On April 29th and 30th I attended the Endurance Sport Science Conference at Birmingham University. It was very high powered – the assumption was that everyone there wouldn’t even know a rider that didn’t have a pair of SRMs. Among the speakers were advisers to Rabobank, Euskaltel, Quickstep, the Australian Commonwealth Games and Olympic Teams and the ‘celebrity’ speaker was Chris Boardman, who was actually very good, very down to earth, talking mainly how he and Peter Keen approached his final one hour ride where he beat Merckx’s record.
I’ll list some of the more interesting and relevant bits raised:

• If you thought that going for three days to the Alps to watch the tour would provide you with useful altitude training, think again. You apparently need between 200 and 250 hours at altitude of between 2000 and 2500metres to make any difference and even then it doesn’t work for everyone and the time after the altitude training that the benefit is felt may vary from instantly to three weeks. Boardman used a hypoxic tent (actually a hypoxic bedroom in his house, equipped with turbo trainer and bike on which he trained) to simulate this altitude over 200 hours and said it had no measurable effect on his hour attempt (and he and Keen measured everything).
• There is a tendency to think that if you have long legs you would go faster using long cranks but if you are shorter in the leg you should use shorter cranks. A researcher from the University of Utah, using cranks of between 145 and 175mms in length, checked out the effect of short legs with long cranks, long legs with short cranks, in fact all combinations of legs and cranks and found that there was no theoretical way of determining optimal crank length.
• For most people, it’s likely to be worth a few seconds in a ‘10’ and rather more in a ‘25’ if you take a strong slug of caffeine before you race. As to how strong and how long before the race, you would need to experiment. Vic Barnett always takes ‘Red Bull’ before important races. No doubt a treble espresso would have a similar effect.
• Contrary to what I’d always believed, there are time advantages in taking an energy drink during events of up to one hour, which must mean ‘25s’. The recommended dose would be 50 grammes of maltodextrin in a 750mls bottle. (Maltodextrin is what Allsports sell as Dynamight).As maltodextrin is tasteless, you might want to add some fruit squash, and a pinch of salt to speed absorption into your bloodstream. Also take a sachet of gel before you start your race. I’ll have to eat my words in a previous newsletter about Camelbacks being for wusses, as to use a camelback is the only way to keep taking the odd sip of drink while maintaining a streamlined riding position. You don’t need to drink the whole lot of your 750mls, perhaps 5 or 6 slurps over the race.
• Regarding recovery drinks, it is definitely worth using amino acids to repair damaged muscles after races and animal protein is the best source. Amino drinks are not worth the cost – a glass of whole milk (and it must be whole milk) after you’ve raced is just as effective and much cheaper.
• Placebos seem to be remarkably effective for some riders so get your best friend to give you a Smartie the day before a race and convince you it’s impregnated with EPO and you’ll go at least a minute faster.

Dave Birch