas (09:49.474) Yeah, I think what's really important about or what's really beneficial about this is the the heart rate is the anchor because of the power we know that you stay at a consistent power and you're not conditioned and your heart rate's gonna drift and you're gonna not be in the right zone. So if you're d using heart rate as your number after that fifteen to twenty minute mark, you adjust the power down to keep your heart rate at that. And the other way to do this is if you were if you were looking at your your power and you were keeping your power consistent after that fifteen, twenty minute mark.

And your heart rate starts to change and starts drifting up. I'd argue that that's too hard for you. So if it's staying the same, then you're good. Like theoretically, you're in the right area. But if your heart rate's moving, then that what is that actually saying is that internally you're having to work harder than what you're exerting in your power, what externally what you're putting out. So there's decoupling and drift happening there, the separation between heart rate and power. We don't usually want to see that too much in zone two work. I think a lot of people think zone two work needs to be

Upper end zone two or it needs to be challenging in one way or another. But usually it's in a normal week of training it should probably be easier rather than harder. Mm. Gonna want it to be under si seventy percent or under sixty five percent. There's not much physiologically, there's not much difference from fifty five percent and seventy percent when you're in zone two. There's not much change, right? Yep. But if you go to ninety five percent or a hundred and five percent of social, they're very different things happening. And it's the same zone. Or zone two, there's a twenty percent range there where

Very, very similar physiological markers going on. So there is another argument, and I've heard this a bit, is that like you target the low end of the zones, you're still getting the same benefit, but it's easier. No one likes going low. No, it's very I when you set someone a a workout of sixty percent for zone two, they're like, That sucked. Like I couldn't do it. I couldn't you couldn't do it because it feels way easy.

Cam Nicholls (11:40.322) Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of arguments about just using heart rate full stop. You shouldn't be l looking at power. The thing in my experiences, particularly for somebody had an underdeveloped aerobic engine, when I first like took my cycling, you know, to the next level, I started doing proper zone two training. So I guess I just go out and ride at two hundred watts. That was what the coach said at the time. So I thought, what do you mean, just ride at two hundred watts? But he kind of knew from some testing that that was my zone two power. And it gave me something like, okay, just two hundred watts, two hundred watts.

And what happened over time is I was probably initially drifting quite a fair bit into zone three, zone three heart rate at that two hundred watts. But by conditioning myself to just target two hundred watts and stay exclusive at two hundred watts, over time a drift came down and then my overall heart rate came down. And I conditioned myself aerobically to ride at two hundred watts. So then I I asked myself the question well, what if I was following heart rate?

Would have I been reducing the power to keep the heart rate, you know, zone two technically, and then I'm conditioning myself to reduce power as the ride goes on. Is that the right way for a recreational and an amateur to do it? Obviously there's no science on this. This is just my own anecdotal experiences, but I've always found that once you can find that zone two power sweet spot, even if you might be experiencing some drift, provided you're not drifting out of control.

you know, and you're going into lactate threshold territory, which we know changes the workout physiologically, you know, over time it's going to that it's gonna level out. And that's when you know you're stretching the left ventricle, you're increasing lung capacity, increasing mitochondrial efficiency, you your type one slow twitch muscle fiber network, all that zone two stuff is being established.

Ryan Thomas (13:19.8) I think the key there is it depends how long you're drifting after. If it's after three hours and well, everyone's gonna drift after three hours theoretically. If you're drifting after thirty minutes, forty five minutes and it's probably yeah, you're stressed. Gonna after a three hour ride you're gonna be getting pretty stretched. So yeah, there's a lot of context that comes in there, but I like it.

Cam Nicholls (13:37.742) Absolutely. So maybe for this one, we haven't put together a a PDF yet, but I think I might put a PDF, my bro science hack, to work out your zone two power.

Ryan Thomas (13:46.958) Can you send it to me? Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (13:48.428) Yeah, we'll link a PDF below if you wanna check it out yourself. And yeah, come back to this video after you've done the test and tell us what happened. Be good to hear and we'll catch everyone in the next show.

Are cycling insoles worth it, or are they just another expensive upgrade?

In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, expert bike fitter Neill Stanbury sits down with cycling podiatrist Nathan White, founder of Cobra9, to explore one of the most overlooked aspects of bike fit: what happens between your foot and the pedal.

While many cyclists obsess over frame geometry, saddle position and crank length, very few consider whether the insole inside their shoe is helping—or hindering—their performance and comfort.

Nathan has spent over 17 years designing cycling-specific orthotics and insoles, working with everyone from recreational riders through to elite athletes. Together, Neill and Nathan unpack the science and biomechanics behind cycling insoles, explaining why properly supporting the foot can improve comfort, stability and overall pedalling efficiency.

During the discussion they cover why carbon fibre has become the material of choice for premium cycling insoles, how foot pressure is distributed throughout the pedal stroke, and why many off-the-shelf insoles fail to provide adequate support for cyclists.

They also explain the differences between generic, semi-custom and fully custom orthotics, discuss common causes of numb feet and "hot foot", and reveal how subtle improvements in foot stability can influence rider position, knee tracking and overall bike fit.

Whether you're struggling with foot discomfort on long rides, looking to optimise your bike fit, or simply wondering whether cycling-specific insoles are worth the investment, this episode provides practical insights from two specialists who have worked with thousands of cyclists.

Cobra9: https://cobra9.com.au/

• Why your feet are the most important contact point on the bike
• Generic vs semi-custom vs custom cycling insoles
• Why carbon fibre is used in premium cycling orthotics
• The biomechanics of foot support during the pedal stroke
• How insoles improve load distribution and reduce pressure points
• Common causes of numb feet and hot foot
• Why shoe fit matters just as much as the insole
• How better foot support can improve stability and pedalling efficiency
• What bike fitters look for when assessing cycling biomechanics

If you've ever wondered whether cycling insoles are worth the money, this episode will help you understand the science, the biomechanics, and the practical benefits behind one of cycling's most misunderstood upgrades.

Hip pain is one of the most common issues cyclists face, but the source of the problem isn't always where you think.

In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with expert bike fitter Neill Stanbury to discuss one of the more serious causes of cycling-related hip pain: hip labral tears. They explain how poor bike positioning, pelvic asymmetry, hip impingement and repetitive movement patterns can contribute to chronic pain and injury.

You'll learn:

✅ What a hip labral tear actually is ✅ Common symptoms and warning signs ✅ Why hip pain is often mistaken for a hip flexor issue ✅ How bike fit can contribute to hip impingement ✅ The role of pelvic asymmetry in cycling injuries ✅ Why some riders develop snapping hip syndrome ✅ Bike fit adjustments that may help reduce symptoms ✅ When MRI scans may be required ✅ Why surgery should be considered a last resort ✅ Practical ways to prevent hip pain before it becomes chronic

Cam also shares his personal experience overcoming years of cycling-related hip pain through targeted bike fit changes, including cleat adjustments, leg length correction and improved biomechanics on the bike.

If you're struggling with hip pain, deep groin pain, hip flexor tightness, hip impingement, or recurring discomfort while riding, this episode provides valuable insights into potential causes and solutions.

Subscribe for more cycling training, bike fitting, injury prevention and performance content from the Road Cycling Academy.

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.804) Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, which is also on YouTube. So please excuse any visual references. Today I'm joined by expert bike fitter Neil Stanbury, and we're gonna be talking about hip stuff in our injury series. This is the second video in our injury series. I'm quite interested in this one because before I came to you, I used to suffer from hip pain for probably 10 years. I used to get back from my Saturday ride and actually put peas, like cold peas, on my hip to deal with the inflammation. And

Of course, you know, you resolved it through, you know, identifying that I was dropping my right hip and I was slightly twisted to the bike. So you put my cleats in a better position. You gave me I think a six millimeter. Yeah. And maybe widened my Q factor a little bit. And it's funny, like I've never experienced hip pain ever since. So it was positional.

Neill Stanbury (01:02.796) Shim. Leg length shim, yes.

Neill Stanbury (01:10.328) Yep. Good. Yeah, yeah, most of them are. This one that we're going to talk about in the as part of our injury series is a bit more specific. I think yours was probably more sort of like an ITB syndrome, like a hip flexor type thing, because it was so easy to resolve. Yes, the other syndrome. This one we're going to talk about labrum tears. Now labrum tears, a lot of people watching this will know what a labrum tear is, but I'm gonna go through it again because there'll be plenty of people that don't. The labrum in the hip

Cam Nicholls (01:25.486) Yeah. I do have a lot of syndromes.

Neill Stanbury (01:38.516) is a if you imagine the hip as being a ball and socket joint, you've got a socket and a ball that sits in there. And that ball just sits neatly in the socket. And that socket is mostly comprised of bone, which is the actual acetabulum of the hip, but extending off the top, mainly the top section of this socket, there is a flexible cartilaginous lip. And the job, and this is what the labrum is, right? So that this is adhered to the edge of the the bone here as like quite strongly, but it can rip off, which is what we're going to talk about in a minute.

And labrum tears what happens when that actually separates off. They typically, when we're talking about cycling, they're very common. They often occur when the hip has been impinging at the top of the stroke. Now, what do I mean by impinging? Essentially, your knee is coming up over the top of the stroke. And if you've got there's some anatomical things you can have in your hip joint which can predispose you to this, but the big one is if you're sitting twisted to the bike. And we talk about this kind of as a causal mechanism of almost every one of these problems because it is.

But if your pelvis is out of playing with the bike, the knee typically on the opposite side to what you're dropping your hip. So if you're if you're dropping your right hip, your left leg will get forced away from the bike. And as it comes in from outside the line of the pedal, that femur is going to have to internally rotate repetitively across the line of the pedal. And so as it internally rotates, you're much more likely to get striking of the neck of the femur onto the acetabulum. And that

loads the labrum and it can rip it off. Now, sometimes they're good for a long, long, long time and then it fails. And you're out on a ride one day and you think, geez, my hip is suddenly painful. But a lot of them creep on. A lot of them, you know, it's a bit niggly and then it slowly gets worse over a couple of months. And then one day it's really bad. The typical pain from this from a labrum tear is a really deep anterior groin pain. So right in through the front of the hip.

People will often sort of grab their hip with their hand like this. We call it a sulcus sign. And they'll say, the pain's in there. It really feels deep inside. It is often mistaken for hip flexor problems. Okay. So a lot of the time the person will get a diagnosis of, your hip flexor is tight. You know, it's your hip flexor. You just got to stretch your hip flexor, your psoas. What you've got to realize is that the psoas muscle and the iliacus, which together form the hip flexor, they both run directly across the

Neill Stanbury (03:57.966) top of the socket, right? They are literally like on the labrum. So it's very, very difficult to delineate between a labral tear and psoas irritation because when the tear in the labrum occurs, it'll leak inflammation into the area around the psoas and you'll get chronic hip flexor tightness, which you can't resolve. So these are an underlying trigger, if you like, of some psoas type issues that people have with their hip flexor.

So deep anterior groin pain often comes on suddenly, but sometimes creeps on. Always associated with asymmetry on the bike pretty much, unless you've got terrible hip impingement issues. And often the rider will have a bit of a clunk and a creak in a pop in the hip. So that if they flex their hip up, as they bring it down, it'll go, wow. That's yeah, it's so we call it sort of a a snapping hip syndrome or something or both. Wow. Yeah, yeah. So there's often a bit of a noise.

Cam Nicholls (04:45.006) That you can feel or hear or both.

Never got to that extent, thankfully.

Neill Stanbury (04:51.946) Yeah, and I don't think yours was very frontal pain. Was it was it right in the frontal. Yeah, it was lateral. Yeah, so the lateral pain is more likely to be like ITB or TFL type pain, but the actual hip flexor slash labrum tear patterns, they're very frontal pain. So that's a it's a much worse problem to get. They're very difficult to fix. The treatment, when you're talking about cycling and biomechanics, the treatment is obviously

Cam Nicholls (04:55.502) No, it was right on the side.

Neill Stanbury (05:16.226) Two things. You must, and we banged down about this in the back pane one, you must correct the asymmetry that's caused it. That makes total sense. The other big ones are to reduce the height at which the knee is rising over the top of the stroke. So basically the higher this hip has to come up, the more likely it is to whack into the edge of that socket and damage the labrum. Yep. Shorter cranks, taller front ends, more forward saddle positions. Often we end up doing a combination of things where we move the saddle up and forward in an arc.

Around the bottom bracket. So we run a higher further forward position and we shorten the cranks and we bring the front end of the bike up. This can cause other slight other issues elsewhere. But if if you're trying to unload a chronically painful hip and let it heal, it's the lesser of two evils. Yeah. So you can end up with a bit too much weight on your hands and that sort of stuff from this type of positioning. But if it gets rid of your hip pain, it's often often the way to go. So you want to reduce the hip flexion, you want to open the hip angle up, shorter cranks are really good, upright front ends are really good on the bike.

And with any luck, it'll resolve. Now, if it doesn't resolve, sometimes these ones you do everything you can and they c they don't get better. We often end up doing an MRI, sometimes with contrast dye injected into the joint, which basically allows us to image the joint with a little bit more detail and determine it sort of increases the sensitivity of the scan for picking up the tear. But a lot of the time you can pick it up on a regular MRI without the dye. it's not very nice putting contrast dye into a hip joint. So yeah, you've got to pick and choose who you want to do that with. It's a big needle.

So we we scan your hip, we determine that it is a labrum tear, and then sometimes, sometimes they have to get off the bike for a period to allow it to heal. If it doesn't heal in that time, you know, which is often like two to three months, if it doesn't sort itself out and kind of the the labrum doesn't glue itself back onto the edge of the socket properly, there is surgical interventions that you can have for these. So is that a sort

Cam Nicholls (07:02.542) Pre slope, like as soon as you go down that path, is it ever gonna get back to where it was or

Neill Stanbury (07:06.979) Okay. But then again, if it's that painful that it needs the surgery and it's been that painful for that long, it's probably not gonna get back to how it was anyway. If you did nothing. So yeah, the surgery is definitely not something you jump into early. You do that as an absolute last resort when nothing else is working.

A lot of the stuff we spoke about in the the back pain piece that we did, which is probably coming out before this one, a lot of those anti-inflammatory modalities do help. The fasting and the hot cold and and that sort of stuff. It can help to knock down the inflammation, the chronic inflammation sitting around the edge of the labrum. But the the surgical intervention when all else fails, they basically put a couple of little grub screws into your pelvis and have a ligature that loops around the thing.

They rough up the bone, they stick these grub screws in, they loop it around and they suck it onto the edge of the the the bone there and they hold it in place. The hope being that it will glue itself back on with you know, with conventional healing processes to the edge of the socket. It's a very long, slow recovery. they have a relatively high failure rate within five years. It's not something you do lightly. They're a huge pain in the butt. So prevention is much better than cure when it comes to labrum tears, people. Okay.

So if any of you out there are suffering from a labrum tea, you've been diagnosed by your physio, your doctor, you've had an RI, hopefully this helps you out a little bit.

Cam Nicholls (08:23.774) Thanks for sharing the wash.

Neill Stanbury (08:25.59) Appreciate it. You're learning something every day, aren't you, Ken?

Cam Nicholls (08:28.27) I'm just I'm grateful that I didn't need to go down that path. Now I'm hearing about it. If you know, from my perspective, it was when I was experiencing the bike the hip pain, what I learned was it was all bike fit related. Yes. So people are out there experiencing hip pain and they haven't had a professional bike fit. You know, from somebody who understands human biomechanics first and foremost, probably a good place to start before you start looking at surgery options.

Neill Stanbury (08:33.568) It sucks. Yeah.

Neill Stanbury (08:53.868) Yeah, the surgery is like last resort and it it's not that great. The success rate is kind of iffy. This was a like the hip art the arthroscopic interventions that they do for this, they were sort of first pioneered probably twenty odd years ago, so it's a relatively young procedure. Yep. And it's not greatly understood the long term outcomes 'cause it's just such a young procedure. We haven't had it for very long. No worries at all.

Cam Nicholls (09:17.55) Well thanks sharing. And I will catch everyone in the next YouTube video and podcast.

Thinking about hiring a cycling coach but not sure what's actually involved?

In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with RCA coach and sports scientist Ben Treble to pull back the curtain on the coaching process and explain exactly what recreational and amateur cyclists can expect when they start working with a coach.

Whether you're training 6–12 hours per week, struggling to improve your FTP, getting dropped on group rides, preparing for a Gran Fondo, or simply looking to become a stronger and healthier cyclist, this conversation covers the complete journey from onboarding through to long-term performance improvements.

RCA coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/

In this episode you'll learn:

✅ What happens during a cycling coaching onboarding call ✅ Why goal setting is more important than FTP targets alone ✅ How coaches analyse your training history and cycling data ✅ The difference between FTP and Critical Power testing ✅ How TrainingPeaks is used to deliver and monitor training ✅ Why accountability is often the missing ingredient for improvement ✅ The role of recovery weeks and periodisation ✅ How coaches adjust training around work, family and illness ✅ Common mistakes recreational cyclists make when training themselves ✅ How structured coaching helps break through performance plateaus

Ben also explains how coaching extends far beyond simply prescribing intervals. From nutrition and recovery to training load management and identifying performance blind spots, coaching provides the structure and accountability many cyclists need to unlock their potential.

If you've ever wondered whether cycling coaching is worth it, or what the process looks like behind the scenes, this episode will answer your questions.

🚴 Perfect for recreational cyclists, Gran Fondo riders, masters athletes, endurance cyclists and anyone looking to train smarter and achieve better results.

Subscribe for more evidence-based cycling training, nutrition, bike fitting and performance content from the Road Cycling Academy.

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.804) Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I am joined by the RCA's European correspondent Ben Treble, who's also a science data geek that digs into all the research. But today we're actually, Ben, we're not going be talking so much about the research, although I know your approach is very research based. So no doubt we'll be sprinkling that a little bit into the topic of today's discussion. But what I wanted to do today is talk about what does the process look like if

I'm a recreational slash amateur road cyclist. You know, I've been training anywhere between six to twelve hours per week, depending on the week. And I'm kind of stuck on a performance plateau. I've been thinking about getting a coach, but I'm a little bit un uncertain. Maybe it feels a little bit beyond me, or maybe it feels like it's going to be another thing in my life. But I I kinda I don't really know. I know people improve a lot when they get a coach, but I don't know if I can commit to it or or what's involved. So

I thought maybe you could share how you work with RCA members, which are essentially men, women between the ages of, you know, thirty-five to sixty-five, that busy lifestyles, jobs, families, you know, life stresses, but they want to improve on the bike. So let's peel it back. Let's just say somebody doesn't really know you know they know s coaching's gonna help them improve, but they don't know what's involved. So my name's Joe Blow.

I'm thinking about getting coached. Ben, what's it gonna look like?

Ben Treble (02:00.162) Yeah. You're gonna you're gonna sign up to the RCA and the first step is we're gonna get you scheduled in for an onboarding call, which kind of sets the stage for what's gonna happen afterwards. In that onboarding call, we're just gonna have a big discussion. We're gonna talk about primarily it's a it's an opportunity to get to know each other, but second it's an opportunity for me as a coach to get your context, get your history.

And we're gonna start to have the first conversations on what is one of the most important parts of working with a coach and that's goal setting. I think it's something most athletes are typically not very good at doing.

Cam Nicholls (02:41.304) Yeah, and I think some people come into cycle coaching with a an expectation that they have to have like a event goal or, you know, a specific of you know, something that's happening on a certain time and I need to be, you know, peeking for for that. Whereas I know a lot of our members actually yeah, once once I have a call with them, because I like I'm typically speaking, you know, as in the inquiry guide to them before they join.

No, you don't need a specific event goal. You don't need to be racing your bike. You can literally just want self improvement. But then within that self improvement, you're breaking down what does that look like?

Ben Treble (03:24.76) Exactly right. I can think of a perfect example. It's probably one of my longest standing athletes I've worked with at the RCA. He did just do his first event recently, but we've been working together for well over a year now, and he never had any necessary intention to do any events. He wasn't racing in the history. His goals were quite simple in some respects and beautiful. One was he wanted to get fit and healthy

So he was a good role model for his daughter. And he wanted to get fit and healthy for himself so he could enjoy life a bit better. And he also just found cycling really enjoyable. and he only did indoor training at this point in time when we started. Interesting. So a very different set to maybe what is more traditional where someone says, I'm a master's writer and I'm gonna do a grand fondo in twelve weeks' time.

Cam Nicholls (04:09.912) Interesting.

Ben Treble (04:21.633) And I would like to qualify for the UCI Grand Fondo Worlds.

Cam Nicholls (04:25.698) Yep. Okay. So in this call, if someone says, yeah, look, I just want to increase my FTP, do you just go, Great, let's just increase it? Or do you set things a little bit differently? And how do you determine where to go? Because obviously you're having a conversation, but do you in that initial call, are you like looking at the previous riding history? are people, you know

Are you getting them familiar with training peaks, which is the software application we use for the calendar and looking at the data, or are most people already familiar with it?

Ben Treble (05:00.642) Most people are familiar with training peaks or a similar athlete management system. if they're not familiar with it in this initial meeting, I'm not going to spend massive amounts of time on that because you could spend days doing this. That initial meeting is the time has to be focused on getting the context of the athlete. So what's their training history, which might be I'm very new to the sport to I've been training for fifteen years, you know, varied periods of time from seven to twelve hours a week.

So you could have big different levels of experience and there's often a injury context. So, you know, I've recently had diabetic people who are trying to improve diabetes. I've had people who are coming back from back injuries, very common back or knee injuries. maybe they've not been riding for twelve months because of that and they're trying to come back into the sport. So the context is that's a big part of the conversation.

Then there's the availability piece. We're trying to tick this off relatively quick, which is, you know, what days can you ride? How many hours are you willing to commit to? That sort of thing. Part of that is looking at their training history. So objectively, I tend to look at if they have training peaks, I'll go in before this conversation and look at how many hours they do a week. And I'll ask them, how many hours do you think you do a week? And they always overestimate it. Interesting. And then I show them, I show them the data in training peaks. I'll screen share and be like,

I know you said you think you're doing eight to ten hours a week, but unless you're not syncing your data into training peaks completely, says you're only doing five to six. So there's sometimes we just try and set the scene a little bit here and put in some reality checks. When someone says, I'm doing eight hours a week and I want to move up to twelve, if they're only doing five hours a week in reality, you're not going to jump to twelve. Yep. Straight away. So I like to do that. And then the goal setting is the next biggest piece. And if

That's a very common thing. Someone says, I want to lift my threshold. I want to improve FTP or what's worse is I just want to improve, you know, my cycling. And I'll ask them why. So Cam, Joe Blow, why? Tell me why you want to improve your FTP.

Cam Nicholls (07:10.196) because I I'm struggling on the local group ride. I'm you know, I'm in in the D in the B group and I feel like I could be better in the B group and I want to get to the A group.

Ben Treble (07:21.816) Yeah, so tell me what do you struggle with the most in the B group?

Cam Nicholls (07:26.002) look, towards the end of the ride I just tend to fatigue out a bit and I go from being able to roll some turns and then I'm at towards the back and there's this climb at the end where sometimes I get popped and you know, I I don't finish and then other times I make it, but I'm always just struggling in the last part of the ride.

Ben Treble (07:43.778) Yeah. So already asking more questions, we're digging into some really nice goals, right? It's not I need to lift my FTP. Maybe that is part of the answer, but often we're already digging into two goals. One, you know, it might not be as measurable in terms of power, but it's still measurable. I want to try and move from my B to A group in a bunch ride. Sometimes it's I want to get from, you know, the the C grade crit race, the local crit, up to the B.

And I want to be able to get to the end of my bunch ride and do the kick, which is a durability question. So, okay, we already have two really good goals. Like how do we get you moving along in your program to improve your durability? And then how do we lift you up into the next grade?

Cam Nicholls (08:32.418) Yep, okay. And what if I say to you, Ben, but I I also like this is a not negotiable ride for me. It's the Saturday group ride. I go there with my mates, we have a good time. I really don't want to like I'm happy to do stuff during the week with you, but the Saturday ride I'd really love to keep it. Is that okay?

Ben Treble (08:50.37) Definitely. There might be a time and place where I say you might be better off here missing it for something specific. But at the end of the day, there's a really important component to training. That is you need consistency and volume. Kind of that's the bottom of the the pyramid, if you want. And often to achieve that you have to stay motivated. So if if doing yes, often the bunch ride's not as effective.

If you're doing three bunch rides a week, I'm probably going to try and convince you to drop some. But if your non-negotiable is I want to do one social bunch ride a week, we're going to make room for it. What that might mean though, that might look like, okay, Friday has to be easy or an off day. Or maybe the Sunday has to then be an easy day. I don't want you doing back to backs like doing a crit race on Friday AVO, going into another really hard bunch ride and then buggering yourself for three days.

Cam Nicholls (09:27.704) Okay.

Cam Nicholls (09:44.812) Makes sense. So we've kind of dug into some of the actual underlying drivers behind the FTP goal. you've done a deep dive on, you know, my logistics, my injury history, you've looked at some previous training. What happens next? You you send me off into the abyss or what am I looking at?

Ben Treble (10:06.934) Yeah, we would talk about a few other topics. Always try to touch on sort of in a self self assessment on strengths and weaknesses, which would include reflecting on your recovery and nutrition practices. I don't normally deep dive on them too much, but I just try to get a picture, okay, is that an area that I need to dig into more with you or not? Have you got a good handle? Are you good and up to speed on, you know, modern nutrition practices or not? And if you're not, I usually make a note, a self note to myself.

Okay, next coach call, we're gonna we're gonna have a bigger chat about nutrition as something for us to work on. Once we've got those out of the way, we've got an idea of the schedule where typically we'll have a chat about equipment. I need to get familiar with what power media you're on, do you have heart rate? What bikes do you have? Are you okay doing indoor training? Do you have a preference for indoor outdoor? They're a little bit different. Typically I might prescribe slightly different work if you ride. Some people are very good outdoors with doing their intervals.

And some people really struggle. So there's no point giving somebody thirty fifteens if they have rolling terrain and they just cannot execute them.

Cam Nicholls (11:14.294) Of course.

Ben Treble (11:15.382) So yeah, making sure that the work you prescribe is relevant and feasible for the athlete to pull off, I think is an important part. Maybe I'll try build you up to a point where we can get you to pulling off high quality thirty fifteen's outdoors. Okay.

Cam Nicholls (11:30.936) So then what happens after that? After the call?

Ben Treble (11:34.04) Or I throw you in the deep end. No, I'm just kidding. No, no. So we would wrap up the call typically with a point where normally there's a couple of days where I go away, I take all the information and I build out your initial couple of weeks of training and we put in place a sort of a higher level macro plan. So often there's if there's not an event goal, I do like to put in place a time bound goal. So that might be we want to try

move from, you know, C to B grade at the crit races by the end of the season. So that might that could be three months away, could be six months away. Who knows? Depends on the individual. But we put a time bound goal in place and that helps drive the the macro plan for the training. So the general blocks. We might say month to month, you know, generally we try and put in place, I want to work on these things. I would hand this over to you in training peaks for you to have a look at in a note.

And you can go in and say, That's not gonna work because I'm going actually going away on holidays for four weeks here, or these are some blackout dates, can't do it here. So then we start to do this a little bit back and forward, getting to know each other and the schedule and making sure that everything fits in place and will work for the athlete. Okay.

Cam Nicholls (12:52.974) Okay. And in that first four weeks where you've sent me off into the abyss, a lot of people get a bit nervous about doing tests because, you know, they need to work out their their numbers. and obviously at the RCA, we don't use FTP, we use critical power. So is everyone doing the tests in that first week? What do the tests look like? Or can you look at existing, you know, data? And are some people already

You know, ticking some of the they haven't done the test, but maybe they've done a three minute all out effort in a local bunch ride. So, you know, you don't need to test that. Well, what does that typically look like?

Ben Treble (13:29.762) Yeah. I would at least in the first four weeks we're gonna do critical power testing.

Cam Nicholls (13:34.838) Okay, so what does that look like?

Ben Treble (13:36.728) Yeah, so we'll talk that through. It's normally for me, I'd like to do three efforts, different durations, short, medium, long. First one's around three minutes, next one's five to six, and a long effort could be from ten to fifteen minutes. Ideally, if someone is more of an outdoor rider, I tell them just go find a segment or a climb that's roughly those durations and try do your best time up it. I like to split them across days, do it on three days.

You can do two in one day if you really want. but I typically try to avoid that. I often find the first time you try this, if the athlete's never done it before, the testing doesn't go perfect. There's a familiarization piece, which I kind of expect and it's normal. but I find often if you let them find a local climb or segment where they just try to do their best time up it, it's a lot easier for them to go repeat it. It's also easier for them to go redo.

testing without it feeling like you gotta try do, you know, testing, which people hate testing, which is fine, but we just try and make it as easy as possible. As you said, some people might have a recent power PB. So we can just easily look in training peaks. If you've recently done in the last, you know, sort of 30 days, even up to 60, I would say, if you've done any of those three efforts, like a good P B, we might use that. So then you might only need to do one more effort.

We just have to fill in the gaps. Yep. Equally, if you've done three power BBs across those numbers in the last thirty days already, training peaks is a great feature in its modeled, it's called modeled FTP, FTP. It's in the the beta, I think it's still called beta function charts. And so we can often rely on that relatively well, at least to get a good idea. So if they're very anti testing or depending on their goals and phase of training, if the first couple of weeks are not great to do testing.

Cam Nicholls (15:06.179) Okay.

Ben Treble (15:34.092) And they have some good training history data, we can often get a pretty good idea of critical power without officially testing, but I would still target in that first block to try and do full C P testing. Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (15:47.118) Okay. And with the training as a general rule, I know this will depend on the person's goals and how much time you have with them, but let's just say they've got a fair bit of time. Their goals are just general improvement. In that first, you know, four weeks, what is there a typical focus you find? Like do they are you sort of peeling them back a little bit and let's have more of an aerobic focus and and get some of that foundational stuff right? Or do you just go straight into it?

Ben Treble (16:17.314) I actually like to go straight into it a little bit. I do to some respects I get gauge how well they might be able to do some stuff. And I like to put in a a mixture of work because I really want to see how good are they at performing intervals. I want to see how good they are at giving me feedback, like their comments. Do they always put in their RPE? This first month is really important for me to get a gauge on the athlete's ability to do work.

How they respond, what their level of feedback is, and just build upon that. So I might give them quite a mixture of work to do, if there's not a singular focus. But I do find in that initial conversation, it's rare that I can't get them to some good goals. Okay. Everybody who says, I just want to improve my cycling generally, when you start asking them why and really pressing, you get down to those, as we did before with Joe Blow, you get down to those really nice goals of okay, I want to improve durability.

I want to move up from this grade to this grade. I want to get to the end of my bunch ride and still do that big kick. I want to improve my sprint or I'm going on a European holiday and I wanna do climbs, but my nutrition's really poor. Pretty quickly we can put in place some really specific stuff.

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So head over to the roadcyclingacademy.com and lock in your spot with Ben today. Let's get back to the episode. Yeah, okay. Cool. And you you mentioned comments there, then them providing feedback. So, you know, you put the the workouts in the training peaks calendar software. One of the the benefits of this software is that it's been around for years and all the major head units and indoor training apps integrate seamlessly. So when you sign up,

People just add their their Wahoo account or their Garmin account, they add their Zwift account, or maybe a lot of people are using Training Peaks Virtual these days because it's covered in the Training Peaks license, which is basically the same as Zwift, which means that when you log into Zwift or Training Peaks Virtual or you turn your head unit on in the morning, it's like, there's the workout that Ben's prescribed me. I just need to follow along. So they follow along, do the workout, and you mentioned feedback before. So

Cam Nicholls (19:53.932) How does that work? Are people just shooting you an email after they do their their thirty fifteens that Ben's prescribed on a Thursday? Or what does that look like?

Ben Treble (20:03.606) I mean they can, but typically what we try to do is the sort of day to day communication is through the comments function in training peaks. So as you said, you get set up. If people are not familiar or tech savvy, there's sometimes some emails after that initial onboarding to make sure that they get set up in the tech, whatever that is that they want to use with Training Peaks. So connecting their Strava, their Garmin, Wahoo, Swift, whatever that is, making sure it's connected.

To training peaks so that the workouts will sync across from the calendar into their device where they can perform the training and follow along. They complete the workouts each day. And at the end of the workout, I try to get them to put in a comment. It doesn't have to be every time. if a workout just goes well and there's nothing to note, you don't need to put anything in. I do ask my athletes to put in their RPE, that's rate of perceived exertion. In training peaks, that's a score from zero to ten.

Zero being no work at all, feet up on the couch, ten being the hardest thing you've ever done before. Throwing up, puking at the end of a ride. So I try to get everybody to put in an RPE score. It's still a very, very valid measure of tracking how hard was the training. It typically factors in all the other stress you have in your life. So workouts work out. You know, if you're stressed or not stressed outside of the bike training, it can impact how hard it felt.

So that's where it gets measured. And the comments athletes can put in comments like that, that felt really easy. If I give someone, if we haven't managed to do C B testing, we're doing say VO2 work and they put in an I don't know, RPE of two, the intensity's probably pretty wrong. that's an extreme example, but I mean it the the good example here with RPE in those early days is trying to get the zone two endurance work right. So making sure you can use RPE with heart rate.

To look at the power and see what's happening. So yeah, collecting that athlete feedback and the athletes often put in the comments, you know, a little bit about their nutrition. I quite like that. I've got some athletes put in comments about nutrition, managed to eat XYZ. This workout felt super hard, or first two sets felt great, but third set failed like, you know, really hurt, or maybe there was a tech glitch, was riding outdoors, third set interrupted because a car cut me off. So little bits of feedback help give me context. So when I

Ben Treble (22:32.428) At least once a week, ideally twice a week, I go through every athlete to review and respond against the comments. And when I'm looking at those workouts and looking at the data, if I don't get that context from the comments, often you can miss stuff. So you go, did the power drop off in the third set 'cause a car interrupted them? Or is it because it was the intensity was too hard?

Cam Nicholls (22:52.27) Interesting. Okay. And what happens if you know, back Joe Blow, he works for a company which is head officed in interstate. I've had to fly to head office for a few days, didn't mean for it to happen. Then I came back and I was a bit sick because one of my one of my kids was you know, gave me something from daycare. So I've had five days off the bike. What happens in in that in that case when you've laid out the four weeks of training after that initial call and there's been a disruption?

Ben Treble (23:22.828) Yeah, I mean assuming this is a monthly if we say this is a monthly coached athlete, I would try and set up in the initial onboarding that the for anything like this, I would say this is sort of more urgent communication. So if you get sick or injured or there's something more urgent you need a response to within a day or two, is to email me. And pretty quickly I would want to make adjustments. So if I know that you're getting sick, we're just gonna put in, most likely depending on the illness, a couple rest days.

And just monitor. As soon as you're ready to go, we might start putting in some shorter, easier recovery rides and just build you back into the hard work again. If you have to travel for work last minute, that's often something that happens. Someone says, I need to go fly to the East Coast this week suddenly because work needs me over there. I've got to leave tomorrow. We might have to just drop a few days out of that week, but then I might adjust the week after in response.

Cam Nicholls (24:19.342) All right. And let's just say that I've I haven't been sick, then I I've nailed the month, you know, I've done all the workouts. Training peaks, you know, for those with a bit of OCT gives you a green badge if you do it in a compliant way. And a lot of people like getting the green badge or all the green color code. So, you know, get to the end of the first month. We're doing monthly coaching here and you know, what what happens next?

Ben Treble (24:45.858) Yeah, I put in a little there's different ways, but typically, you know, we try to have at least one call a month, ranges from a short phone call, twenty minutes, where sometimes people do it in the car, to forty five minutes on a video conference, which is preferred the video conference, because we can share the screen and the athlete can often we will share the screen and I'll bring up a certain workout or we want to talk about certain data or make some adjustments to the program. So

The monthly call can be used for different things. We can review the goals. Often you end up talking about one or two topics though more deeply than anything else. It might be, we need to make some adjustments. I've got travel coming up. Let's adjust the plan. It might be discussing the last couple weeks of training, what worked, what didn't work. And then based on that feedback, I'll be able to make some adjustments going into the next block. We might review the goals, see how we're tracking against goals.

Cam Nicholls (25:41.942) Yeah. So it becomes more less about understanding who the person is, their writing preferences, what their goals are, and more about digging into specific topics that are relevant based off of the phase of training.

Ben Treble (25:56.066) Massively, yeah. And some athletes bring certain topics. I think the advantage of working with me as a coach is I'm an accredited sports scientist, so I am a bit of a data nerd and I'm very happy to talk about some of those other topics like nutrition or talk about physiology on why something's working or not working. And a lot of my athletes love that. It's not for all of them, but yeah, the ones who are interested in going deeper on the data can take full advantage of that.

Cam Nicholls (26:23.384) Yeah. Yeah, cool. And I also you know, know that on that topic in particular, so a lot of our members also go to the gym. So even like strategic placement of the gym, especially when you're doing, you know, high intensity interval training, is a is a super important one. Because you know, once again, it's not a one size fits all gym needs to go here because people will respond differently. Like I know myself, for example, it took me years to figure it out, but

I actually can do a high intensity interval training quite well the day after a gym session. but two days after a gym session and even sometimes three days, I really struggle. So, you know, it was I had to play around with that a a lot initially to figure that out. And no doubt this is something you would do with your clients, whether it's gym or some other cross training activity or maybe maybe a family stressor, just adjusting things to suit that particular individual and how their physiology responds to, you know, the training.

Ben Treble (27:20.94) Yeah, and it's a different circumstance where the adjustments are really important along with the feedback. If I think of the North Americans and the Europeans, they have very distinct, you know, seasons. And going into winter often means a significant drop in volume for recreational cyclists. It's a lot trickier. They don't ride outdoors as much. It's often too cold or snowy. It's not possible. Riding indoors, you're not gonna do most people anyway, are not doing six hours on the indoor trainer twice a week. So

Managing that and managing them through that with motivation and is there even talk about cross-training or just keeping fitness up in different levels varies athlete to athlete. But it comes back to the importance of those monthly conversations where you can collect the feedback about the context. And that helps me as a coach work out what's appropriate, what adjustments do we need to make to keep this athlete going, moving forward towards their goals.

Cam Nicholls (28:17.006) How long do you feel it takes for people to embrace, you know, the the periodization schedule? So obviously one of the big benefits of working with the coach is I think people conceptually understand like building and progressively overloading and having an easier week, but a lot of people don't just don't do it. They listen to podcasts, they watch videos, they just don't do it. But obviously when people work with the coach, they're kind of like committing to, all right, I I know this is something that I need to do. And the coach is gonna, you know, put it in the plan and is gonna make me accountable.

But then there's also the buy-in aspect. So some people might start off doing it apprehensively, where it's like this D-load week, I'm doing not doing enough training. you know, this feels a bit weird. And then I've I've found anyway, and this is from my experiences when I used to coach, maybe after the first four to twelve weeks of training, all of a sudden they're looking forward to the D-load week because they are starting to experience real freshness and real fatigue and

They're buying into it. Like how how do you find, you know, people that you've trained at the RCA respond to that sort of the process?

Ben Treble (29:24.928) Masters male athletes are not good at taking time off the bike. So it's often something that takes time. Some of them are better at it than others. I often kind of let them I try to show them how they come to this conclusion, which sometimes means I have to let them mess up a D-load week on their own. And then, you know, in our monthly call, we're gonna go back and look at the data. And and you can often see in the data, they if they mess up the D load week.

You go into the next block and midway, they're really struggling. And you see it in the comments. And when you review it together objectively like this, they're like, I probably should have taken that rest. Then I then I could have got through the block. Okay, this D load week in a week's time, I'm I'm gonna try to stick to it. I'm gonna take the extra rest day. Like putting data to it often helps. I think a lot of these athletes really see why it's valuable. But sometimes they have to go through the process of sort of

messing it up that first time and and then struggling through a block to realize that. And that also gives you the data to kind of convince them that it's really valuable that they need to do it.

Cam Nicholls (30:31.51) And as we're talking here, I'm just pulling up the RCA Google reviews. maybe I I I'm not gonna have time to pull up some of your really good ones because I know there are some great reviews in there about working with you as a coach. I was trying to I'm thinking of Josh as he's dropped a recent review. I was trying to find his his results. But people can go and read them, of course. When do you think I've just pulled it up here? I don't

helped my FTP grow by over forty percent. So you help Josh increase his FTP, we might be talking about critical power by over forty percent. So there are some really massive numbers people achieve, whether it's FTP, whether it's critical power, whether it's their local climb or their bunch rides or or events, you know, shaving half an hour or an hour off peaks. I know you recently took a guy who'd failed peaks challenge three times previously.

Yep. And then on the fourth attempt under your guidance, made it through with half an hour to spare. So obviously you're static. So there are some really big, juicy goals people are you know, that they might have had for years and they've been on a plateau and the goal seemed out of reach and they get coached and all of a sudden they they're achieving what they wanted to achieve. Like people are inherently impatient as well. So like I I gotta ask you the question if people get coached.

When should they expect the big gains? Is it is it in the first eight, twelve weeks or is it more so they've kind of done a build, then they've d dialed it back and then they're into their second build. So maybe it's twenty four weeks down the track or thirty six weeks. What are you saying?

Ben Treble (32:11.656) I think there's often some big gains in the early blocks. In the first eight to twelve weeks you often see really good improvement. This is often just because you're changing their training and giving them more stimulus or different stimulus and trying to get them to take on more recovery and give structure to it. This alone, most athletes see massive jumps in that first sort of eight to twelve weeks.

But I think you bring up two really good points here. You brought Josh up as an example, and he's a great example because he really struggled with taking time off the bike, recovering, right? He's a sort of person that if he doesn't ride on a day, he feels like he's missing something. So how do we get him to take recovery? Because that's why he was stagnating in performance. He was going nowhere in his bunch rides, but he really wanted to improve. And I think when we started

He had a lot of capacity to improve, which obviously he's had really significant improvement with a lot of commitment and hard work. But what Josh needed was accountability and permission. So most athletes, I think what they get from a coach is you get this accountability piece. Like as soon as you're paying someone for their service, you feel a bit more committed to it, and there's this other person involved.

Right. And they're going to come back to you and say, Hey, on a monthly call, I'm going to talk about it and say, You missed these sessions or I think you could improve here. This could be done better. I'm going to be constructive. I'm going to give you positive feedback as well, but I think a lot of people thrive off constructive feedback, especially in those early days. There's a steep learning curve and that comes from getting constructive feedback. The permission piece is equally as important. A lot of these masters, male athletes, in my experience, they need to be told.

They need to be given permission to take a day off the bike. And they need the confidence to go, Josh knows I'm a sport scientist. So if I tell him he trusts me, and he knows if I tell him you need a full day off and this is why, because if you don't do it, this is what's going to happen. He goes, okay, I can have a day off. It's okay and it's actually going to be good for me. But he needed that human interface and he needed the verbal permission to do it for it to work.

Cam Nicholls (34:31.074) Yeah. No, it's great. Great examples. And look, you know, one of the I appreciate you breaking that all down, Ben. You know, one of the the the challenges that you know, I face as running the RCA is really trying to to normalise cycle coaching because it's funny if you if you if I was speaking to a triathlet this morning and they were talking about a coach all these coaching they supply triathlet gear, custom triathlet gear to co and a lot of it to coaching businesses in in triathlon.

And what I was just talking about how in the triathlon culture, it's very normal to have a coach. But in the road cycling culture, which they're reasonably intertwined, it's probably less normal to have a coach. And I feel like a lot of that comes down to just education. A lot of people don't really know what's involved with cycle coaching and also don't think that they've got the right goals for cycle coaching because they're not racing or they don't have a

big UCI event that they're targeting. But in actual fact, look, it's just for anyone that wants, you know, self-improvement. So yeah. Appreciate your time, Ben. anything to add to that before we wrap up?

Ben Treble (35:44.224) No, just that coaches help you identify those blind spots. You can be an excellent cyclist, potentially even have a some very good working knowledge on how to train. Maybe you've been even coached in the past, but human nature, you know, we're quite biased to ourselves and we're not good at identifying our blind spots. So sometimes having that human interface, the coach, there to call you out.

To help you identify those blind spots and break those problems down and how do you solve them? Sometimes that becomes more valuable than saying, I can do a Zwift program and get 30, 30, 15, you know, VO2 hit sessions. Right. So sometimes the I think the value of the coaching in those first few blocks is probably from the training itself more than anything. But after this, it's the monthly or weekly conversations where you identify these little gaps.

And you can find a solution from them, that's where I think athletes get these really big value out of having a coach.

Cam Nicholls (36:51.704) Good. Well, if you're listening and you'd like to try cycle coaching yourself, make sure you head to the RCA's website. It's www.roadcyclingacademy.com. Check out you can either there's two spots you can check out. We've got a 12-week custom plan. and it's that's what it's called in the menu system, which is more of a one-off call with the coach, like Ben described, but then he'll build or they'll build you out twelve weeks in advance and it kind of stops at twelve weeks or

What we've really focused on today is more of that monthly operating rhythm. we also have a weekly, which is perhaps a rabbit hole for another day, but monthly coaching is kind of what Ben's described today. So that's in our menu system as well, where you subscribe and you work monthly with the coach. Catch you in the next podcast.

Are you planning a cycling holiday in Europe, tackling iconic climbs like the Alps, Dolomites, or Swiss mountain passes? In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with RCA coach and data science specialist Ben Treble to discuss exactly how recreational and amateur cyclists should prepare for a climbing-focused cycling trip.

Ben breaks down the key physiological factors that determine climbing performance, including VO₂ max, fractional utilisation, threshold power, training volume, and cycling-specific nutrition. Together, they outline an 8-week training strategy designed to help cyclists maximise their fitness, improve climbing ability, and arrive in Europe ready to enjoy every ride.

Whether you're heading to the Tour de France region, riding the famous Swiss Alps, taking on Peaks Challenge, or simply wanting to improve your climbing performance, this episode provides practical, science-backed advice you can apply immediately.

✅ Why VO₂ max alone doesn't determine climbing performance ✅ The importance of threshold power and fractional utilisation ✅ How to structure an 8-week climbing preparation plan ✅ VO₂ max training vs threshold training for long climbs ✅ Why recovery weeks (deload weeks) are critical ✅ How to increase training volume safely ✅ The role of low-cadence climbing work and muscular endurance ✅ Nutrition strategies for multi-day cycling trips ✅ Gut training and carbohydrate intake for endurance cyclists ✅ Common mistakes recreational cyclists make before a cycling holiday

• Recreational cyclists
• Amateur road cyclists
• Gran Fondo riders
• Cyclists planning a European cycling holiday
• Riders preparing for Peaks Challenge, Amy's Gran Fondo, Tour de Brisbane and other climbing events
• Anyone wanting to improve their climbing performance

🎯 Learn more about RCA Coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.804) Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I am joined by the RCA's European correspondent and data science geek, Ben Treble, who's currently in Sydney but will be in Europe by the time this podcast goes live. Hello, Ben.

Ben Treble (00:43.714) Hey Cam, how are you?

Cam Nicholls (00:45.656) Good, thank you. So today, because you're heading over you're escaping actually you've timed this pretty well now. I'm just talking I'm thinking about this out loud. You're you're you're about to hit the depths of winter in Sydney. And Sydney gets pretty cold. People don't think it does, but it's actually it's a pretty cold winter. And you're moving to Europe, you've got a one way ticket, you're gonna be in Switzerland, one of my favorite places in the world. So you're basically heading into you're going from one summer season to the next summer season.

You're gonna bit you're an expert in summer seasons, essentially. So I thought it would be a good podcast topic to talk about what's the best way not to prepare for a summer season, because we've kind of, you know, you should have been doing that two, three months ago. But maybe you might want to blend that into the conversation. But more so, you know, we're at the start of the summer season. How are we, you know, as a recreational and amateur road cyclist who's training anywhere between sort of six to twelve hours per week, depending on the person.

We might have some goals to, you know, do some Fondo events, do some big climbs. How are we going to tackle the summer season? What's the best approach?

Ben Treble (01:50.926) yeah, I think for me the context here is probably like a bit of a focus on climbing. So it's pretty hard to go over to Europe and not do climbing. I am a s more of a sprinter myself, so why I picked Switzerland as a location is beyond me because I'm definitely not a climber, but you can't really go anywhere without going over some big mountains.

Cam Nicholls (02:15.458) Yeah, and I think this is like relevant to, you know, most people going into their summer seasons because let's face it, even though we don't have huge climbs here in Australia, when people are looking at their summer season, you know, so many people in Australia, you know, peaks has become the biggest fondo event. You know, they target peaks and there is a lot of climbing in peaks. And even some of the smaller fondo events, like Amy's, for example, what's the first thing you do? You go up a fifteen, twenty minute climb and then there's another climb in the middle.

even Tour to Brisbane, which is you know, UCI qualifier, there's a fifth 10, 15 minute climb in the middle or wherever they put it because they change the event every year. So climbing isn't just a European thing. I know you're trying to rub salt in the worm because you've got amazing climbs over there, Ben in Switzerland, but you know, I think it's relevant no matter where you are in the world, because most events have significant climbs.

Ben Treble (03:10.274) Definitely. Yeah. I mean Tura Brizzy, I can think of two athletes where, you know, the performance determinant was the climb. So, you know, it might not be a one hour, two hour climb. Maybe it's only fifteen to twenty minutes depending on your pace. But it's still a big determinant in tour of Brizzy and it's sort of a in some respects it it's a it's a speed hump in the what, one third of the way in. So it's but still it's super important. So climbing does become very important.

I guess I just wanted to talk a bit around a couple different things on this topic. The first is probably what's important in determining climbing performance. So we'll stick to a bit of a focus on climbing and then we'll talk a little bit more around like people who go to Europe. I can think of a number of athletes I'm working with right now who are planning European holidays. That's either from North America, from Australia. I've even had athletes who

wanted to prepare because they were in Australia and just going down to Bright, which is a very famous alpine region in Victoria, where there's a lot of big climbs, which don't don't underestimate. They are equal to many of the big climbs in Europe. They might not have the same altitude, but you can get a similar elevation profile. We're talking, you know, Mount Hotham as a climb in terms of total elevation is massive. It beats probably half the European climbs.

Cam Nicholls (04:33.078) Yeah. How many meters do you hit in Hotham? Are you over fifteen you're definitely over fifteen hundred. Did you hit over two thousand?

Ben Treble (04:40.024) think you do get two at the very top.

Cam Nicholls (04:42.604) That t two thousand, from my understanding of when I climbed the the glibia many many moons ago was altitude actually kicks in at around five hundred meters. Although you probably it's probably quite subtle. Or even a few hundred meters it actually starts kicking in. But once you get to sort of fifteen hundred, two thousand, then the effects are really significant.

Ben Treble (05:05.846) one eight four five

Cam Nicholls (05:07.788) One eight four five. There you go.

Ben Treble (05:10.254) There you go. Anyway, yeah, I think the first thing we should talk about is VO2 Max. We've talked about this a lot on the podcast. I think it's a big topic, but VO2 Max, we often talk about training it to have a higher VO2 Max. Lots of people walk around with their garments, which estimate their VO2 Max. You can think of that, it's like the the engine size, right? You can have a 600 horsepower car, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you've got the

you know, horsepower or the fuel lines to feed enough fuel into the engine to actually achieve and utilize that power, right? Like you need all of the bits underneath. What is your utilization of the engine? So we know this is true. You can see people who have high VO2 maxes, but don't seem to be able to reach the same performance levels of other athletes with the same VO2 max.

Cam Nicholls (06:05.269) More.

Ben Treble (06:06.424) So why? Because the fractional utilization of VO2 Max is lower. Typically the way that we consider fractional utilization of VO2 Max is at your threshold. When we're talking threshold, I'm talking maximal lactate steady state, gold standard. For everybody on the podcast who don't know what that is, you can think of it as your critical power if you want to equivalent FTP. So threshold at w when you ride at your threshold, let's say it's

200 watts, 250 watts. What percentage of your VO2 max are you holding? Really well trained athletes are going to be, you know, using 85% or higher of their VO2 max at threshold. What does that mean? They're relying more on the aerobic energy system and less on the glycolytic. So they're going to use less glycogen, which is one of your, you know, most valuable resources for fuel. So you're going to conserve that glycogen.

For later. Let's you having a high fractional utilization lets you ride at a higher intensity for longer, relying on less glycogen.

Cam Nicholls (07:14.988) So less lactate production.

Ben Treble (07:17.474) Yeah, exactly.

Cam Nicholls (07:19.69) Okay. So that's important for climbing.

Ben Treble (07:23.532) I should reference it's not necessarily less lactate production, it's a higher clearance rate. You're able to utilize lactate better through the aerobic system.

Cam Nicholls (07:32.886) Okay. Because when you started to talk about VO two Max, I was like, well, wait a second, aren't aren't we talking about long climbs? Don't we aren't we just worried about sort of around threshold and maybe a bit of tempo and sweet spot? Like w who cares about? I'm not doing short, punchy climbs around France. I'm just grinding all day long.

Ben Treble (07:54.254) Exactly. Yeah. So VO2 Max is important, but sort of like one piece of the story. I mean, there's two papers. Some of this dates back quite old. you know, back to nineteen ninety-one with newer papers in two thousand and eight, if you want to call that new. particularly there's a scientist Coyle and Joyner have done multiple papers on climbing performance. They really bring it back down to VO2 Max.

Fractional utilization and economy. Now that comes back to really fractional utilisation of threshold to me, and your efficiency on the bike. So Yeah. What we're looking at here, there's a big focus on fractional utilization of VO2 Max and that helps you with your climbing performance.

Cam Nicholls (08:46.542) Okay. Well, tell me, Ben, I'm I'm a recreational and amateur that wants to go rip apart the hills in in Europe. What am I doing then if I wanna increase that?

Ben Treble (08:58.498) Yeah. So you're probably gonna do very different training, but you're gonna take on blocks of VO two work, probably if you're in building blocks. And as you get closer to your actual holiday or your trip, you're gonna start heading more towards threshold blocks and longer. So progressively increase the intervals.

Cam Nicholls (09:19.466) Interesting. So you are gonna s actually almost reverse periodise the zones. So you're going to start more with a VO two focus and then as you get towards the trip time, it's more threshold focused.

Ben Treble (09:36.92) Yeah. I mean you you're never doing one thing in isolation, right? Like physiology is is broad and and mixed, but if we bring it a little simple terms, you're gonna try build the engine as big as possible to start with, which is key sessions on VO2 max and base volume. Then you're gonna bring it back to threshold work, try and lift your threshold. So this is gonna help improve your fractional utilization. And then you're just gonna continually progressively try build out

How long can you hold that for? Right. So maybe when you start doing threshold work, this might be over-unders, for example, where you're sort of dipping, you know, you go over 105% of threshold and you go under 95%. And you might do one minute above, one minute below, and do, you know, maybe at the start you're only doing 10 minutes of this as one set and you try to do two sets. But you want to get to a point where you can do, you know, at least two or three sets of 20 minutes. So then you kind of go to a point where you're doing an hour of over-unders.

In a single session.

Cam Nicholls (10:38.24) An hour of over and unders. Wow, that sounds I want to dig into that. Let's peel it back now. So now you've you've sold me on doing a block of VO two and doing a block of sort of threshold. And I know as you just said, you're not just doing that. You know, you're not doing six sessions a week of VO two and six sessions a week of threshold for for six weeks at a time. It's a variation and variability, but there there are key focus points.

Give me a high level lens. Let's just say I'm going to Europe. When do most people go to Europe? Around Tour de France time, maybe before, maybe after. So June, July. This podcast will probably go live in a couple of weeks. So let's just say we're going live early June for the purpose of this discussion. So we've got we've got eight weeks. You know, the title of this podcast is going to be something like preparing to tackle the the mountains in Europe. Listen to Ben.

Tell you what to do. Won't be exactly that title, but I'm I'm now giving you a a little project here. I've got eight weeks essentially. That that's what we're looking at. What am I doing to really get the most out of my trip?

Ben Treble (11:46.828) Yeah, the first thing I would do is try to maximize volume. And that's gonna depend on, you know, how much recovery time you have and how well you respond and your training history. So have you only been averaging four hours a week in the last three months? Or have you already been doing ten hours a week, even if it's bunch rides and whatnot? That probably changes wha how well you can pull off what you want to pull off.

Cam Nicholls (12:10.414) So let's say well let's say I'm averaging eight to ten hours per week over the last few months. I'm doing a mix of everything, bunch rides, I'm going and doing some clients here and there. Of course, I'm a typical, you know, amateur recreational. I train too hard too often. I'm not having recovery weeks. I'm probably a little bit fatigued, even though I don't think I'm fatigued. you know, the all all the kind of boxes that many recreationals tick before they join us. So I'm that person, Ben.

What I you mentioned you want to focus on volume. So if I'm doing, you know, eight, ten hours a week, does that mean I now want to be doing twelve to fifteen hours per week for the next eight weeks?

Ben Treble (12:48.088) Yeah, I well if you've got the capacity to do it and the ability to recover, if your sleep is good, your nutrition is good, you can probably jump up to the twelve, even fifteen hours a week, right? But if you have a stressful job and you have family and kids, I probably wouldn't move you that fast. I would try to get you up to fifteen by the end of the eight weeks.

Cam Nicholls (12:51.234) Okay.

Cam Nicholls (13:07.478) Okay. Interesting.

Ben Treble (13:09.72) So that's a bigger picture thing. But that first four weeks I would want to focus on VO2 max work.

Cam Nicholls (13:16.11) Okay. And we may or may not have released this podcast by the time this one comes out, but we've we've done one where we talk about short intervals versus long intervals at VO two max. So should there bear any specific focus if you're going over for the longer climb? Should we focus more on the longer? Or once again, it's just variability. Do a mix.

Ben Treble (13:37.39) I would probably start with some variability. Probably wanna shock the system, get some stochastic work going on. So I'd probably do some short intervals to start, but then progress you into the longer VO2 intervals through the end of the block. So if we talk more of a traditional periodization, we've got eight weeks till Europe. First four weeks, we're gonna ramp up for three weeks. So maybe the first week we're gonna do some short intervals, build you into longer intervals through the first three weeks, slowly ramp up your volume.

at the same time. And then we're gonna have fourth week's gonna be a D Load week.

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So head over to the roadcyclingacademy.com and lock in your spot with Ben today. Let's get back to the episode. Yeah, okay, nice. And what is a if somebody's out there listening, because the we've done a lot of content on this, or you know, we call some people call it an easier week. Some other coaches at the RCA call it an adaptation week to make it sound a bit cooler because no one likes to deload or no one likes to take it easier. But

What is what are people doing in an easier or a D load week and and what's the purpose of it?

Ben Treble (16:07.052) Yeah, I I typically try to aim for a sort of fifty to sixty percent of the same volume as the final third week. So I don't know, let's say you do twelve hours, you know, we're probably gonna try to drop you down to, you know, six or seven hours of volume. Put in an extra full rest day. So you might have two or even three full rest days in that week. And I would still try keep some intensity. So I'd probably have

Still two key sessions, but those key sessions would be, for example, if we're doing short intervals, instead of three by twelve, thirty fifteens, you might only do two by nine, and I would give you fifteen minutes recovery in between the two sets. So really long recovery, less intensity, but still giving you some stimulus. Yep. Through that week. Same with the if we were doing four by four, so longer intervals.

You know, you might only do two or three of them and again give you 10, 15 minutes between them, right? So I find this lets people keep a lot of stimulus going in a delay week. The idea is you you really want the body to recover and have time to adapt to the stress you've just put on it for three weeks. In particular, those first three weeks, by the third week, I'm trying to really push people into a fairly the feedback I'm looking for is.

Maybe I couldn't even finish the last workout. I my legs feel tired. I feel tired. I feel fatigued. That's kind of what you are. You want to feel fatigued by the end of a block. But then you want to go into the recovery week and you wanna be trying to if we talk training peaks numbers, you're trying to probably look at potentially their form would be going negative fifteen to negative forty even, somewhere here, depending on what their history is. And then in their D load week, you're trying to get them

back to a positive position almost on form. So that comes from a big reduction in volume and often you want them by the end of that week they should be, I want to train again, I feel energetic and I'm ready to go.

Cam Nicholls (18:14.742) Yep. And I think it's it I don't want to spend the whole podcast on this, but it's if you're not doing D lo weeks and you're preparing for a trip for Europe and you just train all the way through and doing high volume, high intensity, you're gonna get to the trip fatigued and you're not gonna get the most out of the climbs. So you're four weeks now out. What are we looking to do in that final block leading into our European trip?

Ben Treble (18:38.392) Yeah, we're gonna do threshold work. probably a mixture of I would do two key sessions, probably try to keep it interesting. So it's gonna be a mixture of progressing people through over unders to try and get as essentially as much out of them as you can. So it depends on their history. Some people can already do two by fifteen minutes, and then you could probably get them out to potentially at least two by twenty, if not get them trying for the three by twenties.

But then you're gonna have people who really struggle with them and never done them before, and getting them to one by twenty might be a good achievement. But you might start with three by six minutes with big recovery.

Cam Nicholls (19:21.506) And what's the other key session?

Ben Treble (19:23.628) Yeah, I would do some some steady state threshold work.

Cam Nicholls (19:27.854) Okay. So what's steady state threshold work look like?

Ben Treble (19:31.704) Yeah, I mean if your critical power is, let's say it's two hundred and fifty watts, we're gonna go out and we're gonna go try to just progress it as long as you can. So ideally the other thing you're doing is some outdoor riding with climbing. Your body position on the bike when you climb is just a little bit different. So the muscle recruitment pattern is slightly different. Your position on the bike is slightly different, and you just wanna get used to this. Potentially you're gonna go to Europe and sit in your climbing position for one and a half to two hours.

For one climb. And if you're planning to do two climbs in the same day, it's just a lot of hours sitting in the saddle in that inclined position. So it's what you should train at, I believe. So yeah, trying to get climbing meters in the legs and doing some of your threshold work on a climb. So just see how long can you hold your threshold. Maybe you do a little bit sub threshold, 95%, et cetera. But yeah, generally around threshold, do some repeats.

Cam Nicholls (20:26.988) Interesting. And then so you you're you've got one session a week, you do it you're progressing your over unders, one session a week, you're progressing sustained threshold or just under threshold work. And then are you gonna carry this kind of this work out structure and stress into the trip or you have another D load week before you head away?

Ben Treble (20:50.968) Yeah, I would definitely do one D load before going. Typically we try to time it with the travel week. So normally, at least from Australia, it's not a fast trip to Europe. It's gonna take you probably at least thirty hours, give or take. You're gonna have a day of jet lag. Probably the day before you leave, your bike's already packed and you're not riding. So yeah, we typ try to typically plan it around around that. But yeah, definitely try to get a deload week leading in or a taper week if you want to call it that.

which I would still keep some more volume in this D load week and probably just cut the intensity. So I would try to keep a bit more volume in the legs compared to the previous D load week.

Cam Nicholls (21:31.906) Yep. Interesting. So one thing one question I have for you, because I feel like when people go do these European trips, they're mo they're probably spending a lot of time tempo and maybe sweet spot on the climbs. They're not actually going threshold like at a hundred percent or ninety five percent. They're probably not doing much of VO two. So in this eight week lead in, I know if you if I gave you a twelve week scenario or sixteen week scenario, there would have been tempo and sweet spot in incorporated probably in the early days.

But obviously it's I'm interested that it ha you haven't prioritised it. You've you said VO two in a threshold, but when actual fact probably a lot of the writing would be maybe around tempo and sweet spot. So why is that?

Ben Treble (22:14.546) so we should probably clarify that I would still do some, if you want to call it tempo work. where would it sit in a program? It's gonna sit in your long ride. So most athletes are gonna do two shorter key sessions in the week and then they're gonna do one or two long rides on the weekend. And one of those long rides is I would also consider it a key session, and that's where I would

Definitely still have them doing, if you want to call it tempo work. It often would look like in at least in that first block, it's gonna be high torque, which is low cadence at subthreshold efforts. So you're talking in this 80 to 90 percent range in the sort of you know fifty, fifty-five RPMs, quite nice. And you're just going to push through that and do repeats.

The repeats will progress. You might start at ten minutes. It could even be shorter, five minutes, and then push them out to ten or even fifteen, depending on if they have any knee or back issues.

Cam Nicholls (23:17.962) Okay. Well it makes sense. Well, that's interesting. I'm I've once again I've learned something from my conversation, Ben, because I would have never have thought a VO two block into threshold leading into a European trip. But it's all based off of increasing what's it called again? These scientific terms. I don't know them as well as you.

Ben Treble (23:43.766) increasing your MLSS or your fractional utilization of VH Max. Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (23:49.932) Yeah, there you go. So I

Ben Treble (23:52.504) think there's probably I would the other really common component, like if you had eight weeks of training, what is the one other thing I would do? So call it beyond the bike work itself. And I would have a very big conversation on nutrition and and body weight. In eight weeks you're not going to go lose a lot of weight, but that is a massive factor in climbing performance. So, you know, watts per kilogram, we won't jump into it, but there's a version of that

With allometric scaling, which is arguably a bit better than just pure watts per kilogram. So if you're a bigger rider, there's a scaling to the watts per kilogram that you can look at using. But that's still a massively important factor, especially around gross efficiency, which is a known factor for climbing performance. We're not gonna dispute that. The science is massive on it. I would look at gut training. So we're talking about nutrition, carbohydrate, intake.

It's something most masters riders are not good at. I think we're biased. They often think they're good at it. I talk to them and when we have really honest conversations, say, Yeah, I got my feeling really good. We do some estimations and you look at how hard they were pushing in their long ride, which is often harder than they think, and they're burning massive amounts of carbs, like potentially they're using five hundred, six hundred grams of carbs on a three, four hour ride.

And they're only eating 50 grams, 60 grams an hour. People talk about 90 grams per hour. You hear about 120 grams plus in the propellant these days. If you really break that out and look at how much food that is, it is a lot of food. You are eating nonstop on the bike. so it's very difficult to pull that off, but it's an easy win for most masters riders to improve their experience on a cycling holiday in Europe.

If you could just get yourself from forty, fifty grams per hour of food up to eighty, you will significantly improve how much easier the cycling feels every day. You'll have higher energy levels throughout those six to eight hour days on the bike and it's going to give you better repeatability. So you're doing multiple days of this typically, right, on a cycling holiday. It's not one day. You might go for three, four, five days of riding in a row. And by the time you get to day four and five, most people are

Ben Treble (26:19.062) are buggered. The people who are not buggered got their nutrition a lot better. So gut training in that eight weeks and getting yourself up to a higher carb intake is a big win.

Cam Nicholls (26:32.226) Yeah, a hundred percent agree. As you said, it it's not being buggered at the end of each day or after three days and and you know, everyone goes out and has a beer or two and you you you just want to stay in the hotel room because you cooked. it actually I remember when I fuel properly for a training block recently, how much better even after the long, hard Saturday, you know, f smash fest for six hours on the pedals, I'd actually I felt quite

energize in the afternoon, whereas old Cam who didn't fuel properly used to be on the couch rolling around, having a snooze, feeling really grumpy. So that just enjoyment that they'll get from better recovery fr from fueling that way is key. And I I think just to add another layer to that, you know, if they're gonna if people are gonna start, you know, fueling properly or or training their guts in their in their sessions, you you don't have to do it for all rides. You know, if you're doing a you know a couple of rides per week, which are just sort of like aerobic

sort recovery rides for an hour or two, don't really focus on those. Focus on the VO2 max sessions you talked about, the threshold sessions you talked about, the long Saturday ride. The long Saturday ride in particular is where they want to be focused on targeting, you know, up to eighty, ninety grams of carbs per hour. And if they're at fifty, don't start doing eighty or ninety straight away. As you said, slowly bring it in. You know, next week try sixty, then the week after try sixty five or seventy and until you if your gut feels a little bit funny, maybe just back it off the next week and

I found personally dealing with a lot of recreational amateurs, a lot of people will stop at maybe 60 or 70 because they had a bad experience. Their gut felt a little bit off. But as you said, it's training. So, you know, be patient with it. You know, try it again or maybe try some different food next time. Try bars instead of lollies or whatever it might be. And just be consistent with it because you'll find over time that those gut sensations that maybe you got initially tend to dissipate.

Ben Treble (28:20.32) Massively. You know, we've talked in a previous podcast about the the UCI nutrition project and one of the clear outcomes here is that the gut is trainable like your legs are. But it requires training and like your legs, your legs go through periods where they don't feel good and they hurt. And then you have to recover and then you go again. So the gut is is exactly the same. You want to find your limit. And once you find it, you probably want to back it off five grams per hour, roughly. And then, you know

Every week you can try and add another ten, maybe fifteen grams, and you'll find that week on week you're able to tolerate the the extra intake.

Cam Nicholls (28:57.454) Good. All right. Well, that's plenty of details for people, Ben. If they've got a a European adventure in two thousand and twenty six. If you've got a European adventure later in the year, or if you've got one in two thousand and twenty seven, you know, working with a coach can be very beneficial to ensure that you get the most out of your trip. Not only in terms of, you know, your performance and being able to beat your mates up the climb. There's nothing like beating a mate up a

a a French out climb. I did it to Mitch Boyer. It felt really good. and obviously, you know, I I was taking or working with an RCA coach at the time. you know, check out the RCA's website, one to one coaching. Just go to our menu system. It's at www.roadcyclingacademy.com dot AU and there you'll see one to one coaching. You can work with Ben and

As you now know, he's based in Europe. So for all our European listeners, Ben's on the ground there. Or if you're in Australia or elsewhere, we've got a number of other coaches who are based here in Oz, Asia and New Zealand. So you can submit an inquiry or you can sign up straight away if you want to get stuck in. And thanks for your time, Ben. We'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

Are short VO2 max intervals better than long intervals for cyclists?

In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with coach and data science specialist Ben Treble to unpack one of the most debated topics in endurance training: long intervals versus short intervals for improving VO2 max and cycling performance.

Recent research has suggested that short interval formats such as 30/15s and 40/20s may allow cyclists to accumulate more time above 90% VO2 max compared to traditional 4-minute efforts. But does that automatically make them better?

The answer is more nuanced than most cyclists realise.

Ben breaks down the science behind VO2 max training, glycolytic capacity, VLaMax, lactate production, and why the "best" interval workout often depends on your physiology and cycling goals rather than what the latest study says.

In this episode you'll learn:

✅ Long vs short VO2 max intervals explained ✅ Why some cyclists thrive on 4-minute intervals while others prefer 30/15s ✅ The role of glycolytic capacity (VLaMax) in cycling performance ✅ Why climbers and sprinters often respond differently to the same workout ✅ How to choose intervals based on your physiology ✅ The importance of training variability and periodisation ✅ Why copying professional cyclists isn't always the best approach

Whether you're training for road racing, gravel racing, criteriums, gran fondos, or simply trying to improve your cycling fitness, this episode will help you better understand how to structure your interval training for maximum results.

RCA Coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/

00:00 Introduction 02:00 Long vs Short Intervals Explained 05:00 Are We Talking About VO2 Max Training? 08:00 Why Short Intervals Became Popular 12:00 Understanding VLaMax and Glycolytic Capacity 17:30 Why Different Cyclists Respond Differently 21:00 Does Research Really Show Short Intervals Are Better? 25:00 Sprinter vs Climber: Which Intervals Should You Choose? 27:00 Training Variability and Periodisation 28:00 Key Takeaways

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:01.804) Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I am joined by European correspondent and data science geek Ben Treble. Are you okay to be called a European correspondent now? Ben saying that, well, you're currently in Australia, but in two weeks' time you're gonna be going over and living in Europe.

Ben Treble (00:46.646) Yeah, I'll take it, maybe clarify. I am not European, but I will be moving to Europe permanently and I will be the boots on the ground for RCA when I arrive.

Cam Nicholls (00:59.148) Yeah, you'll be based out of Switzerland. So hopefully that gives us a bit more presence in Europe for not only to support our existing European clients, but anyone considering getting coaching, you know, that who are in Europe and they're like, I don't want to deal with, you know, those Aussies over there. Well, now we've got an Aussi who's, I guess, part Swiss. You know, I know you're going over there with a lovely lady who's from Switzerland. So we'll call you part Swiss for the time being, part European.

Ben Treble (01:25.154) My better half is definitely Swiss. so I'll take a little bit of that.

Cam Nicholls (01:30.05) Nice. So today I wanted to talk about something that popped up in a recent RCA coaching group call. So we have a a catch up with all the coaches at the RCA about once a month. And one of the coaches presents a a topic and one of our coaches, Johan actually, presented a a paper and he did a little bit of practical exercises alongside the research, which he presented, which I thought was pretty cool, about long intervals.

versus short intervals. And I thought the research paper was pretty interesting, Ben. So I gave you the project, being somebody that likes to dig into all the research, to find out is this a real thing? Are certain type of intervals better than the other if you were to focus on one or the other? So Ben, you went away and did some digging. What did you find?

Ben Treble (02:25.998) I do love this topic, particularly 'cause I I love building different workouts and you know, I've been very fortunate to do my cycling certifications, you know, with the UCI. We've had some they had some very good scientists come and present certain topics. For example, Ronastad came over and talked about HIIT training, which has probably been his life's work endurance HIIT training for for some respects as a researcher. Yeah, I love this topic. It's really important.

I think every few years, you know, there's new trends with cycling training and we had HIT training a long time ago, I think. We've had zone two in the last couple of years and it seems to be making a resurgent at the moment across social media that, you know, you've got the classic Norwegian, you know, four by fours, which I would consider long intervals. And now you've got a lot of research coming out from Ronastad and a few other researchers where these short high intensity intervals might be better. And when we're talking about

those short high intensity interval sets we're talking about anything from your 30 fifteens. So that would be 30 seconds on, 15 seconds easy, and you repeat this between nine to twelve reps, then you have a rest period, and then you do a second and potentially third set of those short intervals. There is no universal answer to which one is is better, Cam. So everyone always hates me when I say it's a context that matters the most. So

We can bring this back to why do we train? We need to create stimulus for the athletes. And every interval is going to create a stimulus, but the stimulus for the individual is where it differs and varies. So should you do long or short intervals is going to come back to what type of athlete are you physiologically and what are your goals?

Cam Nicholls (04:16.183) Can I also just preface and you know this before you continue, because when we talk about intervals, you can do zone two intervals if you really wanted to. Most people don't. They kind of just ride zone two. But you can certainly do tempo intervals. You can certainly do sweet spot intervals. So these are all sort of below threshold. But when we're talking about long and short for this conversation and I guess the research on this topic, I'm assuming

We're talking about intervals that are kind of above threshold, kind of in that VO2 max category. I guess probably pretty much in that VO2 max category because a all anaerobic intervals are probably gonna be short. I don't think anyone's doing a 10-minute anaerobic effort. And threshold training, correct me if I'm wrong, is would mostly be deemed as long interval training because it's gonna be at least three to four.

four minutes bare minimum in length. So are we specifically talking about VO2 max training when we're talking about short versus long? Or is there a line in the sand?

Ben Treble (05:25.932) Yeah, I think for the purpose of this conversation, it's gonna be in reference to trying to improve VO two max. So what's going on in the media is obviously there's an awful lot of discussion around VO two max being a very important metric. We're not gonna debate how important VO two max is in this podcast, but it is a very important metric. It's definitely not the entire picture, it's one one metric among many that would help you understand how your training is working. But yeah.

So long versus short intervals, maybe I'll just run through them both to keep it clear, but long intervals sort of anywhere from four to eight minutes, typically on or slightly above threshold. this would be, you know, akin to the Norwegian four by fours, obviously being four minutes, so it's going to be typically a bit higher, potentially a hundred and ten, up to a hundred and twenty percent, depending on what papers you look at. And then you have four minutes easy, repeat. This typically allows you a VO2 max to climb.

really high. So the VO2 kinetics are going to climb and hold. and then you typically get we'd call it full recovery between those intervals. The short intervals are going to be the on phase anywhere from it's it can be as short as 15 seconds, but more common is going to be 30 or 40 seconds with either 15 or 20 seconds rest. So very short rest. The 30-15 component is typically around 120% of threshold. Sometimes it's harder.

Certain research papers have tested should the 30 be maximal. So a common example that's very hard to prescribe in practical sense is going to be Ronostad did some papers where the 3015s were if the set is 12 reps, the athlete had to try and keep the highest possible mean power within the whole set. So the 30s were essentially maximal.

And then the 15s were still moderate. They were not easy. So that's there's nuances to this in the research. It's not all the same, which is probably important for everybody to understand that you often hear and people are citing research, but they'll talk about 30-15s, but if you really dig into it, it's not always the same protocol in there. But yeah, VO2 max tends to stay elevated with the short intervals. That's the idea that it doesn't drop. You get higher lactate accumulation, but

Ben Treble (07:51.18) you get a bit more rest from a muscular point of view. So the cardiovascular system, the rest is short enough that your heart rate can drop, but not too much. You're trying to keep it up. But then you get more muscular recovery. So that's the idea. The other thing that where this came from, long versus short, is Ronastud talks about how do we do VO two max work but for less rate of perceived exertion. So can we achieve a similar outcome?

Which is spending as much or accumulating as much time as possible above ninety percent VO2 max, but for less effort.

Cam Nicholls (08:29.602) Yep. Makes sense. Like for me, the thought of doing like a five minute VO two max effort on an indoor trainer is like absolute death. Whereas doing thirty fifteens and getting myself a cumulative time of thir you know, five minutes at that same power, but in thirty second increments, so much easier.

Ben Treble (08:51.106) Yeah, but it's gonna depend. Like if you talk to a highly aerobic athlete, they're probably gonna prefer longer intervals. Like it'll feel potentially feel easier. And for certain athletes, they find the short, harder intervals easier. The bit that's often missing, I think, here is consideration for the glycolytic capacity. So, you know, if we just quickly touch on what the research is is showing

We're trying to drive more time above 90% VO2 max. You know, this is there's plenty of papers on this. We can link them in the podcast. But Ronastadt is a big one on this. Alpenhans, and I'll pronounce this wrong, but Scovering also did studies on this. most of the studies on well-trained cyclists also have been repeated on runners and triathletes, so I think it's fairly reproducible. But the VO2 max of these athletes are a bit higher. So we have to really keep in mind.

These studies are typically done on well-trained athletes. And what you do see in well-trained athletes is they tend to have a lower glycolytic capacity. They have more slow twitch muscle fibers, they're more aerobic, they're less sprinter. When we look at our recreational cyclists, let's take the RCA for example. Generally speaking, people who are new to cycling, people who don't do a lot of endurance training or have a a low history of high volume endurance training tend to have

a higher glycolytic capacity and tend to have more type two fibers. So how relevant is this for the all these people who are reading this research? This is the bit that's kind of missing for me. And this was what sparked this podcast when we had this team discussion. I was thinking it was a little bit missing from this conversation as well. So interest. I mean, have you ever considered it?

Cam Nicholls (10:33.762) Sing

look, I I more so think about training now when you know, I'm training myself for event is variability. So not looking at one or the other, you know, is longer better or is shorter better, which one should I be doing? But appreciating the fact that if I'm going to be constantly, you know, just the old general adaptation syndrome constantly shocking the working muscle so they can adapt and don't get stagnant.

I've got to change up what I'm doing. So if I'm spending, you know, six weeks on VO2 Max, I'm not doing all long intervals. I'll do a blend of short intervals and unfortunately long, even though I don't like the long ones. I prefer the shorter ones because I I realize and I know actually it's interesting when I'd start doing the three to five minute VO2 max intervals, for me personally, that's probably the biggest stimulus that I get from my training. I notice once I've done that for like two or three weeks.

I'm like, well, okay, now I've I feel like I've got another gear. Whereas the short intervals, even though I find them easier and in the science it says, yeah, if you you're spending more time above ninety percent. So technically they're more effective. I don't find for me personally they're more effective. It's the longer ones interesting, but I do both.

Ben Treble (11:54.614) Okay. That's good. I think we'll we can loop back to that because I think there's a lot more to be said for that than I think it's underrated, essentially. for the it's cohort of people listening to this anyway. Let's I'm just gonna jump into glycolytic capacity because I think that's let's kinda just I'll discuss it. Maybe one of the ways that you can consider measuring it or how it's typically measured in the literature. I would say it's a little controversial and it's

Probably new metric for you, Cam, but it has been around for some time. It's called VLA max. This is the maximal lactate production rate. So you've heard of VO2 max. You can understand what VLA max is. So the V stands for flux rate. Obviously, O2 is oxygen and max is maximal. So what is the flux, the production rate of your oxygen and its maximal? So VO2 max, your maximal consumption rate of oxygen. Likewise, VLA max is

V flux LA is lactate max, so maximal lactate production rate. Why is that a good marker for glycolytic capacity? So if we really think George Brooks is probably one of the most well known researchers on lactate, I think most people now know that lactate is not a negative thing. We have two energetic systems in a simple model, shall we say? You have the aerobic and the anaerobic system, probably better termed glycolytic, but they work together, right?

Glycolytic system, it's producing lactate. And if we think of it like the exhaust, the aerobic system needs that lactate to go through the oxidation process. It's an input to allow it to produce ATP. So their systems are constantly working, and you have this thing called the lactate shuttle, right? So we're each side producing, consuming, moving the lactate through both sides. This is where, you know, I would say the original threshold is coming from, which would be.

maximal lactate steady state. To me that is the gold standard for your threshold when people talk about threshold these days. And that's the point at which your production of lactate meets the combustion. So bring it back to VLA Max. If you can produce more lactate, you're gonna be more glycolytic because you need lactate for glycolysis to work really well. Where do we produce the most lactate? It's in your type two fibers. They're more glycolytic. So

Ben Treble (14:22.432) If you're more sprinter, you're going to be more glycolytic, more type two, type two X fibers, you're going to be able to produce more lactate. But it often comes at a cost to a weaker aerobic system because you have less type one fibers, which is where the oxidation of the lactate occurs. How do we measure VLA max? This is the probably most tricky part, and which is why we won't get too stuck into it. But there's various tests. Typically, there was a 15 second test done on an SRM ergometer.

I think the new literature brought brings it out to a 20-second sprint test to account for the a-lactic time period. And then they actually did this with measuring lactate, which we know is not feasible for most people still. They're not measuring lactate at home. And then you can use this as a measure, right? It's typically you get these ranges of VLA max of anywhere from a very low, let's say 0.2, which you would expect in a highly aerobic trained climber type athlete with high volumes.

Maybe a triathlete even, all the way up to, you know, your weld to a sprinters at say 0.7, 0.8 even, maybe in a track sprinter. Very high glycolytic capacity. So there's a bit of a range. And if you know this range, this is what helps you understand why long, short intervals have different effects on different people.

Cam Nicholls (15:41.014) Hmm, interesting.

Ben Treble (15:43.426) I know this is going a little bit deep, probably over some people's heads, so I can already see your eyes glazing, Kem.

Cam Nicholls (15:50.104) No, it's actually I'll you were going pretty deep there, but I now you've come back to essentially tying into what I was saying earlier about what I found in my own training, how actually, you know, despite what's maybe some of the papers say that one's better, it's dependable. This podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy. And as you now know, we've got some massive news for our listeners, especially across Europe. Now at the Road Cycling Academy, we are proud to serve an international audience from our base here in Australia, mate.

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Ben Treble (17:37.74) Yeah. And so we're gonna I will loop this back to try and make this feasible for people to picture at home where they sit on the scale. So I'm gonna talk about two edge cases because it just stretches out the extremes to make it clear are the differences. But if you had two athletes, one is very sprinter, very glycolytic, you've got one that's more of a climber, high volume, very aerobic type guy. Let's take the long intervals. Let's say they both had a similar VO2 max.

Similar threshold, but one is just more glycolytic than the other. What happens when they do the four by four minutes? Right? The aerobic, so the low VLA max guy, the climber, is getting more of a glycolytic stimulus. It sounds counterintuitive, but the sprinter guy needs less of a glycolytic stimulus when he does those long intervals. So

By the numbers, I won't go too deep on this. This is something from Sebastian Weber, who kind of continued Alois Mater's research in sort of glycolytic work and VLA Max, but it's the you think of fractional utilization of VO2 max, we have fractional utilization of VLA Max. Same notion, but on the glycolytic or anaerobic side. You need to stress that system to either cause it to adapt, maintain, or if you don't stress it enough, it's going to reduce. Now, if we think about if you have a high glycolytic capacity.

It needs a lot more stimulus just to stay where it is, or it's going to start to drop. So if we're doing a four by four, the aerobic guy who has a very low like glycolytic capacity doesn't need to do a lot of effort in the high intensities to stimulate glycolysis. So four by fours, you're probably going to find the aerobic guy is maintaining his glycolytic capacity and the sprinter type guy.

will actually end up with a reduction in his glycolytic capacity. So if your goal is to become more aerobic and you're already more of a sprinter, you probably want to lean towards the longer intervals. Cause your goal is to reduce a glycolytic capacity and lift your aerobic. Are we good? Have I got you? You're following me?

Cam Nicholls (19:51.106) Yeah, interesting.

Ben Treble (19:52.578) Let's jump to the short intervals. So you take 4020s, 3015s. What happens between these two examples? You're gonna have the aerobic guy gets a significant glycolytic stimulus, potentially say 20, 25% utilization of VLA max. So you would expect him to lift his glycolytic capacity. So if you're typically a very slow twitch, lean guy genetically, and you actually want to do more crits and sprinting or lift your sprint.

But you also want to work on VO2 max, you're going to lean towards doing these short hit intervals, the 4020s. If you're a sprinter, it also goes up the glycolytic utilization in the short intervals, but it only goes up to about 10%. So you would expect them to just maintain their sprint capacity. So if you have a sprinter that wants to do VO2 work and they're trying to maintain their glycolytic strength, they want to maintain their sprint.

Then you would also do the short intervals. But if you get a sprinter who's trying to reduce their glycolytic capacity, so really lift the the aerobic and fat oxidation type aspects of training, you're gonna want to lean on the longer intervals.

Cam Nicholls (21:05.644) Interesting. So it's not a one size fits all after all that. But did didn't this paper that Johan presented indicate that shorter were better?

Ben Treble (21:17.57) Yeah. So think about this though, right? Most of those papers work on highly trained athletes who are gonna have this as a hypothesis because it's not typically measured, they're gonna have lower glycolytic capacity. So they're gonna spend more time in VO two max in the short intervals. But they we're talking about if you really look at the short versus the long intervals in these VO two max papers of for time above.

The differences are still small, right? They're scientifically measurable, but we're talking about small differences that are measurable. I think most athletes probably have bigger goals than just lifting VO2 max. So I'm probably what I'm doing is trying to get people to look beyond those papers a little bit and ask deeper questions around do you want to think not just about VO2 Max, but equally think about maybe the best VO2 Max workout for you should be brought back to

Are you more glycolytic or more aerobic? And what are your goals? Do you want to become more of a climber, maintain your climbing capacity, or are you trying to improve or maintain your sort of sprint glycolytic capacity? I think that needle, that decision point is a bigger decision point than the difference you would see in doing long versus short VO2 work.

Cam Nicholls (22:36.12) Okay. So going back to my example now, I'm you know, I'm a simple man, Ben. I need I need you to spell it out for me. So I would consider myself more of a aerobic guy, more of a grinder. You know, I'm more of a climber, even though I don't look like a climber and I'm probably not a climber. That's just my skill set. And sprinting is definitely not a strength of mine. You know, being able to

You know, neuromuscular repeatability, like the thought of going and doing a hot dog crit, like I'll be out the back straight away. You know, jump even this morning I was doing a local group ride and I jumped on a guy's wheel because we have like a little sprint to the signpost at the end. And you know, he's not a big sprinter, but there was no way I was getting around him. I was just sitting on his wheel, sprinting out of the saddle. So my you know, my sprint capacity, like I'm assuming that's the glycolytic system is is not that great, whereas the aerobic

I think's reasonable. So why do you hypothesize that I'm responding well to like the longer VO two intervals when I do them?

Ben Treble (23:41.452) Well, yeah, if I was to guess, you probably sit more in the middle. You wouldn't ha you're not an edge case for glycolytic. You're probably more in the middle, which is gonna be let's say your VLA max is between, I don't know, point four and point five, maybe. P 0.35 to point five, somewhere in here. And this is gonna come back to maybe for you, if only sit in the middle, it's coming back a little bit to what sort of work do you typically do?

And you probably respond better to long intervals because you don't do them. True. And this comes back to, you know, some let's bring this really back out of the science to the core principles of training, which is you need stimulus and you need to stress the body to get adaptation, that often needs variability. So again, back to your original idea, which I think is really valuable for non-elite athletes, which is in the early days in training, it matters less which intervals you pick.

But rather that you're consistent with your training, which often just requires variability. So I actually see that for some people, when you're early in your training journey, you're probably better off using a mixture of these interval style workouts. Cause you just want to create different stimulus, you want to test the body and you wanna see what works well. Often the intervals you find the hardest are the ones that will create the most stimulus because it's what your body's not good at.

Cam Nicholls (25:04.61) Makes sense. Yeah. So I guess, you know, if people are out there listening, one of the key takeaways, I think first and foremost, if they were to favor one side or the other, they need to consider what type of rider they are. How do you do that without going and getting, you know, a blood test or whatever's required to identify this? Is it as simple as like, yeah, I'm really good at sprinting and good at repeating my sprinting and I'm terrible at climbing, or vice versa, or does it go deeper than that?

Ben Treble (25:33.742) I think if you ask most people to self assess probably eight out of ten times, they'd be pretty close to saying, no no, I know that I'm I feel more comfortable doing long sub threshold efforts and I enjoy climbing versus the people who say, no, I consider myself more of a sprinter. I like doing high intensity interval work. I find that easier than doing tempo for two hours. I think that's a pretty good indicator.

If you said, which one do you find easier and prefer and lean towards naturally? And that would tell you if you prefer more high intensity work, like you just you enjoy doing Hessions and you don't find them as taxing, you're probably more glycolytic.

Cam Nicholls (26:17.996) Okay.

Ben Treble (26:19.542) On the flip side, if you say, No, I love long climbs, I prefer long efforts and TTs, you're gonna be less glycolytic, more aerobic.

Cam Nicholls (26:26.988) Okay. So then on top of that, like you still want variability irrespective. So yeah, you might tend to favor one or the other, but ultimately, yeah, you want that continuous shocking of the working muscles, the the different stressor, so you can progress. And as you said, you know, I probably respond best to the longer VO twos because I don't I don't do them. I only do them when I really want to peek for something.

So it might be like once a year or once every eighteen months, do I actually go, All right, that five minute climb that I hate, I'm willing to go do, you know, repeated five minute VO two max efforts on it.

Ben Treble (27:08.76) Yeah, I agree. I think there's a there's a big timing component. So the periodization in your say annual training plan. This conversation's probably most relevant if you really want to pick one and stick with it and work on a specific capacity. It's gonna be in your building phases in terms of the periodization, potentially even in the base periods. But once you get into the racing season or the specific components of your training blocks, I think the interval style you pick

should really just be matched to the demands of your goal. So if your goal is to do crit races, I would still end up pushing people towards the shorter interval styles closer to their crit races because it's going to be more, you know, replicable within the race. It's going to replicate the race demands a lot better. Equally, if someone's going to do more hilly road races where they've got two to four minute climbs or even longer climbs, we're going to lean more towards longer intervals.

Cam Nicholls (28:07.822) Well that's interesting, Ben. Thanks for your time. Was there anything else that you wanted to to mention or do you feel like we've we've wrapped up there?

Ben Treble (28:16.512) No, I think it's the key takeaway for people is ask yourself a question. Would I consider myself more of a sprinter, more of a climber? What type of intervals do I find easier? And what is your goal? Like are you training to go over to Europe and do some big of the famous climbs in the Alps? Or are you training in the US because you want to do the crit season? Like two very different goals and depending on what type of rider you were when you asked the first question.

probably gonna help indicate what type of intervals you should think about doing more than another.

Cam Nicholls (28:51.17) Yep. Good. Well, if you're out there listening and you're like, well, I've just learned a fair bit there, but I'm still a little bit unsure about, you know, what's the best way to bring this into my training? How do I, you know, slowly progressively increase, you know, the intensity and difficulty sessions. When do I bring in short? When should I bring in long? Don't forget we're a coaching business here at the RCA, so you can head to our website, www dot roadcyclingacademy dot com. Check out one to one coaching.

that's where you'll find Ben and a number of other coaches. And of course, if you're in Europe, don't forget, by the time this podcast goes live, Ben will be maybe settled in Europe or settling in Europe and ready to take on some European clients for the summer season. Thanks for your time, Ben. We'll catch everyone in the next podcast.