Should Mountain Bikers Care About Fitness Metrics Like VO2 Max?
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben Turits runs a coaching business and sports therapy practice called The Endurance Collective. He’s a former professional mountain bike racer and current USA Cycling coach working with both pro and amateur athletes alike.
In this episode we ask:
- How did your first enduro race go? What type of training did you do to prepare?
- What does VO2 max measure?How is it measured? Is using heart rate data to estimate VO2 max fairly accurate?
- Are there specific types of training that are effective in raising VO2 max?
- How important is VO2 max for predicting performance?
- What is lactate threshold?What does it measure?
- How is it measured?
- Is lactate threshold directly related to power?
- Are there other similar fitness metrics that riders can or should pay attention to?
- Is there a difference between mountain bikers and road bikers when it comes to the importance of certain metrics?
- Is it possible to get the same quality workout on the trail vs. on the trainer?Is gravel riding a good substitute for road riding in terms of the training benefits?
- How do you know if you’re under- or over-fueled on longer rides?
Learn more or connect with Ben and the Endurance Collective on their website (theendurancecollective.com) and YouTube channel.
✏️ A written transcript of this conversation is available to Singletracks Pro supporters: singletracks.com/support
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 1:07.2 | Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest once |
| 1:13.1 | again is Ben Turrets. Ben runs a coaching business and sports therapy practice called the |
| 1:18.9 | Endurance Collective. He's a former professional mountain bike racer and current USA cycling coach, |
| 1:25.0 | working with both pro and amateur athletes alike. Thanks for joining us again, Ben. |
| 1:30.8 | Thanks for having me, Jeff. It's always good to be on the pot. Yeah. Well, so when I was writing out this |
| 1:36.8 | intro, I looked back at the one we used before, and this one's a little different. I actually |
| 1:42.0 | am embarrassed to say this. I didn't realize you were a |
| 1:45.0 | professional mountain bike racer. So you started out racing cross country from what I read and you dabbled |
| 1:52.0 | in mountain bike marathon as well. You recently competed in an Enduro race. So how did that go? |
| 1:59.8 | Yeah, yeah. The Endura was awesome, man. I haven't, so actually, |
... |
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