The Perfect Mountain Bike Marathon Rider

Björn: Welcome to the Afasteryou Podcast, where everything revolves around endurance sports and training. Here, Sebastian Schluricke, Björn Kafka, and Niclas Ranker give you valuable tips and insights to help you take your performance to the next level. So, welcome to a new episode of the Afasteryou Podcast after a little three-week break. Welcome, Björn. Welcome. I was on vacation. You were on vacation. Yeah.

Niclas: Where were you? I got into the camper and drove through Europe. All the way to southern Portugal. Southern Portugal, so really long drives. Really long drives, sometimes hitting four-digit kilometers a day, the way it should be. And then I visited my oldest friend, who I've known since I was four. And he bought a farm in Portugal and basically dropped out after making money at a big media or internet company. He still works there a bit, but now he lives this dropout life, which is pretty cool. It's wild. I had a great time with my family there, and then I drove through Spain, met people here and there. The usual. And then I came back.

Björn: Learn anything new?

Niclas: A new insight from the three weeks? Yeah, definitely. It's always a question of perspective, and how quickly perspectives can shift is always amazing when you live in a camper for several weeks, or then at my buddy's place, where we stayed in one of those Airstream trailers, those old tin cans, you know those? We lived in one of those. Yeah. Shower outside and so on. It was amazing. Super, super cool. Kitchen outside, a huge kitchen with three gas burners. So we cooked every day. Your perspective shifts and it's funny. We came home and I was like, now into our house, we still have to do this and that, the usual. And you walk in and think, wow, you have space. I mean, living four people in a camper really sucks. And that lifestyle of getting in, rearranging the bed, and off you go, many hours in the car, then arriving somewhere, setting everything up again. You're constantly on the move. You feel like you're doing nothing, but you're doing something all the time. And then you arrive here and wake up and just think, I actually don't have to do anything. Totally awesome. It's really like, I have to come down from the hustle mode, as they say, back to normal and appreciate what you have. It's like, I don't know, when you do crazy diets where you don't eat carbs, and then you eat the first bowl of oatmeal and you just think, this is the greatest thing in the world. That's exactly how it is. It's like a retreat, as they say. Just resetting everything back to zero was awesome. And now I'm back. Many would claim I'm totally energized now, but I'm actually not. I'm still a bit searching. But it was good. Also ideas about what to do in the future. If I don't want to be a coach anymore someday. Those are perspectives you have to keep open, and that's the kind of stuff you do.

Björn: Very nice. Sounds good. I notice that too whenever I'm traveling for a long time, it's always fun. Being on the road is cool too, but living out of a suitcase after two or three weeks, you start thinking, yeah, I just want to be home again, wake up in the morning, make breakfast. And if you're home too long, I don't know, twelve weeks at home just training, then you start wishing, I want to be on the road again. I think it's always good to have a change of perspective, see something different, get out.

Niclas: Definitely. I used to do that regularly. During my university days, I would always go to Norway and hike north for months. I got off the ferry in Oslo and just headed north. At some point you stop seeing people. You go a week without seeing a single person. And I remember, I was somewhere, I don't know where I was, somewhere far north. Then I got caught in a snowstorm. It was a bit later in the year. It started snowing. I was in my tent. I knew things were getting tight. I had to get out somehow. At night I trudged over a mountain with a headlamp down into some village. It took pretty long, eight hours. Then I sat there at this bus stop. That's when I felt it for the first time, it was awesome. Eventually a bus came. And I was totally happy when I saw that bus, especially the bus driver, and I must have looked miserable. If you spend a month out there, you don't buy anything, you collect what you find, catch a few fish, drink the water, some berries, the usual. You just do that stuff. Nowadays I think people make a lot of money doing that. Back then it was just, I'll just do it. Today you could probably do that with some cheesy mid-40s men's health thing, like I need to sort my life out. Now I have to talk about all my terrible problems, and my wife doesn't listen to me. I'm such an underprivileged person. Ha ha ha. No, right. I did that, and then I got on that bus and saw that person, I was insanely happy, I thought about why am I so incredibly happy, and then I realized at some point that I hadn't seen a single person for two weeks. And then I... Crazy. That was really crazy. And then I went into a gas station and bought a Pepsi and drank that Pepsi. It was the best. The best thing I've ever drunk. I was really high on Pepsi. And it was only a Pepsi Max, but I had more caffeine, I realized. Right. Yeah, that's how it is. But we actually wanted to talk about other things.

Björn: Yeah, but I still think it's a perfect intro. Super intro. Okay, but since we're on the topic of traveling a lot, someone who also travels a lot and seemingly can't stand being home for a week is Hans. Hans Becking. He had a tough spring, I'd say. He rode Four Islands with Wout Alemán. Not as grueling a stage race as, for example, Cape Epic, but still four or five days. Technically not easy at all, especially considering it's extremely rocky. The whole thing's in Croatia, so you're basically just riding on rocks. And they won five out of five stages, right?

Niclas: Yeah, five out of five. It was about time. No, it was super. Obviously, the field was okay. And it's a real VO2max race. Short stages, super punchy, very technical because very rocky, like you said. And we had a crappy spring. And a crappy Cape Epic prep, constantly sick, then we skipped the Epic, and Four Islands was the first target we trained toward. Tests were slowly coming back to reasonable levels, and then I did a pretty good job, I'd say. It paid off.

Björn: Apparently. Can you, since you're saying it's a pure VO2max race, did you also do a lot of VO2max training in the lead-up?

Niclas: 40-20s until you drop. The usual. 40-20s, two minutes, and so on. And then the question is always, VO2max, how do you train it? It's like, I always say, everything works. Do what you haven't been doing.

Björn: That's probably tough with a rider like Hans, right? Hasn't he basically trained everything over his career?

Niclas: Sure, but the body is a creature of habit like everything else. If you haven't done VO2max intervals for six weeks and then you ride VO2max intervals again, they hit pretty hard. Of course, you also have to... You have to find a stimulus that's interesting, that fits, and that builds on what you did before. Everyone talks about polarized training. On the other hand, there's also Double Threshold Days, which is the opposite, which is funny. And if you look at Michael Joyner, a sports scientist who says, for example, cardiac output is everything, then you say, okay, where do I get maximum cardiac output? Then you can do things like hammering at threshold for a crazy long time, 30 minutes at threshold, those are brutal workouts, but they show brutal effects. So doing what you haven't done usually works pretty well.

Björn: Okay, well, glad you say 30 minutes hammering at threshold is brutal training, because when I look at my training plan for Saturday, that's exactly what's on it. Thank you.

Niclas: You're welcome. I'd even say it's not 30 minutes at threshold, it's 30 minutes time trial.

Björn: Yeah, because the value is actually just above threshold.

Niclas: No, we've talked about this, I love the study, this Hickson study, I find it so totally straightforward, it's so sledgehammer-like and you see it and think, nonsense. Yeah. But you do it and then realize, wow, it really works. And what I love about it is the following. When you're moving at threshold and a bit above, you recover relatively well because it's just refueling. It's really just eating afterwards. When you hammer at VO2max and above... or really all out, you nail your central nervous system for a while, and then the recovery phases drag on like chewing gum. It can take really long. Then you do a few 40-20s and a few all-outs, and then you train 16 hours and you're just permanently wrecked. You always have to be careful. That's why bicarbonate is sometimes used in such sessions. Or beta-alanine or similar, just so you don't grill yourself. And I find with threshold stuff, you can drive a relatively high stimulus, cardiac output, stroke volume. And the increase in VO2max, as that study showed, is the only study that's shown a linear increase in VO2max. It would be exciting to say, let's check this again in a study, it's such a hellish protocol, to see if that's really the case, or if it was just a lucky shot. But with many athletes I do it with, for example Tim Smäge, I mean, how crazy did he ride? Nobody could keep up. Wout Alemán and Hans bent their legs. Wismar bent his legs. And Tim Smäge rode away 30 minutes ahead from the front and nobody saw him again. And then you can combine it with Live High Train Low if you want. You build up plasma again, and... Exactly.

Björn: What I'd say immediately, a few points, because I just talked with a mutual friend of ours about this Hickson training again, with Holger. Oh, he wrote to me, I said I was on vacation. After that, he sent me the message.

Niclas: Like, an 8000-character message, Holger, sorry.

Björn: I at least called him on the phone, because when I get those huge WhatsApp messages, I have a really hard time reading them. As a coach, you get big WhatsApp messages. I'm always happy when people send me a voice message. I find it much more pleasant. But that one was really big. Anyway, what you have to say about this Hickson thing. The hard part with the Hickson training is you have to be really motivated. You have to smash yourself in the face four times a week, I'd say, at least. But you can't overdo it, like you said, because if you overdo the stimulus, not really riding around your threshold but going into the VO2max zone, then you can wreck yourself so badly that it doesn't work anymore. You really need an athlete who understands, okay, when 5x7 or 7x5 or 10x5 is prescribed and I'm supposed to ride at threshold, then you ride at threshold and don't overdo it and don't blow yourself up by starting the first three super hard and dying in the last seven. And really try to do this time trial with a constantly high output across the whole time trial, not go super hard for five minutes and then die completely in the last 25. So the whole thing has to happen with some sense and understanding. And the other thing I wanted to say, I think it also applies to 40-20s or 30-15s or VO2max training in general. With VO2max training, you're always trying to reach as much time as possible above 90% of VO2max, at least for one, to increase VO2max. But you don't always have to ride all-out, because as you said, with all-out you wreck yourself. Recovery is brutal. I had to experience it firsthand again last week, where I thought, Wednesday, super great legs, it was a lot of fun. The last interval at the end I rode significantly harder than you'd written. And the rest of the week wasn't a complete catastrophe, but for example I couldn't do the test on Saturday because I was just dead. And you always have to teach athletes to maintain intensities to some extent. When you're feeling good, you can ride a bit harder, but never all out, and don't blow yourself up completely. Save those efforts for a race or a test when you really need them.

Niclas: Yeah, I think you can see it in our Activity AI. So if you've synced your Garmin or Wahoo with Afasteryou on our website, and then look at the lactate accumulation or the W', which basically shows how much anaerobic capacity you have, how deep you can really go. And you can actually see, you're maxing yourself out completely, or even overreaching the system, because you're sprinting through standing up. Then you know you've done too much. Actually, not that much should happen. Okay, with 40-20s it can drop pretty hard. Then you also know you've done enough. But not having long enough recovery always shows up quite clearly in the system. Yeah, definitely, and the food afterwards is super important, and the food during training. If you don't manage that, I mean, the classic, arriving half-dead, undersupplied, then 90 minutes of not really eating anything, you can pretty much say, the next training day, you don't even need to train. Honestly. If you don't eat immediately after a hard training and haven't supplied yourself well during that training, you can make the next day a rest day. The next training will be crappy. Period. Simple. Carbs are basically doping. If we're honest, they're the hammer. They're the most potent tool out there. Try doing an intensive race without carbs. You easily lose 20% of your power. Or rather, you don't even get into the intensive zones. So carbs, the best thing out there. Better than EPO, steroids, you haven't seen. Get them in, seriously. It's great. It works.

Björn: Yeah, that's really something too. Glad you're mentioning it again. We also said it, I think, in the last or second-to-last episode. It's something where, at least the last few weeks, I'm talking to so many athletes about it. I'm like, did you take the 80 grams that's prescribed?

Niclas: Yeah.

Björn: Oh no, I only managed 60. Yeah, okay. But that makes a difference when you look at a four-hour session, 80 grams is already a lot less in your system. And when they come home and say, yeah, but I still need to lose weight, and then eat too little at home or just shove vegetables down after, no wonder there's no progress and they've felt stuck for a year or so. Sure, you don't have to just eat Haribos when you come home, but... look, and this works really well with the Activity AI, how many carbs have you burned, eat at least that much back, plus what you have as basal metabolic rate, and then you can maybe save on unhealthy fats here and there, eat less sugar in the evening, that kind of stuff, to maintain or lose weight. But the carbs just have to go in.

Niclas: Right. And when are they best taken in? During training or shortly after? Your call. And what you'd then, like in the evening, you can eat your steamed broccoli if you want. If you steamed everything before. Seriously? Yeah. It's gotten a bit better nowadays, thankfully. Back then it was that skinny, cosmetic aspect. Basically, if you do cycling, it's the worst sport you can do to build some cosmetic, reasonable body. Absolutely. You're skinny as a rail, you have little muscle, except on your legs. And usually those are skinny too. That's partly genetics. But you have to do cross-training, otherwise you look all hunched. Like life squeezed you. So cycling is definitely not the right aspiration if you want to do sport cosmetically. By the way, triathlon is better suited. Just the swimming. Just the swimming. Many, many years ago I read a study on why people do triathlon. And the main reason was aesthetics. Totally wild, yeah. They just want to look decent. And you work everything. These days I'd say, go rowing instead. It's quicker to deal with. And it's cost-neutral or cheaper. I mean, triathlon is... the whole sport is kinda... It would be mean to say it's a show. But when you see the bikes in the transition zone, you think... Other people have V8 engines and fat exhausts, and they have cool bikes.

Björn: Absolutely. Actually, I'd even say cycling and swimming, I'd combine those two, because when you look at how many injuries marathon running brings, it's not much about aesthetics either. But we wanted to get to our actual topic, after 20 minutes. And I actually wanted to use Four Islands to lead into this, and ask Björn a bit about what does the perfect mountain bike marathon rider look like, physiologically? What do we have to train for? What does the nutrition look like? We've already talked about that a bit. Or what's the race tactic? How do I pace myself? And then technique, what equipment do I need?

Niclas: Yeah, so the perfect mountain bike marathon rider is Andi Seewald. If that wasn't obvious.

Björn: No, but I'd maybe... Andi Seewald is a very, very good mountain bike marathon rider.

Niclas: He's incredibly adaptable, and that's his advantage. He can do anything. And you see it in that bandwidth. You can send Andi Seewald to a pancake-flat race and he rides at the front. And you can send Andi Seewald to the high mountains and you know exactly, he rides right at the front. And it's that flexibility, the adaptability of an athlete, and especially the mental adaptability. That's what's fascinating. You go to some race, pancake flat. I mean the World Championship last year or Worlds in Denmark or whatever. Courses that don't really fit. And he builds a mindset and says, okay, I still want to perform. He doesn't say from the start, I'm not strong uphill or it's too flat for me or whatever. He just says, I want to ride there. And I want to do everything to ride fast there. And then it just gets done. His attitude toward training fits. Even if training is crappy, do it. Who wants to ride threshold at under 70 kilos on the flats? That's zero fun. You're just not fast, and then you have to think, how do you do it? How can you still tweak your aerodynamics? I mean, he's one of the few athletes who really say, I really think about how to make myself maximally small. In the wind. And yeah, the perfect marathon rider, there isn't one, because all courses are different. I don't think there's hardly any sport except road cycling, obviously. And totally revolutionized by Pogacar, showing that there are also athletes who are good on all terrains. That hadn't existed for many years. Maybe lastly with Eddy Merckx, or Bernard Hinault maybe, that era. Then for many years, nothing. Just the specialists. Paris-Roubaix, when did a Grand Tour rider last ride that? I mean, Wiggins did it once, 2014 or so.

Björn: Yeah, with Wiggins you almost have to say that by his build, he was kind of already falling out of the classic Grand Tour rider profile of his era.

Niclas: Yeah, true. Definitely for his time. He slimmed down totally. He weighed under 70 kilos then, but build-wise as a track rider he was definitely bulkier. And I don't even know who won Paris-Roubaix that year. Was it the guy from GreenEdge, right? Who rode super smart.

Björn: Roger Hammond, right? I don't remember. Roger Hammond?

Niclas: Whatever. Whatever. Wiggins basically had a target on his back, everyone chased him whenever he attacked. And he wasn't taken to the Tour that year, I think, then he rode the Tour of California. And that's the exciting part. He went from clearly over 70, surely 78, 79, to the Tour of California, which he won dominantly, at under nearly 70. And he became time trial world champion that year too. We didn't take him to the Tour. That year Nibali won, because Froome broke his foot on some stage over cobblestones. I'm pretty sure it was his foot. I was invited then. I was first at Transalp and then at Tanzalp to the finish, got on a plane and flew over to the Tour de France, and then for a team that invited me, we did the Nibali award ceremony and whatnot, and then we went out for a nice dinner and stuff. Yeah, it was nice, and Sky looked a bit foolish. It was pretty controversial because they hadn't taken Wiggins that year. Right.

Björn: But, back to the topic. Physiology, mountain bike marathon rider.

Niclas: Yeah, great VO2max, lactate clearance rate, flexible enough to adapt for the various races. Simple.

Björn: Okay, but that also means, actually like almost every cycling discipline, I'd say, the higher your VO2max, the better.

Niclas: Yeah, the better your four to five minute power is, the better. Simple. And the rest, you have to adapt economy. Glycolytic rate, VLamax, you have to adapt. So how efficiently this engine runs, and then aerodynamics, possibly for the course profile. And there you have it. And then tactical, of course, and then train for the stretched conditions. Super simple approach. Yeah, I find it really important, and it's still done. We have... The way I understand training and the way I always communicate it, and with everyone I work with, especially coaches, we basically always land at the same thing. Take Javier Sola, for example. They super dominated at Paris-Nice last year. That's what they do. They look at every stage until they're sick of it. And they train for those stages. And I mean, Tim Kerrison did this already at Sky. Training toward targeted output. What did Kerrison do back at Sky? In his first year he just sat in the car. He had no clue about cycling. But he looked at how long did they ride up? Okay, at what power do they ride up, he looked at the power meter data, that's why they became so power meter-fixated there, and then figured out that attacking is total nonsense, because I spike my glycolytic power every single time and possibly completely empty or shut down my fat metabolism. And that's why there were those boring Sky moves where they just said, we ride into the mountain seven of us and ride the whole time at six-plus watts. And then nobody else gets the idea, or, let Nibali attack. We just keep our tempo. Easy. And that's how they dominated for years. And that was how they rode back then. Nowadays they ride a bit differently, when you have a mutant like Pogacar and infinite money to buy the best riders in the world. I mean really, it's totally crazy.

Björn: I think you saw it nicely at Flèche Wallonne. They basically used the old Sky tactic. The last six, seven kilometers, or earlier, Jonas Johannessen even started riding earlier. Aha, it was just Brandon McNulty and Jonas Johannessen riding full gas from the front, and the pace was so high that behind them, really the captains of different teams, Alaphilippe, Hirschi, and so on, all flew out, dropped off, and there were only maybe eight riders left. On the last climb, Jonas Johannessen again from the front, and then Pogacar just attacked at some point.

Niclas: It's a total luxury situation. They have such insanely great riders, and they have so incredibly much cash. You buy the crème de la crème, and everyone's happy with it. Back in the day, at QuickStep there was always, only chiefs and no other riders, so to speak, only bosses. Can that work? I think they just got pumped full of money that they say, okay, we do our job here. And Pogacar is so much better than the others that this dominant role of the athlete, although he doesn't flaunt it, they all clearly say, he's just the best rider, we don't have to buck or ourselves, if he's there, we don't need to... make any attempts to win. And then you just hammer at the front with the best riders in the world. Period. That simple. Or simple? You still have to pull that off. And yeah. That would be the tactic. Or I have to come back. How do you train? I had said, ah, Niclas is happy again. The only one who can follow me right now is Niclas. Everyone else is already gone. No, the way I understand sport is, you build your body to fit. It's like sculpting. You have a big piece of wood in front of you and you work on it with a chainsaw, trying to make a face out of it. If you're already pretty good, let's say 90% done, that's your base. Then you say, okay, that's my body, now I'll make something out of it. And then you start with the fine work, and the fine work is always tuning toward the race. That means usually the VO2max work is done at that point. And then you start to tune your glycolytic power, VLamax, in that direction, or I'd even say you start, it goes hand in hand, you start training for that specific power output. It's a 10-minute effort. How many watts do I have to hold for 10 minutes? How is this mountain ridden into? Ah, maybe the first two minutes are ridden super fast. Maybe a team pulls up front so that I have to ride super fast for 15 minutes. Classic. That's why you do motor training, for example. You cruise at 60 through the landscape and then hammer up a mountain like crazy, just to know that speed, how we rode up to the mountain. So broken down, for a normal athlete that means I do my... possibly polarized approach, lots of base, VO2max, base, VO2max, base, VO2max, always a bit of 30-30, 40-20, 1-minute intervals, maybe also slightly over-threshold stuff. And then I start looking, okay, how long is this race? How long are the mountains? Or is it just a time trial? And then you start breaking it down in chunks. You don't start with 30 minutes at target power right away, you say, I'll ride 6x5 minutes or 4x8 or 5x8 or 4x7, whatever. And you gradually work your way in. And then you can think about how a race plays out. Maybe I even ride a negative split, saying, okay, I'll ride the first 10 minutes at 400 watts and the second 10 minutes at 430 watts. And then you tune your body, and that's not just physical, it's also mentally really, really important. You go into such a thing and know, okay, I can do this anyway. And I think that's also a decisive point, that you know, this performance I can just call up, because I've already trained it. Training is simple.

Björn: Yeah, I have to intervene a bit here, because those 10%, looking at my athletes, only apply to very few. Because the biggest potential, like you said, is those 90% before. If I haven't maxed out that 90%, like VO2max and base training and fat metabolism, if I haven't even ridden 3, 4, 5 hours of easy base on the weekend, and done that for four weeks in a row, then I shouldn't start or... Then you just leave a lot of potential on the table if you're already starting with, okay, what's my target power going to be? Most hobby athletes can maybe do that three weeks in advance. You can look, okay, which race is my A race, and then do that. Before that, I'd always say, ride your base properly, eat properly, do your VO2max sessions once or twice a week. That's the most sensible thing for the vast majority, and especially over winter, work on that weakness. Over winter really do big base blocks, as much as you can fit into your training schedule. Short, hard blocks with VO2max then, to build that up, because that's simply for 90% of athletes, especially in the hobby and amateur area, the biggest lever. That said, the older you get, the smaller this lever becomes, because of course the adaptation diminishes somewhat, but even there you can still get a lot out with good VO2max training.

Niclas: Yeah, definitely. Do what you haven't been doing.

Björn: Yeah.

Niclas: Usually works pretty well. Absolutely.

Björn: What I find interesting with training, how do you train, because you said you build the training based on the profile needed for the race. How much fatigue resistance do you mix in?

Niclas: It's such a crappy word, right? Nobody can do anything with it. We throw around fatigue resistance. I think it was Knowledge is what. I kind of like it. But he showed, Giro winners of the last five years. 20-minute power, 20-minute power after kilojoule throughput XY, after a certain time. And then VO2max, but VO2max not as a power value, just as a pure number. So you didn't know anything like gross efficiency, for example. It could be anything. If they'd calculated glycolytic power, it would've been exciting.

Björn: And actually you'd have to add, how did those 2000 kilojoules, 3000 kilojoules come about? Did I ride base? Did I ride tempo?

Niclas: We took that from the Giro data. So it works. Well, at least I do build fatigue resistance in. I find this terminus hard to grasp. And I do it in the sense of changes in torque in the individual trainings. And especially teaching the head or... muscularly breaking down the built-up lactate via higher cadences. You really have to learn that. Or also working with very high torque, base, big gear, whatever. That's how I build it in. It's gross for the muscles sometimes. But it doesn't wreck you mentally. And... Sure, you push intervals toward the back, the classic. It's the... I have some over-unders and then you ride four times twelve minutes or four times 15 minutes, and you ride the first two in the first two hours and the last two in hours four and five. That's super hard training of course. And in between you just ride Fatmax, which is super hard too. And definitely, that's also race-adapted, it works. Basically I keep noticing, what you train is like a switch. If you say, you always only train three hours, then do a 5-hour race, then it's the classic, you ride 3 hours well and the last two are crappy. You have to get used to the distances too, maybe even overdo the distance sometimes. The Japanese marathoners always liked doing that too. So also ride the distance that you have to do there. And maybe also push intensities toward the end, but in a way that it doesn't completely smoke you. That's how it is. And yeah, from that you can do it. So just basically speaking, how do I build training? Let's say I have twelve weeks. Then you start with, where do I stand? Test somehow.

Björn: Ideally a power test.

Niclas: Yeah, sure. It's super simple. It's the easiest way. And then you have Activity AI on top, done. You know what you can and can't do. You see VO2max 55 or I don't know, 50. That's not so great. But for a man that wouldn't be so good. Or 45. You know, okay, I have to do something there. How do I build it up best? What's most tolerable for base? And how much time do I have? And the system tells you how much time you have. How many kilojoule throughput can you handle? You tell me, I've got 15 hours a week base. Just ride that. Ride 15 hours for three weeks. That's 45 hours. That's already a lot. And then it usually gets better on its own. And then I'd... Then the question is always, do I push in a VO2max block if I'm not that good? If I'm already... Usually they say polarized training is great, but I'd also sometimes slip in a light stop sign, because someone who isn't really fit, and you grill them right away with brutal VO2max intervals, they're usually not fit enough. I'd do a gentle progression and just ride sweet spot. Adaptation will happen anyway, a brutal adaptation, because anyone who's not fit will also benefit from this training. And then you can simply say, okay, now I'll ride sweet spot and threshold for two weeks. Then I take a break, then do a test again, see what happened, and then you can ride base again, and then maybe you really ride a VO2max block with 40-20s, and then I'd quickly look at what's demanded at the race. So how much power do I need? Or how long are the sections? Eight minutes, ten minutes, 15 minutes. Then you train for that a bit. That's a bit of threshold. A bit above threshold. That's how I'd do it. And if someone's fit, you do it a bit differently. You have just base first. Then you blast in the VO2max blocks. Then you look at the lactate production. Let's say you have a 0.6 lactate production and a 60 VO2. Then you wouldn't start pushing that down. I wouldn't do that. Rather just deal with it and then ride lots of shuttling, over-unders, one minute over, two minutes under, torques, gimmicks, Fatmax in big gear, Fatmax in small gear, after hard intervals to ramp up lactate or poorly clear it, and then in the next interval clear it strongly. That's what I'd do if people have higher lactate production rates. It's not like Pogacar rides at 0.2 lactate production rate, he rides significantly higher, which he can afford because he has high VO2max. You always have to see these two values in relation. Now I've rambled a lot again. But it was great.

Björn: No, I think it's really good. Now, building on that, we've got physiology, we've got training, nutrition. Basically, nutrition and hydration, like we said, always start with plenty of carbs. Fuel during training, fuel right after, drink enough. What about base training, standard 45 to 60 grams of carbs?

Niclas: Depends on how big the engine is. Yeah, but 45 to 60 grams per hour. You can stagger that. You still have a glycogen store in the muscle. You don't have to start with 60 grams right away if you're only riding for an hour. Sometimes even nothing is enough. But then please eat afterward. Right, definitely, then you can do a bit of carb cycling, I always find that nice, or rather the selection during training, after training, shortly after training, shove in the stuff that makes sense to refill the stores, and then afterward you can slowly taper off the sugar fest, especially when you're not training that much, and then you eat properly; on intensive trainings, meaning VO2max or especially threshold, the carb share has to be quite a bit higher. The body signals that by itself. You're just permanently hungry. And then you eat the sugary stuff shortly after training, and during training I'd switch to more complex carbs. Potatoes, wild rice, whole wheat pasta, whatever. That kind of thing.

Björn: All right. How do you see, sorry?

Niclas: Protein of course too, about two grams per kilo of body weight.

Björn: How do you see, let's say, the last four weeks before the race at high-intensity trainings, testing how many grams of carbs can go in, because the more you can manage per hour in the race, the better?

Niclas: Yeah, definitely. This gut training, definitely. From 90 to 100, 110, 120, 130 grams. 145. You can test that. If you have the engine for it, you do it. Yeah, definitely test that during more intensive stuff. And then, I'd want to do one more really long ride the weekend before the race. 5, 6 hours. And if possible, we've talked about this often, let's say race is Sunday, I'd also do a longer ride Thursday, maybe three hours, even three hours Fatmax, empty out the stores and then fill up well, some magnesium in the evening. Then it works. And classical tapering, yeah, I wouldn't pour myself a hard one during race week. The week before I'd still work intensively, but not super intensively anymore. The week before that, I'd really pour one. So it's like a wave. Let's say you have four weeks, the fourth week before the race, 80% hard. The week before that you go to 90 to 100. And then you really taper down to 70. And in the tapering week you don't do that much. One long ride. I find that's the much more decisive session. And then it works. So the tapering week is basically already a rest week.

Björn: Okay, okay. Then tactics, fueling, race tactics, pacing. How would you, for example... First, for most people it's important, okay, how do I fuel? Let's say a classic four-hour, for a hobby amateur rider five to six-hour mountain bike marathon, 100 kilometers, 2,500 meters of elevation. How would you approach fueling, assuming we don't have a feeder?

Niclas: Hydration pack. And then it's always, do I hammer along or do I say, I'll just ride my tempo here. There's the risk of missing the group up front that's enjoying the draft. On the other hand, if there's a 20-minute climb right from the start, I'd say, ride your tempo up. Your call. And all the others will smoke themselves anyway. And really burn out. And the question is, do I want to win or do I want to just finish? Or do I want to ride a good result? To ride a good result, without pushing for a podium, I'd always say, ride your tempo. Just pace yourself through. Burn yourself out. Unless you have a chance to get into some group. If then there's five minutes uphill, you ride everything you have and try to get into a group. If after that there's 40 kilometers pancake flat, you hammer over that and hang in the draft for 40 kilometers and let them pull you. And afterward you sort yourself out. But if there are really 10, 15, 20-minute climbs one after the other, from the start ride your tempo. Yeah.

Björn: And then ideally, either right before or the weeks before, I always think it's a good idea to do another performance test, because then you just have better values. Then you know, especially for example with our power test, you can see really nicely, okay, what power can I hold on average over four hours. And from that you can derive your pacing a bit. derive, and then at least I say, ideally you've trained it in advance and know how many carbs per hour you can take in, do I tolerate 100, do I tolerate 120, tendentially the more, the better. There's always a certain limit, whether you tolerate it too. Then make sure to ideally have the carbs already on board, work with a hydration pack maybe, drink that empty first so that afterward, or drink the bottles empty first, depending on how the feed zones are. When can I maybe refill what? Do I drink the bottles empty first, refill them, then ride through, or do I drink the hydration pack empty first. And how warm it is. An example.

Niclas: Actually I need to, yeah, we definitely need to do this. I already talked with Sebastian about it. Last year I programmed a little app for myself on my phone for the composition of drinks in heat and humidity and sodium and so on. You type in how warm it is and how many grams of carbs I can max absorb. And humidity and so on. Which is pretty cool because you always have it quickly in hand, and of course it's always really impressive when I pull that out of my phone quickly. We'll put that on our platform, this calculator. Then everyone can mix their own drinks. Yeah, let's do it. I'll send Sebastian the code and then we can build that in.

Björn: Yeah, why? Last week I also met Sebastian in person. But there are still a few things in the pipeline.

Niclas: The cool thing is, I'm thinking about stopping at 50, but we still have 15 years of work. We have so many ideas to implement. I mean, we can do such awesome stuff all the time, and you have ideas too. We don't lack for that. And you were there last week, I wasn't, I was on vacation. Sebastian was on vacation too, he just goes on vacation from the wrong direction. You guys were at the track with Wismar and did some testing and took nice photos. I'm not on them, I'm not, sad about that. And yeah, there's more coming as a newsletter in due time.

Björn: Yeah, it was cool to see how Wismar works with the Afasteryou software and so on, and basically how the guys work, it's really very professional, you have to say, crazy clockwork.

Niclas: There's also the right man there with Jamie Lohan, that's really cool.

Björn: Seeing Jamie at work, he doesn't talk much while working, but you always see the changes he makes to the riders, they just work directly. There were very few runs where he actually said, yeah, okay, that didn't help, but there were also those. It was cool to see what possibilities they have, and they obviously have... What material they brought along, directly everything you could want in spacers, saddles, any kind of change, they had right there to test. They really only changed seat positions, they didn't do the rest, I think. But then I could also talk with Jamie a bit about training and race pacing, and he does a lot, he also plans the pacing for time trials, and I was like, okay, there are things I'd know to do better or want to do. And I found it crazy again that even at that highest level there's still potential. But what I saw is that they're still sometimes short on manpower. Three more crazy aero folks at Jamie Mayer's level would make the team one percent better.

Niclas: It's crazy. It's totally wild, and I notice it myself. Sebastian and I have the advantage of doing nothing but aerodynamics and metabolism simulation. And of course I still train a lot of people, but I keep learning so much, and I also keep noticing, I recently had a longer conversation with Paul Heldran and Javier, we talked a lot about what else you can do, platform-wise, and how they train, or which analysis tools they use sometimes. And they use things where I'd say it's totally outdated, but it still works great because they use these tools in an intelligent and smart way. And again, I notice I have real limits and see that they've gone so deep into certain things that I can't keep up. And similarly, I wouldn't claim, aerodynamics I have a plan, sure, I want to deeply engage with it, but there are plenty of aero people who are better, and of course also, I do train cross-country riders. And Ulan Galinski rode super strong in Brazil. I mean, a 57-kilo rider rides that course, finishing twelfth twice. That's really great. But I wouldn't say I'm the greatest cross-country coach, or the greatest triathlon coach, or whatever, generally. You learn a lot, and you have to be open and say, okay... Can I, from that domain, or do I have access to that domain through a coach or athlete? From Enrico Avicini I've learned infinitely much and got ideas. An insanely creative athlete, really exciting. What can you do differently and adjust, and then use that flexibility? also apply that and build it into training. And I think the athletes who work with me know that training is constantly changing somehow. And sure, there's an insanely long and boring base phase, but I keep trying to find something new, or I'm sometimes so excited about things I've seen and heard that I absolutely have to try them out. And then I have my guinea pigs, my lab rats, and I do it with them. And then I see, yeah, it works. And then I transfer it to others. If I see it's metabolically sensible.

Björn: And if you know, okay, the athlete's up for it and can stick with it.

Niclas: It's not just me always saying, yeah, we've got wood. Though that happens too. I'd say I'm one of those coaches who doesn't actually let athletes train that hard, right?

Björn: Yeah, so what I do basically, that's true, the easy base phases, the targeted base phases are more than before with me, for example. But when the hammer comes out, you have to be ready to hurt yourself. Yeah, so that was for example, and I think it's actually also the thing that makes training or training overall so effective, understanding long, easy phases, and sometimes really dumbly just riding base for a month with maybe a bit of Fatmax on a climb here and there. The body needs it, it's just sensible, you can't unpack the killer intervals in December if you want to ride fast in May, June, July, makes no sense, but training 100 hours of base makes sense. On the other hand, then being ready, when you're for example four weeks out from an A race, to really hurt yourself. That's what makes the training so effective, I think. And I think Andi summarized that nicely once, that when he started working with you, he first had to understand that in these easy phases you also shouldn't overdo it, so that you're fresh for the hard phases, and that you ride the hard phases only as hard as they're written in the training plan, because otherwise you can't complete this overall picture. If you blow yourself up in the first five sessions of the hard block, you won't manage the next five. But to complete the overall picture, you have to execute these ten sessions.

Niclas: Yeah, training, yeah, so I always say, training, a whole block of training, is like a marathon run. Of course you can put a training session or two in it, going full, and think, yeah, that was great training. But there are ten more coming. And if you don't push through those, actually I want you not to necessarily get better from session to session, but to be able to push them through. And it's nicest when the last training session is very hard, that you just manage it and say, okay, now I'm ready. That of course has a super psychological effect. And physically we were definitely on the right track then that we still had that adaptation. Of course we want to build stress, but it has to be to a degree that's tolerable. And the most important thing, or one of the important points, is that the athlete understands it. Don't do more, not necessarily more; there are of course players who always do too much, and you say that once, twice, three times, and the fifth time you just nod and say, okay, walk into the knife.

Björn: For those I actually start, I build the training so that I know, they'll overdo it there, they'll overdo it there.

Niclas: You can do that, but on the other hand I've had people who always had to train 18, 20 hours, and always hard, always hard, hard, hard. Or rather not just hard, but always grossly hard. And then you see, oh, then performance can't be delivered. Then you build in a hammer interval or a hard interval, and then you get a message, it's impossible to do and blah blah blah. Then you say, yeah of course it's impossible to do, because they've already trained slightly into the gutter before, and also reduced the carb intake to licorice, grinding down your tooth enamel, then nothing will come out of it. That's also tricky. Yeah. So mentally it has to fit somehow. That reminds me, I still need to build a training plan. This morning I got a little change pushed in.

Björn: Right. Yeah. Okay, last point, briefly on tire choice, seat position, clothing. How important do you see aerodynamic points in mountain bike marathon? Of course, seat position.

Niclas: If it's flat, definitely. Aerodynamics important, clothing important, wind vests brutally kill aerodynamics. Oh, I just saw... Brand new, there's one from Velotoze, they leaked it, has to be. I was in contact with Velotoze, no, I wasn't. But interestingly, I was in contact with the boss of Velotoze in January. They sponsor a team somewhere in Thailand, I think. And there's a rider there I know very well, a good friend of mine, Adne van Engelen, whom I also coach. Who also rides really fast. And they have a bit of aerodynamics and so on. And now they made this hydration vest, which really should cool too. And I thought, ha, my idea. They obviously didn't just pull that out of the hat as quickly as we talked about it. I don't think. Who knows, maybe in a Chinese factory things can happen zip-zap. No hesitating, just doing. And yeah, there it is. Would be funny to test. I already wrote to Adne, and now let's see if it's game-changer-like. Especially it'd be aerodynamically interesting to see how that thing is, and whether it's UCI-compliant if you carry it around under the jersey.

Björn: You mean that undershirt of theirs where you can put the bladder in the back? Yeah, well, that's essentially the hype, I'd say, that came up last year sometime, where Rule28 and Rapha both presented their race suits where that's in the back. This year at Epic, Johnny Hoogerland from RH77, that's the clothing brand I think, sponsored, also rode a one-piece. It didn't make him faster. But I wouldn't say it was because of the one-piece. I think other things went wrong. But basically, definitely really cool and definitely a point, if you manage to have a one-piece where you can put this bladder well in and out, and then just ride through a VP and, depending on what you need, grab an ice-filled bladder and put it on your back, that can have a really cool effect in various races. Just drinking ice cold also always makes sense.

Niclas: Yeah, and you'd have to stretch the bladder. So I imagine a bladder that has an insulation layer on top and direct skin contact underneath. Maybe make the surface really big, with some structure. Yeah, that would be pretty exciting.

Björn: Absolutely. And I think, if I remember correctly, Dylan Johnson has also tested the whole thing in the wind tunnel, and a hydration pack, at least on a gravel bike or a road bike. tends to even make you aerodynamically faster, when even the surface in the front, where the hydration pack is basically closed to the backpack, if that even falls away and you basically only have the bladder in the back, it should make you even faster. That's definitely exciting. Look, now I'm totally gone. You don't know Dylan Johnson? Of course not. He's from America, a gravel rider. Earlier, at 14 I think, he started riding mountain bike, rode a lot of mountain bike marathon, was always good. Then he started riding gravel especially, 2018 with his first Unbound. And he makes YouTube videos about it. So he coaches people himself, makes YouTube videos about it, and does a lot of YouTube videos on sports science topics, and he's known for searching for marginal gains. He has videos on which chain is the fastest. He talked to all kinds of people, a lot with the Silca developer about which chain wax is fastest, which wheels, which tires. He started, before Unbound, he tested, okay, the 2.1 Continental Race King is the fastest tire for the race. He just figured that out on his routes. But then he went and, for example, when you get the Race King brand new, it has lots of these little nubs sticking out. And he said, yeah, that can't be aerodynamic, and went, with a hair trimmer, and shaved all the nubs off a brand new tire before the race, so those nubs were gone. And he's kind of the founder of this trend, I'd claim, that on gravel bikes you mount 2.1 mountain bike tires, because in terms of rolling resistance and comfort they're faster. And he just put out a video where he tested which tire is the fastest. They went into the wind tunnel, looked at 35mm tires up to 55mm mountain bike tires. And they got these aerodynamic values and compared them with the rolling resistance values, and then even went, he said that the test wasn't 100% perfect, but they tested how rolling resistance works on unevenness too. And then they saw, okay, that a 45mm mountain bike tire probably just due to rolling resistance beats aerodynamics of a 40mm gravel tire for example, especially on real gravel races. And I think that's also a reason why in the mountain bike area, 2.4 tires are now slowly gaining the upper hand, because run at 1.1, 1.2 bar pressure they're just the fastest. Especially on an Epic course, almost everyone rode a 2.4 tire. And what I find cool, if we come to the material a bit, that with a 2.4 mountain bike tire on a 30mm rim you don't have to ride those crazy knobby tires anymore, like a Racing Ray for example, because you build up so much grip just through this width and the tire pressure, that as long as it's not super wet, you, for example, with a Ray XC, which... profile-wise has relatively little, but you cope super well and are just insanely fast. So it's crazy what I've done with tires in recent years.

Niclas: So surface area, more surface area, the better. Punctual, so that's like the elephant on high heels. The profile presses itself in, and you use that if you have little surface. And if it's not... Or Vanessa. And if you have lots of surface area and just a bit of tread on it, you always have an advantage. Clear. Yeah. Dreamy. Yeah, now we don't even need to talk about it. I was still riding 18 millimeter road tires with 12 bar.

Björn: Horrible.

Niclas: Which is totally stupid. And when the 25s came out, that was already mega, that was already the sedan. I mean, these days we ride 30, 28 and even wider. I think he rode all 32s. Makes sense too. Anything else is dumb. Exciting, especially aerodynamically it's always different, which rim, how wide, and especially how is the frame, how is the fork, where does the wind come from. You have to always look at that too. Just throwing it in the wind tunnel is nice at first, but if you have a frame XY, or a rider XY, the separation edge at the tire can be totally different. And especially you have to test individually. I'd just do a Zero test.

Björn: I found it super interesting with Sebastian on the track at Wismar, that you really can't just say, okay, we'll get bike XY, put the position on it that looks fast, and that'll fit. No, you really have to test individually, because it always depends on the rider's body, and just because a position looks fast on Ganna and I'll replicate it and ride it, for you that position might not be the fastest, just because your body is built differently. You have a different separation edge with your body, and then you need a completely different position.

Niclas: That's why material tests are always tricky in the wind tunnel. You put a helmet in the wind tunnel on some dummy in position XY, maybe the helmet is 5 watts. I mean, 5 watts, you can't even measure that out. Or 3 watts, you can't measure that. That's noise. Could be fast on the dummy, but could be total crap on bike XY. And for wheels you can test okay, you can see what's fast. But how does it interact with the bike and the rider? And that can be different again. And at what speed? Are we talking 40, like triathlon speed, or are we talking 50 plus, road speed, or 60, 70 plus, at sprint speeds. You have to consider all that too, and it's super involved of course. That's why I always say, grab your material, blast our aero test on it, and ride as many gains as you can pull for so little money. You ride it yourself and test it through. But I find it exciting again and again. People... think insanely much about training, analytics, look at some graphs, try to voodoo-interpret something, and honestly, as much half-knowledge as exists, I'd claim that I'm okay training-wise and physiologically, but far from what others can do. And when there are people who have significantly less clue and are then rock-solid convinced that this training works and that works, I think, that can't be. I'd never stick my neck out that far. Exciting, on the other hand, is that aerodynamics is totally solid. It's so solid, you just, you go out, test, and you just have numbers and know, that's now faster, you feel it too. With training, training is always a black box or often a black box. You don't even know what's happening. Do I do training XY and then I'll be better in four weeks? Or I did this training and it made me faster. Do I do it again? Does it make me faster again? Nope, not necessarily. Not necessarily. Body things happen. With aerodynamics it's a totally different topic. You sit on, do a test, you see, it's faster. Good, what can I change again? Sit on again, test again in a few weeks, and so on. The more often you do it, the faster you get. I know a rider, hobby rider, who pushed himself down to a CdA of 0.17. That's a crazy World Tour level. And he rides around at 330 watts and just destroys everyone. Because everyone says, oh wow, you must have like 400 watt threshold. No, he just has a 0.17 CdA, while the others are still crawling at 0.21. Saves infinitely many watts. And this hesitation to test aerodynamics, I always find exciting, because it's so easy. You just invest a few days. So you ride one day, and I don't mean a few days in a row, but once a week. And then you need a speed sensor. Such a thing costs 20 euros. I mean, that's nothing. But that's already the first hurdle, such a thing with magnets. Yeah, exactly such a thing. And... And then they want to test and think, it's done in one day. Then they come with crazy aero material and test first your position, as it is. And then you test through and test again and test again. Yeah, but Björn, such a helmet is also simply easier to buy. Right, that's bought. That's it. Bought, but not self-tested. So Dan Bigham. There's nobody who's done more tests with us on the platform. It's obscene. I don't know how many hundreds, if not thousands, of test rides he's done. And he's, I mean, the studies, you can look at how many watts he rode for his hour record. It's a joke afterwards. At 270 or 80 watts. He totally blew up at the end. Of course, totally blew up. But he was still brutally fast. And that's where you see what you can achieve with aerodynamics. And the potential, honestly, even for World Tour riders. There are a few teams that really have an eye on that, who also test material, their bikes, and so on. Yeah. But many are still like, oh no, do I have to? It's exhausting. It didn't work right away. Then you think, yeah sure, like you do every test always super. You have to learn that, it's a craft.

Björn: Yeah, I found it super crazy at Flèche Wallonne to see, that Pogacar, as soon as he knew, okay, it's getting into the finale, now it's about the win, he took everything off, he only had his race one-piece on, and many, even captains behind, were still riding with rain jackets, wind vests, and I was like, guys, what are you doing? So what... Like, why?

Niclas: Aerodynamics, wind vest, or jacket, kills you. 40 watts more. Yeah, I mean, Javier knows what aerodynamics is. We made a funny joke yesterday. I don't even know which rider it was. He had posted some picture of someone, he had his rain jacket at Flèche... stuffed in the front here, and I told him, well, that's definitely aerodynamically advantageous, to leave it in the front. Could even be that they tested it. I can do it again, but I think, yeah. No, they put brutal thought into this. Where can I pull out another thing? Or here when Visma went out three riders, Matteo Jorgenson, Wout van Aert, and Tiesj. And Tiesj, you mean at... Paul won, right. Yeah, exactly. And that's a crazy thing. Ride out with three people. They just have that. They're so aerodynamically optimized. It's crazy. When Campenaerts sits on the road bike, it's like a time trial bike for other people. Totally out. Aerodynamically. Absolutely.

Björn: So I think, testing aerodynamics, understanding a bit and knowing, okay, how do you grip.

Niclas: It's so cool, you can be so fast, and then the position feels crappy at first, but train yourself into the position, and then in the race just ride like 10, 15 minutes in such a brutal aero position and just notice, hey, nobody can keep up. And I just ride the thing forward and maybe ride up to the group. It's obscene.

Björn: I loved that at the Epic time trial stage. I started with the new bike right before Epic, after we had the episode with Jamie, always started gripping only on the inside, because I tested it once, saw, dude, that makes a big difference. Only rode on the inside. And there are pictures of it, of me riding at the front of the group. Okay, I have to say, they were all masters riders behind me, so maybe it was unfair contest. But I rode in front, gripped tight, made myself very very small sometimes, and they behind me, they all died. But if you look, all their elbows are sticking out. Nobody made themselves small. And I don't get it. So it's not like the race was technically demanding that day. It was easy. I could lay on the bars for five kilometers straight. No problem. It was just straight farm road. Sure, there are some bumps, but we ride full suspension. You put the suspension on half-setting and then you iron over it. And I find it ultra cool to see. Did you see Georg's post with his new Bikerhead bar? Yeah.

Niclas: No, I didn't see it.

Björn: Look at it. We've made a bar now.

Niclas: I know, I saw the prototype already before the app.

Björn: Oh, how cool.

Niclas: I actually want it. I still remember the neon pink dummy, I think it was. Yeah, definitely.

Björn: Because Tim at, what's the race called, Trente?

Niclas: Yeah yeah, it's totally crazy, the race.

Björn: He rides that one too, with such a bar.

Niclas: Yeah, exactly, it's totally crazy. He just rode through at 300 watts and nobody could keep up, and I think he won with seven minutes lead.

Björn: Yeah, that was totally crazy. Good. Nice. We'll try to do podcasts more regularly again. Vacation has to happen too.

Niclas: I'm back now. No, otherwise I don't have anything. Otherwise we talk about... Look, my kids are also already awake now. And loud. That's the right time to stop, I'd say.

Björn: Perfect. Then many thanks, Björn. And we'll hear each other next week again.

Niclas: Next week we'll talk about gravel racing and training.

Björn: Or aerodynamics even more important. But I'll bring a few things from Dylan Johnson.

Niclas: I'll check him out. I'm so bad. You know enough already. Yeah.

Björn: We'll hear each other. Ciao, ciao.