David says I'm new to train a road and really stoked to finally have
some structure for my training.
I mean the fourth week of the base phase for Olympic distance triathlon,
and I'm doing the mid volume plan.
And finding that.
And for those that don't know, those are our training plans that
we have structured and train at rib.
I'm finding that in the warmup phase of a workout, my legs
feel heavy with lactic acid.
So that's his assumption.
There.
It's actually hard for me to meet the target Watts after the warm-up or
at least early in the main workout.
However, I feel fine and my legs feel quick and light.
My question is, what is this telling me?
Am I not properly cooling down?
Am I on the verge of over-training or is my body simply in the
process of absorbing the work?
Um, Chad, do you want to, should we actually, you, you've got a
good lay of the land on this one.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
I have several things to say first off warmups are hard.
They typically are.
I mean, they're taking us from a, from a pre-exercise state
to a, to a pre-workout state.
That transition is seldom easy.
You know, sometimes you have that rare day where you feel good and as soon as
you get on the bike, everything goes well.
But for most, for the most part, that that warmup is kind of hard for.
Yeah.
And actually to share something on this.
I remember this summer, I did a week where I had five races in the week
kind of like what you've got coming up.
And I remember dreading the warmups speed week.
Yeah, I did.
Yeah.
And I, and, and you know, that that's a joke on the actual speed
week, which is a whole series of criteriums that I would really suck at.
But anyways, yeah.
I remember dreading the warm-ups before those races, because
they were short, hard races.
I remember dreading the warmups more than I did anything else.
I was like, oh gosh, this is,
and my bike classes.
I had to coax people through the warmups.
I know, I know the workout looks, looks menacing.
I know the warmest already difficult, but get through the warmup before you start
worrying about the rest of the workout.
Yup.
And that's basically it, my advice to you.
Um, there are certain things physiologically that take place.
Um, the one study that I can cite, I think it's.
Pigs or mice, but there's a lot of, you know, basic physiologic carry
overs, um, and, and hemoglobin, so that, so the protein in the blood
that actually carries oxygen to your working muscles is twice as.
Your blood gives us twice as much, or the hemoglobin gives us twice,
twice as much oxygen when it's raised by just five degrees centigrade.
So we're just talking a little bump in the temperature of your blood and a lot more
rogue respiration escape is a possible.
So there is one thing.
I mean, you start, you start out feeling heavy legged and it's not lactic acid.
First off let's dispel that lactic acid clears much more quickly than
people think even after a really high, highly intense workout.
Um, give yourself an hour and you're pretty much back to pre
pre-exercise levels.
And that's when you mean when he says like, am I not cooling down properly?
Like leftover from last night?
Yeah.
By the time you get to your next workout, even if it's, you know, you worked out
at night and the next workouts early in the morning, lactic acid is not a factor.
If
I could break one thing that I think a lot of people, even subconsciously
tie together is soreness in your muscles is not necessary,
is not lactic acid necessarily.
Right.
Um, so yeah, it's, it's that isn't related.
Yep.
So, um, it it's, like I said, it's just a matter of taking yourself
from pre exercise or a pre-workout to, to, to work out readiness.
It's it's a tough transition, often enough.
Uh, and, and the fact is you're getting through it.
If you want.
And you were starting that first interval or working through the
first half of the workout and feeling the same way that will be.
Cause for concern, that would be an indication of, you know, something's
up a little bit over training, a little bit under recovery, whatever it is.
That's not, that's not what you're describing here.
You say, once you get through the warmup, you feel better.
That's why we do a warmup.
We want those first intervals to be as productive as they can be.
Always understanding that those intervals may not be as productive
as the, as the later ones.
So even when you're into that first interval or two, you're still
effectively warming up and usually
to give it time, you've designed the workouts to.
Never does it go?
The first workout is the hardest interval of the set.
The first set of, yeah, the first, sorry, after the warm up, the first
interval has never, like, if you have five intervals, I X wattage, the first
one's always like, and that's by design because I understand that,
especially with it a 60 minute workout.
Cramming a warmup, a main set and a cool-down all into that single hour
that I, I it's it's implied that that first interval is going to be
a little more taxing in terms of the fact that you're still warming.
And I even a lot of the times when I put the workout texts in there, I will say
if this, if this first interval is really hurting, you dial it down a little bit.
You can always bring it back up once you've furthered your
warmup.
If I had unlimited time, I would do like an hour easy.
I would like.
You would warm up for your warmup.
Yeah.
And you could really stretch it out and you would feel.
No pain.
Like it was just, I mean, it would lower the RPE for the warmup and the first
ideally I would like people to be able to spend for 15 to 20 minutes, just get
on there at 40, 50% of FTP and just, just spin the legs, then you do the warmup.
Yeah.
And that's the thing, you know, we're all, we're all constrained by time.
To some extent you can just
harden up and get through that little, because usually the warmups.
Yeah, I know what you mean by that.
You're saying push through and just push.
I'm trying to discourage you though.
Don't let it derail you psychologically for the rest of the workout.
It's not necessarily indicative of the way that
I look back through my workout notes and I keep like writing
notes after I do each one.
And so many of them say I felt bad at the beginning.
And then I felt got into a rhythm and I actually look at yours too.
Jonathan, same thing.
I felt bad at the game and it fell to a rhythm and you just
pushed through it happens.
Yeah.
You know, something that I would also say you, you mentioned that you're
in the fourth week of the base.
I've noticed that as, as months tick by, and I'm very structured with my training.
And usually when I'm, you know, when I'm, when I'm following trainer over workouts,
usually those workout or those more bumps are pretty short and I'm a time crunch or
I'm a normal athlete, like the rest of us.
So we're time-crunched right.
So as a result, you know, I start to get used to those short warmups and you'll
be surprised if they're difficult.
Now I always find.
You know, by the time we get into the build phase or even toward the end of
base, and sometimes maybe it'll take a long time get into the specialty, but
you'll be used to those shorter warmups.
Like I do think that there are certain trends, you know, as
you age, they say that sometimes you need more time to warm up.
Seems to be true.
Yeah, but at the same time, I think it is somewhat trainable.
Like you can, you can get used to a shorter warmup.
Um, but it's, it's certainly if you have the time to do more great.
I always notice, for example, like, uh, I did a short ride.
I'm trying to take advantage of every moment of dry dirt that we
have right now on the weekends.
Right.
With.
And this weekend going out, one of the rides that I had the plan was to
start, and it's like a super steep mile and a half long climb with like
38 switchbacks and climb 800 feet, the absolute worst way to warm up.
Right.
Um, so I made a conscious decision that I was going to ride around
beforehand before I got to that.
So yeah.
And that's, if you can tack on even five.
To, to your warmup.
I said 20 minutes would be ideal.
It's ideal.
If you can just get in an extra five minutes of easy noodling and then
start the workout, work through that warmup even that'll have an impact.
I do that too.
If you have a, a dumb trainer, you can just kind of spend for five
minutes and look in your phone.
But, um, if you have a smart trainer, usually if you don't have trainer
road pair and you have like the app closed, just a natural resist.
We'll be enough, right?
Like, like without the thing, like without a connected to it really like
turning on the magnets in it or the I'm really not magnets, but the elect.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That'll be enough.
And then you can do that for five minutes or like, I don't really, I'm always
like, oh, You know, this it's 4 22 and I didn't get on the bike by 4 25 in
order to get home by four 10 or, yeah.
That's reality right there.
Um, so all of us, so actually I, yeah, and I think Chad does too.
I I'm pretty big on structured warmups before I race Nate.
You've been doing some cross racing and other things recently, and
you've refined what you feel like is.
It's a constant process, but you've, you've got a warm up
that you're using right now.
Right.
Uh, could you describe a bit the protocol that, yeah, I've
only done it.
I've only done this warmup, I think twice cross Vegas and another race, but
I felt fantastic when the race started.
I, my handling wasn't there, but I
felt that test.
And over the course of the race, you yep.
You don't feel like you spent
yourself early?
No, not at all.
And then, uh, there was another race where I didn't do it and I
just felt like, ah, kind of flat.
It could be in my head, but, um, I really liked.
I have the feedback sports.
What does it call up omnium and if you look at my Strava, Nate
Pearson, there is a picture of it.
You see the set up at me, everyone that follows me.
Paul's you guys text him all of us fake or internet points don't matter.
But anyway, you can see a picture of the set up there.
And I do about, I try, I like to get there early and I set my truck up.
So there's like, I put the bed down.
It's like a little table, which is really nice.
Get some music.
And then a 30 to 40 minutes, like really easy, like 40% or 50% of FTP, which is
kind of steady that's, you know, that's, you can talk to everyone it's really easy.
And then after I feel sort of warm, I'll do threshold renewables of like
two to three minutes long and I'll go another couple of minutes of easy, and
then I'll do like really hard punches, almost like it's the start of the race.
Like for 15.
15 20, 25 seconds somewhere in there, but I won't go all the way
out, but I will go like dig deep.
Right.
And then rest a little bit.
And I just kind of go until I'm like, oh, that's enough.
And I know we have structured intervals in it, but, um, I
don't, I didn't really want it.
Yeah.
I
would argue that that's excessive if it weren't for the fact that this is a short
event, if you had a two or three hour race ahead of you, I'd say you're doing way too
much work in, in, in preparation for it.
But the fact is it's a cross race, much like a criterium or anything.
That's our sub hour we're right around that.
And there's gonna be a lot of intensity right?
From the start.
I think it's a super good protocol.
And it's working for you, which is the most important
thing.
Cross Vegas, 30 minute race, the other 1 45 minute race.
35 minute rate or 30 minute races.
And one of them says we're only doing one lap, seven minutes, seven, eight minutes.
We don't want to hop on here.
Hope that it doesn't catch up.
So you just watch the field
roll away.
I hope I'm not anchoring this thing.
You're wiped
off.
I was doing a long road race or something.
I wouldn't.
Yeah.
There's, there's somewhat of a, and I don't know the science necessarily
behind this, but it's more of just a saying that that's commonly repeated
is that there's an inverse relationship between race length and warm-up length.
In other words, if you have a long race, you don't necessarily need to look.
Yeah.
Science minds.
I mean, it just, what works.
I mean, if you go out and bury yourself in a warm-up and then you
roll out for some neutral star for three miles, what was all that for?
This is, and we talked about this when we were discussing this.
I mean, if you see a guy and you know, it's, it's a mild rollout and it's a 90
mile road race or something like that.
And some guys getting after it, on the trainer, either as someone who's
kind of blowing it or that someone who's planning an early attack.
Yep.
Either way it can be
informative.
And there is, there's this aspect of like getting your head straight.
Like getting like, oh, I'm just warming up on the
rollers.
That's why I like the initial low-intensity time.
I mean, you're not, you're not hurting your body at all, but it
allows you to psychologically start to zoom in on what's what's ahead.
And that's why
almost like this is going to hurt saying this to a CEO, but I don't
like using structured like our app for the warmup at a race, just because
sometimes that takes 20 minutes and other times it takes longer.
You need a
little more time to get into the
zone.
So exactly.
So it's more of the mental aspect, right?
Okay, now I'm ready to do a threshold.
Right.
And there's no rush.
And maybe if I don't do it, there's no.
I mean,
yeah.
So we have, uh, I've, I've wrestled with that and here's how I deal with it.
Cause I still like to use trainer road to follow the structure part.
And then we have, if you look in our workout library, you can sort by warmup.
That's one of the categories.
And we have just a few that are different structure for different
types of races, short, hard, or something, a little more sustained.
But with those, what I do is I usually say.
Easily, and I can just spin.
And for hour long, I feel that I'm ready to be warmed up.
And then once I'm warmed up, then I load the workout and I can get going.
So if you do want structure, that's an option for you.
You can do that.
But like you said, I think there's a big psychological aspects of warming up.
And I found on this, you know, you mentioned the rollers and you're talking
about the feedback sports rollers.
You do feel even I'm sure less hooked in than on the trainer there.
And I've found something.
One of the benefits of the rollers before a race is the fact that you have.
It's there's a lot of kinetic stuff going on.
It's a lot of body managing the bike and everything else, and it's very
easy to feel like you're getting in the flow because you're working
just, you know, very similarly to what you'll be doing out there.
So yeah, I think there is a big psychological aspect to it.
Um,
well, I'm going to do now.
Yeah.
I have five races to try, right.
So I'm going to this week.
I'll do.
Just the easy spinning and then we'll load up structured, warm and see.
Cause I can kind of, I can play with them.
Right.
I could try both of them.
See which one is better and it's kind of all within the same, the same course.
That'd be great.
Yeah.
Maybe some good
AB testing.
Almost air-quotes science.
Yeah.
So warmups I've, I've, I'm a big advocate for using them.
However, if it's a longer race, I just make sure that I've got a little bit of
time to spin around and nothing too big.
So there's some real
scenarios where warm up really.
Isn't that crucial.
Yeah.
So, you know, even, I would say one thing too, and as you mentioned it, I,
this is probably understood, but just in case it isn't, you mentioned it for
riders, like really working hard and getting, doing a hard warmup, chances are
they're going to get ready to go fast.
There are certain races where the beginning, even though it's a long
day at the beginning will be slow.
And whether it's because of the profile or it narrows down to single track
for a bit, and then maybe it opens up after that, whatever it might be, but
it can be selective or a race like Leadville, where you have so many people.
So if you are warmed up and you're ready to put in a little more early on, you can
probably get by a lot of those people.
It's
a long day.
If you're looking for positioning, like in the case of Leadville,
where there are literally hundreds and hundreds of writers to get.
Depending on where you start that that's a, that's a case for it.
There's the opposite
too.
Where like, like courtesy off-road.
If they do the old course starts with an hour climb, that's on a fire road and I
see people go off the line so hard and I'm like, I can see you the whole time.
And there's, there's no block.
I mean, yeah, there's enough.
There's the road is.
We're and there's no drafting, right?
Cause if you're going slow enough that you can pass somebody
the whole time, I don't laugh.
Why do people
do that?
I think that it's a lot of nerves.
Right.
You know, people are just ready to go.
And when we play the Disney movie of our own success story over in our head, it
starts with us going hard and it finishes.
But you know, that's not how reality works.
In fact, last year during Carson city off-road I didn't have a whole lot
of time to warm up and I was okay.
And it actually ended up working out pretty well.
When we first went off at the gun, the pace bikes that were in front
of us, the motorcycles, they were not, and it's a long drag on a road
for a long time and it's uphill, but it's not anything super steep.
And the people were going super hard.
Cause they're trying to keep up with those motorcycles.
I linked up with a few guys that I knew that were wise and that they would
pace well and sure enough, who was right with us in that pack was Lance.
And he.
It's just right on our wheel doing the same thing and through
his nose, Lance Armstrong.
Yeah.
Mr.
Armstrong.
Yeah.
And, uh, and he was right with us and doing the same
thing and we let the pack go.
And then toward the end of it, that our, I should say toward the end of the neutral
section, before we got to the dirt, people already started just bloating blowing up.
And we that's when we started picking things up and actually
going a little harder.
So it really is course dependent and it really is race dependent in terms
of tactically speaking, you know,
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