Iron Rider's Recovery Based Training

I began a recent post on training with the statement "I don't get very many comments on my blog, but I love it when I do" and Iron Rider obliged me with the following friendly and helpful comment on that post:

How often are doing your MAF tests and training rides? ... What prompt[s] me to ask the question was your description of riding the MAF tests at a heart rate of 130-140 bpm for 45 min (not including the 30 45 min of warm up and cool down!) That seems to be a fairly strenuous aerobic workout. While I don't know your max heart or heart rate at lactate threshold, 130-140 bpm would almost always fall into the high aerobic zone for a man over the age of 45 ... doing 4-5 high aerobic zone workouts week is definitely working hard with very little recovery time. 

One possible reason why your 130-140 bpm sessions may seem "easy" (Zone 2) is that if you do not recover adequately then you start each day with an elevated resting heart rate. As a result, an easy workout gets the rate up to an extent that it would would not if you were fully rested. If this makes sense to you and you are concerned about recovery and overtraining, I suggest monitoring your resting heart rate first thing in the morning. If it increases, you are not recovering. If it decreases you are getting the result you want. 

(I have edited his comment to emphasize the points I am making and hope I have not thereby altered the meaning or tone.) Let me start with the following points:

1. I really appreciate comments; even if I happen to disagree with a particular comment, I appreciate that someone has taken the time to talk to me. That said, I certainly did not disagree with this comment.
2. I am a scientist by training, and one of the rules of thumb in science is that a fact is more valuable the more surprising it is; an unexpected fact is more likely to tell you something you did not already know. Iron Rider's comment was very surprising to me; I had been convinced that a training ride consisting of just a MAF test was not at all strenuous. Thus, his comment really made me reconsider what I am doing. And, to answer his question, his point makes a lot of sense to me and I am very concerned about recovery and overtraining.

It seems to me that there are two main points to Iron Rider's comment:

1. Based on the standard calculations used to estimate the maximum heart rate for a man my age (64), my MAF test rides seem like they might be quite strenuous and that as a result, adding rest days to my schedule might be beneficial.
2. By monitoring my resting heart rate, I might be able to determine when rest days are needed.

Let me start with Iron Rider's first point, that my MAF tests are being ridden at a high heart rate for a man my age. I take this point very seriously, and here are my thoughts on this issue:

1. I have previously posted on how I have estimated my maximum and lactate threshold heart rates and why I think my heart rate is higher than average for my age. These estimates are not as good as I would like them to be, but I do find them plausible. That said, I admit that the values I am estimating for my maximum and lactate threshold heart rates are very high, well outside most predictions.
2. I have not yet made a direct determination of either my maximum heart rate or my heart rate at lactate threshold. Joe Friel argues that it is unnecessary and unwise to measure your maximum heart rate, that lactate threshold heart rate is just as useful while being easier and safer to measure, and I suspect my cardiologist would agree (though I will ask him at my next visit.) I hope to make a better measurement of my lactate threshold heart rate in the future, but until I do, there is not much more for me to say.
3. In support of the heart rates I determined, I used those heart rates to define my heart rate zones for training, and the level of exertion I perceive match with the Joe Friel's perceived levels of exertion he associates with the various heart rate training zones. Iron Rider argues that this match could be misleading because it might result from training with inadequate recovery. However, because this match always exists, independent of whether this is a MAF test ridden after a day or two off the bike or is the fourth MAF test in a row, I am inclined to give it some weight. From Joe Friel's data, I have compiled a table showing the linkage between training zone, heart rate, and perceived effort. I cannot sing during my MAF tests, but I can talk in complete sentences.

This brings me to Iron Rider's second point, that resting heart rate can be used to determine when one has recovered and thus when to plan the next strenuous training ride. He has built a training program around this idea which he named "Recovery Based Training". He provided a link to one of his blog posts on this program in his comment:

http://eprider.blogspot.com/2012/01/recovery-based-training-part-two.html

...and that post contains a link to the original post describing the plan:

http://eprider.blogspot.com/2011/01/recovery-based-training-theory-in.html

You should read about this plan on Iron Rider's blog, but to my eye, it is truly inspired and seems to have worked very well for him indeed. Fortuitously, I have been measuring my resting heart rate first thing each morning for over 16 months, since before my first brevet or blog post. My records are not perfect, there are many days when I forgot to measure my heart rate and the way I am measuring my heart rate (discussed below) may have problems, but there is enough data to do a preliminary analysis. Thus, I am in a position to ask retrospectively, if this same approach would have worked for me? In addition, I can ask the related question, am I riding MAF tests with too little time for recovery between them?

Simply looking at my resting heart rate data, I see no evidence of it changing in any organized way; it has varied from 54 to 76 bps, mostly between 65 and 70 bpm, but not with any pattern I can fathom; it is not obviously lower after a rest day or higher after a hard day. At a first approximation, this answers the question; if I cannot see obvious changes in my resting heart rate, I cannot use my resting heart rate to decide when I have recovered and when I have not. However, I wanted to dig a little deeper, so I did a statistical analysis of the data to see if I could uncover trends in the data not obvious to visual inspection. What I did was to define 6 groups of heart rate values:

1. Those measured the morning after one full day or more entirely off the bike. This should be a fully rested state.
2. Those measured the morning after one day of MAF tests (the previous day being off the bike.)
3. Those measured the morning after two days of MAF tests.
4. Those measured the morning after three days of MAF tests.
5. Those measured the morning after a 200K brevet. (There are only two of those.)
6. Those measured the morning after a long training ride, one 60 or more miles long. I selected this distance because it is at about 60 miles I start finding these rides difficult to complete.

For these comparisons to be valid, it is important that my resting heart rate not be changing over the time that I rode these MAF tests. That turns out to be the case. For my measurement of average resting heart rate after rest days and MAF tests I used data from 2013. Here is all my heart rate measurements from 2013, and although there is considerable day to day variability, the data is not trending up or down, so averaging the data over time makes sense. 

"Resting" heart rate each day I measured it in 2013. The darker line through the data is the least squares trend line through the data. The fact it is close to level indicates that my average "resting" heart rate has been constant over the time interval in which I am interested.

The following table gives the averages of heart rates taken the day after the above six kinds of training days described above. The first column lists the kind of training day, the second the average of the heart rates measured the day after each of these kinds of rides, the third the standard deviation (a measure of how much individual measurements vary from each other), and the last the number of heart rates averaged.

	Average Heart Rate	SD	N
Rest Day	65.86	3.69	35
1st Day MAF	66.48	4.46	21
2nd Day MAF	66.58	4.43	19
3rd Day MAF	68.29	5.09	7
200K Brevet	74.50	4.95	2
Long Ride	66.00	3.95	12

Iron Rider defines three ranges of heart rates. The first, called "Rested", is a heart rate equal to or less than his resting heart rate. The third, called "Elevated", is a heart rate 10% or more higher than his resting heart rate. The second, called "Tired", is anything in between. I am a bit confused by this division because any measurement is going to have some variability and normal variation will mean that, even if one is never tired, one's heart rate will be above one's average resting heart rate half the time. I will assume that Iron Rider has a very stable heart rate and he simply doesn't see much variation, so this is not an issue for him. Unfortunately, that is not true for me, and therein lies a tale.

If I round my normal resting heart rate to 66 beats per minute, anything above 73 beats per minute would be "Elevated", and anything between 67 and 72 beats per minute would be "Tired". The problem is, given the observed variation in my heart rate (shown in the SD column in the table above), even if I am never tired, I would expect to experience an "Elevated" heart rate every week or two and a "Tired" heart rate every other day. This probably makes it impossible for me to follow a "Recovery Based Training" regimen.

Even though I cannot use the "Recovery Based Training" regime on a day to day basis, by averaging the data from multiple rides, I might be able to reduce the variability in my heart rate data enough to ask the question "are MAF tests leaving me tired?" Simply looking at the average heart rates would suggest that they might be; my average heart rate increases with every sequential MAF test. However, once again variability rears it ugly head; when I used a standard statistical test (the t-test) to compare the average heart rate after rested days to that after 2 or 3 days of MAF tests, the difference was not significant. That is, the difference in average heart rates could well be due to chance. The only comparison which was significant¹ was that between my average resting heart rate and my heart rate after a 200K brevet. In fact, my average heart rate after a brevet qualifies as an "Elevated" heart rate. I definitely need to rest after a brevet!

An obvious question at this point is am I measuring my resting heart rate correctly; can I reduce day to day variability by changing how I do that? The way I currently measure my heart rate is based on convenience. I get up, brush my teeth, get dressed, walk down stairs, and use my blood pressure monitor to measure both my blood pressure and heart rate. A few days ago, I tried something different. I took my Polar heart rate monitor upstairs when I went to bed, and then put it on when I woke up, while remaining still and in bed. What I found is that my heart rate varied between 63 and 69, all while lying quietly in bed. I left the Polar on as I went through my morning routine and saw heart rates up into the 90s. When I sat down to measure my blood pressure, it dropped to 75 while the heart rate measured by the blood pressure meter was 74. The lesser problem was that the variability in heart rate before I got out of bed was at least as great as what I am doing now and thus changing my routine will not solve my variability problem. The greater problem was that my wife was not at all pleased by this change in routine. She is used to sleeping in for a few minutes after I get up and her sleep was disturbed by my heart rate experiment. Today, at her suggestion, I came downstairs as usual, laid down on the couch, and used my blood pressure monitor to measure my heart rate five times in a row while lying quietly. I measured heart rates of 72, 70, 69, 67, and 71, in order; variability continues to be an issue.

Why is my heart rate both so variable and so high? I think this is just an example of the fact that we are all individuals and that as a result, we are all different one from another. That is why the medical community is so excited at the prospect of personalizing medical care ("precision medicine" né "personalized medicine") and why the exercise community has advised us for years to personalize our exercise routines. Thus, I completely believe that  Iron Rider's "Recovery Based Training" works for him and suspect it will work for most of you. If it does works for you, I highly recommend you give it a try. I would if I could, but I can't. That said, I certainly found Iron Rider's comment useful and I haven't completely given up on using his approach. I have been re-motivated to directly measure my lactate threshold heart rate and I will continue to experiment to see if I can find a way to measure my resting heart rate that yields less variability.

---

Footnotes

1) I am aware that doing multiple t tests on the same data can make data seem more significant than it is. I did so because I knew I was going to have trouble finding any significant differences at all and I wanted to maximize sensitivity. Because the results I got were NOT significant, this concern does not arise.

2) I decided not to post MAF test results this week because household duties cut into my training last week so, compared to last week, I have nothing interesting to report.

"Distance Cycling" by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach

I purchased "Distance Cycling" because I recently started reading "randon¹", the Google group on randonneuring, and one of the authors, John Hughes, is an active contributor there. When I read one of his posts on an older cyclist he was coaching, it struck a cord in me so I looked into him and discovered this book. I purchased the Kindle version of the book, but if I had it to do over, I probably would purchase the paper version; I find it much easier to jump around in a paper version as one is wont to do with a training guide.

I confess that my first reaction to this book was disappointment; it seemed superficial, offering up the same platitudes one can find in every other book or free on so many websites. Also, certain aspects of style in which this book is written were not to my taste. The authors chose, in many places, to use a story-telling style in which they refer to a fictional cyclist and tell stories about him or her. Some examples:

"Kyle practices riding with a smooth pedal stroke of 80 to 90 revolutions per minute (RPM) in his middle gears."

"Kyle practices eating and drinking regularly while riding safely."

Does this remind anyone besides me of Goofus and Gallant from the children's magazine, Highlights?

As I continued to read, however, I warmed to this book because of its breadth. In particular, it is the only book I own that discusses training for the standard brevet series² of 200K, 300K, 400K and 600K rides or for riding 12 brevets a year, one per month, all year long. Using the Amazon scale for rating books, I would give this book three of five stars. On the one hand, I am not at all sorry I paid for it or took the time to read it, but on the other, it is not my all time favorite training book.

The chapters of this book are as follows:

CHAPTER   1     Going the Distance
CHAPTER   2     Selecting Your Event
CHAPTER   3     Baseline Conditioning
CHAPTER   4     Fueling the Distance Cyclist
CHAPTER   5     Gearing Up for the Long Haul
CHAPTER   6     Preparing Your Body to Go the Distance
CHAPTER   7     Conquering the Century and 200K
CHAPTER   8     Ultimate Training for Ultra Events
CHAPTER   9     Mastering the Multiday
CHAPTER 10     Ultra distance Riding
CHAPTER 11     Preventing Injury

The material I found to be of the most interest were in Chapters 8 and 10. Throughout the book, the authors provide detailed, day by day, week by week training plans including cycling, resistance training ("weights"), stretching, and psychological conditioning. (I did say this book was comprehensive.) This material was of some interest to me, especially to compare to other training programs I have encountered to see what I can learn from the similarities and differences. However, it was the extension of these programs into some new territory, extensions I was having difficulty imagining on my own, that made this book worth my time.

Chapter 8 includes information on moving up from a 200K to a 300K brevet or from a century (100 mile) to a double century (200 mile) ride, information duplicated in some of my other books. However, what it has that I didn't find anywhere else is a 4 week maintenance program to execute if, in contrast to the waxing and waning of a traditional training program, one wishes to ride one 200K brevet a month, all year long, what one needs to do in order to earn the RUSA R12 award.

Chapter 10 describes a training program for a brevet series, in which one rides increasingly long rides, one month apart: 200K (124 miles), 300K (186 miles), 400K (248 miles), and 600K (372 miles). There probably are more theories of training than there are cyclists. I am personally unlikely to follow any program exactly, including this one. What makes this program interesting to me nonetheless is that it gives me a place to start thinking about what I want to do, a program which is reasonable and conventional. Along those same lines, one table in this chapter particularly caught my attention. It came right after a discussion of planning how a brevet might go, pointing out that one's average speed will drop as the brevets get longer. The table was for planning purposes, and listed assumed completion times for various length brevets:

Distance	Assumed  Completion Time (Hours:Minutes)	Required  Completion Time (Hours:Minutes)
200K	9:00 to 10:30	13:30
300K	14:30 to 16:30	20:00
400K	21:00 to 23:30	27:00
600K	34:00 to 37:30	40:00

I completed my first 200K brevet in 12 hours, and felt good about that because it was well under the required completion time. I completed my second 200K brevet in 11 hours, and felt good about that because it was an hour faster than my first. However, I see that these times are still slower than what was assumed in this book, suggesting to me that I might not be ready for longer brevets, a useful cautionary note.

This book is not specific to randonneuring, it includes information about all kinds of long distance cycling, including bicycle touring. Chapter 9 focuses on touring which why it was of less current interest to me. In summary, this is a good book covering a lot of material while making few assumptions about prior knowledge. For these reasons, and because it adheres to conventional practice rather than advancing novel theories, it might be particularly suitable for a beginner.

---

Footnotes

1) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/randon

2) For background about randonneuring in general and what a brevet series is in particular, no better source can be found than the RUSA website.

---

MAF Test Results

For those new to this blog, each week I am posting an update of my training results; see my previous posts for explanations of my aerobic training program, MAF tests, and this graph.

The plateau in performance seen for the past few weeks continues. Recently, I got a very provocative comment on my last training post from Iron Rider. I plan to devote my next post to a consideration of this comment, some of Iron Rider's training ideas, and comments on this plateau.

Cycling in the Aughts: Fredericksburg Weekend

• In 1979, my wife and I took what was to be the last bicycling vacation for 29 years.
• In 1981, the first of our two sons was born.
• In 2007, the second of our two sons graduated high school and moved away to college.
• In 2008, my wife and I took a long delayed, second bicycling vacation together.

Do I see a pattern?

Zombie's wife, 1979, Brandon, VT

Zombie Cyclist, 1979, Dorset, VT

A lot happened during the 29 years between bicycling vacations, most of it truly wonderful, but none of it relevant to this blog. One thing happened which, although inevitable, was nonetheless un-wonderful; we got old. Thankfully, neither of us is too old to ride a bicycle. Another thing that is definitely relevant to this blog is my wife's determination to ride with me. The bicycle ride I took on August 1, 2008 represented a clear watershed, the first day in many years I rode my Bianchi Specialissima and the day I restarted cycling on regular basis. My second ride was on August 5, and already my wife was riding along side me. Our second bicycling vacation, taken a mere three months after our cycling restart, was modest compared to the one 29 years earlier, constituting only two days of riding over a long weekend, but my wife's enthusiasm can be seen in that she chose this vacation as her present for a very special birthday. Both the similarities and differences between these two vacations are striking, and at the expense of repeating some pictures from my last post, I have tried to highlight this.

Zombie's wife, 2008, Luchenbach, TX

Zombie Cyclist, 2008, Fredericksburg, TX

In Vermont, in 1979, we stayed in inns. In Texas, in 2008, we stayed at a bed and breakfast, a very similar kind of accommodation. Although The Town Creek Bed and Breakfast (where we stayed, highly recommended) did not supply dinner like the inns in Vermont, it was within easy walking distance of the excellent restaurants of Fredericksburg, so the overall experience had the same luxurious feel as Vermont.

The Garden Cottage at Town Creek Bed and Breakfast, where we stayed.

Whereas the route we followed in Vermont was provided by the Churchill Inn who organized the trip, in Fredericksburg, it was provided by Cycle Texas, a consortium of local cyclists led by the local bike shop. In short, the Vermont vacation was more Prix Fixe, the Fredericksburg vacation more A La Carte, but the overall effect was quite similar.

Working barn in the countryside around Fredericksburg, Texas

Both vacations provided rides over quiet roads through authentically rural scenery. Vermont is a little greener and more New England, Texas is more rugged and Old West, but both were variations on the same theme. Both involved a lot of climbing, and the maximum elevation achieved was the same for both trips, just over 2,000 feet. I was unable to reconstruct if the amount of climbing was similar because I was unable to determine the lowest elevation we reached in Vermont; Fredericksburg is at just under 1,700 feet, but rides from there go down to about 1,500 feet increasing the climbing a bit.

Rolling hills near Fredericksburg.

The cycling routes provided by Cycle Texas are superb, both for the rides themselves as well as the information provided on Cycle Texas's website. These rides vary between 19 and 88 miles in length. For this trip, my wife and I completed a 30 and a 23 mile ride together, and I rode an additional 20 mile ride one afternoon while my wife caught up on her reading. Although the vagaries of life prevented us from returning to Fredericksburg as quickly as we hoped, we continue to hope that, with more miles in our legs, we can go back and try some of the longer routes Fredericksburg has to offer.

Livestock on the road (contained by cattleguards) is evidence of the very low traffic.

I cannot say enough about the opportunities presented to cyclists by Fredericksburg, Texas. I have revisited the roads of my California childhood, and found them delightful but much busier then when I last rode them 40 years ago. By contrast, the roads around Fredericksburg remind me of the roads of my childhood, not the roads of today. I have previously mentioned Cycle Texas, but here again is a link to their website:

http://www.cycletexas.com/

The town of Fredericksburg is filled with some of the finest accommodations and restaurants in the world. The only place we have stayed is Town Creek Bed and Breakfast, so we cannot talk from personal experience about any of the others in Fredericksburg, but we can say Town and Creek is one of the loveliest experiences we have had anywhere. By the end of the visit, we considered the owners as personal friends. If you are traveling to Fredericksburg, you should definitely give them serious consideration. However, as best I can tell, the do not have a website, you have to telephone them:

304 N Edison St
Fredericksburg, TX 78624
830-997-6848

---

For those new to this blog, each week I am posting an update of my training results; see my previous posts for explanations of my aerobic training program, MAF tests, and this graph.

My MAF test results seem to have plateaued. I will be interested to see what they do when I move from base training to build training and start doing longer and longer weekly rides.

Cycling in the 70s: Inn to Inn in Vermont

My wife and I have always enjoyed active recreation. While dating, we often spent our Saturday cycling 15 to 25 miles west from Boston, seeking out the best ice cream stands in rural Massachusetts. A year or two after getting married, we took a vacation in Yosemite National Park which involved a week of backpacking. And in 1979, five years after getting married, our vacation was a week-long cycling trip in Vermont.

The trip we took was a package deal organized by a consortium of inns in Vermont. (Unless I am mistaken, this same consortium, lead by the Churchill House Inn shown below, is still organizing these tours.) Each night we spent at an inn which, in addition to providing a beautiful and comfortable place to spend the night, provided dinner when we arrived and breakfast the next morning.

Of course, much about the trip has been lost to the mists of time. This blog post was created to a small extent from my fading memories and mostly from a set of photographs from the trip. Using pictures showing the names of inns which still exist, a picture of a rural road sign, the sign at the top of a mountain pass, and a city limits sign, I was able to determine that we rode mostly through national forests in the southern half of the Green Mountains of Vermont.

The inns where we stayed varied enormously (which was deliberate and part of the charm of the trip.) The pictures above show inns which were bed and breakfast-like, having the appearance of a traditional Federal-period home. The picture immediately below is what was probably the most casual of the inns at which we stayed, which had the feel of a ski lodge. The picture after that shows an Inn that had more of the feel of a resort.

This trip took place during the summer of 1979. In 1980, my wife and I completed our training, started our first jobs, and each took on the responsibility of setting up, funding, staffing, and running a research laboratory. That same year, we purchased our first house. A year after that, we had our first son. Thus, as unfortunate as it was, it is perhaps not surprising that it took 29 years before we could manage another bicycling vacation. And with that, I will end this post with a few additional pictures from this trip.

---

For those new to this blog, each week I am posting an update of my training results; see my previous posts for explanations of my aerobic training program, MAF tests, and this graph. My apologies for not posting a MAF test last week, I simply forgot.

As described in an earlier post, I am currently looking at this data attempting to determine if the results decrease for a while after the peak (corresponding to my 200K brevet in May) and then start to increase again, or if they have hit a plateau. This will help me determine what the MAF test actually measures. Although the data looks a lot like a plateau to me, I think it is still too early to judge. The problem is as it has always been, there is a lot of day to day variation ("noise") which makes it difficult to see a trend. Time will tell, and when it does, I will share my conclusions in a blog post.

Cycling in the 70s: Boston to Montreal

This is me with the same Bianchi Specialissima I have today. Note that fenders and the heavier load than I carried on the Mountain Loops - I am growing up. Note also that I was riding in jeans, I used to do that. I still have the jersey in this picture (which is wool and was very comfortable), but there is no chance I can get into it (I've tried). The bandana on my head (still no helmet) was my minor excursion into radical symbolism, a symbol that managed to upset a number of people, my future father in law included.

As best I can tell, the last major bicycle tour I rode in California was my ride to the Great Western Bike Rally in 1969. If my aging memory is to be trusted, I continued to train with the Berkeley Wheelmen in 1970 and 1971. In 1971, I moved from California to Boston to attend graduate school. Some time in 1972 or shortly thereafter, I biked from Boston to Montreal, about 350 miles, with two companions. One was a roommate and close friend, identified hereafter as "D", and the other a friend of his who I had not previously met and whose name cannot recall, identified hereafter as "Y" (because I have already used "X").

"D", my good friend and roommate.

I can't completely remember how or why this trip came together. The one part I remember was that the choice of our destination was determined by my infatuation with a young woman,  a fellow grad student, who was from Montreal and was home at the time visiting her parents. If that inspired the trip or only influenced its destination, I have no recollection.

"Y", "D"'s friend.

This trip took place in the 1970s, a decade that Grant Pederson argues was dramatically more bicycle oriented than the 1960s. As it happens, that didn't affect my perception of the tour much; as far as I was concerned, this tour might have been titled: "Mountain Loop - Eastern Edition."  That said, the impact of the 70s vs the 60s might have been that this trip happened at all. In the 1960s, I did all the riding I did because, over the years, I had assembled a circle of like-minded friends with whom to ride - the Modesto Roadmen. By the 1970s, it had become possible to put together an ad hoc group of cyclotourists from among my acquaintances.

Scenery along the way.

I wish I could remember how we selected our route (or what route we selected.) I remember going through New Hampshire for part of the ride. I don't even remember how long it took us. I can distinctly remember two campsites along the way, one rather posh one in New Hampshire, and one in Quebec which featured a disco that kept us up all night, so I assume we were on the road for at least three or four days.

Our campsite

The above picture shows one of our campsites. Unlike the Mountain Loop, we stayed in legal campgrounds at least some of the time, and we carried tents. I also remember "feasting" on Hamburger Helper, which means we brought cooking gear.

A bit of yard art encountered along the way.

In Montreal, instead of trying to camp, we stayed at a Youth Hostel. When it was time to leave Montreal, my girlfriend asked me to accompany her back to Boston in her car rather than bicycle home, and how could I say no? My companions "D" and "Y" were not ecstatic about being abandoned, but being guys, they understood about girlfriends, and they managed to bike home safely on their own. As I said earlier, "Y" was not a friend of mine (though we got along great on the ride) and I didn't stay in touch with him, but "D" did forgive me and served as my best man when I finally married this same girlfriend, so all's well that ends well.

"D" and "Y", in street clothes, standing in front of the Youth Hostel in Montreal, where we stayed. Note the CYH emblem in the window just above "Y"'s head.

Overtraining and MAF Tests

As this picture foreshadows, three out of the four pictures in this post have nothing to do with overtraining or MAF tests; they are in here to break up the tedium all this text. This is a photograph I took of a particularly interesting sky when I was out bicycling with my wife.

I don't get very many comments on my blog, but I love it when I do. Back in March, Michael (a fellow RUSA member) commented on one of my posts on training. He mentioned that his training regimen involves a lot of riding; his training rides are sometimes 200 miles long! His comment raised an obvious question in my mind: "Could I be training harder? How do I decide?" In my youth, these would not have even been questions, it went without saying that I should train as hard as my schedule and enthusiasm allowed. Since age 55, however, I have found that sometimes, the harder I train, the worse I do, a phenomenon known as "overtraining".

Overtraining (which I post about a lot) is a widely recognized if somewhat controversial topic in both the fitness community in general and the cycling community in particular. The controversies include how it is defined, how frequently it occurs (e.g. is it a rare or a common disorder among athletes), how serious it is, and what the symptoms are. As regular readers of this blog know, the last has been particularly vexing for me. Of course, the core symptom of overtraining is fairly obvious; training more and performing less well. However, that is a fairly late symptom, one that could have causes other than overtraining (e.g. illness, loss of motivation), and one that can be difficult to measure and interpret (e.g. if the ride with the lower performance is on a more difficult course or with stronger companions, it may not be meaningful.) For all these reasons, I am always looking for additional symptoms that are more objective and which provide early warning signs of overtraining. As I have mentioned in previous posts, however, most if not all of the early warning signs for overtraining commonly suggested (e.g. increased resting heart rate) are not, for various reasons, useful to me. The symptoms I am left with, for now at least, are how I feel while riding (including tiredness or aching in my legs), how I feel generally (e.g. depression, lack of motivation, increase in the number or severity of illnesses), and MAF test results, described below.

Another picture whose only purpose is to break up text. This is an old three speed I inherited about 35 years ago when I friend of mine moved to California from Boston and didn't think the bike was worth moving. He was probably right, but being the pack-rat I am, I have tried to keep it working. It's primary virtue is that it looks as bad as it is, making it fairly unlikely to be stolen. I use it for utility trips, shown here at a grocery store. Groceries, including the flowers peeking out the top, are in the backpack.

MAF Test Definition

Very briefly, a MAF (Maximum Aerobic Fitness) test involves riding 45 minutes on a fixed course (the Rice Track) at a fixed heart rate (130 to 140 beats per minute) and recording my speed. According to dogma (see below), this speed should increase month to month during optimal training but should fall during overtraining. As compared to generally observing "performance getting worse", results in a MAF test should be less susceptible to variations such as those resulting from course variations (due to the fixed course) and motivation (due to the fixed heart rate). Unfortunately, there are still many factors other than training and overtraining that that can affect a MAF test score, such as wind, temperature, mild (subclinical) illness, short term tiredness, etc. To a significant extent, these factors can be dealt with by averaging the results of multiple MAF tests. The more serious question, however, concerns the basis for my belief in the validity of the MAF tests; what is the evidence that they are a good indicator of training and overtraining?

Final irrelevant picture. Houston does not have nearly the bike culture of cities like Boston or San Francisco, but we do have the odd fixie. There is a "foodie" market in Houston, Central Market, which attracts the same demographic who rides fixies, and when I shop there, I typically see a couple like this one.

Validity of the MAF Test

I encountered the MAF test in Dr. Phillip Maffetone's book "Endurance Training and Racing". I recently re-read this book to refresh my understanding of the program and re-reading definitely changed my understanding.

1. Dr. Maffetone is explicit and adamant that what he calls his "maximum aerobic heart rate" can only be determined by his formula of 180 beats per minute minus your age plus up to 5 beats per minute or minus up to 10 beats per minute depending on training history and health status; he specifically rejects the kind of personalization of heart rate that I have done.
2. Dr. Maffetone does not believe in periodization. His ideal training program consists of training at maximum aerobic heart rate for three to four months and then adding racing to the mix through the racing season or until MAF test results start to decline.
3. Except for recommending that all training be done at his "maximum aerobic heart rate", Dr. Maffetone does not provide any detailed training plans. For example, he does not recommend any specific length for training rides; I suppose that he would argue that the length of training rides should depend on the event for which you are training. In particular, Dr. Maffetone does not recommend that training rides be the same 45 minute length as MAF tests, and contrawise, he recommends only performing one MAF test a month.

Thus, it is now time for me to unreservedly confess that my current training does not follow that given in Dr. Maffetone's "Endurance Training and Racing" and that I do not, at present, plan to change my training to match the book. Thus, there are two reasons the MAF test might not be a good measure for overtraining:

1. The claims made in "Endurance Training and Racing" for the MAF test are not accurate.
2. I have modified how I use the MAF test to an extent that it no longer works.

The response to both concerns is the same, however: to test the MAF test. This is what attracted me to it in the first place, that Dr. Maffetone made explicit, testable predictions for the MAF test, and if those predictions are not met, then the MAF test is invalid either intrinsically or because I have modified it. The problem is that there are too many different ways that the results of the MAF test can be interpreted. I think it will be a long time before the weight of the evidence is sufficient to convince me if it is working or not, but thinking about it is fun. Here are my latest MAF test results:

The vertical axis shows the average speed as measured by my Garmin 500 during a 45 minute MAF test, done at a heart rate of 130 to 140 beats per minute. The tics on the horizontal axis are one day per tic. The graph starts at the beginning of December, 2012 with the Base phase of my training. At the beginning of February, marked by a red arrow, I switched to the Build phase of my training. The second arrow marks May 18, 2013, the day I rode my 130 mile brevet. Since then, I have returned to Base training. The different phases of training are described in the text of this post.

If I assume that riding the brevet in March pushed me into overtraining (see below), the MAF test results would appear to support that; my MAF test speeds increased all through training and then fell after the brevet, perhaps leveling off the last week or so. I am very curious what the results will do moving forward. Right now, I am training at a fairly low level, doing daily 45 minute MAF tests and the occasional 30 to 40 mile longer ride. If my MAF test results continue to remain level and only increase when I resume longer rides (up to 90 or 100 miles), then I will assume that MAF test results are a measure of fitness and are not useful to measure overtraining. If the MAF test results start to increase again before I resume harder training, then I will conclude that the reason they fell after my last brevet was overtraining, not reduced fitness, giving me confidence that MAF test results are another useful indictator of overtraining. Stay tuned.

Other Symptoms of Overtraining

The day after my second (and most recent) brevet, I was tired but felt pretty good; I went on a 17 mile social ride with my wife. Over the next few days, I had trouble sleeping at night. Five days later, my MAF test results were almost as high as they had been before the ride but I was feeling tired so cut back on training. As the days went on, I felt more and more tired rather than recovering as evidenced both by general lethargy and a soreness in my legs that would not go away. Two and a half weeks after the brevet, I developed an acute illness that kept me in bed for two days and then settled into a chronic cold from which I am only now recovering, 8 weeks later. For some months, I have suffered from sciatica which is usually fairly well controlled. At about the same time I developed my cold, my sciatica became dramatically worse.

Are these symptoms diagnostic for overtraining? Are my illnesses a coincidence, bad luck, or the result of the stress of the brevet? Although I don't know for sure, most of the training books include advice to the effect that you should "listen to your body", and I feel like the message from my body is quite clear. Any one of the symptoms (illness, tiredness, sleep disorder) might be do to something other than overtraining, but when considered together, the aggregate of these symptoms convinces me that I am overtrained. When you put that together from the results of the MAF test which started declining at the same time, the picture is consistent, evidence that the MAF test is one more indicator of overtraining. Because the effects of overtraining appear to be delayed by at least a week or two from the event the caused them (e.g. the brevet), it is hard to be sure when they started, but the combination of all the data suggests to me that I did not develop overtraining from my training but only when I rode the brevet itself.

Plans for the Future

Last October I outlined a training plan for the years 2013 and 2014 (here and here). These plans involved training for a brevet in May, resting for the month of June, doing base training for the months of July, August, and September, build training in October, November and December, and then a 200K, 300K, 400K and 600K brevet series in January, February, March and April. Although I am on schedule to complete training plan, because my second brevet appears to have taken much more out of me than I had hoped, I no longer think it will work; I think any brevet longer 200K or 300K may be impossible. The unfortunate implication is that Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP, 1200K) would lie forever out of reach. On the one hand, I worry that, by being overcautious, I might miss the one opportunity I have left to participate in the event of a lifetime. On the other, I worry If a single 200K brevet leaves me this exhausted, how can I hope to go on from there to 300K, 400K and 600K brevets, much less the 1200K of PBP?

To both maximize the chance of being able to ride PBP (as small as that might be) and to minimize the chance of overtraining, I am revising my training plan based on what I learned from this latest brevet. I am hypothesizing that the training in preparation for my last brevet did not result in overtraining. Thus, the experiment I am considering is to increase training before my next brevet so that the brevet is less of a "shock". Looking at a calendar and at how I am feeling today, I am considering attempting another 200K brevet on November 9. Previously, I have worked up to a long training ride of 90 miles to prepare for a 200k (124 mile) brevet, training to 73% of the distance of the brevet. This time, I am planning to work up to a long training ride of 110 miles, almost 90% of a 200K brevet, making the brevet more like one more long training ride than a challenge. My hope is that as a result, I will not be so exhausted after the brevet. Assuming I feel OK after the November brevet, I would ride a 200K permanent in December to maintain my conditioning for the brevet series starting in January. My further hope is that by doing more training for the November 200K and a second 200K in December, the first ride of the brevet series, a 200K in January, will not be exhausting and that, on the other hand, by doing three 200K brevets, I will be maximally prepared to attempt a 300K brevet in February. I think it would be premature to make any predictions about what comes after that.

The other possibility, of course, is that all this training will leave me totally exhausted, unable to even attempt a brevet series in 2014. The reason I am willing to make this gamble is that I am pretty sure what I am doing now will not work and so there is little to loose. In any case, I am likely to learn something about my capabilities from this experiment that might allow me to either complete longer rides or at least come to peace with my limitations.

---

What Others are Posting

The RadioShack professional cycling team posted an interesting article on the Science of Recovery.

Joe Friel has an excellent post on the increased difficulty older riders have recovering from hard training.

Cycling in the 60s: Conclusions

A group shot of a Modesto Roadmen ride in the Spring of 1967. This picture does not include everyone who participated in the ride, but even so it is obvious that this represents a significant increase in membership for the club. The big news, of course, is concentrated towards the right side of the picture, five young women (creating a cognitive dissonance with the name of the club). Despite being three years away from the magic date of 1970, the Modesto Roadmen had gained social acceptance. I cannot name most of the people in the picture, but front and center, playing the ham as usual, is "Terry". Other old faces in this picture are "James", "SD", and "JC". I was there, but on the other side of the camera.

I began my series, "Cycling in the 60s", with this quote from Grant Pederson:
"In the mid-‘60s, nobody over 12 bought or rode bikes ... in 1970, teenagers didn’t ride bikes. (if you were the exception, allow yourself a proud, private moment, and please don’t write demanding a retraction—because the statement is largely true.)" - Grant Pederson, Rivendell Reader #42
When I used that quote I was not disputing it, despite launching a series of six posts about the cycling I did before 1970. As I said then and confirm now, these posts are my "proud [if not so private] moment". In 1971, Time Magazine had an article on the then current "bicycle shortage" reporting that 1971 was the first year since the 1890s that the number of adult bicycles sold in the US approached half the total of bicycles sold, that the total number of bicycles sold in 1971 was the highest in history up until then, and that this represented a doubling in bicycles sales in just one year. According to the National Bicycle Dealers Association, more bikes were sold in the US in 1973 (15,200,000) than have ever been sold before or since. I recently purchased the book "The Evolution of American Bicycle Racing" from whence I obtain the following quote: "The 1970s was a watershed decade for American bicycle racing." There is no doubt that there was an explosion in US cycling in the 1970s leading to the vibrant and significant cycling community we have today, a community which would have been beyond the wildest dreams of the Modesto Roadmen.

1) As you compare this picture to the next two, note that there seemed to be two styles of Berkeley Wheelmen jerseys in play. 2) I think this is the first example of a hard helmet AND the first example of a rear view mirror I ever saw. I almost missed this because neither looks remarkable today, but back in the day, I think this guy was unique. 3) The bike he is strapping to the top of his VW beetle is yet another example of the ubiquitous Bianchi Specialissima.

And yet, bicycling was happening in the 1960s. The Amateur Bicycle League of America was running bicycle races. Cardiologists were organizing bicycle rallys. The American Youth Hostels were sending bicycle tourists to Europe. And some of us, a small percentage but significant in absolute numbers, were riding our bikes to school, around town, for fun, into the mountains for days at a time. Were we a precursor to the magic 70s or were we an irrelevant offshoot? I have no idea, I can only report what I did and saw. Really, all of this was just an excuse to share a few of my memories and photographs of cycling from almost 50 years ago, and perhaps to document part of the history of The Modesto Roadmen, a truly wonderful and unique bicycle club and an example of adolescent energy, ingenuity, and self reliance at its very best.

This guy was the president of the Berkeley Wheelmen while I was a member and was actually a very serious guy. Due to a stint in England, he knew more about bicycle racing than any of the rest of us and took seriously his role as a mentor. I guess he didn't want his picture taken and so got weird. Remember that, if you get weird when someone takes your picture, you may be sorry 43 years later. 

Other than the first, the pictures in this post are of The Berkeley Wheelmen, another superb and historically important bicycle racing club, the one I trained and raced with during my four years of college, 1967-1971, and my less extensive coverage of them reflects only the photographs I happen to be able to find all these many years later.

This guy was perhaps the fastest cyclist in the club during the time I belonged. The Berkeley Wheelmen was a haven for a variety of nutritional theories. My job in the club was to publish the newsletter, and I remember publishing, over several issues, a heated debate as to the best pre-race breakfast. This guy ate only raw food.

I have one more bit of cycling history to share before I will have exhausted my meager resources, two long rides I took during the 1970s, and will take these up in future posts. Before I do that, however, I will finally return to MAF tests and brevet training in my next post.