Off Season Manorexia Quest

Today was the first time I've touched my bike since Page Valley and for good reason. I ended the season dreading riding much less having to do something structured. Driving to BFN, getting up ass early on my days off, and feeling beat to hell all day every day were getting old. I can go into detail about my last few races, but it doesn't matter- I had almost nothing left physically and mentally and just quit when I would normally have done anything but. It was my first full racing season and I had raced for 25 races and almost 5 months straight. After 2 bronchial infections, the flu, a fluid sack in one lung, 4 sinus infections and wacky hormone tests the season had taken a toll on my body and my mind. Grumpy and generally annoyed with everything cycling I cut things short and took a much needed break.

I still ride to work and will probably get in 2 longer, easier rides a week, but by and large I don't think about it that much. After moving my entire apartment and waking up too sore to function the next day I decided that maybe I should dedicate my few off-season weeks to becoming a more functional human being. I am going to be starting up with a fairly reputable coach in October so that gives me 6 to 8 weeks of full off season before my base training starts. I'm not riding hard, so might as well use the chance to try and lose some weight and work on some of my nagging injuries. Towards the end of the season my right leg was doing almost no work due to some weird imbalances and a possible pinched nerve so I'd also like to work on my mobility and correct the problems I've accumulated from working a desk job and spending all of my spare time sitting on a bike.

A lot of people are probably asking 'Why would you want to lose weight in the off-season?' and saying things like 'You're just going to be burned out before the season starts.' Well, if you understand how the body utilizes different macronutrients and the different energy systems used in riding that's not really the case and the off-season can be a good time at the very least and possibly a better time not get fat for the following reasons:

1. You're not riding 'hard'. The work you're doing is lightly to moderately aerobic if you're doing any at all. Your body utilizes very little ATP or CHO for this type of work. Fat oxidation is a tad higher as well, so if you scale back your CHO intake and scale up your protein and healthy fat intake (slightly) you will recover just fine since you aren't constantly trying to replenish 2400kj of glycogen from riding to Greenbelt, racing, and riding home.

2. Recovery isn't key. You don't have to worry about upcoming races, rides, or anything in particular so if your ride is a tad slow or you're a tad more sore who cares? During a hard build phase or peaking/racing phase recovery is essential to success. I, like many others, have experienced many signs of fatigued from being a caloric deficit during these periods. Ever wonder why you hear people talk about how they can only hold their racing weight for a few weeks? Ever wonder why they then complain about being burned out for peak races and suffering the ills of mild starvation?

Well, its pretty nonsensical to try and impair recovery by cutting back on calories when you need them the most. Pros can't help but lose weight during a Grand Tour and try to control their weight running up to it, but during the Tour they eat everything they can possibly get their hands on for good reason. My average Wednesday ride to Greenbelt, riding the race, and riding back added up to 3.5 total hours of ride time@700 kj/hr is about 2400 calories burned total. Add that to my commute of 200 calories in the morning and by BMR of about 2100 calories and I have to eat 4800 calories just to maintain my body weight. That's 720 grams of carbs in order to not lose weight and if you're eating 100-200 calories/hr as you should (but I usually forget to do) then you still have 400 more to go. Considering I get home at 8:45 and go to sleep at 11:30 to get up for work the next morning that leaves me with almost no time to cram the food in before I go to sleep, which starts the most important part of any recovery phase- rest. So, I could try to diet and eat miniscule balance meals all day and possibly undershoot the mark, which is fine once or twice but over time will add up and the crash most people mentions occurs.

When you are doing lots of racing, anaerobic intervals, and vo2 max work your body uses a lot of Fast Oxidative Glycolytic and Fast Glycolytic muscle fibers, which use significant amounts of ATP and CHO as fuel, both of which require heaps of immediate nutrition to be replenished to optimal levels. Your body needs 24 to 72 hours between such training sessions for a reason, and its not just so you don't feel sore, but rather so that you have built up significant energy stores for your next session (this is one reason why creatine, which is thought to replenish ATP stores, is so popular among strength athletes). You might not fully deplete your glycogen stores in one session or over time, but why risk having less fuel? Fail to do so and your intervals, or racing, will suffer especially over time. I suffered this affect this Summer many times and although it wasn't my only undoing I'd rather not have a bad race because I forgot to do one of the few basic human functions.

Instead, I, and a few others argue (see the video below), it makes much more sense to meet your basic caloric demands and possibly exceed them as you feel during a taper period. If you get hungry, eat. If you've done the work earlier in the year you will already be at or below your goal weight so the extra 100-200 calories will add maybe a pound over a 5 week race period. You then diet during your off season and lose that pound.

This video also has some good information on this concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icKwnvYGSQI

3. Amateurs shouldn't be letting themselves go in the off-season as much as some pros can. Pros ride upwards of 25 hours a week almost year round and many ride 30 to 40 hours during their base period. Even though pros are racing less than they used to they often race for 50-100 days/year many of which are 1 week to 3 week stage races, 250km+ classics, plus their respective training camps and whatnot. A pro comes out of the season severely depleted and bored with the routine that is their actual livelihood and thus have a much greater need to eschew their diets in the winter months. Jan Ulrich, Bradley Wiggins, and Mark Cavendish are/were all notorious for gaining 10 to 15 lbs in the off season and then losing it for their target events. Jan and Cav might have overdone it, but lets say that 10lbs was all fat, which it often isn't, then they have 30,000 spare kcal to burn. If they're riding a 35 hour week @ lets say 650-800 kcal/hr during base thats 22,750 to 28,000 kcal burned per week, which makes it pretty easy to lose all of that weight by a Spring/Summer target event.

On the other hand, us amateurs ride 8 to 15 hours a week, maybe a bit more if we're fortunate. We race anywhere from 10 to 50 races per year, many of which are under 3 hours in duration and very few actual stage races. Doing a 12 minute prologue, 1.75-2hr road race, 20minute TT and 1 hr crit at ToWC is a bit different than even a less demanding stage race such as the Tour Down Under. Assuming these riding levels, a good amateur will burn 5,200 to 12,000 kcal/week and thats assuming the same metabolic efficiency (which we probably don't have). Races are often less calorically demanding than training rides, so there aren't many opportunities to really roast the calories away in the race period by doing longer stage races to race into form like many pros do.

4. Losing weight requires dieting, which entails avoiding certain types of food (at least for me). I, and millions of other Americans, don't do well with highly processed starchy carbs and grains, however, they're easy to eat. Cramming down the 4800 calories from my earlier example isn't very easy and doing it with whole grains and non-refined foods is even harder. For one the fiber content is absurd, which makes the guts a tad uncomfortable. Second, these types of food are higher on the satiety index so you get full faster. One can simple take in more calories with less dense and filling foods. Third, your body needs many faster, simpler sugars during training phases that incur a high amount of glycolytic debt. You want to replenish nutrients in both a fast and full manner. Fiber slows does digestion and thus replenishment. Its a lose-lose situation- you have to consume them for full benefit, but they're also not the greatest for maintaining a low body fat percentage. Its easier to eat 2,300 kcal of these foods rather than 4800 kcal so the off-season makes a bit more sense since you won't have to worry about recovery speed or eating so many whole grains that you're backed up for a week (thus increasing your on the bike weight).

So if we ride less, race less, and have a harder time recovering then why would it make sense to use the one time a year when recovery doesn't matter to pack on weight that we will have an awful hard time losing later on? It makes more sense from a recovery standpoint and physiological standpoint to lose the calories when my body doesn't need them to begin with. While running and doing some pretty light aerobic riding won't increase my cycling performance, they will burn calories. This doesn't mean us amateurs shouldn't relax in the off-season, but rather we shouldn't let ourselves go. I'd even suggest extending this mentality into the early base and build period where training is still fairly light and one can afford to be in some kind of deficit.