Dean’s Hour Record Attempt, Part 2. Equipment & Training
Only I could need a second article to talk about riding a bike in circles for an hour. If you missed part one summarizing my hour record attempt, it can be found here. In part two, I’ll review my bike and equipment, training, and answer some common questions I received.
Dean’s Hour Record Attempt – The Bike
The Cervelo T4 is a sure thing for a track based event like the hour record. It may not be the youngest bike on the track scene, but it’s still one of the most common bikes you see at Masters Track Worlds and for hour record attempts. Why? It’s fast, it’s very adjustable, and, at least until a few years ago, it was the gold standard for the fastest track bike.
The Hour-Record Attempt Stem
In my case, my newest riding position is uniquely high in front. Very few cutting-edge track bikes have aerobars that go this high. That 25-degree Zipp Service Course stem pointing at the ceiling is not on there for its looks or aerodynamic shape, but it gets my aerobars where I need them. I tested back and forth moving the top spacer under the stem; there remains room for future height adjustment.
The Hour-Record Attempt Aerobar
The USE Tula Aerobar with Zipp Vuka Race extensions makes up the cockpit. I’ve had this aerobar for seven years now and I’m glad that I kept it around. I love how simple it is and how sleek it looks. Any stem clamps onto it, which allows me to run it in a wide range of positions. While the aerobar itself isn’t super adjustable, the pad width, extension length, and angle works well for me.
I tried a number of different aerobar extension models and the Zipp Vuka Race was just right. I used Predator Cycling hooked end plugs so my fingers had more to hold onto during the record attempt. They’re adjustable and I was able to find a position that kept my hands relaxed and secured.
The Hour-Record Attempt Wheels & Tires
Aerocoach Prima Pista Aeox Disc wheels make the bike pop on the shop wall where it spends the majority of its time. However, the real reason the Aerocoach wheels are on the bike is that they’re super fast. If you look closely at the back of Tadej Pogachar’s TT bike in this year’s TDF you’ll recognize this same disc wheel with logos removed. They’re fast. I ran Veloflex Record 700×23 clincher tires with latex tubes as these match the speed of the fastest tubular track tires. I remember the shock I received running clincher tires on the track as early as 2014. While I’m sure I wasn’t the first to run clinchers on the track, it sure felt like it at the time.
The Hour Record Attempt Gearing
The Aerocoach Brute 58 tooth chainring catches eyes for its substantial size. I’m quick to remind people that there’s a 13-tooth cog on the back; the 58:13 gear ratio is very similar to what most road cyclists have for a high gear today. Also, the 58-tooth ring is the largest chainring that fit on the Cervelo T4 without running into the chainstay. This being said, it was all I needed to see 91 RPM at hour attempt speed.
Why not use a smaller chainring in combination with a smaller cog? Larger rings have better mechanical efficiency which counterintuitively offsets the possible aerodynamic penalty of the larger surface and slightly more weight. Regardless, for me, the 58-13 gearing worked well and fit on the bike, so I didn’t think much more about it.
A Ceramic Speed UFO track chain finishes off the drivetrain and minimizes mechanical friction.
Power Meter, Pedals and Saddle
My ten-year-old SRM track power meter still resides in the middle of the chainring. I run discontinued Speedplay ZAero pedals, so the SRM remains the best way to measure power on the track bike. While I’m not able to use the power data during the attempt, I like having the data to look back on and thus I recorded data during my attempt.
I still use an ISM PS1.0 saddle. I use this same saddle on my outdoor time trial bike. Familiarity can be good when it comes to saddles.
Training & Lactate for an Hour Record Attempt
The trouble with training is you simply can’t cover it all. I trained similar to how I always have. I spent most of the summer riding by feel as I was overcoming a May COVID-19 infection. Now I have two data points with COVID, both showing it takes me two full months to recover on the bike. While COVID erased my summer of 2024 racing plans, just like it did the summer of 2022, I entered August feeling great. In fact, I matched the best power numbers I’d seen in my strongest years. This gave me confidence that the time was right to try the hour record.
The key intensity during an hour attempt is to stay at or under your threshold power. Decades ago, we started calling this FTP or your “1-hour power” in order to work around the countless definitions coaches use to describe these intensity levels. I know my FTP and I know that it completely depends on the temperature I’m riding in and whether I’m on the road bike or time trial bike. The FTP number itself isn’t prescriptive enough to target during this event since I’d be on an indoor track at 75 degrees Fahrenheit decked out in a skinsuit and TT helmet. Likewise, the cooling air you feel on a track riding at 31 mph is not the same as that big fan blasting in your face on the trainer at home.
I’ve been fortunate to ride with Janda Ricci-Munn for the last couple of decades. Janda doubles as one of the top coaches I know. Janda has done a couple of lactate test sessions with me. While I won’t do a deep dive into the newer LT1 and LT2 training methodology here, I’ll show some results that helped me the most.
On our last day of lactate testing, we sought to determine exactly which power output and heart rate I could ride before my lactate started accumulating beyond the point it could be cleared. If I go behind this point, things go downhill quickly. However, if I stay under this point I can ride for over an hour with great consistency. We knew I was fine at 375 watts, but I unwittingly rode higher than that without the assistance of my power meter and that escalated things too much.
The data set above shows my lactate level after each step interval of seven minutes. For the hour record attempt, we wanted something even more prescriptive than LT2. We wanted a point just below LT2 – the very point at which lactate starts accumulating beyond the point it can be removed. We ran intervals twice at 380 watts and lactate readings were stable. We then went up 10 watts to 390 and ran it for seven minutes. If felt fine and lactate was similar; I still felt under the LT2 ceiling. We ran it at 390 watts and lactate was still stable. However, at 405 watts, step lactate jumped quickly and we knew we’d gone too far. We’d finally pinpointed that magic number.
I had both lactate and heart rate data for the intensity my body can ride for an hour or more. This data point happens to show exactly where I want to be during an hour record attempt. However; the test environment for the above test was a 60 degree basement with a giant cooling fan. The velodrome environment would be quite different and thus targeting these power numbers would lead to certain failure. I did, however, have one of the most accurate and helpful uses for heart rate data I’d ever had and this data would help guide me through warmer conditions in the coming months.
Heat Training In Preparation for the Hour Record Attempt
Heat training has been around as long as I’ve ridden a bike. In recent years it’s gone next level. The internet is loaded with studies showing how proper training in the heat will bring power gains. Heat training not only allows us to exercise in the heat both for longer and at higher intensity, but it also allows us to handle any environment better. Heat training is akin to altitude training, the gains are similar. I trained in my basement at 80 degrees for the month leading up to my hour record attempt. This was easy to create as it only involved shutting a door and turning on a dehumidifier to create a heat chamber. What felt horrible at first, slowly became bearable. Leading into the event, I could barely feel the heat and my power numbers were shockingly similar to what I do in a 65 degree basement. I spent lots of time riding at my LT2 heart rate cap of 162 as noted above, and watched my power slowly rise over the course of a month.
I tried more aggressive heat training with a higher temperature, no fan, and extra clothing. I can attest that there is a point where performance and recovery suffer so badly that it’s detrimental. At just under 200 lbs, my environment was likely a similar heating load to a 150 lbs elite cyclist in a 95-100 degree environment. Heavier athletes suffer worse in the heat because convective cooling is proportional to the surface area of your skin. The rate at which a heavier athlete’s mass increases is a 3rd power while the rate your skin surface area increases is a 2nd power; a larger mass human can’t cool at the same rate as one of lighter mass.
Cheers to slender triathletes and cyclists out there. If you don’t suffer in the heat, it’s just because you haven’t found a hot enough environment yet. Given enough heat, you will eventually suffer like me. Likewise, this is why lighter athletes also freeze earlier in the cold.
Pre-Cooling
An easy way to increase the amount of time until you overheat is to start cooler. Ice vests are now a staple during warmups for many elite endurance events. Ingesting cold drinks or ice slushies will also reduce your core temperature. I took pre-cooling to a personal new level by putting ice packs all over me in warmups, drinking ice slushies, and doing whatever I could to keep my body cool/cold while simultaneously warming up. There’s a fine line where you can be too cold to warmup. It can take training to learn where this line is for yourself.
Pre-cooling is similar to carbo-loading before a long event. The better you pre-cool, the longer you’ll last before overheating and seeing performance suffer. You will cool along the way, and the lower the intensity you ride at the more effectively you’ll stay cool. Just as you’ll eventually bonk if you ride long enough or hard enough, you will also overheat if you ride hard enough or long enough in the heat. The key is pre-cooling enough and then riding at an intensity that can be held in those conditions for that duration.
Questions I received after my Hour Record Attempt:
“I noticed your cadence goes up and down in your power file, why is that?”
Every time your bike leans in the corners of a velodrome two things happen which cause you to go faster. Because of the angle of the corners, your wheels travel farther than your center of gravity. As this happens, both wheel speed and cadence increase. When you reach the straight your body straightens and cadence drops as wheel speed drops. Coming out of a turn feels like climbing a small hill, and vice versa heading into a turn. This is why both power and cadence fluctuate when riding around a velodrome. The other part of this is that your center of gravity gets lower in the turns and your entire body picks up speed as potential energy gets converted to kinetic energy. It’s the same reason you gain speed going down a hill and lose it going up a hill – kinetic energy converts back to potential energy.
“Why can’t you coast on a track? Aren’t you on a single-speed bike?”
While a track bike has one gear, it’s a fixed gear without a freewheel. As long as that rear wheel is turning, the gear is turning. As long as the gear is turning your crankset is turning. It’s a scary feeling at first, akin to a runaway train. This being said, you get used to it.
“Why do you ride faster at altitude when runners slow down at altitude?”
This is a great question. Both cyclists and runners lose the same aerobic power at altitude. Unacclimated sea-level athletes will find themselves making 10-12% less power at 6,000 feet of altitude. A runner will run slower since the speeds they run at gain far less from aerodynamic improvements at altitude. A cyclist, however, may see a 20% reduction in aerodynamic drag at 6,000 feet. Aerodynamic drag makes up 80% of what a cyclist as speed has to overcome. This reduction in drag can offset the power loss and allow the cyclist to ride faster.
“If the temperature was too warm, can’t you try the hour at a lower temperature?”
This is more easily said than done in most cases. During my Milton Ontario hour record attempt, the city controls the velodrome HVAC – only one temperature could be selected for the entire day. 75 degrees is quite common for attempts as the warmer air makes the air density less and allows riders to go faster. On the other hand, too low a temperature sees a significant increase in both air density and tire rolling resistance. There’s a trade-off going on and the 70-80 degree range tends to be the targeted temperature for most hour record attempts. Looking just at body performance, my ideal temperature would likely be in the 65-68 degrees range.
“If the high barometric pressure made that day slow, why couldn’t you pick a different day when the track was faster?”
The Milton Ontario velodrome is a busy place. Our day was scheduled months in advance and all other days had events scheduled. There’s no way to move the date around once it’s set at this venue.
“What happened to you 20 minutes into your hour record attempt? i.e. Why did you blow up?”
I overheated. That’s the easiest explanation.
I was surprised at how quickly I overheated after being in a steady state for 15 minutes. I’d done many rides in similar heat at similar power and I have a good sense as to what I can hold for an hour or more. However, I like the saying that a power meter calibrates perceived effort, but perceived effort modulates power. Ultimately perceived effort decides how much or how long you can ride at an intensity. In hindsight, I derailed myself by doing such a good job pre-cooling. I was lured into a false sense of steady-state riding too early.
Pre-cooling doesn’t change the fact that your body is still generating a ton of heat that needs to be removed. A cyclist is 20-25% metabolically efficient, so that means if you’re making 300 watts at the pedals your body is burning 4-5x that amount (1200-1500 watts of waste heat is being generated). That’s over 5,000 BTU/hr of heat that needs to be removed to prevent overheating. Your fate depends on whether you can remove enough of that heat through your skin before it shuts you down. I let decades of perceived effort combine with what felt like a very manageable first 15 minutes override my pacing plan for the day. What pace could I have held? That’s still unknown. My heart rate data on my 10-minute test effort the day before indicated I shouldn’t exceed 365-370 watts in the conditions presented. I crossed that line and crossed it early.
In retrospect, clearing 50 km of distance in an hour on this day was a more realistic goal. Even attempting 50 km there’s still a good chance I’d have overheated before the end. So, the day was what it was. There was no way to set records on the day as it presented and thus you chalk it up to a learning experience.
