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the time crunched cyclist - race-winning fitness in 6 hours a week. chris carmichael and jim rutberg. powered by strava. velopress softback 430pp illus. $21.95 (£19.99)

the time crunched cyclist - carmichael/rutberg

i am fortunate in that i am of slim build and of a disposition that means i rarely eat the sort of stuff that's considered less than favourable, should one wish to acquire a honed physique. i stopped eating sweets when i was about nine years old, became a vegetarian at around 14, i don't much care for chocolate and i have no liking for any form of alcoholic beverages. the latter is often remarked on as being somewhat of a humorous situation considering i'm now surrounded by nine single-malt distilleries with a tenth under construction, but a little bit of idiosyncracy never went amiss.

thus, even in my advanced years i can comfortably fit into a medium-sized jersey from pretty much every cycling apparel purveyor on the planet and small sized bibs or tights. dieting is something i view from afar but in which i have never participated. i tell you this not as a form of conceit but as a prelude to admitting that i could hardly be considered a poster boy for any kind of fitness regime. yes, i can ride my bike all day if necessary, but i will most likely be at the cow's tail when any form of sprinting is taking place up front. were srm kind enough to send a power meter in my direction, i doubt that its liquid crystal display would be much troubled in the course of its duties.

the short answer to this apparent conundrum is a lack of both time and application. thewashingmachinepost, despite numerous technological advances, still does not write itself and with a predilection for regular percussing of an evening, there are dotted quavers and accented sixteenth notes to be practiced, to say nothing of the day job. would that there were more hours in the day, but then i'm sure that's a wish that pertains to a great deal more individuals than yours truly.

it would appear, therefore, that i am the very person messrs. carmichael and rutberg had in mind when they put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard and offered their collective wisdom on just what i ought to do in order to leave my fellow riders trailing in my wake at the bruichladdich sprint. however, what i omitted to mention in the introduction was my almost pathological lack of any organisational abilities. and while reading the time crunched cyclist, if nothing else, it appeared that in order to make the best use of those six hours, a modicum of organisation would be a pre-requisite.

foiled at the first hurdle, it would seem.

however, it would also be necessary, i tend to think, to put a great deal of commitment into the act of training, with a view to observing ideal results in the quest for victory. this would be undoubtedly true whether your cycling took you offroad, onroad or in direct contravention of rule #42. sadly, i am particularly lacking in that ability too, so perhaps mr carmichael and mr rutberg were not thinking of me after all?

in keeping with many training manuals and, in my experience, those emanating from the carmichael training system, the crunching of time would be far more effective if the first 116 pages did not insist on explaining concepts such as the new paradigm for endurance training, or measuring intensity in the information age. i would not for a moment dispute that the contents of those chapters are a necessary part of race-winning fitness, but i would be a tad more forgiving if the authors had found a means of incorporating those into the training programmes themselves.

there seems a perceivable danger of those with little spare time skimming the opening chapters and heading straight to the nitty-gritty beginning on page 117. however, it would be unfair to accuse the authors of unnecessary prevarication, when they at least admit as much in the introduction...

"This is a book for people who lead busy lives, people who wake up early and hit the ground running, juggle one or more jobs while raising one or more kids. Time is in short supply, and the whole point of this program is to get more from less. So why is this book so thick?"

i may be alone in admitting to this, but not only do i have no real interest in reading "The end product of all three systems is ATP, which releases energy when one of its three phosphate bonds is broken.", but i don't really know what that means. and even if i did, i'm not sure it would change the way i ride my bicycle. of course, i could be oh so very wrong. but then as the book progressed, i realised even more that i am ill-suited to adopting the way of the six hours.

"Precision comes from having detailed, real-time performance data you can use to monitor, evaluate, and adjust your training. And by far the best piece of equipment for providing that information is a power meter, which measures the true amount of work you produce as you ride."

i am famous in my own living room for having a distinct aversion to numbers; i truly cannot see me sitting at my laptop of an evening, disseminating the data generated by the day's ride. and in case you were wondering when the powered by... label on the cover would make itself known, the introduction to power meters brings us very close. after a dense few pages explaining where and why kilojoules enter the fray, the continued effectiveness of using a heart-rate monitor and how, if all else fails, to make use of the 'perceived rate of exertion' paradigm as opposed to spending substantial amounts on bike-mounted data gatherers, the narrative culminates with a sub-chapter entitled "Using Strava for Data Analysis".

at that point, i'm afraid i lost the will to live.

however, lest you perceive the story so far as a character asassination, nothing could be further from the truth. i do not consider myself as the centre of the cycling fitness universe; in fact, i have narcissistically phrased the foregoing in order to make it plain that The Time Crunched Cyclist is probably the very book you've been looking for, precisely because it doesn't suit me at all. aside from stringing the reader along until page 117, before unravelling that for which you came, carmichael and rutberg would appear to be pretty much right on the money. and considering strava can be either free or available in the pro version for an economical annual fee, it truly is ideally placed to assist the trainee in analysing their progress.

the training program(me)s cover criterium, road race and cyclocross along with centuries, gran fondos, gravel racing, endurance mtb and even one for commuters, all of which are laid out in logical fashion with tables showing the daily requirements of each. those are followed up by a section dealing with weight loss, nutrition, hydration and something that most uk readers could ignore, heat-stress management.

assuming you adopt the way of the six hours and find yourself in possession of unrivalled fitness, the authors end the programme by explaining how to supplement the training schedules with blocks of endurance training and subsequently making the most of that which has now been achieved. there is a great deal of information to be absorbed here and it would ill-behove the fitness aspirant to treat it with the insincerity i affected at the beginning of this review. velopress are to be congratulated on having commissioned such a manual and to have made it available at such an attractive price.

add to this a more than comprehensive reference and recommended reading section followed by an excellent index, the rest, as they say, is up to you.

velopress publications are distributed in the uk by cordee books. cordee books | velopress.com

tuesday 4 july 2017

twmp ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................