Giro d'Italia 2009: Why it's special this year

It's a Special Giro this year, why?

• 2009 is the 100th anniversary of the Giro d'Italia, the 2nd most famous and important cycling race in the world after the Tour de France. Even tough this year, the Giro may beat the tour..
  
• The logistic is completely different from all the previous years: it starts in the North, in the city of Trieste, it will go through the Dolomites during the first week, go through Milan but it will finish in Rome, with the individual TT around the Colosseum and along the blvd of the "Fiori Imperiali". This scenario will be spectacular!



• It will feature the longest individual TT in the history: 61.7 km along the Italian Riviera and the cinque terre, from Sestri Levante to Riomaggiore.



• Stage 19 - May 29 - Top finish on the Vulcano Vesuvio will be memorable.



• Decisive stages:



• Stage 10 - May 19 - Mountain Stage with the Col d'Izoard and Sestriere





• Stage 12: May 21 - 61.7 km Individual TT along Liguria coast





• Stage 15: May 25 - Mountain stage in Marche region





• Ivan Basso is BACK. He will be racing the Giro after he has been banned for 2 years



• Lance Armstrong (collar bone fracture permitting) will be racing the Giro, 1st time ever, to win it.
  

If you want to ride and watch 5 stages of the Giro between May 13 and 24, join our Tour and email to keith@nonstopciclismo.com or luisa@davanticycling.com - It will be unforgattable!

How much exercise to maintain, loose or prevent regain weight?

Do you know that :
66.3% of adults in USA are overweight or obese and the cost of treatment of weight reduction
is estimated to exceed $117 billion annually ?

• Benefits of weight loss: reduced risk for
CVD, decreased blood pressure, improved
Lipid profile and glucose tolerance

How "much" exercise ?

ACSM is “American College of Sports Medicine” made a
retrospective analysis of all the research studies after
1999 and came up with these latest 2009
recommendations on:
• how much PA (Physical Activity) for:
– Prevention of weight gain
– Weight loss
– Prevention of weight “regain” after weight loss

For example : To Loose weight

PA of 420 min*wk -1 -> 5-7.5 kg weight loss (>3% loss)
in 12 weeks
• Additional Energy restriction is needed:
Deficit of 500-700 Kcal * d -1 for 12
weeks to loose 7.5 (8%) and 5.9 kg (6.5%)respectively.

These are useful guidelines. Read more on

http://www.davanticycling.com/documents/HowmuchPAforMaintain-Looseorpreventionofweightregain.pdf

and forward to friends, relatives, parents who need weight management. Let's save lives.
YES, "enough" physical activity can help preventing diseases and kill our National health bill.

Luisa

Strength and Power are two different things

Most of the time riders do not know the difference between Strength and Power.
Power is Force (strength) * velocity. So, power depends not only on the amount of force you are able to apply to the pedals but also on how fast you turn those pedals when you apply that force.
In fact, the best power is the best combination between the amount the force applied and the velocity you are able to produce applying that specific amount of force.

Low power can be the result of a huge amount of force at a very slow velocity or of very high velocity and a small amount of force.

The tyranny of the cadence
Do you know that for every rider, for a certain gear on a certain terrain, there is the "perfect" cadence that will provide the best power for the force the rider is able to apply to the pedals when he/she turns them at that specific velocity. If your cadence is higher, you may see your power dropping, because the cadence is too high and the force applied to the pedals decreases.

Therefore, just trying to increase your cadence is not always beneficial, there is that "cadence" threshold, above which your power will drop.

So, when you climb, for example, try the same portion of the climb, different times with different gear ratios, and pick the one that allows you to ride that portion in the shortest time.

Does Caffeine enhance Performance?

Does Caffeine Enhance Performance?
Several research studies showed improvement in endurance performance followed by caffeine intake. Caffeine increases endurance and speed, but not maximal VO2max and related parameters.

How much?
A minimal dose of 5 mg/kg of body weight (BW) is necessary to induce performance enhancement. However, higher doses of 9 or 13 mg/kg of BW did not show a greater enhancement than the dose of 5mg/kg of BW.
So, a person weighing 60 kg needs to intake 300 mg of caffeine 1 hour before the event to have improvements in his/her performance. Considering that 1 cup of brewed coffee contains 115 mg of caffeine, one pill of caffeine supplement contains 84 mg of caffeine and 1 “espresso” contains 80 mg of caffeine, a 60 kg person would need to drink 3 cups of brewed coffee, or 4 espresso shots OR take 4 pills of supplements or any combination of these drinks (example: 2 espresso shots normally included in 1 largo Latte at Amante + 2 pills of supplements).

There is no advantage to ingesting higher doses of caffeine than outlined above for performance. In fact, ingesting large amounts of caffeine can have deleterious health effects.


Read more on :
http://www.davanticycling.com/Creatine&Caffeine_doc.pdf

Have a great week!
Look for my next posting Monday, February 23!

Training Zones and Physiological Adaptations

Do you know that when you exercise, the intensity level of your session or your interval determines the physiological adaptation you are stimulating in your body?
This is one of the reasons why sporadic and random exercising at different levels of intensity for sporadic and random periods of time will not be very effective in improving your fitness and enhancing your performance.

• How do you know which physiological adaptations you need?
• How do you know your own Training Zones?
• How do you know at which level of intensity you need to train to develop the specific physiological adaptation?
• How do you know how long you need to exercise at a specific training zone to stimulate the desired physiological adaptations?
  How do you know how to make these suggestions specific to your needs, goals, body and current ability?
  
• Answers are at : http://www.davanticycling.com/documents/TrainingZonesandPhysiologicalAdaptations.pdf

Visit me every Monday morning and you will find a new weekly training tip

The advantage of those 15-30 min. at the same sustainable effort

To Train Right you have to train Metabolic Zones

I performed lactate threshold testing today to a fitness club in town and watching the pattern of most of the tests, I realized how it's easy to train several days per week, hitting several times high heart rate, burning hundres calories and still not having a strong aerobic system.

First of all: what's Lactate Threshold:

Physiological definition: The exercise intensity where the rate of lactate production is greater than the rate of lactate clearance. More simply: it's the level of exercise intensity where our body starts accumulating lactic acid, which means that our body starts using more the anaerobic metabolism to produce energy over the aerobic system.

The key for performance is to have the threshold occuring at higher level of intensity, to go faster for longer time before fatiguing. It's for this reason that LT is one of the most important predictors for performance.


Common pattern I oberserved: subjects where reaching lactate threshold for pretty low exercise intensity and, moreover, they were not able to sustain intensity staying seated on the bike. However, they were telling me that, during thier spinning classes, many times they were hitting high intensity... but... for a "burst", then they were recovering.

The key to be able to sustain high intensity is to have a strong aerobic system which is able to clear lactate at the same rate it's get produced. In order to build a strong aerobic system, people need to train in the aerobic metabolic zones and stress that metabolic system, until physiological adaptation occurs. To be understood I am talking about those long 15-30 min. interval at 75-80% of your threshold. Read 75-80% of your threshold NOT 50-60% They key is to train at this same aerobic intensity (you know which the intensity is for you after you get tested and your training zones gets assesed), for long intervals of tiime, until you are able to ride 1 hour at that intensity.

Then or, even simultaneously, but in separate sessions, you need to stress your anaerobic system, training your anaerobic metabolism to develop "tolerance" to the accumulated lactic acid. In order to do this you perform short burst of high intensity intervals followed by recovery time.

What I am trying to say that training 30 sec all-out followed by 2 min in aerobic zones and then 10 sec all-out does not work.......

I am sorry for the long paragraph but this is the TAKE HOME MESSAGE:

When you train, you train METABOLIC SYSTEMS, in order to do this Train 1 Metabolic zone a time , the specific zone that targets the correspondent metabolic system....
and please, do not forget to ride long time in that sustainable heart rate or power..... whatever that number is, but if you do so, then that number can get bigger and bigger,


Talk to you soon - Luisa

http://www.davanticycling.com/

luisa@davanticycling.com

Bike Fit Tips

10 things you should know when you think to shop for a bike fit:

1. Look for a "certified" bike fitter. Ask if they hold any certification.
2. Look for an independent bike fit - Why? For different reasons: bike fit done by a bike shop not always have a professional certified bike fitter available; moreover their bike fit are usual driven by the interest to sell not only new equipment but the type of equipment they sell, that not necessarily works for you.
3. Do not believe if they say you have "legs discrepancy". Legs discrepancy can be assessed only by X-Ray. More often it's a "muscle imbalance" that needs to be addressed by specific strength exercises.
4. Make sure that bike fitter does flexibility and posture assessment
5. Ask for the independent bike fit has an agreement with a bike shop near by. The advantage is that the bike shop will sell and mount equipment according to the new measurements and suggestions given by the bike fitter
6. The bike fitter should ask the main goal of your bike fit: performance vs. comfort.
7. Ask for a written document that lists what changes have been done and why, which changes have been done to address which problems or pains or performance requests. The document should also list all the new measurements.
8. Ask if they have "follow-up" process in place. After a new bike fit some discomfort is expected to allow the body to adapt to the new position. However, if you have pain and not discomfort or your discomfort has not gone away in 2 weeks of riding, then you need to call the bike fitter. The bike fitter however should call you any way within 2 weeks from the bike fit, and ask for a re-assessment. The re-assessment should be at no additional fee, unless you changed position or equipment meanwhile.
9. Do not change position by yourself just because you are in pain or you feel discomfort. Call the bike fitter fist, ask for a new visit. If after they are not able to address your problem, then just shop for another professional bike fitter
10. It's a plus if the bike fitter has "coaching" and bio mechanics knowledge, to advise for the best position to address performance goals and prescribe exercises and training that can address eventual flexibility and muscular imbalance issues.

Schedule a Bike Fit for an existing or for a new bike with Davanti Cycling by February 28,2009 and get 20% discount. Mention the discount code "10 tips for bike fit".

email now to: luisa@davanticycling.com or call 1-888-348-5228