The Cycling Science Digest
A weekly email with useful studies, real-world experiments, and the patterns I’m seeing across 20,000+ training files. Sent every Sunday.
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149 issues
Your ageing engine is more than your heart
When you think about losing fitness as you get older, where does your mind go? Probably to your heart. It can't beat as fast, so it can't deliver as much oxygen, so you slow down.
4 minMasters & ageingTrainingWhat makes an interval session count?
High-intensity intervals are widely used to improve aerobic fitness, but there is still debate about which session designs provide the most useful stimulus. One common measure is the time spent close to maximal oxygen uptake, or VO₂max: how long the body sustains a very high rate of oxygen use during the session.
4 minTrainingData & monitoringDoes your heat training match your event?
You’ve entered a hot-weather event. Now you’re looking at the forecast, wondering whether the heat you can train in at home will prepare you for the heat waiting at the start line.
4 minHydration & heatTrainingMindsetThe biggest clue to your next cramp
You're well into a ride when the familiar tightening starts. Same calf. Same warning. You reach for your bottle and wonder whether you should have packed more salt.
5 minTrainingWhat the breakfast study actually tells cyclists
You’re getting ready for a long Sunday ride. You ate well yesterday, there’s breakfast on the table, and now you’ve seen a study suggesting that even a huge serving of carbohydrate barely changes what’s stored in your muscles and liver. It’s tempting to decide you can leave the food and get another hour in bed.
4 minFuellingBicarbonate for the hard effort late in a ride
The last climb of a long ride can feel quite different from the first. Lifting the effort for ten or fifteen minutes asks more of you than it did when you were fresh.
5 minSupplementsDurabilityWhat the new bicarbonate study adds
A hard effort near the end of a ride can ask quite a lot of you, even when most of the riding has been steady. That’s one reason I’m interested in the research on bicarbonate.
4 minSupplementsFuellingWhat the UCI nutrition statement means for your week
You’ve packed enough food for the ride. Then the group gets moving, the road narrows, or you hit a long rough section. Half an hour later, the gel is still in your pocket.
5 minFuellingThe harder warm-up didn't make them faster
The harder warm-up pushed perceived effort 32% higher, heart rate 9.9% higher and peak oxygen uptake during the warm-up 31.2% higher. It also increased muscle soreness.
4 minTrainingRacing & pacingWhat the 15% rule can and can't tell you
Imagine you finish a training block, look at your numbers and find that your threshold power has improved. Your VO2max has improved too. Yet the percentage of VO2max you can hold at threshold has barely moved.
5 minTrainingLactate is fuel. That doesn’t mean the supplement works.
Lactate gels have started appearing in the pro peloton, and the pitch is persuasive. We have spent years correcting the idea that lactate is just a waste product. It is a fuel. Working muscle can use it.
5 minSupplementsFuellingWhat trained muscle can still keep as it ages
Most conversations about ageing collapse into one of two stories. Decline is inevitable, so accept it. Or exercise is an anti-ageing drug, so train hard enough and you can stop the clock.
4 minMasters & ageing23 extra hours of training did not change performance.
You finish the interval session and the hard work makes sense.
4 minTrainingWhat 6,589 Gran Fondo finishers tell us about pacing.
You line up for the biggest event of your year and the first hour disappears in a blur. Someone jumps, the pace lifts, and it feels wrong to sit up. So you don't. Then the deciding climb arrives and the legs aren't there.
4 minRacing & pacingDurabilityDehydrated? Your carbs are working ~16% less hard.
You have packed the gels, you are taking in around 60 g of carbohydrate an hour, and an hour into the ride the fuel still feels like it is not landing. The instinct is usually to reach for another gel.
2 minFuellingHydration & heat