Nino Schurter, Kate Courtney and many more of the world’s best cyclists and coaches are here to answer your cycling questions. From training tips to gear advice, explore answers from world-class cycling experts on AnyQuestion.
I'm mountain biking and usually carry one inner tube for when I get a flat. Transcript: "Hello from the forest. Today, I'm riding mountain bike and when I do that, I just ride with one tube in my cell back, and that's normally enough rally. I puncture more than once on a ride if I even do. Yay."
Yes, five watts per kilo is considered a professional athlete FTP for women. Transcript: "So my best ever FTP was around five watts per kilo, I'm just over. So yeah, I guess that is considered a pro-athlete FTP for women."
Technology has allowed us to advance the way we communicate during races and our team recently picked up new partners in Retevis to provide us with improved radios for our team cars, staff, and riders. Transcript: "Absolutely perfect timing on this question. Communication during a race is extremely important. There's obviously the old-school form of communication which is simply talking to one another, finding each other in the group, using hand signals, raising your hand, dropping back to the team car and talking directly to your director. All great things. But you know technology has allowed us to advance the way we communicate and we absolutely take advantage of that. So the reason that's perfect timing is Project Echelon just picked up a new partner in Retevis and so this is the RT90. This is the CB radio that's in the team car. So we just got some new CB radios for the team cars and then for our other staff that are on the road, soigneurs and such, we got the RT3S's which are GPS functional as well so we can see where each other are and then we have all the riders equipped with radios as well."
Data is important in making decisions while racing, but it's also important to remember that mental toughness and progress don't always come from hitting specific data marks, so it's important to take a break from looking at the numbers sometimes. Transcript: "Data is amazing, right? Making data-driven decisions, even within a race, right? Knowing, hey, this is an effort that I can sustain. I'm putting time into the group. Let's keep going. Or this is way over my limit, and I can only do this for another 30 minutes, and I'm going to absolutely blow sky high. I need to back off and reset my plan. But there's a time, too, where we just stress about the data, and we forget about the racing. We forget about the mental toughness and the training piece of it. We forget about the progress that can be made when maybe we're not hitting those specific marks. And so being data-driven is extremely important, but there's a point where we need to just put the computer in the back pocket and race, or just get out and ride, and not focus too minutely on the numbers, because that can be an inhibiting factor as well."
I break down tasks by working backwards from the end goal. Transcript: "My entire life I have broken things down in reverse. I see where I want to be, what the solution is, and I work my way backwards from that. And I check off those boxes. It gets things done and it gets me to the outcome that needs to happen. Thinking backwards. Planning backwards."
Power workouts depend on the type of power you're talking about and vary depending on the specific fitness goal. Transcript: "This depends entirely on what kind of power you're talking about? Are you talking about your function? Functional threshold power, are you talking about your ability to produce power aerobically? Are you talking about your ability to Sprint or to climb? They are all very specific and the workouts for them are all very specific and different Feel free to ask a more specific question and I would be happy to go into it."