(dramatic swooshing)
- Hello again, welcome back to another
edition of Ask GCN Anything.
- This week, power meter or light weight wheels,
how far can I lean on my tires,
and what is a good warm-up?
- Yes, all of those questions coming up.
Don't forget that this show
is all about us answering your
cycling-related questions.
A few ways to ask them, you can leave them
in the comments section down below,
you can use the hashtag #torqueback
over on social media,
or if you'd like to be
in a chance at winning a free
three month subscription to Zwift,
the hashtag is #askgcntraining.
Right, first question this week
relates to grip.
Came in from Dan Whittington.
I do a lot of commute riding,
typically 100 miles a week using standard road bike tires,
25 millimeter tires
and ride at different times in all conditions.
My question is, what's the best way
of exploring the limits of tire grip and lean angle?
It hasn't happened yet,
but if I needed to take evasive action
I don't know how extreme my maneuver could be
but at the same time I don't want to stack it
trying to find out.
And no, you don't, do you?
- And we don't want you to either.
Well, it's one of my favorite questions
'cause I loved playing around on my bike
when I was a rider.
And the simple answer is, actually to find a limit
you have to go right over them.
But as we said before,
we really don't recommend that
'cause you're just gonna get hurt.
- It's painful.
I mean, I came off a lot.
You were just saying that you haven't
come off that much.
- No, but I did fall off enough
to know where the limit was
and to know that I shouldn't exceed that limit.
- Well I did and I kept coming off still
so I think it just shows I've got no brains, basically.
But as Chris said, in order to find
where the limits are you've got to go over them.
That's why I got so much respect from MotoGP riders,
because every corner on every lap
they've got to be at the limit in order
to try and win the race.
In cycling, it's not just similar
when you're doing a crit,
it's all about the corner, isn't it?
And I think it's just really through experience
and knowing the conditions,
knowing your own bike,
knowing the tires.
You will, if you push it, eventually come off
and that is where you know you've gone over
the limit, of course.
It's different off-roads or on-roads as well
because I came from a mountain bike background
and when you're going around a mountain bike corner,
if you lose grip slightly and your wheels
start to drift often, you can get that grip back
and keep it upright.
On the road, once you start to slide,
you're normally off.
- Yeah, but I think it's 'cause you've got
so much grip on the road, as soon as you
overstep that mark it's just gone
and you've lost it at such a speed
that you're gonna fall off.
I've been having a lot of think
the last couple days, though,
because the other day I got brand new tires.
I didn't put them on my bike,
and I didn't check the pressure
which I probably should've.
Anyway, I rode them on Monday
and I rode them again yesterday
and riding them yesterday I had 45 PSI
on the tires.
The day before was 7 TID, or on Monday,
it was 7 TID and they felt so much better
at 45 because I could feel what was going on
in the road a little bit more
and I felt like I had more time to react.
Once I could feel it slipping,
it was an icy day.
So we sort of get in touch with our flaws.
- Basically, oh, I've got a mechanic
to put my tires on for me, I didn't check the pressure.
Anyway, what we could recommend is if you want
to practice, use the same corner over and over again.
That will give you a sense of what
your tires and your bike are gonna feel like
at different speeds.
But if you do push it,
you are gonna come off, unfortunately.
Somebody who did come off was Hank.
In fact, it wasn't Hank,
it was a stuntman and we shouldn't
reveal that already because he didn't
really push the limits of grip,
he just came off his bike
but hopefully you'll find the next video
about cornering reasonably to be interesting.
- So when you turn a corner,
you generate a centripetal force.
That's the same force that you'd feel
if you were to swing a weight on a string
except in this case, there isn't a string
pulling James around the corner, of course.
The centripetal force is actually generated
by the grip of his tires
and him steering around a corner.
Now, to counter the apparent centrifugal force
effectively pushing James out,
he's having to lean the bike over.
The faster he goes, the greater the force
and the more he's got to lean the bike.
(swooshing)
- Question number two this week is the winner
of three months free subscription to Zwift.
So congratulations to AndyVandy516
who left this question for us last week.
Could y'all do something on warming up?
I think I'm picking up that it varies
based on the kind of ride, but a few examples
for endurance, intervals, TT, or race days
would be super helpful.
Thank you very much.
- Well nice, and we can and we will
do something to address this
because coming up soon on the channel,
it's already been recorded,
is the perfect warm-up, in my mind.
It's like a nice progressive ramp
that takes you right up to pretty much
max intensity for a very short period
which will leave you ready for your event.
- And it is short, it's 20 minutes long, isn't it?
And I think that's crucial.
That's how warm-ups have changed
over the course of the last few years.
20 years ago, you'd get people
warming up for a time trial
for about an hour.
Especially in the middle of a grand tour, for example.
The science has changed vastly on that.
Now I've just recounted the story
to Chris, actually of the 2011 Tour Cata.
There, we had a coach on the team
called Matt White who just coached
Jack Bobridge to the world individual pursuit record
which nobody had thought would be broken
and the warm-up that he gave me
was only 15 minutes long.
Short warm-up, five minutes easy
and then a load of intervals
and I actually stopped right at the end
of the last really hard interval
because he said that leaving a lactic acid,
a certain amount of lactic acid in your legs
just before the start,
for a really short prologue like that was three minutes long
is actually quite beneficial.
And I don't know if it's psychological,
but I felt really good during that prologue.
- And we just looked at your results in fact,
you went really quite well.
You beat Bradley Wiggins. - For me
I mean, he had a real off day
but I was just way in front of him.
I'll take that, I'll take that.
- You can reduce the warm-up that I put up
on YouTube by pressing the settings button
and watching it in one and half times the speed.
So if you haven't got as much time,
it's quite a good way of getting through it quickly.
- Of course with warm-ups,
it's easiest to do them on a home trainer of sort,
even if it isn't actually indoors and next to the start
of the event that you're doing.
- I don't think the differences
between different events are huge really, are they?
- I think warm-ups, shorter is generally better in many ways
it doesn't take that long to get your body going
and to get your muscles warmed up.
Start doing half an hour to an hour
and you're actually gonna start
eating into your energy reserves.
- Yeah, it's also mentally less stressful
because you're less worried about the time
or how much time you have to be on turbo trainer
before I get off.
And of course, you can do them
on the road though, can't you?
You don't have to do it-- - no, you don't.
It's just a bit more clinical, isn't it?
If you want to make sure that
you're going to finish your warm-up
at just the right point
before you start your time trial, road race,
or whatever it might be.
It's an interesting one though,
I'm looking forward to watching that video myself.
Don't forget, if you want to be in with a chance
of winning this Zwift subscription,
there's one going each and every week.
The hashtag for that is #askGCNtraining.
- Next up is Mark Munro.
Good afternoon lads, I'd like to know if there's
a correlation between a heavy road bike
and needing lighter gears to ride it
and a super light hill climbing bike?
Do you need the 32 to cycle a bike 8 kilograms lighter
up the same hill?
Many thanks, Mark.
- The short answer is sort of yes, really, isn't it?
If you keep the same power
and you add weight on your bike or on your body,
you're going to go slower.
And therefore to ride at the same cadence,
you're going to need large gearing at the back
or smaller gearing at the front.
There's no getting around that really.
The super light weight climbing bike,
if it is eight kilos lighter,
you are basically going to go faster on it.
You're not necessarily gonna put out anymore power
through having a heavier bike,
people often ask that question,
if they're gonna get more out of their training
by having a heavier winter bike.
The power you do is the power you do, basically isn't it?
- Yup.
- But it is amazing how much difference weight does make
to the speed that you go up a climb.
A couple of years ago when we were in Andorra,
we did an experiment with a backpack on.
You're gonna see the video in a minute,
but it made about a minutes difference
over the course of 15.
- Oh blimey, that's quite a lot.
- It is, yes.
If you'd like to watch that video,
it's coming up for you right now.
My Canyon Ultimate, complete with full bottle,
power meter, et cetera, comes in at 8.1 kilograms.
My bag weighs 5.35, and I, including all my kit,
come in at 74.4.
That's a grand total of me on round one, with 87.635.
Out next question comes in from Kwak,
my favorite beer, well actually my second favorite,
I said my favorite's Omer, didn't I, before Christmas?
- You did, yeah.
- Anyway, we'll get on with the question.
How do pros manage to ride five plus hours
without stretching knees and ankles, et cetera?
I don't have clipless pedals
and I need to regularly stop and stretch.
Precision, I only do uphill riding, no flat, for five hours.
Not quite sure how you do that to start with
but I shall let Chris answer the point about the stretching.
- Yeah well the pros are conditioned to ride for that long.
Like they've done it, it's ingrained in them,
they regularly train at five, six hours or more.
So they don't need that stopping and stretching
because their bodies are used to it,
basically is the answer.
But if you do stop and regularly stretch on your ride,
you'll probably find that incrementally
you can increase the gaps between the stops
and your fitness will build that way
and you'll get used to it.
If you're still having issues though,
then I'd recommend probably getting a bike fit
or have someone analyze what you're doing on a bike
because that isn't quite right, is it?
- No, you shouldn't be having to
stop every so often to stretch.
Some pros do stretch whilst
they're riding the bike,
don't they? - yeah.
- This is a story I think I've recounted before here on GCN,
that I used to look at the pros when I was a youngster
and think that looks cool,
I'm gonna stretch my quads whilst I'm riding along.
- I reckon I can do it on the stool now.
- Like this, I put my foot up on my saddle like that
and my hamstring cramped,
so I never ever did it again.
I only did it to look good
and it actually affected my ride that day.
We've just been discussing how flexible each other are.
- We have, Dan.
- Chris was religious in his stretching
before and after riding, I understand, I wasn't.
He can touch his palms on the floor
without bending his legs or anything.
You probably can't see that,
but I can tell you that the thing
he's doing under the table
is actually putting his palms on the floor.
I'm not too bad actually.
I've been yoga recently through Suffer Fest.
So I'm actually reasonably flexible at the moment.
- Come on.
- Alright.
You won't be able to see this either,
but Chris can talk you through what I'm doing.
I'm straight-legged, they're almost together.
- Straight legs, long straight legs.
Palms, they're pretty much on the floor.
There's not a lot of different.
- Not far off, it's not bad for someone
quickly approaching 40 years old.
Anyway, we're digressing quite a lot,
once again, on this question.
We have got a video from many years ago
with me and Si looking a lot younger,
talking about how to get through a long bike ride.
Hopefully these tips are still relevant
and that video is coming up now.
Our first training tip is something which
you might have heard us talking about
before here on GCN,
but we really do think that
being consistent is absolutely key.
Even if you don't have a load of time to ride,
it's good to get in four to five rides per week.
And even if they only total around about five hours,
that's much better for you
than one individual five hour ride at the weekend.
Quick fire round now.
First question, James Brown.
I need help doing the 20 minute
high intensity interval training and fat burning video
that you've got on GCN.
I'm not using a road bike,
I'm using an indoor spinning bike,
which doesn't have gears.
It has a handle that I can turn to make
the resistance harder.
What I want to know is when you go from effort 5
and up to 10, what should I select in terms
of where I turn the handle
to get the correct resistance level?
- So you want to kind of relate this
to your perceived exertion.
So if 10 is literally, you have to sprint on that machine
to keep the fly wheel turning,
then to get, well, crank it up as far it goes basically.
You need to do it on feel
is what I'm trying to get at.
It's quite a difficult question to answer
without seeing the bike. - it is and we get a lot of
questions on effort levels from 1 to 10,
that we use on GCN.
They relate to the duration of the effort
that we are prescribing.
So an effort level of 10 on 1 minute interval
is gonna be a different power
to an effort level of 10 on a half hour interval
because they're completely different durations.
But you just need to turn it up
to where it feels about right for the duration
that you're being asked to do.
- Trial and error and practice will make perfect.
Right then, next up is Graeme Crowther.
Asking for a friend, obviously.
If you are a really hairy person,
where shaving your legs your save you about 40 watts
at 30 Ks an hour, yes they are that hairy,
where you suggest they stop?
Keeping in mind that if they do stop
where the shorts end,
it may still look like they have shorts on
and let's face it, this may not be
too appealing to their better half.
- Or do you really need to
shave your legs in the first place?
I'm not shaving my legs.
I might well do for my final Suffer Fest test
in a few weeks time,
to basically feel like more of a cyclist,
but you don't actually really need to.
If you must, I think our suggestion would be
to go all the way.
- Yeah, I couldn't not shave my legs, Dan.
- Could you not?
- No, they would look weird I think.
I'm not a footballer.
- No.
- I'd go all the way, track cyclists even shave their hips.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- I don't think I need to shave my hips.
Mind you, I've taken skin off so much
from those corner fails,
there isn't much even skin there, let alone hair.
Too much information, I know.
Right, next up, Peter Bowles.
This summer, I'm going to cycle from London to Istanbul
and aiming to do about 100K a day
for five or six days a week
and carrying all of my equipment.
How shall I best prepare for back to back long days?
Is it best to just get the miles in
or should I be doing something different?
- Well, you've not mentioned how fast you want to do this,
but I would aim to get used to doing back to back rides
of long intensity, oh sorry not intensity, long duration.
So if you've got the weekends free,
you want to do two rides around five hours each.
You want to build up to that of course.
You don't want to just throw yourself into the deep end
and that's what you aim for
and being efficient on the bike
and also on top of your fueling.
- I think it's the back to back days
that are the key thing here, isn't it?
- Yeah.
- Even if you've only got a couple of hours,
you go out and do something intense for two hours,
for three days in a row.
That's gonna be way more benefit
than going out for one long six hour ride
at the weekend because it stresses your body
that bit more and get used to riding
on back to back days,
is what you're preparing to do.
Right, next question.
Vincent Ulterweerd, or Vincent Ulterweerd.
What to invest in when you're going to do
lots of climbing in the mountains?
Light weight wheelset or powermeter?
That's a blooming good question, that.
- Yeah, it is and I would go for long-term benefit,
I'd go for a power meter.
- Yeah, me too.
- Because over a period of time,
whilst it won't instantly make you faster on that first day,
you'll learn more about yourself as a rider,
you'll be able to pace the climbs better,
and you'll get fitter with it.
- Yeah, I thoroughly agree.
You need to put the time and invest the time
into learning how to use one,
which you can do for free online,
but if you do learn how to use it promptly,
you'll gain way more benefit
than losing a kilo or two on your bike.
- And then you'll be able to buy the wheels afterwards.
- Penultimate question now
and it comes in from Michael Arroyo.
I'm a diabetic and I have been for quite a while.
I love my cycling and I was wondering
if there are any riders in grand tour or pro teams
that are or have diabetic riders
and if so, how do they manage their diabetes?
Examples with training, racing, food, and recovery.
- Well, there are riders
and Team Novo Nordisk is made up entirely
of riders that have diabetes.
And the way that they monitor
and stay on top of their condition.
Sorry, the way they stay on top of their condition
is close and careful monitoring.
So, they'll build up the experience that they need
to get them through each and every race day of the year.
But even then, you'll still get curve balls
and things like nerves can really alter
your blood sugar levels for an event.
And it's very individual conditions
that everyone has to adapt to.
- Yeah, I think every athlete pretty much
manages their diet quite closely,
but they have to make triply sure
that they're really on top of all of their nutrition
before, during, after, and through the night even, as well.
So yeah, as Chris said, there is an entire team of riders
that have diabetes and actually,
I've spoken to a few of them
and they're doing very well in the races as well.
- Yeah, they're good.
- Last question today comes in from Matt Litwin.
Hey GCN team, I've just planned a trip to Belgium
and will be visiting Brussels, Ghent, and Bruges.
I have been given permission for one day of riding
and was wondering if you had an afternoon
to do a single epic ride,
what route would you take?
Also, any cool cafe stops or bars,
Dan, here's looking at you,
that you'd suggest visiting would be great.
- You're gonna have a great time, Matt,
it's an amazing place in Belgium,
and I'm glad that you've got permission
to do at least one ride.
Loads of the climbs are condensed into one place
near Oudenaarde basically, aren't there?
There's a couple of anomalies
like the Muur van Geraardsberge, it's a bit further out,
but you can do things like the Kwaremont, the Koppenberg,
the Paterberg, and a whole host of other cobble climbs,
all within about 15 kilometers of the same place
and that place, Oudenaarde,
has also got the Flanders Museum,
inside that is a bar.
Loads of bars in Oudenaarde as well,
but if I could recommend one bar only,
in Ghents, that you're visiting,
it's called The Beer House conveniently.
- Nice.
- And it's easy to find
and it's a really small neat little place
and a great selection of Belgian beers.
I absolutely love it there.
- I want to go on this trip now.
- I do as well.
In fact, I am going to Belgium in a few weeks time
for the Tour of Flanders,
so I can't wait to go back.
I love the place.
- Yeah, no, it's special, especially at that time of year.
- Yeah, really good.
The atmosphere's amazing around the bike races.
Right, that's all for this week.
Apologies if we haven't answered your question so far,
but make sure you keep trying.
The hashtag is #torqueback on social media.
You can leave your questions
in the comment section down below.
In order to be given a chance at winning
the Zwift subscription, it's #askGCNtraining.
- That's it for this week
and if you're looking for one more video,
why not check out Hank or James' meet the presenter
just down there. - Yeah, Chris' is coming soon.
Tomorrow in fact, if you watched this on Friday.