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Top Tips For Riding In Warmer Weather

Here are six things to keep in mind about cycling in warm weather!

Acclimate Yourself
“The biggest warm-weather mistake cyclists make is riding in the heat without preparation,” says Stacy Sims, PhD, founder of Osmo Nutrition. If you don’t acclimate to warm-weather riding, you won’t reap as many benefits from your workout and you’ll increase both perceived effort and potential for injury. Instead, ride early or late in the day, when it’s coolest, and use your down time to get used to the heat—try Bikram “hot” yoga or a sauna.

Protect Yourself
A sunburn does more than fry your skin, Sims says. It contributes to fatigue and increases your metabolism. The latter might sound like a good thing, but it also increases fluid needs, which can be a problem on a warm day when you’re already struggling to stay hydrated. Do everything you can to prevent sunburn: Always wear sunscreen; choose jerseys, shorts, and arm skins with built-in sun protection; and wear a cap under your helmet to shield your head.

Plan Ahead
To prevent your drink from quickly turning the temperature of warm tea, freeze one bottle at half full and another at the three-quarter mark before topping them off. (Mountain bikers: Put ice cubes into your hydration pack.) For longer rides, figure out in advance where you can restock with cold beverages.

Get Wet
While it may be tempting to toss ice cubes down your jersey, don’t. Sims advises against it: “Ice against the skin causes blood vessels to constrict, which shoots hot blood back to your core.” If your core temperature climbs too high, performance and health can suffer. Instead, pour cool water over your neck and forearms, or wipe them with a cool, damp towel.

Ease Up
Don’t try to maintain the same pace or power you’d put out on a milder day, says cycling coach Derick Williamson, cofounder of Durata Training in Austin, Texas. “Once the sum of the temperature in Fahrenheit plus the relative humidity gets above 130, we dial power ranges back by about 10 to 15 watts,” he says. “If you’ve been doing 15-minute intervals at 220 to 240 watts, that becomes 205 to 225, or we may reduce the efforts to 10 or 12 minutes.” If you’re racing in steamy conditions, cut your warm-up time in half or more.

Hydrate Right
In the days leading up to a big ride, increase your consumption of watery fruits and vegetables (such as watermelon and grapes), Sims says. Sodium helps your body hold on to the fluid you’re drinking, so sip an electrolyte beverage during your ride. Sims’s company makes Osmo Active Hydration, but there are many others to choose from. Aim to drink at a rate of 10 to 12 milliliters per kilogram of body weight, about a 20-ounce bottle every hour for a 150-pound rider. Postride, “a protein-based recovery drink will rehydrate you faster than a carbohydrate-only one,” Sims says. Protein pulls water with it when it travels to muscles. If you opt for plain water after a ride, pair it with a snack or meal that contains protein, carbohydrates, and sodium.

Article via bicycling.com

How To Deal With Hazards On The Road

Via Global Cycling Network

Riding Rollers – How To Do It

You’ve probably seen them before at a race, ride, or event. Riding rollers is a way to ride your bike in place without having to hook it up to a trainer or other contraption. The drums the wheels rest on spin to keep the rider upright but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to ride. Just how is riding rollers done?

Riding Rollers – The Benefits

Rollers can be intimidating and may even evoke fear in the hearts of some cyclists.  They’re simple enough but in the wrong hands, can be dangerous. Once you get the hang of rollers, you’re in for a ride that offers you benefits of balance, bike handling, and fitness.

Rollers Have Evolved

At least part of a new outlook on rollers comes from evolution. Contemporary rollers employ smaller drums and upgraded bearings that allow for more control. They’re overall easier to use than older, clunky rollers from the past.

For Starters

Before starting a roller session, always check that the rollers are on a perfectly flat surface. You don’t want them to rock from corner to corner, tip, slope or tilt.

Check the Length

Check that the rollers fit your bike. Stand the bike on the rollers. Draw a visual line vertically down from your front axle. The axle should be just behind the apex or top of the roller. In other words, the position of the roller should be just longer than the wheel base of the bike. If not, the front drum is typically adjustable. The two drums in the back are not.

The Safety Net

Place an object on both sides of the rollers for you to hang on to. You can use two high-backed chairs,  or something that you can brace yourself against. One option is to set the rollers inside a doorway and use the sides of the doorway for balance. Once you get on, you can lean your shoulders against the doorway to regain balance and prevent falling.

Check Your Gearing

Start with your bike in an easy gear so when you start pedaling you can quickly bring your wheels up to speed which is what will keep you upright. As you get rolling, you can then shift down to a harder gear for added resistance.

Getting on The Bike

To get on the bike, first place it so both wheels are on the rollers. Then if getting on from the left side, place your left foot on the roller stand so you can get high enough to swing your other leg over the back wheel and sit your butt on the saddle. With one hand on the bars and another on a chair or something else stable, bring your left foot to the pedal and clip both in.

Starting to Pedal

With one hand still holding on to something to balance and one hand on the handlebars, start pedaling slowly. Keep the front wheel straight and ideally in the center of the drums. The magic of balancing a bike happens because of the gyroscopic effect of the turning wheels which is what keeps you upright while riding rollers. It will be very difficult to balance while pedaling slowly so speed up by pedaling harder and shifting to a harder gear. You will feel the bike become less twitchy and more stable. Keep holding onto the support for a few minutes until you start to get comfortable.

Riding Without Support

Once you feel comfortable, start lifting your hand away from the support but holding it in the air just above it should you need it. As you get more comfortable you can move it closer to the bars and eventually completely on the bars. This will take some time and practice to get t0 and to be comfortable with so it’s alright if you can’t do this right away.

Keeping Your Focus

The good, or bad thing with riding rollers compared to a trainer is that you have to pay attention. If you don’t, you will ride off the side of them or fall over. Particularly when starting out, you will have to focus hard on staying in the center of the rollers and keeping your balance. As you get better and better your focus can drift.

One Minute Per Gear

When you get the hang of it, shift to the easiest gear in back while keeping a high cadence. A good starting workout for a beginner is to ride one minute in each gear, shifting to a harder gear after one minute. If you have ten gears that’s ten minutes, each progressively harder if you’re keeping an even cadence. If that’s not enough, repeat running through the gears for a total of twenty minutes. Three times through or thirty minutes could be something to work toward.

Getting Off the Rollers

To get off the rollers, stop pedaling and put one hand on whatever you’re using to balance. Then un-clip the foot opposite that you’re getting off on and then un-clip the side that you are getting off on. Place the foot of the side you’re getting off on onto the roller stand and swing your other leg over the back of the bike to get off. It may be awkward at first but you’ll get the hang of it quick.

Basic Tips

• Set the rollers up between two objects: chairs, doorway etc.
• Use the right gears to start; easier is better.
• Focus a few feet ahead. Don’t look down just at your front wheel
• Don’t use a death grip or tense up. Hold the handlebars lightly.
• Use you hips to drive the pedals. If you get wobbly, add speed.

Article via ilovebicycling.com

What to eat and when

How To Ride Safely On The Road

Effective communication and consideration will help keep you safe while out riding on open roads.

Banana Bread

Ingredients: (Makes around 12 slicer or 8 if you’re hungry!)

• 4 ripe bananas, about 700g
• 75g unsalted butter, melted, plus extra for greasing
• 1 egg
• 150g white plain flour
• 50g wholemeal flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 75g sunflower seeds

Method:

• Preheat oven to 200C/ 180C fan/ Gas mark 6. Lightly grease a 1kg loaf tin with a little of the butter
• Peel and mash the bananas in a bowl. Add the melted butter, followed by egg and stir well.
• Add both flours, baking powder and salt to the bowl then gently fold everything together until well mixed. Set aside about one tablespoon of sunflower seeds, then fold the rest into the mixture.
• Use a spatula to transfer the mixture to the loaf tin. Shake gently to distribute it evenly in the tin and then smooth the top with the spatula. Sprinkle the rest of the sunflower seeds on top.
• Bake for 55-65 minutes until well browned then leave to cool.
• After it cools enjoy with a nice cup of coffee after your ride!

Recipe from: 7 Days UAE

Puncture Prevention

Scottish inventor John Boyd Dunlop made the first practical pneumatic tyre in 1887 to prevent his son getting headaches while riding his bike on rough roads. Since that day, air filled tyres have allowed cyclists to race over the rough pavé of Northern France, tackle rocky and muddy trails and to enjoy a smooth ride on tarmac. With that familiar hiss though, our air cushioned dream can quickly turn into a ride halting nightmare.

Punctures always seem to happen at the worst possible times, such as when you are running late on a commute, on a freezing wet training ride at the top of an exposed hill or in an important race or event. Unfortunately occasional punctures are an inevitable part of cycling but, with practice, can be quick to fix and there are steps to take to avoid getting as many.

Types of puncture

There are two main types of puncture. The first is a penetration puncture where a foreign body such as a thorn, nail or flint goes through the tyre. These type of punctures can range from a small thorn that will result in a tiny hole that will slowly leak air, to a large sidewall gash caused by a sharp rock that will cause instant deflation.

The second common type are impact, pinch or snakebite punctures. These happen when you hit a sharp edge, such as a pothole, and the inner tube gets pinched on the rim causing it to puncture. These puncture are characterised by the two parallel slits in the inner tube they cause, that give them their snakebite name.

Tyre choice

Super lightweight tyres can be great for that race day performance boost when every second counts, but the small gains they give you has to be weighed up against the greater losses you could accumulate fixing flats. For day-to-day training on the road and sportives, there are plenty of tyres available with puncture protection technology, such as Kevlar reinforcement, that aren’t too heavy.

Consider heavier duty tyres for winter training duties but be aware that cheaper ones will often have a very hard rubber compound that can be slippery. Urban commutes may require even more robust tyres to combat broken glass. Mountain bikers need to consider the trails they typically ride on. If they are rocky, especially with flints, you will need tougher sidewalls.

Tyre pressure

Checking tyre pressure should be part of your pre-ride routine using a track pump with an accurate pressure gauge. Tyres will have a recommended inflation range printed on the sidewalls but don’t just pump them up to the maximum. Correct pressure is dependent on rider weight and road or trail conditions. You will need to experiment and seek advice to find what pressure works best for you.

As most of your weight goes over your rear wheel, it is normal to run it at a higher pressure than the front. An under-inflated tyre will be far more prone to pinch flats and thorn punctures but an over-inflated tyre is more likely to be damaged by sharp flints as it won’t deform around them. Mountain bikers and cyclocross racers are often forced to run very low pressures to maintain traction and, because of this, using tubular or tubeless tyres will negate the risk of pinch flats as there is no inner tube.

Maintenance and routine checks

As well as checking pressure, before every ride, carefully inspect your tyres. Run your hands over them to find any unusual bulges or foreign bodies and look carefully for embedded shards or glass or flints that haven’t yet worked their way through to cause a puncture. As part of your post-ride clean, wipe your tyres off and again inspect for damage. It is always better to find a problem and sort it then rather than when you are heading out the door for your next ride or a couple of miles down the road.

Sealants and tape

Liquid sealants go inside the tyre, inner tube or tubular and will seal punctures up to a certain size. They are often latex based and some also contain small particles that aid sealing. It is possible to buy inner tubes with sealant already installed and, especially if you mountain bike in thorn ridden areas, these can be a convenient solution. The downside is that they are expensive and they add rotating mass to your wheels.

For most tubeless setups, using a sealant is part of setting the tyres up and making sure that the system holds pressure. Once inflated, the sealant is then there to seal punctures. Setting up a tubeless tyre with sealant can be messy and does make changing tyres to suit trail conditions inconvenient. However, for mountain biking, the advantages tubeless tyres offer definitely outweigh these cons. It is also possible to use a sealant in tubular tyres as a preventive measure but it is wise to check manufacturers recommendations as some ammonia based sealants will attack and degrade the inside of the tube.

You can also buy puncture resistant tape and strips that sit between the tyre and the inner tube adding an additional layer of protection. With modern tyre protection technology and materials though, these are usually an unnecessary addition that do add significant weight to your wheels. They are only probably worth considering if you mountain bike on very thorny trails and don’t want to make the change to tubeless tyres.

Riding technique, line selection and road positioning

Some riders just seem more prone to punctures and, although in rare case this can be down to pure bad luck, skill does play a significant part. Especially when riding off road, learning to “ride light”, using your body to absorb shock and picking smoother lines, all reduce the risk of flats. On the road, having good bike handling skills will also help prevent punctures. They will allow you to avoid obvious puncture hazards such as gravel or broken glass and, in extreme cases, bunny-hop a bad pothole.

If you are riding in a group, make sure that major road surface hazards are pointed out and that the warning, usually pointing at the spot on the road, is passed through the group. Use common sense and discretion if you are the front rider. You don’t need to point out every single bump and blemish on the road, just any major hazards. Finally don’t ride in the gutter. Not only will it encourage cars and other vehicles to attempt to squeeze past you but puncture causing road debris tends to gather there.

Article via British Cycling

Top tips for losing unwanted pounds

Follow these top tips to help get your scales moving in the right direction!

Find how much you need to lose

Many riders will just conjure a number out of thin air, find out how much their mate weighs or base their target weight on a generic formula such as BMI. However you have to take your body composition, build and previous sporting background into account. Try to shed too much weight, especially if you are taller or have well developed upper body musculature, and you could end up sacrificing power.

Head down to your local gym and get a qualified fitness professional to measure your body fat using a skin-fold test. Once you know your body composition, you can calculate how much you can stand to lose. Devices that measure body composition using an electrical current aren’t as reliable or replicable as a qualified and experienced person using calipers.

Avoid faddy and crash diets

Don’t believe any hype about miracle, rapid weight loss or food type restrictive diets. Don’t try and crash weight off too rapidly. Realistic sustainable weight loss is approximately 0.5 kg per week. Any more than this is likely to be water weight or power reducing muscle loss.

Heavy training is not the time to lose weight

Periods of hard or heavy training are not the best time to try and shift weight. You need energy to train and, if you are restricting food intake, you will be compromising your gains from your workouts. Try to schedule in weight loss periods during blocks of lighter or lower intensity training.

Energy balance

Weight loss is all about energy balance. If your weight is stable, your energy balance is neutral, if you’re gaining, it’s positive and, to lose weight, it needs to be negative. It’s really that simple. Half a kilo of fat is approximately 3500 kcals so, to lose that over a week, you need a negative daily energy balance of 500 kcals. To put this in perspective, that could be six digestive biscuits, two Mars Bars or just under three pints of beer.

Find your metabolic rate

You need to know how many calories your body needs each day just to exist. There are a number of online calculators you can use that will take information such as age and body composition into consideration. They’re not 100% accurate but provide a good enough starting point.

Log your diet and exercise

Log the calories you take in from food you eat and the exercise you burn from exercise. Again there are some excellent online resources with extensive databases of foods. Calorie expenditure from exercise can be a bit of an estimate but accuracy is improved by factoring in heart rate and, if you are training with a power meter it can be very accurately gauged. Aim to hit that daily deficit of 500 kcals.

Consistency is key so avoid big fluctuations. A day when you are massively under isn’t a good thing for encouraging fat loss so, if you do a lot of exercise in a day, such as a big weekend ride, make sure you eat appropriately. You will find the act of logging all your food and drink is beneficial on its own. It will make you more aware of portion size, less likely to consume unnecessary snacks and reveals which foods and drinks are surprisingly calorific.

Weigh daily

Get on the scales at the same time daily but don’t compare one day to the next. Inflammation from a hard workout can cause a kick up and dehydration could give a false low. Plot a graph and you’re looking at the overall trend over at least a couple of weeks.

Cut out the processed foods

There are some obvious candidates to cut from your diet if you are trying to lose some weight. Sugary snacks and drinks should be avoided off the bike, alcohol is empty calories and can lead to unwise food choices and processed foods and low fat so-called diet meals are often laden with sugar.

Protein with your carbs

Not too long ago the traditional cyclist’s diet was very carbohydrate heavy, focussing on pasta, rice and potatoes. You still need the energy that carbs give you if you’re riding but not the amounts that were previously thought. If you’re not training hard, you don’t need many starchy carbohydrates and should focus on brightly coloured vegetables instead.

Balance your carbohydrates with protein at each meal. You will feel fuller for longer as the protein causes the energy from the meal to be released more slowly. Spread your protein throughout the day so, for example, have an omelette with your porridge in the morning, some oily fish with salad at lunchtime and some turkey and rice for your evening meal.

Slow release low GI

The Glycemic Index provides a guide for how quickly the energy from the food you eat is converted to glucose in your bloodstream. Obviously, as cyclists, there are times when you need that quick sugar hit but, in general, look for whole, unrefined low GI foods.

Fruit and veg

Five a day is the absolute minimum and, to support an active body, you should be looking to exceed it. Gut health is crucial to optimal performance on the bike and for facilitating weight loss and is significantly improved by a high fruit and vegetable diet. Vegetables are especially good if you’re trying to lose weight as they’re low calorie, dense in essential nutrients and fill you up.

Small and often

Don’t just have three big meals per day as you’ll struggle in between them, you’ll suffer from energy dips and be tempted to reach for sugary snacks. Spread your calories out throughout the day, including regular healthy snacks such as nuts, seeds and raw vegetables.

Eat mindfully

Think about and appreciate your food. Don’t just mindlessly shovel it in in front of the television. Eat slowly, put your knife and fork down between mouthfuls and chew thoroughly. You will improve your digestion and will feel fuller.

Fasted rides

Fasted rides are often publicised as a good method for aiding weight loss, they can work for some riders but the most current thinking is that they may be more beneficial if you also take some protein on board.

Prevention is better than cure

This may sound obvious but, if you go through an annual cycle of ballooning in the off-season and then struggling to get it off in the spring, you may what to take a more pro-active approach to weight control. Gaining a few pounds over the winter is perfectly normal, can help to prevent illness and keep you warmer on winter rides but piling on half a stone or more just isn’t necessary.

If this sounds like you, use an online calorie and activity logger for a couple of months and find out what it takes for you to maintain your weight. You will find it really won’t be too bad or restrictive and you won’t have a mad March weight panic.

Via British Cycling

8 tips to get back on track after Christmas

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via Global Cycling Network