Three days after CTS Senior Coach Kate Gracheck raced at the 2008 Collegiate National Championships, and 6 days after turning 29, Kate was diagnosed with cancer. For two years Kate had been monitoring the size of a growing lymph node on her neck and alerting doctors to its presence. She was reassured that she was too healthy and too young to be concerned. Finally during her annual exam in 2008, a nurse practitioner took her golf-ball sized lymph node seriously and ordered a biopsy of the tissue.
 
Just as Lance Armstrong raced in the 1996 Olympics with cancer, Kate competed in the 2008 Collegiate National Championships with cancer. Kate raced on Sunday and had surgery to remove the lymph node the following Wednesday. Nine days after racing at a National Championship Kate Gracheck was diagnosed with Stage 1A Hodgkins Lymphoma. She had been living with cancer for 2 years at that point.

Kate’s family wanted her to return to California for treatment, but Kate wanted to keep her life as normal as possible. She wanted to continue coaching her athletes, counsel her clients (Kate is a therapist working on her Doctorate in Psychology) and hang out with her friends. So she stayed in Colorado Springs, CO, with the support of family who flew in for her treatments. On October 17th Kate started chemotherapy treatment at the Penrose Cancer Center. She responded well to treatment and after 12 weeks her body was cancer-free.
 
Kate’s success at fighting cancer is undoubtedly linked to her coping strategy throughout treatment. She was very angry at the cancer and took all of her anger out exercising. As a highly successful athlete, coach and scholar, Kate was accustomed to setting goals for herself. She approached treatment similarly and told an Oncology nurse that she was going to win a national championship within a year of her cancer diagnosis. Toward that goal, she remained as active as possible throughout her chemotherapy treatments She climbed The Incline - a 2000-vertical-feet climb in just one mile up and over old railroad ties. The average grade of the incline is 41% with the steepest portion at 68%. This is one of Colorado Springs’ toughest training arenas, where many an Olympian comes to work towards their Gold. Kate was climbing the incline in 42 minutes during chemo, while most “average” individuals don’t even make it to the top in an hour. She was, however, disappointed as she had been climbing The Incline in 32 minutes pre-cancer. In addition to The Incline, she ran the trails through the mountains west of Colorado Springs and she continued to train on her bike. Kate had to keep the intensity low throughout treatment, though, as her lungs were compromised from the chemo and her heart raced with any effort over a recovery pace.
 
Once Kate was discharged from chemo she traveled to California to visit her family. Even though her training during treatment wasn't overly strenuous, Kate saw that she |
was producing higher power outputs on the bike post-chemo than she had one year earlier. Being cancer-free made the lighter training load that much more effective and her higher power outputs post-cancer made her realize how much the cancer had been hindering her progress over the previous seasons. Kate was ready to get back to full-intensity training at that point, but she still had a session of radiation ahead of her.

Despite the rapid progress from diagnosis to remission, Kate’s doctors still recommended radiation treatment. So in January of 2009 Kate underwent 20 days of radiation. The radiation took a lot out of her - she said she felt like she was “hit by a Mack truck.” Her energy levels were very low and she was unable to remain as active as she was during chemo. However, after radiation was over, Kate’s energy levels returned, and in March of 2009 Kate was once again training like the track star she was before cancer, with her sites set on achieving her goal of winning a Stars-and-Stripes jersey within one year of her cancer diagnosis. And since Kate turned 30 during her treatment, she was now eligible to race Masters National Championships.
Beginning with some moderate intensity and low gearing workouts to build her strength and refine her pedaling cadence, Kate grew stronger and more powerful with every passing week. She could only handle intensity every other day, but she was still able to ride 6 days per week, 3 days of intensity and 3 days of endurance/recovery. Each ride was meticulously planned out to prevent her from wasting valuable energy. Her training plan consisted of very focused intensity and recovery blocks, ensuring that Kate never became too tired because she was unable to bounce back from too much overload. Using her energy wisely, she was able to focus on strength work on the bike and then move to higher intensity training just before Masters Nationals.
 
A typical training week for Kate looked like this:
 
Monday- Easy Ride
Tuesday Track Race
Wednesday-Recovery Miles
Thursday- Track Race
Friday- Recovery Miles
Saturday- 4x2k efforts, 3 1 lap standing starts
Sunday- 2 hour Endurance Ride
 
Kate’s gradual buildup in training volume and intensity worked exceedingly well. In the weeks leading up to Masters National Championships, she was riding stronger than she ever had in the five years she’d raced before her cancer diagnosis. Taking another cue from Lance Armstrong, particularly from his recent return to professional cycling after a short retirement, Kate attributes her new-found strength and success (at least in part) to her 6 months of “recovery” after 5 years of racing. While chemotherapy and radiation treatment can hardly be considered recovery, it’s also significant to note that Kate was not pushing her body on the bike the same way she had for the previous five years. Lance Armstrong retired for nearly four years following a 15-year career as a professional cyclist, and the extended mental and physical recovery period served him well during his comeback in 2008-2009. Similarly, Kate’s 6-month hiatus allowed her to fully recover from the accumulation of 5 years of training stress and her 2 years living with cancer. Kate had built up a strong base over the years, and when she was free and clear of cancer and able to handle focused efforts, “it all came together.” During the 2009 US Master’s National Track Championships in Colorado Springs, CO, Kate earned her Stars-and-Stripes jersey. Less than a year after being diagnosed with Stage 1A Hodgkins Lymphoma, Kate Gracheck stood atop the podium as Masters National Points Race Champion in the 30-34 age group, and a Masters National record holder in the team pursuit event.

Perhaps the note she sent to the rest of the CTS Coaching Staff  sums is it up best:
“Most people never have to face cancer, and most people never win a National Championship, and I did both in the same year!” –Kate Gracheck

Chris Carmichael
www.trainright.com

You can follow me at www.twitter.com/trainright

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A lot of people have been asking about the workouts Lance used to prepare for the Tour de France, and especially the time trials. The tricky thing about time trial training is that you need to train at race pace even when you're not in shape to sustain efforts that difficult. In other words, we know that Lance has to be able to ride 45-50 kilometers an hour, sometimes faster, in either an individual or team time trial. But back in February and March he didn't have the power to ride that fast for the duration of a full time trial. So the workouts that I used with Lance earlier this spring - which are the same as what we used to use back when he was winning the Tour - were time trial intervals.

To perform time trial intervals, Lance would get on his time trial bike. It seems like you could perform these on either a road or time trial bike because you're concerned about power output, but it's important to remember that these workouts are also essential for developing the skill and feel necessary to handle the TT bike with confidence at race speeds. So Lance would go out, do a nice warmup and then 4 8-minute intervals that were pretty much all-out. This meant he was holding a power output and speed that was greater than what he would hold for a 60-minute time trial. In essence he was doing "over-speed" intervals, because riding at that intensity forces the body to adapt and develop the power necessary for sustaining long efforts in individual and team time trials.

Since there are a lot of amateur cyclists competing in summer time trial series, here's what I would recommend for you. You can do a very similar workout to Lance's, but I'd back the workload down a bit to 3-4 6-minute intervals. If you know your time trial pace, push yourself to ride 10-15 watts above that intensity, or 5-10 heart beats above your time trial heart rate if you're not using a power meter. In terms of speed, these intervals should be 2-5mph above your time trial pace. Take 6 minutes of easy spinning recovery between intervals.

Chris Carmichael
www.trainright.com
www.twitter.com/trainright
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By Chris Carmichael

 

There is a crucial threshold that every bike racer must reach and exceed in order to be successful. But I’m not talking about a lactate threshold or anything like that; this threshold is harder to define because it’s really a combination of physiological, psychological, and environmental factors. At the same time, every racer who’s broken through what I refer to as the “Competitive Threshold” knows what it is, even if they can’t really describe it.

 

When your fitness is below a given point (relative to your competition) you’re racing to survive and holding on to a slight hope that if you survive long enough you might be able to launch one all-or-nothing bid for victory. But when improve beyond your Competitive Threshold, survival is no longer an issue and a whole new world of opportunities opens up. Instead of fighting for wheels so you don’t get dropped, you’re fighting for wheels based on strategy. Instead of viewing the peloton as a place to find shelter, you start viewing it as a tool you can use to increase your chances of winning. You start acting like a hunter instead of a scavenger.  

 

At the 2009 Amgen Tour of California, there were a handful of athletes on the comeback trail and many more riders who were just starting their season. With the difficult weather conditions and challenging stages, it quickly became evident that many riders had yet to reach their Competitive Threshold this season. But before you slam me and say I’m criticizing riders, let me say that it’s completely normal for a significant portion of the peloton to be using a race for training (it’s only February, after all!), and getting steamrolled by some of the world’s top teams is actually an invaluable experience for the development of stronger domestic programs and younger riders. It’s a hard way to learn, but the key to developing world-class riders is building a series of experiences that will progressively make them wiser and tougher.  

 

The reason I bring up the concept of the Competitive Threshold is that Lance Armstrong’s ability to ride the front of the peloton – not just for moderate pace-setting duties but also for the hard chasing that was frequently necessary in the final hour of stages – was additional proof to me that he’s reached and far exceeded his Competitive Threshold. The Tour of California was challenging for Lance, but he wasn’t riding to survive. He finished seventh overall, within two minutes of Levi Leipheimer while riding as his domestique, and when he needed to be he was on the correct side of every split in the pack during the road stages.

 

In the past few days, though, I’ve received calls and emails asking about Lance’s Stage 5 time trial performance. Should it have been better? Is 14^th place a sign that he’s lost a step in his abilities against the clock? Has his age reduced his capacity for great time trial performances? None of the above. The man hadn’t raced a top-tier professional time trial since July 2005, and he’d been pulling super-domestique duty for the previous four days – through some of the nastiest conditions this side of Belgium. And, as I mentioned before, it’s still February and Levi and others trained specifically to try and win the Tour of California and/or the Stage 5 time trial. Lance’s time trial performance was right where it needed to be at this point in his comeback and this point in the season.

 

Though I didn’t get a chance to travel with the Tour of California, I was there for the time trial stage because I was coaching at the CTS Training Camp in Buellton, the next town over from Solvang. We’ve had a camp at the same time as the Tour of California for the past two years, and we’ve gone to watch the time trial each time. Whatever you’ve heard about the crowds and excitement, multiply it ten-fold and you might begin to understand the scene in Solvang. It was incredible, there were fans packed 10 deep on some sections of the course. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it at a bike race in the US, and I’ve been to the Manayunk Wall in Philly, the home straight of Athens Twilight, Beech Mountain during the Tour du Pont, Brasstown Bald during the Tour de Georgia, and I rode the Coors Classic way back when. Long live the Tour of California.  

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By Dean Golich, 

You know it’s hot when an athlete drinks seven bottles of fluid and still loses two kilograms of bodyweight during a five-hour ride. The oppressive heat and gusting winds made the Tour Down Under a hard way to re-enter the peloton for Lance Armstrong, but he handled the weather and his first top-tier pro race in nearly four years quite well.

After spending close to two weeks training in Hawaii, including some motorpacing with Chris Carmichael on the Queen K Highway and some long climbs outside of Kona, Lance flew to Australia about a week before the TDU started. Chris flew home to Colorado from Hawaii the same day I left Colorado Springs to join Lance in Australia. During the first race of his comeback, we wanted to gather data on Lance’s power and also see how he adapted to being back in the routine of stage racing.

In the week prior to the TDU, Lance continued training long hours in the saddle. The biggest challenge for these rides was the heat, and at one point his SRM file shows a peak of 115 degrees! The reception for Lance was tremendous, even well before the race. He and his Astana teammates had police escorts on training rides and since Lance and the team were so easy to recognize there were people constantly waving out of car windows, houses, buses, etc.

Once the race started, Johan Bruyneel, Sean Yates, myself, and several other athletes and directors who had known or worked with Lance before 2005 all said the same thing: “It’s like he never stopped riding.” That’s not to say that he’s as strong now as he was when he won the 2005 Tour de France. He still has plenty of progress to make before he gets there, but the way he raced his bike in the Tour Down Under wasn’t any different than the way he raced before he retired. He wasn’t hesitant or rusty, he wasn’t timid about sticking his nose in the wind, and he rode smart.

The 2009 Tour Down Under was harder than we originally expected it to be. The days that were likely to be pretty easy turned out to be very windy, and crosswinds shredded the field. Lance rode wisely and had the power to stay near the front, and avoid the crashes and splits, and his power outputs and kilojoules (a measure of the mechanical energy a rider produces as he rides, which by a matter of convenient math turns out to be about equal to the calories burned to produce the work) were as high and sometimes higher than during the stages with more challenging courses. In other words, there were no “easy” days at the TDU where Lance, or anyone, could just sit in the field.

With the TDU being more challenging than expected, it was great to see that Lance not only rode well but actually felt better and stronger as the race progressed. The original idea was for Lance to ride conservatively and just use the race to get re-acquainted with racing and the very fluid dynamics of the peloton, but the conditions made it necessary for him to race the TDU rather than just ride in it. He came away from the race feeling very good about his conditioning, his power numbers are right where they should be, and his form looks very good going into the Tour of California.

Perhaps even more impressive than his performance on the bike was his performance off of it. Since he won his first Tour de France, Lance has been more than just a bike racer. He’s always had more responsibilities (press conferences, visits to cancer centers and hospitals, meetings for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, etc.) than the typical pro cyclist, but watching him go through his day is incredible. I was staying with Lance and his soigneur for the trip, and he is in constant motion. Within 30 minutes of getting back from racing a stage of the TDU, he was showered, dressed, fed, and off to another function. Keeping up with him is a challenge for everyone around Lance, and we weren’t racing!

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To fine-tune his preparation for the Tour Down Under, Lance traveled to Hawaii for some long miles and motorpacing. I'll be out there for the motorpacing, and it will be good to get some high-speed, race-pace hours in his legs before he starts the first stage race of his comeback. Here's the training plan I worked up before he left. It has changed slightly, as training programs always do, but the most important thing for Lance is the progression of block training. You can read more about block training in previous posts, but for now, check out what Lance is doing.

December 29-31---3-day training block
3-4 hours daily @ endurance pace staying below 315watts, climbs at 340-380watts
 
January 1: Recovery ride
 
Jan 2-4----3 day training block
Day 1: 4 hours @ endurance pace staying below 315watts, include 1hr @ Tempo power, 350-380watts, low pedal cadence during Tempo (60-70rpm).
 
Day 2: 4 hours @ endurance pace staying below 315watts, include 2-3 10-minute MuscleTension Intervals @ 45-50rpm, uphill @ 350-400watts with 8-10mins recovery between intervals.
 
Day 3: 4 hours @ endurance pace staying below 315watts, include 1hr @ Tempo power, 350-380watts, low pedal cadence during Tempo (60-70rpm).
 
January 5-6: Recovery rides
 
Jan 6-8----3 day training block
Day 1: 5.5 hrs with 3 climbs of 15-30minutes at 380-420watts, last 60mins behind motor for leg speed.
 
Day 2: 4.5 hours with 2-3climbs late in the ride of 15-30minutes at 380-420watts, last 60mins behind motor for leg speed.
 
Day 3: 4 hours @ endurance pace with 2 climbs of 15-30minutes at 380-420watts, last 60mins behind motor for leg speed.
 
January 9-10—recovery rides, maybe on the TT bike
Day 1: Recovery ride
Day 2: Recovery ride
 
January 11: Possibly an Ironman test on the TT bike??
 
January 12: Depart for Australia?

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By Chris Carmichael

 

Twenty-five watts in two weeks. Lance Armstrong is gaining fitness so fast that his maximum sustainable power output improved 25 watts from an informal test in late November to a test in Austin, Texas a few days after he returned from the Astana team camp in Tenerife, Spain. One of the biggest questions I had going into this comeback was whether Lance’s body would adapt to training the way it used to. Well, the improvements I’m seeing are roughly equal to what I saw before he retired. Neither age nor three years out of professional cycling seem to be slowing him down. In fact, he’s improving so rapidly that he’s ahead of schedule. Initially I thought the short timeline between Lance’s announcement and his return to ProTour competition would make it difficult for him to be in decent shape for racing, but now I’m actually having to back him off a bit so he’s not too fit too early.

 

That doesn’t mean you should expect him to go to the Tour Down Under in Australia and win in dominating fashion. He’s going there to train and while he’s ahead of where I expected him to be right now, he’s still near the beginning of a trajectory that should see him start the Tour de France in optimal condition. He’ll do well in Australia, but keep in mind that the primary purpose of that race is to get back into the groove of elite-level road racing and all the off-the-bike routines that come with it.

 

The biggest impact of his rapid progression has been a constant shifting of his schedule. Originally, we were going to go to Napa, California, a week or two following the Tenerife camp for 7-10 days of big-mileage training. The testing in Austin showed that wasn’t necessary and would have provided too great a training stimulus. So Lance got to stay at home more, which is always a good thing because it means more time with the family and that leads to a happier Lance. Just as with any athlete, the more “normal” Lance’s life is (in terms of the daily balance of kids, training, foundation work, friends, etc.), the better he trains.

 

Over the past few weeks, Lance has been doing more back-to-back volume, meaning he’s been doing three-day blocks of 4-, 5-, and 6-hour rides. The intensity is steady and reasonable, right now he’s averaging between 200-230 watts for the duration of those rides. The idea behind the three-day training blocks is to build the kind of endurance needed to compete in stage races. It’s one thing to ride three long days in a week, but separate them by an easy recovery rides or days off. It’s another to ride four hours one day, recover overnight and then go out and put in five hours at the same intensity the next day, and the next. Physically, these blocks induce a lot of training load (more than you could reasonably accumulate in one ride), which in turn leads to adaptations that improve the ways working muscles utilize fuel. Psychologically they help riders get into the routines that will sustain them through stage races: good eating habits, proper recovery techniques, going to sleep early, etc.

 

Lance’s next trip will be a training camp in Kona, Hawaii. We’re going out there so Lance can continue putting in the miles, and I’m considering putting him behind the motor for some motorpacing as well. With the Tour Down Under coming up quickly, a few hours of race-pace training behind the motor certainly wouldn’t hurt… well, at least it won’t hurt for me.

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By Dean Golich

 

Since Chris Carmichael and the folks at Livestrong.com gave me the opportunity to contribute to the Train Right Blog, I suppose the best thing to do is introduce myself. My name is Dean Golich and I’m a Premier Coach and sports scientist for Carmichael Training Systems. I’ve known Lance Armstrong since the early 1990s when I was working as a sports scientist for Chris at USA Cycling, and at various times throughout Lance’s career I’ve worked with Chris to apply the latest research in sports science and technology to Lance’s training. Last month I was part of the crew that went to the Low Speed Wind Tunnel in San Diego and the velodrome at the ADT Event Center in Los Angeles (in the velodrome photos, I’m the guy in the red hat behind the computer).

 

Chris and I are on our way to Austin, Texas, to spend a few days monitoring and evaluating Lance’s current training. He just returned from the Astana team’s training camp in Tenerife, Spain, and after a few days to recover and get over the jet lag, we should be able to get a clear picture of his current fitness. Initial data from Tenerife, along with anecdotal evidence and comments from Johan, Lance, and his teammates, suggest his aerobic fitness and sustainable power outputs are just about where they should be for right now.

 

One of the widely-read comments from Tenerife was that Lance was one of the top three riders on the team in terms of fitness. That statement can be viewed in two ways. The doubter or cynic would point out that Lance is likely more fit than some of his teammates because their competitive seasons ended more than month ago and they’ve been taking it easy. By their logic, Lance isn’t necessarily very fit; the rest of the team is just relatively unfit.

 

The other way to look at Lance’s performance, relative to his teammates, is that he’s made a lot of progress since August. Yes, he’s been doing more extensive training than his teammates have over the past 8 weeks, but there was a giant gap between Lance’s fitness and everyone else’s in mid-July and August. Lance was fit last summer, but he wouldn’t have been able to match Astana’s top riders on a sustained climb, especially not at the end of a week-long training camp. Between August and December, Lance has closed a big fitness gap and his sustainable power output is now comparable to several of his teammates. His teammates may be 10% or more below their peak race power outputs right now, but being roughly equal to his teammates now is impressive, and bodes well for progress we expect to see in the months to come.

 

Lance’s performance in Tenerife was encouraging, but there’s more work to be done. He has the power to stay with top riders for a sustained climb, but he needs greater endurance in order to be able to perform at his best climb after climb and day after day. Fortunately, there’s plenty of time between now and the Tour Down Under, and of course the race will be an important endurance-builder as well.

 Added by Chris: When Dean introduced himself, he left out the part about being one of the top endurance coaches in the world. He coached 2001 Mountain Bike World Champion Alison Dunlap and 2000 Time Trial World Champion Mari Holden for almost their entire careers, and he currently coaches NASCAR driver Carl Edwards – who finished second in both the Sprint and Nationwide points series this year. He’s also coach to Katerina Nash, who just won the overall title at the US Grand Prix of Cyclocross last weekend, and has worked at one time or another with many of the top road and mountain bike athletes in the US. read more

By Chris Carmichael 

Following the excitement of Lance announcing his comeback and the subsequent flurry of press conferences and all manner of races in October, the main comeback event for November was the aerodynamic testing we did in southern California.

 

Prior to getting into the wind tunnel in San Diego, Lance raced the Tour de Greune individual and team time trials in Texas. During the individual time trial he rode a position he and Steve Hed had been working on, and though it looked fast Lance discovered he had trouble maintaining his power output. Of course, that was partly due to a calibration problem with his SRM – it was reading about 100 watts low – which prompted Lance to ride at what we estimate to be close to 500 watts for the first five minutes of the race. He clearly paid for that effort later in the event, but even accounting for the inaccurate numbers, after 15 years as a professional cyclist Lance was absolutely certain the new position prevented him from generating maximum power.

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