Monthly Archives :

May 2021

The Virtual Phoenix Challenge is Live

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It only took a few minutes after we pushed go on the event website that the messages started coming in.

“No way I can make it in person, how can I participate?” “Will there be a Zwift version?”

After a few weeks of deliberation, we’re pleased to announce that yes, there will be a Virtual Phoenix Challenge Double Century ride!

No Excuses

Can’t make it? Not vaccinated? Afraid to ride outside in national parks?

You can throw those concerns away thanks to the new virtual phoenix option on Zwift. You don’t even have to take the bike off of trainer. You can login and start riding your century on the weekend of June 11th to 13th. Two centuries (100 miles) on back to back days will count!

Image from the OC Register

Step One: Are You Tough Enough?

Doing a century ride indoors isn’t for the faint of heart. Or the thin of bib short.

Now do another one on the very next day? You clearly have issues.

This can only mean one thing — you are part of our tribe.

https://www.bikereg.com/the-phoenix-challenge-skyline-double-century-ride

Step Two: Register Online

Visit the event on BikeReg here. From there you can select the virtual option and register. The cost is $50 for the event and includes some of our ride swag in addition to recognition in the Phoenix Hall of Fame.

We Ride We Rise on Strava

Step Three: Join our Strava Group

We are using a Strava group to track your participation. This goes for riders joining us in the real world as well as those participating virtually. By becoming part of our Strava group we will be able to see your data for the workouts. As a reminder, Strava does have a free option so you’re not required to pay anything to be a part of this process. Join the group here.

Step Four: Plan and Execute your Indoor Rides

volume distances indoors is no joke. And someways, it’s mentally tougher than being outside. You still need to fuel properly and take care of your body. As you prepare for your virtual Phoenix Double Century adventure, be sure to take your nutritional and physical needs into account.

Here are suitable courses on Zwift:

Hope you can join us!!

Register Online Today!

Adventures Are Better Than Ordinary Century Rides. Hands Down.

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Coming off the last year that was 2020, it’s time to enter return to cycling with a bang. Seriously.

After much planning, we have put together an epic two-day adventure that combines the challenging roads with beautiful scenery — the Phoenix Double Century Challenge (www.weridewerise.com).

Ride like a professional cyclist with your daily logistics 100% sorted. From organized stops to professional SAG to luggage service meeting you at the halfway point, your only job is to ride the bike and enjoy the incredible trip on Skyline Drive.

Mary’s Rock Tunnel, Skyline Drive

Two days and 200+ miles. One way has more than 10,000 feet of climbing — it’s tough, but it’s achievable. We will be riding on Skyline Drive, a National Park. The roads are well-maintained and quiet.

No grade is steeper than 6% and all of the turns a gradual and fun to cruise. There are three convenience stores along the route or you can shop as needed in addition to our professional support vehicle. We even have training advice for you. Or nutrition advice should you need that.

Take advantage of the overnight pitstop to recharge your batteries and test yourself on the return trip home.

We Recharge at Basic City Beer Co (Yes, they have food too!)

Join Team Endurance Nation and other adventurous cyclists for this great adventure.

We have organized a low-contact 99% outdoor adventure for those of you ready to get back to the open roads in 2021.

Full details are online here: www.weridewerise.com Registration is on Bike Reg.

Long Bike Rides – How to Build a Peak Cycling Mileage Week

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Whenever you are training for a big ride day — whether that’s a grand fondo, something like the Phoenix Double Century Challenge, or just your own adventure – there’s a block dedicated to peak miles. It’s part of your Long Ride Preparation.

This is the week, two weeks, or perhaps even three weeks (depending on your fitness and the ambitions you have for the big day) where you really add additional training time. These are your biggest mile weeks. 

Sometimes it’s just a weekend or a few days. Or maybe you are going big and making the whole week a volume focus. Whatever it is, hitting peak miles in your training is both an opportunity and a challenge.

The Mental Side

From a mental perspective, those peak weeks are designed to test your resolve. Being successful at these longer events requires you to knowingly enter a space where things are going to be tough. Where you understand that you’re going to be challenged. And not just your life choices, but also: route choices, pacing choices, friend choices, course choices, etc. 

Is this really a good decision?

Part of the reason we do these peak weeks / peak miles is to recalibrate you mentally for the challenge of the big day. As an Ironman triathlete, I know I have to ride 112 miles on race day.

So my peak weeks would have me doing double that mileage in terms of total training volume. And I would also go out and do a 130-mile ride or 150-mile ride once a season. This is part of that mental reset. If I can do 150 miles and be on my bike for eight hours, I can easily ride 112 miles.

The Self Assessment

After eight hours, five hours sounds positively reasonable! That’s a key part of these peak weeks. As you proceed through this peak block, do a quick self-assessment to see where you’re at and then keep a blog or keep a log and know, Hey, how am I struggling?

These notes are the counterpart to your ride data. Log them where you can refer to them. If you’re preparing for another long ride, it’s really helpful to be able to go back and look at your notes from the last one. What worked? What didn’t? You can now implement those changes.

The Physiological Challenge

On the flip side of that, we have that physiological challenge. While mental challenges can have you up and down, physiological challenges can derail the whole peak week and really sets you back if you aren’t careful. 

Think about handling the peak miles from a physiological perspective in three critical ways. 

Number One: Make it Achievable

We want it to be a stretch goal, but not like a stretch goal with a gap that we have to jump over. On our bike and pray that we make the other side. And if we don’t, we may be broken. That’s a bridge too far and not one that we want to cross so early in the season. 

If your average weekly mileage has been 150 miles, that stretch goal might be 250 miles. It’s just another a hundred miles. That’s one long day. It’s two medium-long days.

If you can modify your week, then you can add riding on top of the regular rides that you have. This could be just as easy as saying I’m going to ride in the morning, my normal ride. And then in the evening, I’m going to do a bonus 20 miles on the trainer or around the neighborhood to add that extra a hundred miles between Monday through Friday.

And in other cases it may be, I’m going to go out to some specific location and do a, a century ride or something similar on terrain that’s applicable to my event or whatever it may be, whatever it is, understanding that, that. Delta between where you are now and where do you want to be?

It has to be a step change, but a step that you can reach. So it’s challenging enough, but not over challenging.

Number Two: Pace Properly

We have to maximize the pacing long ride pacing, especially early season. Pacing should be biased towards a negative split. 

When I look at the ride files of athletes and the early season rides, they almost always want to hit the ride hard.

Peak 20 minutes or peak 30 minutes for heart rate? It’s almost always is located to the front the data file because we’re full of energy. We’re full of ambition. That first hill? We hit it. This is not the recipe for success in a peak week.

Rather we want all of these miles to be steady. And then the last portion, the last 20% last 25% — if you’re feeling good — can show a little bit of flash, a little bit of effort. That’s where we start to separate out from the baseline training and all the riding. And the beginning of the first 80% was just to set you up for that last 20% where we make the fitness.

That’s where the fitness happens. It happens at the end. So bias yourself through pacing towards a strong finish in these peak week miles, whether it’s individual rides or just all the rides across the block of the week. Super important. And then finally, The third part of this handling peak weeks is around recovery.

Number Three: Recovery Mode

When you’re in long ride peak week mode, recovery becomes critical. Not just recovery on a macro perspective, but on a post-ride perspective. We have to get it right, because during peak weeks, there’s not a lot of time between these critical sessions. 

If you’re doing four hours today and four hours tomorrow, and you started at 8:00 AM and you’re done at noon, you can start at 8:00 AM tomorrow. You’ve only got 20 hours left. And you’re going to sleep like seven or eight of those hours.

So you’ve only got 12 hours left to do stuff to get you ready for that next day. So the recovery piece is part nutritional. It’s part hydration, making sure you’re refueled afterwards. It’s self-care in terms of stretching or recovery boots or compression tights or whatever you use. It’s also part scheduling, making sure that the rest of your day is not full of work that’s going to exhaust you doing a long ride. So skip that four-hour yard work project!

Remember, don’t go too big with the peak weeks. Be smart. If you do it just right, you will peak at the right part of your training and be ready for the big day. 

Good luck and ride on.

Drinking on the Bike

Fix Your Bike Nutrition Plan in Three Simple Steps [Video]

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Today’s topic is nutrition for long rides for athletes across the spectrum. Riders from experienced to total beginners constantly make nutrition-related mistakes early in the season. And that’s usually because we don’t have the recent experience of doing the volume. 

The long bike rides you are doing, and the experience of those long rides, help us refine our nutrition strategy. 

Skipping Mistakes

So how do we jump ahead? How do we skip that process of having a couple of really bad, long rides to make sure that we’re alright? We start with a sweat test. You can do this in your own house on your trainer. Or you can ride outside as well.

Let’s assume you are doing a two-hour ride. So warm up for about half an hour. And then we’re going to ride an hour steady at your target pace. Your long ride pace. So say your target pace is 200 Watts. You’re going to warm up, and before you start the Sweat Test, you will hop off (strip on down), and get on a scale to weigh in.

Solving Hydration with a Sweat Test

We start with the fluid first, don’t start with the food. It’s easy to shop for food. It’s sexy; it’s colorful, it’s got all sorts of branding, things on it and, low sugar, high fat — whatever it is you want. But what we really want is to start with the fluid.

Weigh yourself. Totally bare you. Great. There you go. You are looking good. Hopefully private! Bonus if you have a scale like a Tanita that can estimate the % of fluid in your body.

In my case, I am 180 pounds. Then I go get on my bike, and I ride my hour a steady-state. I capture everything that goes into my body.

So whether it’s food or fuel on the hydration side, I capture all that I get at the end of the hour. I go back, and I weigh myself again to see the delta. How much did I lose in an hour at race pace? Note it.

Then I review the fluids — how much did I consume? If the scale indicates that I lost a pound of fluid in that hour of exercise, but I also consumed 16 ounces of fluid (which is a pound), then I have actually lost two pounds of fluid (32 oz) in that hour. 

Knowing this will help me to fix my intake schedule to ensure that I’ve got the right fluids and enough of them as well. And now I have a target. I got to take two bottles an hour to pretty much offset the cost of my goal effort.

Second Step: Knowing the Calories

So nail the fluid losses that you have in an hour at your target effort – power, heart rate or RPE. Then determine the fluids you are taking. Are you drinking just water, or are you using a sports drink / drink mix? 

If yes to sports drink, then we can do some calories math. When you drink two bottles of sports drink, per hour, according to your sweat test results, you can figure out exactly how many calories you are taking in. 

For example, a bottle of Gatorade endurance — my long-ride fuel of choice — has approximately 180 calories per 24 ounces. Across two bottles, I’m taking in 360 calories per hour from my sports drink of choice. 

Step Three: Mapping Fluid Calories to Caloric Needs

In terms of my burn rate, I can look at my data…how many calories do I burn per hour while riding at my race effort? Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that I need to take in 390 calories per hour at my rate for my body and everything.

Since I am already taking in 360 calories from my fluid choice, I only need to solve for 30 more calories. That could be half a gel or part of chew. Easy! 

Step Four: Practice

There is nutrition that exists as a formula in a spreadsheet. Then there is nutrition as your body experiences it.

Executing a nutrition plan over the course of several long rides will help you synchronize those two realities. No plan is perfect until you have practiced it. This practice will give you a perspective on how, if necessary, you can adjust it when race day arrives. 

Why Fluid First?

We start with the fluid first. Even if we don’t have enough calories on the day, we’ll be much better off than if we were under-hydrated. If you are low on fluids but overfed, your body just won’t be able to function well.

If you fill your stomach with bars and blocks and gels and chews and not fluids you will be in trouble. Without enough fluid to operate, your body is basically sending a DANGER signal to your brain when you’re riding. And it says, “Hey, this is not good! Even though I have bars, I don’t want to eat them because I’m really thirsty and I need to drink.”

The Recap

So as you think ahead for your nutrition for these long rides, remember to start with your fluid first solve with a sweat test for your fluid losses. 

The fluids that you choose should include electrolytes. Use that fluid choice to determine, based on your hourly consumption rate, just how many calories you’re getting in.

And then you fill the gap on those remaining calories with foods of your choice to be successful. Don’t forget to always bring salt tabs with you just in case you need to help settle the stomach with a little too much fluid. And don’t be afraid when you stop at a convenience store and you’re in a dark place.

An Emergency Solution Example

Don’t be afraid to go outside your comfort zone and get some food from a store on your next ride. My go-to is a can of Coke and a Snickers bar. 

It has saved me on more than one long ride because I needed calories. 

I needed sugar. I needed caffeine. Problem(s) solved in a single pit stop.

Don’t be afraid to go outside the box if you have worked yourself into a corner. Convenience store snacks can save a long ride.

Long Ride Preparation for Your Next Cycling Challenge

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Get Ready for a Century Ride

It’s almost time for that first long bike ride of the season. Before you roll out on a massive bike ride or gran fondo, here are a couple of key things that you should be thinking about so you have the ride you want instead of the ride you want to forget.

Know the Route

We use the route as the box within which we’re going to operate simply because it determines a couple of key things. How long it’s going to take you, what the conditions are going to be like when you get there and how hard it’s going to be in terms of elevation and logistics. Those three elements combine to create the experience of what that long ride is.

Bonus Resource: How to Plan a Route Online Using Strava, Ride with GPS, and Google Maps

Solve for the Ride Not for Your Fitness

If we know that the long ride that you’ve planned to do is going to take you four hours or five hours or eight hours — you have a duration of time that you need to solve for. Here are the key elements to consider. 

Nutrition. What are you going to eat and drink across this bike ride to make sure you can be successful? And more importantly, will there be opportunities on that ride for you to refuel and stay on point second?

Pacing. How are you going to pace this century ride? Is this a gran fondo that’s going to be competitive with friends or is it a long ride you’re out for just picture-taking and loving nature? Or is it a long ride with a time goal? Are you going for a fastest known time or something similar?

Those elements determine the effort at which you’re working.  For this to work correctly,  the nutrition and the effort must intersect. 

Safety. The route that you’re taking — is it a lot of main roads? Is it completely off the beaten path? How can you ensure that you will be safe as you compete or complete this event? 

This is a huge part of the equation. We think about long rides. It’s one of those background, subconscious kind of stress level things. And we’re not so worried about. If you’re in a sort of well-developed or well-populated area, but as you head off the beaten path you have to be prepared. 

Get Equipment Ready 

In addition to those key elements above, you also need to make sure that your equipment is ready to go. Give your bike a once-over, making sure all your devices are charged – from your bike computer to your electronic shifting! 

Now you can move on to the supplies. The first long ride of the year just takes a lot of mental power. You want to make sure that the tubes you have for your tires are the right stem length. You want make sure that you’ve got that extra sealant if you’re tubeless. ‘ 

You should make sure that you’ve got the lights and all the flashy things on top of your bike. Don’t forget the new tires in case your trainer wore them down. 

Schedule a Fake First Long Ride

One of my key tips to you is just to schedule a fake long ride the week before your real one. This way you can go through the process of what it would be like to pack everything together, to go out for that ride. 

I literally walk around my garage with my helmet upside down like a shopping basket, filling it with all the items I need. CO2 cartridges, food, salt pills, a copy of my driver’s license in a Ziploc bag, my backup a battery, my sunglasses. All of this goes into my helmet. 

I now have seven days to fix any missing or broken things, as opposed to trying to fix it in the morning of your long ride!

What Is Your Early Season Long Ride Preparation?

If you have ideas or thoughts for us, please leave comments here or on the YouTube channel.