Even though we own an SUV, it seems there’s never enough cargo space. Two dogs, two bikes (which princess prefers be inside the SUV) and more gear than is ever necessary. To help store all this gear, especially for long bike tours, my parents have a cargo carrier that we’ve borrowed several times. It’s great for the additional space and easy to access (rather than a roof-top cargo carrier). The only complaint I have is it is sometimes a pain to access stuff stored in the back of the SUV because the cargo box is in the way.

ROLA has made a cargo carrier with a swing away feature. It’s called the Adventure System w/Swing Away. This system has 13.5 cubic feet, 250 pounds of storage capacity. The box is removable from the tray so you can use the tray separately.

(Click on images for a larger view.)

Questions and discussion can be found on my Facebook page.

Cycling and mountain bike training plans can be found here.

Last week I wandered around the isles of Interbike with my eyes open. I looked for products that solved problems I have or have had in the past. The first product I want to tell you about is Bicycle Trunk Locks.

If you have a trunk-mounted bicycle rack, you want an easy way to secure the bikes to your vehicle rather than the rack itself. With Bicycle Trunk Locks, you close the trunk onto a cable strap that is secured to an anchor knob. The knob is closed inside the trunk. You then run your own cable lock through the bike frames andthe Bicycle Trunk Locks cable strap.

For just $30 plus shipping and handling, you can go enjoy lunch without worrying about the bikes on your trunk rack.

www.BicycleTrunkLocks.com

Recently I wrote a column on how to prevent thigh muscle cramping. After doing a good amount of research – on the research – on muscle cramping, I experienced muscle cramping myself. It isn’t the first time I’ve experienced muscle cramps, but I will say that I don’t have a family history of muscle cramps nor do I have a history of tendon or ligament injuries. All three of these items were found to be associated with cramping in one research paper.

In my opinion, based only on my personal race experience, cramps are related to intensity. That is intensity and volume of intensity in a race situation, compared to training.

In short, the mainstay of my training over the summer was directed at doing mountain bike races between 8 and 11 hours long and at altitudes between 9,000 and 12,600 feet. I live at roughly 5000 feet.

In September I had an unexpected opportunity to do a race that I thought might take me between 5.5 and 6 hours. This particular race was at altitudes between 3,000 and 6,000 feet. Unlike my longer races in the season, this race had short, poppy climbs inserted in within an event where most of the altitude gains were in the first half of the race. My longer races had long, sustained climbs for the majority of elevation gains.

Before the September race I decided I was going to ride as many of the short, steep hills as possible and I was going to press the intensity.

Below you can see a chart that displays the heart rate time spent in various zones (using the same heart rate zones for all races) for three of my races. For those of you familiar with the training zones I use, you’ll notice that in the September race I spent two hours and forty-six minutes (2:46) in a zone considered lactate threshold. This was 50-percent of the race time.

(Click on the chart to see a larger image.)

What? How is that possible?

I’ll tell you how that is possible in the next post.

For this post, know that my aggressive approach to the race came with a price. The first charge was a hamstring cramp when I was in the process of quickly dismounting the bike on a steep climb. The second charge was an inner thigh (adductor) cramp on a steep hill that was around two minutes long.

How did I get rid of the cramps?

For the hamstring, I stopped and stretched the hamstring while pressing my fingers into the belly of the muscle right where it hurt the most. Once the cramp was gone, I got back on the bike and started pedaling again at an easy pace. If the hamstring felt like it might cramp again, I changed my position on the bike until I could pedal without threat of cramping. Once the easy pace was doable without cramping, I ramped the speed back up.

No drinking lots of water. No popping electrolyte tablets. (Which I wasn’t carrying.)

Some 30 to 45 minutes later in the race when my adductor on the other leg cramped, I kept pedaling but slowed down. I massaged the muscle that was cramping. I changed positions on the bike so the cramp wasn’t aggravated. Once the easy pace was doable without cramping, I ramped the speed back up.

No drinking lots of water. No popping electrolyte tablets. I continued consuming my electrolyte drink and eating normally, as I had done in other races this season and within the race previous to the cramps.

So why did I cramp?

Intensity. In my opinion, the cause of my cramps - and I suspect many other athletes as well - is high intensity and high volume of intensity. This is intensity that was not adequately trained.

I pushed the intensity at this event much more than in the longer races. As you can see on the chart, I had a 100+ mile race in August, roughly three weeks prior to the September event. I had plenty of endurance.

Though my muscular endurance was well trained, my anaerobic endurance was not well trained. Ouch.

I was able to work my way through the cramps knowing that:

• it is possible for me to make them go away, I’ve done it before.
• my overall fitness was solid.
• hydration and fueling was dialed in.
• I used self-talk to say, “no cramping, legs, pedal now”, “shut up legs” (stolen from Jens Voigt), “cramps are temporary, speed will return.”
• I knew I hadn’t pushed this hard, for this long in any training or racing sessions – and that’s okay.

Next post…how the heck can anyone spend near three hours at lactate threshold?

Questions and discussion can be found on my Facebook page.

Cycling and mountain bike training plans can be found here.

Back in mid-June I mentioned that I had my first experience with a chiropractor. What initiated my trip to the chiro was an endo. The endo was a direct result of becoming a better technical rider on the mountain bike. This year I made an effort to improve my technical mountain bike skills, and I did. I can still improve more, but I made some headway.

As I improved technical skills, I should have been making equipment adjustments along the way. More specifically, I needed to run more air in my tires when doing trails that involved drops at higher speeds or larger drops. (No, I’m not catching air or hucking myself off of gnarly sections.)

I came off of a drop that was probably some 18 inches or so and the drop was part of a rocky section. My front tire belched some air out on the drop – which I didn’t notice at the time it happened. Not more than 50 yards later on the trail, I was going around a corner and my front tire slipped off the edge of the trail (normally a completely benign section of trail). When I tried to correct and get the tire back onto the trail, over the 1-inch lip, the squishy tire (low on air from the belch) caught the trail lip and promptly turned 90 degrees.

Over the handlebars I went, and I landed on my right scapula area – low on the scapula, including ribs. Dang.

Deciding I wasn’t hurt that bad, I continued the ride. Isn’t sharp pain in your ribcage area to be expected after a crash?

Later that day and into the next, I was sore. The worst of it was pain in my ribcage, mostly on the back but sometimes radiating around the front. This only happened when I sneezed, laughed (a huge problem as I like to laugh a lot – and often at myself), coughed or tried to roll over in bed. Breathing, thankfully, wasn’t an issue.

With a bike tour looming a mere 10 days away, I wanted to speed healing as quickly as possible. The shotgun approach wasn’t out of the question, so I decided on my first trip to a chiro (recommended action by a couple of friends), massage and my first trip to acupuncture (also recommended by friends).

I saw the chiro first, two days after the endo. He did an examination and asked if I had any pain in my left leg. I told him no, but I was considering lowering my road bike saddle because it felt like my left leg had more trouble reaching the pedals recently (well before the endo). He told me that there was an alignment issue that he could address with the adjustment. He also located the rib that was bothering me and said it wasn’t correctly aligned.

I was face down on the table, and he told me he would press on my spine in certain areas and I might hear or feel popping. The table beneath me would breakaway a small amount, limiting the range of adjustment motion.

I have to tell you, I absolutely hate the feeling and idea of someone making adjustments to my spine.

I didn’t feel any instant relief from the adjustment and in fact, that night I was more miserable than I was before the appointment. I was in more pain than before. Is it normal to be in so much pain after a chiro appointment?

My appointment was on a Friday and I took Saturday completely off of any endurance exercise. On Sunday I felt better and decided to go for a bike ride. Interestingly, the rib was not painful at all riding the bike – but any fast motions steering the bike, coughing, sneezing or laughing was still very painful.

Most interesting is that my left leg felt like it could easily reach the pedal and deliver power to the bike again. I nearly made adjustments to bike fit for what was a physical root cause.

Interesting.

When I returned for a follow-up appointment on Monday, I told the doctor that I could have strangled him on Friday night and Saturday as well. I asked if I should have expected so much pain after the adjustment.

He thought he had let me know that some people do experience more initial pain, but that pain should subside within a few days as the body heals and gets back to normal. Some people have instant relief from pain (I didn’t). Individual reactions to chiropractic treatments depend on the nature of the injury and the amount of time between the injury and the appointment.

The short answer is, yes some people do experience a good deal of pain after a chiro appointment, but not everyone does.

Next blog, acupuncture.

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Questions and discussion can be found on my Facebook page.

Cycling and mountain bike training plans can be found here.

For long mountain bike races, eating on the bike is often a challenge. Accessing packaged food stored inside a hydration pack requires stopping. Most racers don’t want to stop to eat.

If you’re one of the lucky racers that can get away with using only bottles during a race, you can store food items in your jersey pockets. Many racers cannot use bottles-only in a race because their frame size only allows storage space for one small bottle and the distance between aid stations requires more fluid than one bottle can supply. These rider can carry an extra bottle in a jersey pocket, but often small sized jerseys won't hold a water bottle and all the extras needed for race day.

Some mountain bike riders have turned to using top tube storage boxes for food and a hydration pack for fluids. These boxes are popular with triathletes and multi-day, self-supported mountain bike riders. I did try one of these boxes but didn’t like the way it rubs on my top tube in rough terrain and though I liked the zipper access box better than Velcro access, the slapping of the zipper was annoying. Yes, I could put frame protectore on my top tube, but I didn't want to do that.

I prefer using a pack used by ultra-runners. The pack is made by Ultimate Direction and has generous pocket space built into the front of the shoulder straps. Two of the pockets have zippers and the other two are mesh nets with open tops. A photo of the Wink pack is below.

Depending on your personal bend, a top tube storage box or a hydration pack with shoulder strap storage may solve your food access problems.

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Questions and discussion can be found on my Facebook page.

Cycling and mountain bike training plans can be found here.

A racer dropped me a long note explaining his unhappiness with a race he did that had 10-year categories for racers (60-69) rather than five-year categories (60-64, 65-69). His main point is that he doesn’t view his competition as 10-years younger (or older) than his age – rather a tighter age range of five years.

He thought 10-year age groups was a money saving scheme by the race director so he didn’t have to pay for more awards.

If it meant a registration fee increase, would you pay more to have five-year racing categories? Do you think 10-year splits are just fine? Or you don’t care about age categories at all, you only go to compete against yourself?

The comments remain closed on this blog due to a programming issue, put your comments on myFacebook page.

Over the last six months or so, I’ve made several changes to my S-Works Epic 29er. Here’s the list and why the change:

1. Changed from a SRAM 38x24 to a SRAM 36x22. Though I muscled my way through racing last year on the 38x24, I decided to make the change to lower gears when I was pre-riding the Breckenridge 68 course. I just wanted lower gears so I could do more spinning and less power riding. For me, though the 38x24 is fine for rides on the Front Range, this change is critical for the long climbs at altitude at Breckenridge and at Leadville.
2. Cut one inch off of the ends of both handlebars. Last season I noticed that I was close to clipping some trees on narrow singletrack races. On an early season race this year, I clipped an rock that was hanging over the trail in a narrow section. (You’d think I would have taken the hint then…) On the Breckenridge pre-ride I noticed my handlebars were wider than one of my riding buddies, Scott Ellis. He is 5’9” tall with very wide shoulders. Why am I riding such wide handlebars? Since the change, I’ve noticed my handling skills have improved. Geeze, the issue of the coach having improper bike fit, like the plumber that has leaking pipes in his/her own house.
3. Put on new bar grips. My hands will fall asleep on long rides with technical descents. I’ve tried other ergonomic grips and didn’t like them. I put on the BG Contour XCT Grips and love them. They are smaller and more comfortable (the surface gives more) than other grips I’ve tried. If I’m comfortable, I ride faster.
4. More tire pressure. Ugh. This was a result of belching a tire on rock drop and not noticing. With the tire soft, it caught on the rim on a benign section of trail. That turned my handlebars 90 degrees in less than a flash and I went over the bars. I can run softer tires on non-technical courses, but if there are drop-offs I use more pressure.
5. Varied fork and shock pressure. It does take awhile to figure this out, but I use different pressures for different courses. I use more pressure in the fork for courses that are very technical and have drop-offs. 

How does this help you?

Though you’ve been riding your mountain bike for awhile, maybe years, is it set up optimally for your current level of fitness and for the specific races or rides that you do?

If it’s been awhile since you’ve checked some of these items, I think it’s worth a look.

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Questions and discussion can be found on my Facebook page.

Cycling and mountain bike training plans can be found here.

Awhile back there was a display of old bikes in a local art gallery. These bikes are indeed art.

The one that I took the most photos of was the 1888 Peugeot. Some things to take note of in the photos below include hard tires (completely solid rubber), a “spoon” brake, the handlebar grips were made of horn (it didn’t say what type of horn) and a candle lantern for night riding that they proudly note was made at the Luxor Factory in Paris.