News

  • Oct 07, 2014

    Should all intensity be removed from winter workouts?

    My short answer is – no. On Sunday's group ride, the topic of winter riding volume and exercise intensity came up. "Should triathletes, road cyclists and mountain bikers remove all intensity during the preparation or base phase of training? What does research support?" You know my short answer, now let's look into the answer in more depth. Before going further, let me define "intensity" for the purpose of this blog. I consider "intensity" to be any effort above an aerobic heart rate. (What I define as Zone 1 to 2.) Very high intensity is short duration (60 seconds or less)...

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  • Oct 03, 2014

    Gale Bernhardt Consulting Selected as One of Top 6 Online Trainers

    Today I was pleasantly surprised, humbled and honored to be selected as one of Men's Fitness Magazine's top online trainers. The honor was for providing dedicated workouts and advice for athletes. In the magazine, they pulled a nice quote from the Tough Love blog written in August. I must say it feels great to have triathletes, mountain bikers, road cyclists and runners value my training plans and advice. For the recognition, thank you Men's Fitness ~   Note: What I didn't catch in the original tweet to me is that it is an international honor - Men's Fitness Magazine, U.K....

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  • Sep 30, 2014

    How to get back to lifting weights, a sample routine

       When the weather is nice enough to ride and run, it is tough for most endurance athletes to lift weights. I'm in that category. Last week, I realized it has been four-and-a-half months since I lifted weights. What?! How did that happen? Yesterday I forced myself to get back to the weight room and, like always, once there I was glad to be at it again. I usually use some variation of the exercises suggested on my supporting documents for triathlon and cycling training plans. I do add some balance exercises as well. I also like to add...

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  • Sep 09, 2014

    Sleep deprivation impairs performance an average of 11%

    Most endurance athletes know that getting adequate sleep is important to top performance in training and races. At the same time, many competitive age group athletes are juggling careers, families, volunteer obligations and perhaps extended family care. Add the hours up for responsibilities and what remains is the daily budget for exercise, eating and sleep. It is not uncommon for busy endurance athletes to dashboard dine. That is, eating while driving or while doing work at a desk. This practice of distracted eating can lead to consuming too many calories, but that is another discussion. In my experience, a high...

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  • Sep 03, 2014

    How to make next season your best yet

    After you have had the last race of the season, it is a great time to reflect on accomplishments. Many athletes begin by being self-critical of all the things that could have been better. We'll get to that later. First, take the time to list all the things that went well during the past year. That includes your entire training plan, off-season, race preparation period and the race season itself. Include supporting items such as nutrition, family, massage, etc. Hopefully this is a long list. Leave it open-ended. That is, allow the list to grow as you think of more...

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  • Aug 27, 2014

    Can snotty molecules make total knee replacements less invasive?

    If you are a candidate for total knee replacement surgery, you know the surgery is anything but routine. Surgeons break out the power tools, literally, to saw off the end of your femur and tibia. This is followed by drilling holes into the bones in order to glue and hammer into place the metal surfaces that replace these parts of your joint. Between the two surfaces is a plastic piece that takes the place of your meniscus. A good animation video for total knee replacement can be found here. The life of these artificial joints used to be around 10...

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  • Aug 25, 2014

    Comparison of gear inches for a 1x11 on a 29er and 27.5 mountain bike

    In the last post, I included a gear-inch chart for comparing 1x11 and 2x10 gear inches for a mountain bike with 29-inch wheels. The post generated plenty of good discussion and comments on the blog and Facebook as well. One of the comments was that switching from 2x10 to 1x11 is made easier on the low range of the gears if you also switch from 29-inch wheels to 27.5-inch wheels. So, I created a chart so you could see the comparative differences for gearing. The discussion of going from one wheel size to the other is an entirely different blog....

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  • Aug 22, 2014

    Gear Inches Chart for 29er Wheels – 1x11 v.s. 2x10

    I've had a lot of questions from mountain bikers about gearing. Riders wonder if they should go with a 1x11 or 2x10? There are many factors that go into this decision, not the least of which is the actual gearing. I'm going to use myself as an example. Right now I am running a 2x10 setup with a 22x38 on the front and 11x36 on the rear. On the gear inches chart below, you can see that my granny gear (22x36) provides 17.7 gear inches of travel. This is my low gear for climbing. My big gear for pushing speed...

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  • Aug 12, 2014

    Tough Love Advice for Leadville 100 Training and Racing

    In yesterday's blog I gave a race recap from the 2014 race and mentioned I would follow-up with a frank discussion about training and racing the Leadville 100. Before starting into training and racing points, it's worth mentioning that in a previous blog, I listed training resources available for the Leadville 100, including a course description, key training elements, an interview with Dave Wiens, and a few other links to help you on your training and racing journey. I will say that in the resource blog, I did omit two columns: Altitude Training for Athletic Success: Part 1 and Part...

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  • Aug 11, 2014

    Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race and the 1,000 Mile Buckle

    This year marked my 10th Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race. My priority goals for the race were: Ride safe, stay upright and finish. Finish under 12 hours. Finish under 10 hours. You might read the list and have questions. For example, people would hear goal number one and say, "Of course you'll finish!" No. That's not a given. For this year, 2014, I had fitness equal to or slightly better than last year. My best time was last year at 10:01:19. Fitness on race morning, check. On Thursday prior to the race, I'm aware of one racer that overcooked a...

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