"Overreaching lasts from a few days to 2 weeks and is associated with fatigue, reduction of maximum performance capacity, and a brief interval of decreased personal performance. Recovery is achieved with a reduction in training or a few extra days of rest.
Overtraining (overtraining syndrome, staleness, systemic overtraining) is the result of many weeks of exceeding the athlete’s physiologic limits and can result in weeks or months of diminished performance - symptoms normally resolve in 6-12 weeks but may continue much longer or recur if athletes return to hard training too soon. It involves mood disturbances, muscle soreness/stiffness, and changes in blood chemistry values, hormone levels, and nocturnal urinary catecholamine excretion.
Stress factors such as the monotony of a training program and an acute increase in training program intensity lasting more than a few days increase the risk of development of overtraining. On the other hand, heavy training loads appear to be tolerated for extensive periods of time if athletes take a rest day every week, and alternate hard and easy days of training.
Pathologic fatigue is deined as fatigue and tiredness that cannot be explained by the volume of training. These are generally medical conditions such as infection, neoplasia, disorders of the blood, cardiovascular, or endocrine systems, and psychologic/psychiatric disorders. Included in this grouping are the side effects of medications and "chronic fatigue syndrome" - an ill defined medical condition. A recent article has muddied the water even further by describing muscle changes from years of high volume exercise training that may be related to this entity. Another controversial possibility is iron deficiency without anemia - although this is much more common in endurance runners than cyclists."
Pages
Monday, May 31, 2010
And Now For The Rest
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Basso Takes Pink: News Cycles
- The opening flat stages in Holland threw some nasty winds at the riders, causing some pile-ups that threw the entire race into disarray. Early favorites like Sastre were virtually eliminated from the start. Other teams were crippled to the point of losing some of their more talented support riders and making the distribution of the workload more concentrated on a few.
- Again, the weather created chaos for the Strada Bianchi Stage 7 and a little bad luck and a few forced mistakes threw the contest back up in the air.
- Stage 12 saw the GC contenders hammer on each other to gain the upper hand in a stage that had originally been a bone thrown to the big sprinters in the group.
- Nibali's stupidly amazing descent on the slick roads of Stage 14 to give the Italians a taste of home filed advantage.
- The duel between Cadel Evans' thumping power and Ivan Basso's featherlight tip-toe styles of climbing up the Zoncolan on Stage 15.
- The Plan de Corones ITT mtn TT saw riders opt for amateurishly looking compact cranks with 26-28 cassettes to lamely struggle up the pukingly steep ascents.
- The insanely heroic descent made by Arroyo on Stage 19 on the wet roads that made the mighty, mighty Basso flinch.
- Stage 20 was amazingly beautiful. I caught some of it on an internet feed and it looked like a string of postcards. with a descent on the other side that crackled with crisp technical feats and the electricity of speed.
News Cycles:Taylor Phinney of Trek-Livestrong won his second U23 Paris-Roubaix here. This is pretty significant as Phinney, son of the former Team 7-11 star and US National Champion Davis Phinney, and is actualizing all the expectations heaped upon him as America's next great cyclist.Taiwan's Super Athlete, Craig Johns, covers the Hualien Triathlon and sadly announces his retirement from triathlons here. The local triathlete community can now breathe a sigh of relief that his reign of terror has come to an end. This does not mean the cyclists can have a reprieve as Johns will continue to pursue cycling which isn't so hard on the joints.Joe Friel tells us everything science really knows about muscle cramps here. The short answer is "nothing", but don't tell the sport drink and supplement companies. I always find discussions of cramping interesting as I suffer from cramping on occasion. I found the best solution is the kitchen sink approach. I take 3 Tums before a ride for the magnesium, a couple bananas before a ride for potassium, try to stretch my calves (usual culprit), adjust my fit, drink enough liquids with a mix of water and sport drink on hot days... basically everything short of voodoo magic.Darryl has launched his awesome directory for bike blogs here. I have to hand it to him for putting out the effort to consolidate the bike-blog universe into an easy to use directory that is easily classified into category and location. Check the Taiwan blogs ;)Virginia Xing blogs on her preparations for a weekend of racing (even if it was complicated by rain) here. I was happy to have chatted with her a bit on the phone the other day to officially make her acquaintance. I hope to ride with her in the future to learn a thing or two. If you visit her blog you can see how much effort she puts into her training... and with a fistful of little boys to herd. Truly heroic.Anyone else have something to report?
Beyond Lukang
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Giro d'Italia Wraps Up Tonight
- 1 Ivan Basso (Liquigas)
- 2 David Arroyo (Caisse d’Epargne) + 0:51
- 3 Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) + 2:30
- 4 Michele Scarponi (Androni) + 2:46
- 5 Cadel Evans (BMC) + 4:00
Houli Loop!/后里, 臺中縣
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Weekend Notes
You Never Know What You'll Become
1st Night Ride To Caotun: 48Km
UCI Responds
The UCI, which is the main governing body of professional cycling and the keepers of arcane beliefs that regulate official equipment use and other trivialities that influence what average consumers buy to look "pro", has issued a statement regarding the potential bombshell released last week by 2006 Tour de France winner and loser Floyd Landis detailing the UCI's response to the allegations it colluded with Lance Armstrong and others in hiding positive results from random tests for performance enhancing drugs.
Oooooo.... the plot thickens! I hope there is a part coming up where a splinter group of the Catholic Church sends out an auto-masochistic assassin to suppress the truth and preserve the power of the UCI and its Rosecrucian overlords.
UCI Press Release, May 25 2010
Floyd Landis’s accusations: clarifications from the UCI
Due to the controversy following the statements made by Floyd Landis, the International Cycling Union wishes to stress that none of the tests revealed the presence of EPO in the samples taken from riders at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland. The UCI has all the documentation to prove this fact.
Between 2001 and 2003, only the Paris, Lausanne, Cologne, Barcelona and Madrid laboratories, commissioned by the UCI, detected the presence of EPO in the samples that had been entrusted to them for analysis. During this period, the first laboratory carried out three positive analyses for EPO, the second 18 and the three last laboratories one each. None of the samples concerned had been taken at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland.
The International Olympic Committee received a copy of all the reports for the positive analyses mentioned above. Furthermore, in 2001, all the analysis reports carried out at the Tour of Switzerland were sent to Swiss Olympic.
Since 1st January 2004, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) receives a copy of any analysis reports which show an abnormal result. WADA has not reported any abnormal analyses from any of its accredited laboratories that have not been duly dealt with by the UCI.
The UCI wishes to reassert the total transparency of its anti-doping testing and categorically rejects any suspicion in relation to the concealment of results from parties involved in this field.
Read more: http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/05/news/uci-press-release-floyd-landis’s-accusations_118561#ixzz0p1Gw1uwf
Monday, May 24, 2010
On The Dope
"OK," the doctor said when we settled into his examination room. "What do you want to be?"
I looked confused, so he explained.
"You want to be bigger? Leaner? Faster longer or faster shorter? More overall endurance? You want to see better?"
"See better?"
"Human growth hormone does that for some people. It improves the muscles in the eyes." He tried again: "So, what do you want?"
This was quite a concept. Freud wrote that anatomy is destiny, and here was a doctor giving me a chance, in my late forties, to alter my body in the most fundamental way. It was strange, but also strangely alluring.
Evening Ride: 5/24/2010 (72kph)
Death On Wheels: A Cycling Guide To Taiwan's Most Dangerous Cars
Taxis in Taiwan are known to be driven by hoodlums and maniacs and in Taichung we have the best of them. I have been in taxis that hydroplaned trough city streets in rain storms. One amphetamine addled driver buzzed a police station making play gun shot noises while he waved his arm out the window as if shooting a gun. He later took a freeway offramp at about 70mph toward a brick wall... with his hands off the wheel. My mother was not amused. Taxis are aggressive bullies of the road that use brute force to negotiate traffic. The taxi only made it to a 4th place standing for the fact that they are easily seen, universally recognized as a hazard and the drivers must receive some sort of licensing.
The scourge of the mountain roads is the Mitsubishi 4x4 minivan. These are usually encountered during mountain rides and in the countryside. The owners jack these terrors dangerously high for such a narrow wheelbase and then take the mountain roads at very high speeds. There is an overall sentiment of invincibility on Taiwan's roads where the concept of fate reigns supreme. These little bastards have it is spades. If they don't hit you they may tip over on you. An added danger is the higher possibility that the drivers are not licensed and often totally wasted.
T-Mosaic's Child Prodigy?
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Taipei Traffic (Video): Some Guys Have All The Luck!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Chiayi Foothills and Hua Shan
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Shot Heard Round The World: Landis
The only sure bet is that Landis' battle to win over public opinion took a massive hit Thursday after his business manager, former teammate and close friend Will Geoghegan was revealed to have made a legally ill-advised and personally vicious phone call to LeMond on the eve of LeMond's appearance at Landis' arbitration hearing.
Everyone in the courtroom knew LeMond agreed to testify for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency because he was out to help the agency's case against Landis. Case insiders also knew that the two riders had an acrimonious phone conversation last August, shortly after Landis' positive tests were announced, and assumed LeMond would describe that call in unflattering terms.
But few people were prepared for the broadside LeMond delivered with the simple, modern act of handing his BlackBerry to USADA lawyer Matt Barnett, who placed it on the podium to display the phone number on an overhead projector.
The number shown was one reporters covering the case had entered in their cell phones many times over the past few months as Geoghegan barnstormed the country with his friend Landis, rallying support for Landis and asking fans for contributions to fund his defense.
One can only imagine how donors to the Floyd Fairness Fund felt when they learned about what LeMond said next.
The courtroom was silent and still, except for Landis lawyer Maurice Suh, who whirled toward Geoghegan at the first mention of the phone call and began whispering to him intensely. Geoghegan, a former rider who first befriended Landis when Landis was a teenager, sat with his head bowed and his exposed neck flushed crimson in the row of seats behind the defense table.
LeMond earlier had said that during the August phone call, he confided details of his own childhood sexual abuse to Landis and implored him to admit that he had doped, a confession LeMond said could "save cycling" and Landis' own mental health.
"You were sharing this in an effort to help him?" Barnett asked.
"Yes," LeMond said.
According to LeMond, Geoghegan tried to use that information in a threatening phone call placed at 6:53 p.m. Wednesday night.
"I'm your uncle, and I'll be there tomorrow," LeMond said a then-anonymous man told him, and continued with references to vocabulary best known to pedophiles. LeMond later traced the number using a paid Internet search.
I think Landis is in a very sad situation and I feel sorry for the guy because I don’t accept anything he says as true,” McQuaid said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “This is a guy who has been condemned in court, who has stood up in court and stated that he never saw any doping in cycling. He’s written a book saying he won the Tour de France clean. Where does that leave his credibility? He has an agenda and is obviously out to seek revenge.”