Fine Tuning Team RadioShack for 2010

8 January 2010

Fine Tuning Team RadioShack for 2010 by Jeff Ludlum

As Team RadioShack (TRS) prepares for its first race later this month in the Santos Tour Down Under (TDU) in southeast Australia, the cyclists named on the Start List are surely working hard in preparation, applying the training instructions and plan they received from coaches while together in Tucson, Arizona in early December at TRS’s first training camp.

Levi Leipheimer, Daryl Impey, and especially Lance Armstrong have been keeping the Twitter-sphere abreast of training rides and other activites throughout the holidays post camp. Particular events shared by Armstrong just this week give interesting insights as to some of the approach he’s taking to optimize his training and ultimately his racing capacities and performance.

Training in Kona Hawaii, Armstrong’s Twitter and Youtube posts this week revealed that Dr. Allen Lim (new TRS physiologist) was attending and overseeing the training sessions with a particular focus in mind. Together with Dr. Stacy Sims, they initiated thermo-monitoring and regulation experiments during Armstrong’s training sessions to learn more about his body’s management of this critical physiological condition. More on this topic in a minute. First, a little background on Lim and Sim’s project regarding thermoregulation for elite athletes and how it effects performance.

As reported by Matt McNamara of PezCyclingNews.com in September last year, Sims (then a post doctoral fellow from Stanford University) worked on a research project with Lim, who at the time was the chief physiologist for Garmin Slipstream (GS). The project focus was to learn how to maximize an athlete's efforts quite literally in the heat of competition, by studying the relationship between thermoregulation, hydration, and performance. The idea was to develop and execute hydration and thermoregulation strategies road cyclists could use while racing, and in particular during longer, grand tour stage races.

The Lim & Sims' research efforts involved the GS team, since that was Lim’s affiliate at the time. Through experimentation, data gathering and analysis, the two physiologists made quite a bit of progress. The underlying plan basically involved hydration at different times during the riders’ training sessions, and with different fluids as well. With this dual approach, they were able to achieve measurable results that translated to meaningful improvement for the riders during training sessions, and also during actual competition races.

By applying the Lim & Sims' hydration and thermoregulation strategies, the team combined a rigorous pre-event acclimation camp that included stints of up to 30 minutes in a sauna immediately following training rides [remember this for a bit later in the story], with the creation, and riders' consumption, of literally thousands of liters of high- tech liquid mixtures tailored to the various phases of the race. These strategies proved quite fruitful. The team's riders realized significantly improved race results; they should also realize improved the long-term health by following the prescribed strategies.

Considering Allen Lim's background and experience, it's no wonder he's stepped in quickly and thoroughly with his new team, TRS, and especially team captain Armstrong, as the team prepares for the first race of the season.

As Lim shared in an interview early last year with nyvelocity.com's Andy Shen, his professional path has been a natural progression of increasing involvement with professional cyclists and their training. The basis of that work: the particular physiological realities the riders cope with and strive to overcome to maximize their bodies' response to the grueling regimen of training and racing.

The project together with Stacy Sims referenced above was really a continuation (and progression) of the ideas that are well-known in sport physiology regarding thermal regulation as the great limiting factor to an athlete's sustained effort in competition. An athlete's understanding of his/her limitations in this regard, and having successful strategies for coping with and overcoming these factors to sustain peak performace, seem an obvious and necessary focus to compete successfully at the highest level in all manner of endurance sport.

Now we return to Armstrong's Youtube posts this week. Over five video posts from Test Day 1, the viewer can follow the thermo-monitoring and regulation experiments as they play out with Armstrong and his trainer/coaches, and also see a few glimpses of Armstrong's current personal training camp: the roads and scenery of Kona! (the first of these videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwQ45tzoGRI)
The basic experiment: Armstrong swallows a capsulized thermometer; this device sends out a radio signal that allows for monitoring of Armstrong's core body temperature. They then try different approaches to both regulating Armstrong’s temperature range, and also extend his body's ability to cope with the increased body temperature scenarios while training (and therefore racing).

From a tweet Lim posted on Tuesday: "Conduction, convection, evaporation. Cooling strategies looked good today. Kept Lance's core temp stable." It seems they're realizing good success. These experiments continue as Armstrong makes his final training rides leading up to the TDU start on 17 January (the Day 2 experiments, during simulated time trial conditions, involved continued testing of different cooling protocols – ice vests, various levels of ice-cold fluids consumed, etc. – and also time trial aerodynamics. Check the video from Day 2 for a great recap).
The progress bodes well for Armstrong and the other cyclists on the squad who will be competing later this month in the TDU. Certainly the lessons and strategies that come from these sessions are sure to be duplicated with the whole of the TRS team throughout the season.

Allen Lim's contributions don't stop there. Not only is he a extremely effective sport physiologist with inovative thinking, strategy development and application of leading-edge training approaches and technologies. He's also a pretty good team chef that delivers nutritious (and tasty!) racing fare!

One need only follow the CycleopsPowercyclin-produced Youtube videos of Lim from last year to get an idea of the diversified value he brings to TRS (the first of several videos is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGTu8yJesmE&feature=PlayList&p=07C6EACED754B00F&index=0).

If you look closely at the clip from Armstrong's video report "the first 50 miles" of the Experiment Day 1 training ride, you'll see near the end of the take, someone (presumably Lim) hands Armstrong a foil-wrapped snack...coniecidentally very similiar to the rice cake that Lim makes in his Cycleops "Rice Cake" video (check it out for your self: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UiuqIWGe_s).

While it's certain that the team will have various options for pro-cycling chefs in their Rolodex, they’ll get the bonus of Lim's race culinary contributions in the realm of nutritional instruction (and recipes!) will also help the riders of TRS perform at their best, be it in the Spring Classics, tours, or grand tours in the season just under way.

Not only will the team’s racing fare include predictable energy sources such as Cliff Bars, Power Bars, energy gels, etc. They’ll also be able to enjoy the most basic food ingredients that provide high levels of energy and nutrition in the form of “real” (and delicious) foods, such as rice cakes, potatoes, and simple sandwiches. Good stuff!

As they head Down Under next week, it’s clear that the team’s focus is on fine-tuning training efforts to optimize the squad’s performance during the race. It’s also clear that TRS means to make a statement in this first race of the 2010 season, showing the cycling world that this newly-formed team intends to compete in the peloton as the world-class racing squad their roster and list of team management suggest: The Shack will be ready, they’re coming fast, and they’re racing to win!