HeroDirt Cycle Coaching

08/04/2025

The insight into the coach athlete relationship about 1/3 of the way into this video is amazing.

Demonstrating trust, scientific approach (lactate testing), the positive psychology of casting the vision for racing for the coming year and the calm voice and sytematic approach to the days testing

A great watch for cyclists and their coaches 🙌

For the past 6 years, professional off-road racer Payson McElveen has hosted a podcast about the people and the places that bike racing takes him. Now he's s...

26/03/2024

How fit do you need to be to race Downhill?

Listen to the breathing of u19 Australian champion Cooper Northey during a practice run on the Awaba Nationals course. Keep in mind he would have gone even harder in seeding and race run!

Plus the self talk, the line choice, the skill ex*****on is mind blowing 🤯

It’s great viewing thanks for sharing Coops!

22/03/2024

Australian Marathon Champs is 6 weeks away and build going beautifully - 4 x 10min at 95 - 105% of FTP with the goal of improving time to exhaustion at threshold. Nailed it!

Note - the actual was in alignment with the planned training peaks just isnt showing it that way

16/03/2024

Awaba Nationals XCC 😳🤯

20mins
1258w off the start line
IF: 1.20
Avg Power: 335w
Normalised Power: 388w
Avg HR: 193bpm
12 laps with 3 x 700w + accelerations in every lap
Probably equally/most important metric that wasn’t quantified: speed held through corners

Impressive!!

13/02/2024

Nothing overly conclusive

But still a good read and great to see training science and prescription for women (not just studying men and prescribing that) gaining momentum

There isn’t a ton of data on resistance training for women, so researchers pooled it to look for patterns

10/01/2024

Great study examining the physiological impact of Bike Packing the Tour Divide (Canada to New Mexico) in 16 and a bit days

Result - negligible physiological impact 😮

Why (my take) -
Participant was fit AF (Vo2 = 60)
Fueled well daily (caloric intake matched energy output)
Slept relatively well for bikepacking (5.5hours a night)
Apparently this was their second time doing it so I’m going to assume this would reduce some of the physchological stressors that may occur with route and food/water finding and location and length of climbs. As well as informing training second time round)
NOTE - participant was in the lab less than 36hours after completing Tour Divide doing another vo2 test and biopsy 😱

The Tour Divide (TD) is a 4385 km ultra-endurance bicycle race that follows the continental divide from Canada to Mexico. In this case study, we performed a comprehensive molecular and physiological ...

18/12/2023

Are we on the brink of real time adjustments to training prescription?

Going to be super interesting watching this tech develop over the coming years, particularly when the inevitable use of Artificial Intelligence, power meters, HRV, real time glucose and real time lactate wearables intersect.

For example will we see a future (not to distant!) where coach or AI prescribe a cyclist 3 x (5 x 30/30 vo2s) with specific power targets and nominal 5mins easy btwn. Then based on waking HRV data let’s hypothesise the athlete has a super high readiness score so AI automatically ups the prescribed 30/30 power targets a few %? Or reduces the recovery times between efforts. Based on training history AI will know what’s best for the athlete to optimise that days training and also recovery following.

Then when the athlete has nailed the first set of 30/30s their wearable rather than observing the 5mins rest prescribed by coach is taking on board real time glucose and lactate data (and athlete could even enter RPE data to account for physiological readiness to do the effort) and when muscle/blood glycogen and lactate levels return to optimal levels the wearable (with coaches voice? 🤣) says go on the next set of 30/30s

Thoughts?

📸 Look at this post on Facebook https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-training/will-continuous-lactate-monitors-blow-the-doors-off-the-world-of-bike-racing/?utm_medium=organic-social&fbclid=IwAR0OuZP-Ls3x6gL_BFfETUxfCy3XUk9KWMinNc2TAjwmW6Ve8fQCBKsf5a0_aem_AcQm_BMTaZsM7dOoUt_1Dfw7GiD5McPINSwcOT-livcmnQs_L1OnHMFGkihHl8yYExc&utm_source=Velo-facebook

Continuous lactate monitors could provide the truest indicator of training stress yet – but are the possibilities of CLM limited?