Racing: Beating the cold
The word in the European peloton this year was that summer happened in November and winter came back for March and April. Races like Milano-Sanremo and Ghent-Wevelgem were hammered by snow and sub-zero temperatures. How do the Garmin-Sharp pros ride in arctic temperatures when they are expected to race and train as if it were always July outside?
German national road champion Fabian Wegmann grew up in Germany so he is accustomed to training and racing in frigid temperatures. Wegmann raced Milano-Sanremo in March, the event that was forced to bus riders over a snow-bound mountain pass. Wegmann said on whiteout days like that team soigneurs provide riders water bottles filled with hot tea rather than the normal water or energy drink.
Besides warming the riders from the inside out, Wegmann said the bottles help frozen extremities, too. Grasping an imaginary bottle in his hands and hugging it close to his chest, Wegmann said “you wrap it in your hand and it keeps you warm.”
Wegmann said dressing for cold weather depends on the nature of the course. Flat courses are easier to dress for than hilly courses. “When it’s flat you can put a lot of clothes on,” Wegmann said. “But when it’s a hilly race it’s a big problem, because when you go up, you always get warm, even if it’s zero degrees. You start sweating, so normally if it goes up you have to take all the clothes off. And when it goes down you have to put all those clothes back on.”
“But when the race is full on, you can’t do that; sometimes you have too many clothes on so you get dropped on the climb, and then you have too little and you get cold and you get dropped because your muscles are frozen.”
Along with the difficulties of putting on and off layers during a race, Wegmann said long-fingered gloves can make it a challenge to access food in jersey pockets. Because of these functional challenges, Wegmann said that during moments when the course allows it, “you have to eat.”
Even if Wegmann does not feel the urge to down a Clif bar at a certain moment, if the pace slackens in the field or if the road is relatively straight, then he must seize the opportunity to eat.
Complicating the simple issue of fishing food out of pockets is the reality that in cold weather the body burns additional energy to stay warm, which means on days when it is most difficult to eat it is more critical to consume more than usual.
Team doctor Kevin Sprouse confirmed Wegmann’s observations. “In terms of physiological differences, your body uses more energy in cold weather because it has to maintain its body temperature as well as produce power to do whatever the racing effort is,” Sprouse explained.
“It’s really important for anybody who is exercising in cold weather for any period of time to make sure they keep their intake of calories up.”
One technique the team’s soigneurs use to keep the calories flowing to riders was to fill their bottles with a warm oatmeal porridge. The staff blended oatmeal into a liquid state that provided calories on the go. Riders could refuel with a semi-solid meal by simply pulling their water bottle from a cage.
“It allowed them to eat in a liquid form through the bottle so they get calories, they get something warm, and they could do it with their gloves on in the midst of a race,” Sprouse said. “It is something you could even do at home if you were going out for a three or four hour ride.”
Referring to Amstel Gold Race, the Dutch spring classic that is notorious for its labyrinthine, turn-filled course, Wegmann said “In a parcours like Amstel eating is not easy because you always have to take care and be in the front. It’s not easy to take the hand off the handlebar.”
Wegmann said this year’s Milano-Sanremo was one of the coldest races he has done. But he also noted that his years racing as a junior in Germany prepared him for days like those.
“As a junior I did a lot of cyclo-cross races in minus 15 degrees — it was pretty bad.” Another challenge he faced as a junior and still confronts today are races that start in the sunshine but end in cold and rain. Whether he starts in the rain or rides into it, Wegmann says he has a favorite piece of Castelli kit to fend off the cold and wet.
“It’s the Gabba jacket for sure.” He said the form-fitting Windstopper jersey, along with his Nano Flex leg and arm warmers “are really good if it rains. The rain comes to you, but it does not soak through.”
Once the riders complete a frigid day of racing, team chiropractor Matt Rabin said he modifies his rider recovery techniques. Rabin said cold can exacerbate musculoskeletal issues.
“What you tend to see is a little bit more back discomfort, a little bit more neck discomfort,” Rabin said. Because cold weather riding shunts blood to the extremities like feet and fingers, he said other cycling-critical muscle groups can be less supple than they would be on warm days.
“From a chiropractor perspective, the guys come back and things hurt more, they notice it a bit more.”
Rabin, who consults closely with the team’s sports scientist Robbie Ketchel, added that both cold and heat create special racing nutrition challenges.
“Any extremes of temperature, whether it’s too hot or too cold, you have a feeling or sensation that you want to move away from some of the things that you might typically want to do.”
Rabin explained that when it is scorching, the body feels little desire to eat, even though it still needs energy for racing. And when it’s wet and sub-zero, the brain does not yearn for fluids, even through the body’s hydration requirements persist.
“It’s just a balance, it’s about knowing the things you need to do to yourself to get ready and reset for the next day,” Rabin explained of the steps both the team riders and the rest of us can take to perform at our best, regardless of the temperature outside.
By: Slipstreamsports