PBC March News

Renew Your PBC Membership
$20 for Individual
$30 for Family
Pay your dues at the West Hill Shop, mail to the PBC @ P.O. Box 447, Brattleboro, Vermont 05302, or to the West Hill Shop, 49 Brickyard Lane, Putney, Vermont 05346, or register online at BikeReg.Com (the far right drop down menu for Club Memberships). Membership includes the same benefits as last year. Please include your mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address.

Daylight Savings Time
The 2009 Cycling Season Begins

Daylight Savings Time, for me, marks the beginning of the cycling season, despite the snow on the ground and the wet and grimy roads. For those of you who have been cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, riding on snow mobile trails, or training indoors on your wind trainer, rollers, or CompuTrainer, your Aerobic Capacity is probably fairly decent. If you are like me, and have spent the winter on your couch, eating, reading, and napping, you are out shape, overweight, and have lost your fitness.


Humble Training Tips
1. Tune-Up. Get your bike into the shop for a tune-up. New tires, new chain and cassette, new brake pads, maybe that stem or saddle you promised yourself at the end of last year. Support your local bike shop.
2. Weight. Instead of spending money on that Titanium Stem to shave a few grams from the weight of your bike, think about shaving off a few pounds of body fat instead -- it make the hills a lot easier to climb.
3. Weights. Do not neglect weight training. It is important to strengthen your core -- your abs, lower back, and obliques. Without a strong and stable core, you will not be able to effectively transfer your power to the pedals. It is also important to strengthen your upper body - biceps, triceps, deltoids, and trapezoids. These help with bike handling, climbing, sprinting, and overall endurance. Split your weight training into two phases. Phase One is for strength (4 sets of 12-15 repetitions of the basic exercises relevant to cycling). Phase Two is for endurance (6 sets of 40-50 repetitions of the same exercises, but with a much lighter weight). Phase Two will build muscular endurance that will pay off during the season.
4. Equipment. If you are not purchasing a new ride this year, the one piece of equipment I can recommend that will improve your ride more than any other is a new wheel set. When I replaced my Mavic Open Pro wheel set with Ksyrium SL wheels, my 10 year old lugged steel Marinoni was transformed. Also, consider a compact crank to flatten out the hills. When I was racing in 2007, Daq put a compact crankset on my Scott and I was flying up the climbs, but was spinning out during the descents. This was because I did not change the cassette, and was running a 12-27 cassette with a compact crank. Checkout the gear charts with Daq to understand what cassette you want to use if you change over to compact crank. I put on a 13-23 and problem solved.
5. Log. Keep a training log. Don’t log miles -- log hours on the bike, the time you spend in various heart rate zones, the kind of ride you had -- was it a slow, easy spin, a tempo workout, climbing repeats, sprint intervals, and how you felt during the ride? Logging your training will invariably increase the amount of time you spend on the bike, and you begin to see patterns and will see greater results in a shorter length of time. Don’t neglect the easy, recovery rides after a hard training day -- they will help to remove the damaged cells and lactic acid from your legs.
6. Recover. You get stronger on the days you rest and recover. Do not overtrain. Feed and hydrate your body.
7. Goals. It helps tremendously to have a plan or a goal(s) for the season -- whether it is your first century ride, a race, or a National Championship. Having a goal will motivate you to train and will give you the satisfaction of charting your progress toward your goal.
8. Team. Some workouts have to be done alone -- but you will find that if you ride with people who are faster and stronger than you, you will improve your skills, strength, and endurance, and will enjoy the friendly competition.
9. Base, Base, Base. The importance of establishing a strong aerobic base cannot be over emphasized. If you fail to establish an adequate base early in the season, your training will be for ought -- like a building with a foundation rot to the core. An easy way to build your aerobic base is to take your average annual mileage, divide by 4, and commit to riding that first 25% in the small ring at a high cadence - 90-100. For example, I ride the first 1,000 to 1,500 miles in the small ring, before training for specific deficits, like hill climbing, or sprints. The high cadence spinning early in the season will elevate your heart rate but not unduly stress your muscles, while your muscle memory helps you to improve the smoothness of your pedal stroke. Later, when you climb and sprint or do your endurance rides, your solid aerobic base will pull you through, and you will have a more enjoyable and successful cycling season.

Wanted: Person to organize the Tuesday Night Ride Schedule and make modifications of the starting locations, routes, or ride leaders, as needed, throughout the Spring and Summer. Contact putney.bicycle@gmail.com if interested.

Wanted: Candidate for President of the PBC. You don’t have to do anything, or you can become as involved as you want. Contact putney.bicycle@gmail.com if interested.