When I put a training plan together for myself or a student, I’ve gotta’ work backwards. Where do we want to end up, and then back it up to where we are, and the rest will fill in by measured and deliberate progression. As an endurance rider, and someone who helps people do their first epic ride or century, we have the luxury of focusing on a slow periodized program from start to finish with more and more time in the saddle.

However, this total event is only about 50 miles in length, with 3 food breaks. Endurance is not what I need to train for. My focus needs to be on producing the required power for each grade of hill I will encounter, sustaining heart rates above threshold for varying amounts of time, and keeping the legs from seizing up in the process.

Consequently, instead of a 6 day a week riding schedule with rides between 1 and 3 hours long, I’ll be training 3 to 4 days per week where all but one of those days each week will be fairly intense; very little time in Zone 1 & 2, about 50% in Zone 4, and a progressive increase of time above threshold. In most cases, I will want a day off or active recovery after each day of training.

I will be focusing on improving lactate buffering, and increasing my threshold. Starting my “pre-training” routine a couple weeks ago, I’ve already begun to feel an increase in my threshold, but I will do a New Leaf metabolic test this week to establish a true baseline.

While at first blush this doesn’t seem like a lot of training, the intensity creates a significant challenge. In fact, I’ve averaged over 1000 points per week just for the pre-training weeks. So, I’ll be using 1150 training load points as my starting baseline, and shoot for a 5% increase each week to keep the body honest. This will get to about 1800 points at the week I will begin to taper. I need to get fitter, stronger and more tolerant of the inevitable pain, and this seems to be the right approach.

So here’s the outline of the training plan:

3 days intense training: 2 days outside, 1 day inside
1 day of active recovery riding inside
1150 starting points, and % splits: Zones 1: 0%, 2:10%, 3:30%, 4:50%, 5:10%
Ending targets 1800 points, 20% in Zone 5, Threshold increase of 10 – 15 BPM

Way back in January when our annual Winter Training Program kicked off, each participant was required to have a goal to train for. Goals ranged from doing a 50 mile charity ride to having 2 separate peaks during the race season. For me however, having just finished filming the Pittsburgh Dirty Dozen as a charity project for Livestrong, and watching some of the strongest riders I know struggle just to finish, that event seemed to be the logical choice. So I said it, I would train to complete – NOT COMPETE – in the Pittsburgh Dirty Dozen Race.

Starting this weekend, September 4th, I will have exactly 12 weeks to prepare for The Pittsburgh Dirty Dozen. I’m going to post my training plan (both Heart Zones® as well as Power Training), and pre-ride schedule on this blog for others in the Pittsburgh area who would like to train along with me. The training plan will provide some structure to follow even though we will train in different areas. Every 2 weeks I will take on at least 2 (or more) of the 13 climbs as part of the overall training plan as well. Exact times and dates will also be posted here so riders who want to share the pain can join me if they like.

Point of fact is: this IS a race. Point of reality is: only about 10 to 15 of the 180 riders that rode last year were strong enough to garner any points at all. The format of this “race” is that the entire field is together at the bottom of every hill, and then the organizer, Danny Chew blows the whistle (by the way, someone needs to buy him a new whistle this year, it was sketchy at best last year), and the first 5 riders to the top get points.

While a few supermen and wonder women surge to the top like they have hidden motors in their bikes, the rest of the field climb at varying speeds, with an inevitable group on every hill pushing their way if they can’t maintain at least 4 to 5 mph. In surveying the group last year, it was clear that a lot of the field were experienced amateur racers, and that this was not bringing out the average casual rider. So when I say people were pushing, and there are always people pushing, it does not mean they were weak or inexperienced riders.

The graphic above is from the training DVD we created (Global Ride Productions) from last year’s race. It is slated to be released in 2 to 3 weeks, just in time to mix up some great indoor cycling with the outdoor application. Stay tuned, as I will endeavor to keep this updated once per week as we head towards this epic event.

So, I flew to New York to discover it for myself – the only reasonable way to get the straight poop right? While their numbers do not really measure the metrics we understand as Power in the cycling world, they have accomplished an amazing feat – they’ve created training tools they retrofit to older Red Knob bikes! I started out quite skeptical, but ended up quite impressed. Come follow this journey.

Their little display that is attached to the side of the flywheel does indeed say “Power”, and there is a number that displays, but it is not Power in Watts as you and I (and anyone interested in real cycling power) currently understand it. It is an attempt to measure the combination of resistance applied from the red tension knob, and the estimated cadence or RPM of the flywheel, and report on that combination. First of all, yes, power in its simplest terms is a mathematical function of RPM and torque or force applied, in this case to the flywheel. So, it’s good that it is this combination they focused on. However, the question is how are they measuring these two critical components, and what is the result. Let’s break it down.

Torque
Their display spells it “Torq” for branding purposes I’m sure. This number simply reflects how much resistance you are putting on the fly wheel. I suspect they have something that is measuring the number of turns of the red knob, or somehow measuring the amount of brake put on the flywheel. As you turn the red knob, you see the power go up – even if you are not pedaling the bike. Hence, it clearly is not power. In fact, when I came into the empty cycling room early, each bike had a different power number showing on their custom display. I was ready to call the ghost busters, but instead I asked the Flywheel attendant what it meant, and he told me it was simply how much the red knob was turned or how much resistance the rider last used. While they could have called it “gear” or “resistance level”, I guess it was more chic to call it “torq”… hey, it’s NY city.

RPM
The “measured” RPM however is another story. I saw what looked like a magnet on the side of the flywheel (but I’m not sure it was), so I hoped that they were measuring this much like outdoor bikes measure RPM – with the circumference of the wheel and the number of times the magnet gets passed over. However, that may not be the case, since the numbers seemed a bit low to what my body was telling me. After having a cadence meter on my outdoor bike for 6 years, and teaching with RPM on my indoor stationary bikes for 3+ years, I am pretty in tune with my spinning speed. So I did some manual validation tests:

First, I established a steady number on their meter of 60 RPM, with a steady, smooth pedal stroke. The number held pretty consistent, never varying more than 1 RPM more or less. Once it was steady, I counted the number of revolutions (each time the knee comes up, or the foot hits the bottom of the pedal stroke can easily account for the number of pedaling revolutions), for 10 seconds (using a stop watch) and multiplying the number of revolutions by 6, giving me the RPM or Revolutions Per Minute. I also counted them for 15 seconds, and multiplied by 4 – just to vary the method a bit and see if there would be variations. While the two measurement periods (10 and 15 seconds) did not produce differences, it was difficult to get exact counts at the higher pedal rates. At 60 RPM I was a consistent 10 RPM higher in my manual test than what was showing on the meter. However, when I tested it at a steady 80 RPM those numbers seemed to produce estimates 15 to 25 RPM higher.

Consequently the cadence reported is low by a minimum of 10 RPM and a maximum of 25 RPM. This variation is likely due to this testing in a “manual” way without a mechanical device, but I can assure you, those stated RPM are definitely too low. My gut tells me that if they were validated in a controlled environment with mechanical devices, they would average about 15 RPM or more too LOW.

OK, so we have a torque number that we know is a measure of resistance, and we have an RPM reading that we know is low, but likely consistently so. The big question is where does the number under the heading of “Power” come from?

Power
I had to slow my RPM down to as little as 60 to test the following theory, but any of you who go to FlyWheel can test this for yourself and tell me if you agree or not. As I pedaled at 60 RPM, and set my “torque” or resistance knob to a torq of 15, I saw the power number of 9 come up. So I increased my RPM to 70, and I saw power numbers jumping between 10 and 11. So I increased my torq to 20 and dropped my cadence back to 60, and I saw a power number of 12. Are you beginning to see the pattern? It is simply the multiplication of torq and RPM divided by 100: (torq X RPM) / 100. I further tested this theory by watching and pausing the Channel 7 report they so conveniently supplied on their website. Each combination of torq and rpm shown on the TorqBoard (if you pause each number combination) can be proved out by this formula, But reader beware – this is not cycling power by any stretch – it is simply a number.

Total Power
This is the number that intrigued me the most. What in the world is total power? It’s sort of like asking, how many RPM did you do today. It doesn’t even make sense. But here’s the very cool part. While I did not take the time to figure out their formula on this one (I assume it adds the average power for each minute on a cumulative basis), I found this number to be completely captivating and motivating. WOW, was this a surprise! Here I am, looking down my nose at a completely false set of numbers in absolutely every category and indicator, and yet, the weirdest one of all; Total Power, was driving me on… pushing me to get to 400, then to 450 before the cool down, then I was bummed that I couldn’t hit 500 before the end of class. What just happened there!?!?

Bad Data Is Better Than No Data
At first blush, this heading may seem, well, sacrilegious… maybe even dangerous. Couldn’t bad data lead to terrible conclusions and even worse decisions? In life yes, but when it comes to Indoor Cycling the answer is maybe not.

At the end of the class, it was clear to me what Flywheel had done. They created a way to put tools on the bike, that measure your effort, hopefully in a consistent way. Forget about the purity of each measurement – the fact remains, as I’ve stated in previous blog posts; to wit – if you can measure it, you can improve it. Having some mechanism to measure how I’m doing today, I can subsequently measure how I’m doing next week, and next month, and see if I’m getting stronger, weaker, better or worse. Best of all though, in the moment, it provides some tools for the instructor and immediate feedback for the student. As weird as this sounds coming out of my own mouth… or keyboard… it’s all good!

Rock On Flywheel!
While I won’t even comment on the custom weight holders attached to each bike, and my disdain for contraindicated movements and activities on the bike, I must commend Flywheel for bringing tools into the Indoor Cycling environment – and doing it by retrofitting older bikes. If you can get by all the numbers being mislabeled, inaccurate and in some cases just silly, you may just find yourself working harder than you thought possible, just to get to that next level. Well done Flywheel, keep on flying!

Adding my race schedule to the extensive winter training and teaching schedule kept me enjoying life on two wheels like never before. For almost three years I was in the best shape of my life, and both race results and training rides were at their peak. Then it happened… the combination of getting sick in the middle of winter training this year and deciding to spend 100% of my time building a new Indoor Cycling franchise took my training to an all time low. Basically, I returned to what I did before I met Sally Edwards and the Keiser m3… I just rode. As I saw my abilities decline, I fell into an old way of thinking; to wit… I better ride more, I’m starting to get worse out here.

This is what I and most of my riding buddies did to “get better” before Cycling Fusion. We just rode more, or did more climbing. Unfortunately, it never really translated into very big improvements, yet it was all we could think of. So guess what happened. Past patterns translated into past results – no significant improvements and a return to pre-Heart Zones®, pre-Power training levels. I have a saying I stress to my students and team members. If you train right, the results will be easily seen and felt – you will either go faster, or suffer less. My riding in France… let me start that again. My attempting to ride in France for Global Ride (see pained rider in photo) was the event that forced me to admit the truth: I’m neither going faster, nor suffering less, even when I go slow… basically, I just suck right now.

For a while, I tried to explain it (translate blame it) away on a variety of situational factors. Truth be told, I just stopped training. Training does indeeed take hard work, and committment. You can’t cheat your training and hope everything will turn out alright, like some kind of workout fairy will sprinkle performance dust on you while you sleep at night. It’s simple… start training again, or stop crying in your beer. The fact is, I’m going to suffer in the hills, and keep getting dropped by my buddies until I decide to start working for it again. Argh… I hate starting over like this, but this stuff works in both directions – conditioning or DEconditioning. The choice lies before me.

We need to crank this concept up and spread the cycling love! What better place to start than with the day to day leaders; the people who make this thing happen every hour of every day in some corner of the world. Right now, as you read this blog, someone is leading a Spinning® or Indoor Cycling class somewhere in the world. These are the men and women who are in positions to impact the lives of every person who fills a bike seat. They are in a position to either intimidate or embrace, patronize or educate, annoy or inspire, fill a time slot or create an event. If you’ve traveled and taken classes in numerous facilities, you know these dichotomies are not “extremes” as much as they are unfortunate realities of the variation that currently exists.

At the end of the day, it’s not the program, the gym, the bikes, or even the music… it’s the leaders at the front of the class that make the biggest impact. These are our Pied Pipers, poised to take us wherever they want to go… we can only hope that it’s a place we all want to visit again, tell our friends about, and see translated into improved fitness, and skill levels.

So rather than focus on what’s wrong and how to fix it, let’s celebrate what is right and let’s paint the picture for how good this thing can really be when the right leader is at the head of the pack. Cycling Fusion is consequently on a mission to find the best of the best, and have them begin to set the standard for what indoor instruction should be. Regardless of what program or certification they represent, which club they come from, or whose bike they ride on. Let’s celebrate the individuals that do indeed embrace, educate, inspire and create an event every time they mount their bike and turn on the mic.

To that end, Cycling Fusion has created this contest to identify the Top 10 Spinning® or Indoor Cycling Instructors; first in the U.S. and then Internationally. I urge you if you are one of these instructors (or if you know one) to lock arms with us and others across the globe to change the face of Spinning or Indoor Cycling forever.

My buddy John Magowan from ICI/PRO has joined me in this quest, but we are only 2 voices out there. We need your help! Click here to go directly to our web sub-site dedicated to taking contestant applications and sample videos. We can do it!!

Rather than blather on, I’ll simply describe how we arrived at these numbers, and define each of the metrics that we tracked throughout the sessions. Our methods were as scientific as is possible outside of a university setting. We required everyone to do a New Leaf metabolic test (measuring fat/carb burn rates, VO2, Threshold, Heart Zones, etc) one to two weeks before Winter Training began on January 2nd. We also used the first 2 weeks to measure everyone’s baseline power numbers.  Having the Keiser M3 to work with was the absolute key component of tracking and improving our progress for improving Power.  From there, we kept track of these various metrics over the next 16 weeks of training, culminating with a post New Leaf test.

The percentages in the table images represent the amount of improvements each rider has achieved from the beginning of the year to about the middle of April – setting each one up for the cycling season of their lives. I graded anyone with cumulative improvements over 100% with an A, over 200% an A+, and one individual (our most improved rider) had a total of over 300% gain across multiple metrics. The highest degree of improvement in each category are highlighted by a pink cell, showing while they’ve all had huge gains, each person responds differently to training, and thus they vary by which aspect of their riding and fitness improved the most.

Training Load: These are measured in Heart Zones® training load points. Each week riders were required to increase their load by 5%

Threshold: This is their measured heart rate where the body shifts its use of fat in the aerobic energy production system to carbs (actually, glycogen) in their “anaerobic” system. This is also their Lactate threshold, and team members were given lactate tests to double confirm these threshold values.

VO2 Max: The maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in to produce energy

Sustainable Power: The MSP (Maximum Sustainable Power) measured in Watts, for 20 minutes (all tests were done twice and averaged, with 5 min of rest between efforts)

Climbing Power (5 min): The MSP for the Climbing Power Zone. It represents power output for 5 minutes. Three efforts were averaged for each of these.

Climbing Power (3 min): Same as 5 min, only at higher power levels, for 3 minutes of power generation instead of 5.

Explosive Power: This is the MSP for the Explosive Power Zone – which is 1 minute power. Three efforts were averaged.

Pocket Power: During the New Leaf tests, we manually record their power numbers each minute of the test. The power each rider generates while they are within 15 beats of their threshold is their “Power Pocket”. This is similar to Sustainable Power in that it represents a hard effort that should be able to continue for very long rides.

Watts per BPM: This is an efficiency rating. Every Watt of power you produce is at some physiological cost. The heart rate is the easiest way to measure that price you are paying. Hence, the fewer heart beats that you require to produce the same Watts, or the more Watts you can produce with the same BPM (Beats Per Minute), the more efficient you are.

Burn Rate Change %: New Leaf measures how many calories you are burning in each heart zone. As you train your metabolism, the intention is to have your body learn to burn more fat, more often, and for longer periods of time. This preserves your glycogen for harder efforts, and makes you much more efficient at producing energy, especially over longer rides.

Weight: Not everyone attempted to lose weight, but even if that was not the goal, a lighter rider should be able to produce more Watts/Lb, thus becoming stronger and faster.

Another way to look at it in turns of your overall training plan, is that it is time to move into the “specificity” portion of your training. If you are just beginning riding outside, or if you are a veteran that still races, the mission is the same – start practicing the skills you need, in the environment you intend on riding or competing in.

It goes without saying that there are significant differences in equipment, environment, clothing, fueling, etc that you must begin to account for when riding outside. If you are planning on anything over 30 miles or so, you need to begin experimenting with the right combinations of all the above… to get it “dialed in” so that when you are cranking out the miles, you are comfortable on the bike. The indoor cycling training will have prepared your heart and cardiovascular system if you’ve followed good Heart Zones® principles. If you’ve been working out on a Keiser m3 or other bike with power, your legs and power should be close enough to handle most of the climbs. However, your butt has probably not had more than 2 hrs in the saddle indoors. You will need more saddle time for those longer rides, and the impact on your back, neck and shoulders also can not be underestimated. You need road or trail time to get the body accustomed to the small adjustments it will make, including unconscious acts of balance and stability, as you ride. In other words, your body needs to learn the roads and trails again now that you’ve prepared your fitness to handle it.

This does NOT mean abandoning indoor cycling. You still can’t find a more efficient place to work on measuring and improving power, and it is vital to do at least 1 steady state Heart Zones workout each week to keep the cardio system in tune. The difference now, is that you will do longer steady states in higher zones, and the power workouts will be more precise too – in other words, you will workout for shorter periods indoors, but they will be much more intense, giving you the biggest bang for your buck, or shall we say the maximum movement for your minute.

Unfortunately, they have missed more than the point. If you have read our Cycling Fusion Manifesto, and subscribe to this blog, you already know how much fun riding indoors can be. This alone is a good enough reason to give indoor cycling a second look if you live in a climate that locks you out of riding outside for months on end. However, it’s the performance improvements that are the real draw of indoor cycling. There a number of cycling workouts that are nearly impossible to accomplish outside. This applies to both Heart Zone® centric workouts as well as Power workouts. Many of these workouts are designed to accomplish some of the coveted objectives of higher VO2, greater power, and an elevated threshold.

Here are a few excerpts from some diehard outdoor cyclists who are just discovering for themselves that Indoor Cycling may be the key to their next performance jump:

UK Rider
“…this started me wondering whether there is an argument for doing roller sessions even when you could ride outdoors. The problem with riding outdoors, certainly around here, is that you are often prevented from applying power for various reasons. There’s traffic lights, roundabouts, junctions, cars blocking you, downhills with tight bends etc. Then there’s also uphill parts where it is almost impossible not to go anaerobic. I could post some pictures of graphs of power distribution and quadrant analysis, but I’m sure you get the idea – my power output is much more variable outdoors, so to hit the same average power as I would on the rollers, I actually end up spending a lot of time at much lower power output and also quite a bit of time at higher power output to pull the average back up to where I want it to be.”

USA Rider
“I took 30 seconds off of my 10 mile TT PR last year and was putting out crazy watts compared to the previous year.  In road races I felt like I had an enormous depth of strength and pretty much went on a reign of terror during the spring and won a lot of races. Interestingly enough though as the time changed and I spent more time outdoors I had a smaller amount of total quality time on the bike per week than I had during the winter.  Of course I was racing and doing more threshold, VO2 max work than during the winter, but in retrospect I felt like my fitness went down during the summer.  In retrospect, if I could I would have sent the April version of me to Nationals in July.  I wasn’t bad in July, but I was better in April.”

UK Rider
“One of my points, though, is that outdoor training can be even worse than this, in that interrupting the time spent at the target power with time spent at a much lower power, might have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the training. Accumulating 60 mins of tempo over 3 hours as 5 mins tempo, then 10 mins AR (Active Recovery), then 5 mins tempo, 10 mins AR etc, may not have the same training benefit as a continuous 60 mins of tempo, on top of the inefficient use of time.”

However, all of this does come with a catch of sorts. This caveat pertains specifically to any cyclist who wants to improve their performance outside. If you are content to stay inside and ride, this is only an issue if you are pushing for the next level of fitness, or perhaps cross training for another sport. But for those that enjoy riding in both venues, this is vital to understand. Without a power indicator on your indoor bike, my current feeling is that you are almost riding blind. This may seem a bit harsh or extreme, but I’ve now cycled with a number of Indoor-Only instructors who have asked me to take them outside and give it a try. While they do have to get used the equipment, shifting and the sport in general, they typically lack the ability to climb real hills. The lack of an indicator for tension or power creates an almost artificial ceiling, where it requires a great deal of personal conviction to keep reaching for the next level and making that simulated road that much steeper.

Let’s hope that soon this will be a non-issue, as old bikes get replaced with new ones like the Keiser M3 and other indoor bikes with Power. Members, instructors and indoor cycling advocates of all kinds all need to let their voices be heard if this trend is to take hold and sweep across the nation.

Rather than give you my biased opinion of how good indoor training can be for your outdoor game, I’ll let the captain of our men’s racing team tell you in his words, and then I’ll discuss two midpoint New Leaf metabolic test results with you, one of which appears at the top of this post. Let the facts speak for themselves:

From Chris:
“Alright, I’ll be the 1st to say that I did not know what results to expect when we started the training plan this year.  I had my doubts that anything would be different in my performance once I hit the road.
 
Well, Sunday I finally got out to play for a bit.  I had 2 goals as I left the house:  stay under threshold and don’t wreck(if I did I would have had to hear “I told you so” from the estrogen based life form).
I achieved both goals as I expected, but what I did not expect was how I would feel.
 
It’s February and I felt like it was May.  The legs feel great and the motor to push them is huge. I stayed away from the usual low lying flats due to major snow melt runoff and headed away from the river.  Up.  Who doesn’t love to climb!

Now the climbing legs are not quite there yet, but the base building we have been doing showed.  Even while climbing I felt like I had more if I wanted it, but could then hear Gene yelling to stay disciplined and stick to the plan.
Even the last ½ mile climb to my house up the 10%+ grade of Logans Ferry I was pushing my usual 10mph speed well below threshold.  I pulled in the driveway feeling great. I can safely say my 1st climb of the year up that hill has never felt like that.  I wanted to go back down and do it again.
 
The training is working.  We all need to stay disciplined and stick to the plan.  The results will come.”

Fat Burning & VO2
Part of the requirements for our Winter Training program was to be tested with the New Leaf Metabolic system to establish our baselines. Our 1st goal then was to actually train our metabolism to burn more fat, and to burn it loner. Our 2nd goal was to increase our VO2 max – even before we begin the hard VO2 work. I’ve seen posts on various sites saying you can’t do that; train your metabolism and VO2. I think these posts are mainly done by those that have never been able to get definitive results in their own training plans, because the tools now clearly exist to validate that this is indeed very possible.

The two graphs here are for Nina – the captain of our women’s racing team – any myself. You will see a white line on both charts that shows where the 50% fat utilization is. What stands out is that most of the graph (and thus fat burning) is below the graph when we started the program, and now we are well above the line half way through. That is the burning more fat part.

Secondly, look at the shape of the graph. The deep diving of the first graphs indicate that our bodies were forced to burn glycogen even early in zone 4, where as now we are holding on to our fat burning machines longer, well into Heart Zone 4 before we have to tap our glycogen stores. This is good stuff!

In both manners, Nina’s results are better than mine – she is burning fat more often above 50%, and she is holding on to it longer in Zone 4. Last year she was also able to train with fewer training load points than I did, and still performed at a higher level in Italy. This may be partially due to age (I’m an old fart), but even so, it is a great example of our respective “Response to Training”. This is a training principle that can not be denied. Everyone will respond to training according to a sort of genetically determined response rate. Each person in our 16 week training plan will gain a different amount of benefit based on this individual Response to Training.

Finally, Nina’s VO2 increased 3 points, and mine increased 2 points. Our stated goal for the entire 16 weeks is 5 points for everyone. We are both well on our way there.

To my surprise, we not only had serious cyclists come out (those I expected), but we also had casual recreational riders, and even some who only ride indoors – self called “spinners” who joined us to watch Bicycle Dreams. With such a varied group, I gave everyone permission to leave whenever they (or their cheeky friends) decided they had enough. Since most of our classes are under an hour, I did not expect to get more than half to stay through to the end. Well, this movie was so compelling and emotionally engaging, not a single person left, nor stopped their pedals till it was completely over. I was amazed. That was the inspiring effect this film had on every single person there.

I’ve been interested in the RAAM for a number of years. I even copyrighted an idea I had for a reality TV story where I was going to take 8 people who never rode a bike, and train them to do this as a team… (I ultimately never got any backers). So I went into watching this with a bit of background already established. However, no matter how much you read about RAAM, or how many youtube videos you watch about it, you will probably never get the feeling of doing it like Bicycle Dreams delivered (unless you actually do it yourself).

The producers of Bicycle Dreams provided a tremendous mix of the highs and lows of this incredible race. Even as I type the word “race”, it seems almost silly to call it that. This is so different than any type of race that anyone has ever seen or participated in. RAAM is more like an exploration of in-human endurance, tenacity, desire, sleep deprivation, pain tolerance, and physical assault and abuse of every kind. Yes, believe it or not, people voluntarily do this every year.

I love to ride my bike. I love this country. I want to see this entire country on my bike, from coast to coast… in about 2 or 3 months time though. Doing it in 10 days or less is an accomplishment so monumental, it begs the question – “Who are these people!?!” This is also what this film does so well; showing you just the kind of individuals that decide to ride RAAM solo. They are not professional cyclists and athletes, but yes, they all have cycling backgrounds and extensive experience riding. It is however, qualities much beyond that which separate them from you and me.

If you are reading this blog, you either ride inside or outdoors, or both. Mark my words, this movie will leave an impression on you that you will never forget, and if you are like me, you’ll find it worth watching multiple times. In my case, I plan to make it the kick off film for Winter Training from now on. Whatever pain we put ourselves through to prepare for the upcoming season, it will never come close to what these gladiators do.

One word of caution though. You may never be comfortable complaining about any aspect of your biking again. As the saying goes, don’t sweat the small stuff… and compared to RAAM, it’s all small stuff.