(upbeat music)
- Coming up on this week's Ask GCN,
how to descend in high winds,
what is the best bike for indoor training,
does a lower tyre pressure mean more punctures,
and what are those small springy things in quick releases,
plus a lot more too.
- That's a really good question.
Can learn a lot from that one.
But first up is this from Hornetluca who asked
how much does heat affect performance during cycling?
- Well that's an interesting one
and very difficult to quantify, isn't it?
Because different riders will respond to extreme heat
in a different way.
The likelihood is that if you've grown up
in a very hot country,
you are better able to deal with high heats
than if you've grown up in a cold country.
But everybody will be effected to some degree.
And that is due to the body's own mechanisms
to cope with the heat almost like
a defence mechanism really.
So once your cold body temperature rises
to a particular point
your body will prevent you from working too hard
so that you don't do yourself any serious damage.
- Yeah, but there a few things you can actually do
to help your body when exercising in the heat.
The first one, obviously one of course,
is make sure that you're properly hydrated
and the second one is acclimatising to the heat itself.
And this is something I've actually done in the past,
way back in the late '90s.
I trained for particularly hot and humid
Commonwealth Games Road Race over in Malaysia.
What I actually did was train in my garage
on my home trainer with a tumble dryer full of wet towels.
And it actually worked for me,
and you see pros doing similar things now as well,
especially when you look at the kind of climates
they have to perform in.
Let's take the Qatar World Championships,
last year for example.
- Yeah, or even the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 too.
There's a lot more things you can do though
to help yourself if you are riding in extreme heat.
And we went through a few of those tips in this video.
- It was warm there, wasn't it?
- It was hot, yeah.
(upbeat music)
The first rule is to make sure that you drink plenty.
Sweating is your body's very effective way
of cooling yourself.
But what it does mean is that you need to stay
on top of your hydration stages
so that you're replacing the water that you're loosing
through sweating.
- Yeah remember that more than 50% of your body
is made up of water.
So it's really important
that you keep that level maintained.
Make sure you're hydrated before you even head out
and then take plenty of fluids out with you.
You really want two big bottles, 750 mls.
And ideally you want to favourite electrolyte drinks
over water, as they do a much better job
of keeping you hydrated.
- Our next question came in on Twitter
using the important hashtag #torqueback from Dave Lambert.
Any tips on descending in heavy wind,
over 60 kilometres per hour?
I'm riding in Tenerife, which has beautiful descends
but the heavy wind is very scary.
- You're right, riding in heavy winds like that
is pretty scary.
But it's not too bad
when you've got a tailwind directly behind you.
A headwind is pretty safe as well,
although that can be pretty annoying.
But once the wind comes from the side,
especially when you're travelling at high speed
it can make things pretty choppy on the bike
and the wind can really affect the steering of your bike.
- Yeah, our first piece of advice for this situation
would be just to be cautious.
There's no prizes really if you're going faster on descends
when you're not competing.
So don't be afraid of just putting your brakes on
and going slower.
The next one though is equipment,
in particular your wheels, and especially your front wheel.
So a traditional shallow section, box section rim
is going to catch the wind far less
when it's coming from the side than a deep dish wheel.
And once again, the fact that the shallower rims
are less narrow is not really going to be
of any importance when you're not competing.
- In fact, we've got a few tips
on riding crosswinds in this next video.
The most efficient place to ride is right in the gutter.
Staying out of the pace line
but still being sheltered from it.
It's a difficult place to stay,
but it's a skill well worth mastering.
- And with this in mind,
and if you want to make somebody really suffer,
you don't want to offer them any protection at all.
And by putting Simon right in the gutter
he's getting hardly any benefit from my slip frame.
And if, and it's a very big if,
I'm stronger than him I should actually drop him,
something I couldn't do without the help of a crosswind.
It's time for the rapid fire round now.
And shall we try and be quick this week?
- Super quick, let's do this.
- Okay, first up from Tracy.
Tracy, Tracy, Tracy
from Switzer. - Three Tracys.
- What are the pros and cons of getting a spin bike
versus a regular bike trainer for home use?
Well if you're talking about specific spin bikes
they've got quite a different feel
in terms of the way that you pedal
and the type of resistance they use.
You can get other study bike,
such as a walk bike, which give a very road like feeling.
And the advantage of having something
like that in your house is it's always there
set up for you to use
as and when you want to do some indoor training.
The cons to that might be that
it takes up a little bit more room in your house
and also it can be quite difficult
to get exactly the same position
as the bike that you're using out on the road.
- Good answer Dan,
but not exactly rapid is my view on that one.
Next up we have this from Ed Newell.
Hashtag #torqueback.
Years ago I was told to keep tyre pressure high
to prevent punctures from sharp objects.
Softer tyres puncture easily, true or false, or TOF,
as you've written down.
Took me a while to work at what that was.
But basically, the risk of getting pinch puncture
are actually higher if you have a lower tyre pressure.
Ubt now a days, because tyres are getting
increasingly wider and frames being built
to accommodate them,
the actual risk is decreased because it just brings--
- Air within the tyre.
- Indeed.
So as in relation to getting flints
and bits of glass in your tyre,
that can be something to do with the casing
and it's just about luck as well I think.
- Yeah, penetration of a sharp object
I don't think has anything to do
with tyre pressure whatsoever.
That is the casing itself.
Next up Renee Starling on Twitter,
I have a cross bike for commutes and trails
but would a separate endurance bike be better
for riding in a sportive?
Not necessarily Renee.
If you're very comfortable with the position
of your cross bike
and you want to go and do a sportive
we recommend just purchasing some slick tyres,
so that you've got slightly less
roll and resistance on the road
and you're probably then going to be fine.
You might at a point find that the gear ratios
aren't quite what you need on the road versus off the road,
but again that can be changed with different cassettes
on a different set of wheels,
which you can use on your cyclo-cross bike.
So if you're comfortable it's fine.
- 8 out a 10 per speed there Dan, but very succinct.
Ah, next up and finally in the rapid fire round,
- Not quite.
- Is Peter Sagan,
that's the penultimate question, thank you very much.
It's from Peter Sagan.
Thanks very much
for getting in touch Peter. - I don't think
it's the real one, but it might be.
- Yeah, I mean, it's written down.
Anyway, here we go.
Can Froome be just as fast on an entry level bike
compared to a fit average climber on a high end bike?
No, it wouldn't be as fast, it'd be faster.
Now that's the rapid answer.
- It is yeah.
It's about the rider as much as the bike.
Way more than that. - Definitely.
- The bikes will make a bit of a difference
but you put Froome on a 1,000 pound bike,
or even less, - He's gone.
He's going to everybody super fast.
- That would be rapid fire.
- Anders Skansen has written in underneath
one of our last Ask GCN anything's.
I've been wondering lately, what exactly
do those little springs on the skewer do,
and why are they cone shaped?
- That's a cracking little question there, isn't it?
- Yeah, well it's basically to keep either side
of the quick release equidistant from the axle on the hub,
which makes getting your wheel in and out
both at the front and back far easier.
The reason that they are cone shaped
is so that they don't go over the axle part
which goes into your fork legs or into the rear dropouts.
- Basically balancing the width of your skewer.
- Our next question is affectively about recovery,
it came in from Andy.
I missed my morning ride.
Can I take a seven PM ride at night
and still be rested enough for my 5:30 AM ride
the following morning?
Well once again this is going to be determined
by a number of different factors.
Firstly, what you've been doing on the lead up
to these two rides in terms of your training.
Secondly, what you're planning on doing
on the actual rides themselves.
And even the type of job you've got
can affect this type of thing.
So if you are working in a office
and you just sit down, and at least physically relaxed
if not mentally, your recovery powers might be greater
than if you are a manual labourer.
- Yeah, I think what you need to ensure
is that after, if you choose to ride in the evening,
after the ride, you make sure you eat properly,
then get some rest
that's very, very important indeed.
And also you really do need to factor in
your level of fitness.
So say for example you do four or five rides a week,
you may find that you can cope
perfectly adequately with those back to back sessions.
But if you trained just a couple of times a week
at low intensity,
you might actually find that doing those sessions
within such close proximity may give you pretty sore legs.
But I think overall what you need to ensure,
and what you need to integrate into training
is a degree of flexibility.
Especially if you're working around a full time job.
And there's no harm from sounding
a bit of extra rest or having
close together sessions basically.
- Hm, and if you want to improve your recovery time
we've got a few tips for that in this next video.
Why, look at the smoothie.
- Look at that t-shirt my mate.
- Look at that face.
Young.
(upbeat music)
- First and foremost,
recovery happens when we're resting.
So, we should aim to do just that.
However, most of us lead hectic lives
and so we probably don't have the luxury
of being able to collapse on the sofa
after a hard ride.
Although, that is probably something
we should all aim for at least.
- Yeah, I definitely aim for that most days.
You should particularly think
about the timing of your training sessions as well.
So if you're someone with a very busy and hectic job,
it's pretty best not to do
your training sessions before work.
Instead, do them after work
that way when you get home you can relax
before going to bed.
- Yeah, because bed, or more accurately sleep,
is even more important
to your recovery than you might think.
Even power naps have an incredibly beneficial effect
on your recovery.
- I'm not sure that now is the best time
for a power nap, Si.
Maybe wait 'til you get home.
- And finally on this weeks Ask GCN
we have this question from Bikeanddogtrips
over on Twitter, who asked,
why is it deemed so important to improve your FTP,
your functional threshold power?
I would've thought it more useful to improve
your VO2 max threshold.
- Well to a degree the two are linked, aren't they?
I mean your VO2 max is important,
but you're not going to have a power at VO2 max at 500 watts
if your FTP is only 150 watts for example.
So FTP is kind of the basis for fitness really,
in terms of endurance, road wise.
On top of what you can put the icing on the cake
with your shorter sharper efforts.
At the end of the other end of the scale though
you've got track sprinters and BMXs
for whom FTP is not really important at all,
because often their events are less than a minute long.
- Yeah it is a really interesting subject though,
because let's take Mark Cavendish for example.
Now his FTP compared to a lot of his contemporaries
in the Pro Peloton isn't particularly high,
yet he is one of the most successful riders of all time.
- Yeah.
- And if you compared his FTP to a member of the public
obviously it'd be way higher,
so it is, - It's all relative, isn't it?
- It is all relative.
And in fact, we discussed this very topic, didn't we,
in a video that we filmed over in The Yorker
about how important is FTP to pro cyclist?
And finally we have, the punchers.
The likes of Philippe Gilbert and Greg Van Avermaet.
Now those guys might not necessarily
be out to sprint with the best sprinters,
time trial with the best time trialists,
or climb with the purest of climbers,
but what they do have is a superhuman ability
to deliver power on short climbs.
- Yeah these beasts have the biggest disconnects
between their functional threshold powers
ad the power that they're able to produce
over short climbs of maybe one to five minutes in duration.
They are anaerobic monsters.
Not only have they got an
amazing ability to go in to the red
they can do it on most heat of occasions
over the course of a single race.
And this in fact, is kind of what made the
Olympic road race in 2016 so fascinating.
'Cause really Greg Van Avermaet on paper
should not have been able to win that race
with the climbs involved.
However, on the fold of his life
he was able to dig deep, go in to the red,
stay with some of the best climbers in the world,
and then easily out sprint them at the end.
- Well that's it for this week's Ask GCN.
And don't forget you can leave your questions
for future shows in the comment section down below.
Or if you happen to think of something
whilst you're out and about
and you want to use social media, you can use
the hashtag #torqueback - A phone.
- And we will find it there.
Don't forget to subscribe to the channel,
there will be a globe somewhere on the screen right now,
you just have to click on that to subscribe to GCN.
And we got a couple more relevant videos
for you now. - We have.
- Just down here is Si's first look
at Mavic's very revolutionary new tubeless tyre set up.
- And to keep it rubber related,
how 'bout clicking just down here
for the truth about wider tyres.
- Down where?
- Just down there.
- You're on it today, aren't you?