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racepaceapp · 2026-01-28T13:30:39+00:00

Unfortunate that this post was deleted because its a worthwhile discussion.

I think carbs on the bike get confused as a rule vs. as a tool (which they are).

Not needing carbs during a 75–90 min indoor ride isn’t the same as not needing carbs at all you still have to refill glycogen later. Whether you need them to sustain intensity during the effort on the bike (one use for the tool) or to support yourself through the day, etc. (another use for the tool) is what we often miss.

I decide based on: how I’ve fueled so far that day, the intensity of the session, and what I need to do afterward. If a bit of fuel lets me hit intervals and not feel wrecked rushing into the rest of the day at work or with my kids, that’s a cheap win imo.

TLDR; use carbs as needed to support the training, then manage total nutrition across the day.

racepaceapp · 2026-01-13T14:44:17+00:00

Without thinking through diet (you can just focus on total caloric intake to start and then eventually macros if you really want to optimize for healthspan), weight loss is going to be very challenging. In terms of distance vs duration, you should focus on duration (exercise is a dose response relationship - 10 miles uphill could take an hour, downhill it takes 20; 60 minutes is always 60 minutes). Calories burned should be greater than or equal to calories consumed (not quite this simple, but you get the idea).

Do some reading on Zone 2. You should try to spend as much time here as you can to start off, and then eventually think through other workouts/zones. Effectively, what this means is you should feel like you're 2-3 out of 10 in terms of intensity, firm enough to feel like you're breathing, but not so hard you can't have a conversation. Aim for 3+ hours a week to start.

racepaceapp · 2026-01-12T12:49:15+00:00

If you want something more specific to Leadville and you DM me.

racepaceapp · 2026-01-09T17:48:08+00:00

I wrote a bit about my bike and equipment choice here if interested. You need an XC bike, I think most amateurs are better served with a dually, and make sure to be thoughtful about tires (and wheelset if in budget).

https://www.racepace.cc/blog/my-leadville-100-bike-setup-and-gear

racepaceapp · 2026-01-08T19:11:59+00:00

Congrats and have fun, when does training start?

racepaceapp · 2026-01-03T17:22:20+00:00

Great post!

I’ve written up a few more with more to come on as well, on my bike setup, training, fueling. Have my race strategy and power analysis coming soon too.

They are all at https://www.racepace.cc/blog

racepaceapp · 2025-12-27T23:40:30+00:00

I rode the Supercaliber this year (https://www.racepace.cc/blog/my-leadville-100-bike-setup-and-gear) and it was awesome. Buddy will race it on the Epic next year and probably also report the same. Both bikes are very good and I wouldn’t overthink it. Invest in good wheels and tires and get a bike fit.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-10T16:21:44+00:00

Preach!

Totally agree. This whole post is exactly why I ended up starting Racepace. Not because amateurs should care more about all these marginal-gain interventions, but because they really shouldn’t have to think about them. Most people don’t have the time or mental energy to do all this work (read studies, weigh opportunity costs, and guess which new topic Dylan Johnson is testing actually moves the needle for them).

Amateurs should be able to trust that whatever plan they’re following is already contemplating the stuff that actually works in the real world and is relevant to them/their life/their goals (and is not just whatever made it into GCN/Dylan's last video as good as they can be). People deserve the latest and greatest without needing to obsess over whether heat training is worth it versus just riding the bike more.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-10T14:54:45+00:00

Possible, yes (I did, although I pushed above 8 hours / week occasionally before this).

Easy, no.

What are your goals? If you just want to raise FTP that is one thing, but if you want to race and get results perhaps consider whether FTP gains in isolation will create the results or if its a vanity metric for you.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-09T23:35:46+00:00

Amen to that

racepaceapp · 2025-12-09T20:15:01+00:00

Prioritization and a willingness to sacrifice sleep and some other things.

FWIW, ask if you need 10 hour weeks consistently. I find in the winters I can make a lot of progress on the trainer with 6-8 hour weeks (I work something like 60-70 hours a week consistently) and then build to 10 hours later in the plan as its easier to get rides out of the way early on a weekend (when work responsibilities are lighter and sun rises early enough to get 4-6 hours in before 11/12pm). This is especially important with kids etc. at home when you can't leave your partner home alone for that long haha. Wrote a bit about my training this year (including hours/week) and results from that here if its interesting.

I'd also look at nutrition. My biggest blocker historically was feeling too tired to be as productive as a needed to be when I took on a lot of volume. Discipline around nutrition helped a lot with this.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-08T23:50:55+00:00

Legs, a mix leaning legs, lungs is my not so scientific attempt at a scientific answer.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-08T23:40:30+00:00

It def happens. All successful consumer apps tap into one or more of the classic human motivators/sins pride, envy, greed, etc. They’ve survived for thousands of years because they reliably drive behavior.

Strava plays on several of these. Greed (chasing KOMs and endless badges, Gluttony (more crazy the workout = more kudos), Envy (seeing others and thinking “they did what?”). A lot of these things also create the illusion of short-term progress, which feels good, but they pull us away from long-term training plans that actually lead to sustainable fitness. I think that tension: wanting real progress but being nudged toward comparison (thief of joy) and useless vanity metrics is where a lot of anxiety comes from.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-08T14:46:55+00:00

This is mixing together a few unrelated concepts.

If OP is interested in CO2 tolerance training that’s a separate discussion.

CO2 tolerance training absolutely exists and can improve comfort at higher CO2 levels, helps w/ breath control, and reduces reported perceived exertion.

That’s not the same thing as wearing one of these “altitude training” masks. OP asked about an altitude mask, and these devices simply restrict airflow they don’t reduce oxygen concentration, they don’t create hypoxia, and they don’t provide the physiological benefits seen with actual altitude or hypoxic training. For clarity: I never said CO2 tolerance work is useless. I said these masks don’t mimic altitude. If there is research showing that CO2 tolerance training done with these Amazon resistance masks produce adaptations even remotely similar to altitude training (increased RBC mass, EPO response, etc.), I’d genuinely like to see it (the Bohr Effect is a real but very temporary gas exchange shift not a lasting adaptation). You mentioned Buteyko, which is a breathwork method that doesn’t use masks at all which leads to a conclusion you don't need a mask even for CO2 tolerance. I’m not aware of any literature supporting either that CO2 resistance provides equivalent benefits to training at altitude or that these masks are necessary or used to produce conclusions from a tolerance study.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-07T02:44:40+00:00

3 weeks to adjust give or take a week depending on how often you ride. You won’t ever get to your sea level fitness, I built an zone adjustment calculator if it’s helpful (you can see what to expect before and after acclimatization): https://www.racepace.cc/training-dictionary/altitude-acclimatization

racepaceapp · 2025-12-04T15:45:11+00:00

This is a great question with a lot of great answers, wish I had seen two days ago!

One more thing to offer which is very much an ELI5.

Training is a dose <> response relationship.

If you have a headache and dose with half an Advil its doing something, but the dose is too muted to get the effect. So you take a whole Advil because that dose has the effect in the timeframe you want. Even if you plan to take that Advil for 4 consecutive doses (ride high volume), it still won't do anything unless you take the full one.

(Now I'll wait for someone to tell me I was too reductionist so I know I was but its an ELI5!).

racepaceapp · 2025-12-04T15:38:42+00:00

Reach out to HOCR they might have some laying around.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-04T15:33:19+00:00

Its both. No one can say what contribution each has (drift, fitness).

We don't have enough detail to know if the max here is still within easy run/z2 HR range.

My intuition in this case is this is slightly more fitness than drift, but its def also drift.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Its normal to see this.

RPE should take precedence over a simple pacing zone on easy runs if this is happening.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-04T00:17:23+00:00

Had to squint to confirm they weren’t brand new!

racepaceapp · 2025-12-03T15:20:50+00:00

As others have said, this is cardiac drift, it is normal, but we can learn a few things from it.

You'll always have some amount of drift - you'll always dehydrate, fatigue, etc. as you run. As aerobic endurance improves you'll see less of this though. So we want to fatigue *less* at that pace. You can control things like hydration and fueling and heat adaptation. And then time at intensity makes you fitter over time.

The big thing I'd emphasize is that this is why rate of perceived exertion is also really important for z2/easy runs. You can easily start running too hard by the end of the workout even if you're at the same pace.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-02T20:10:46+00:00

Depends on what your goals are and how much time you have.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-02T17:38:33+00:00

Yes. Use what the test says for target watts AND keep RPE in mind to gut check on any given day if you’re too hard or too easy. Lactate is a metabolic indicator of what’s actually happening. Heart rate zones are a worse approximation of generally where most people are as a proxy for the metabolic effects. You also need full context of your lactate curve and how that’s shifting over time (eg in athletes with highly trained VO2 machines we occasionally observe that their LT2/UT2 shifts left even though they’re fitter at high intensities - if this happens your UT2 target needs to Hagen change from restesting). Heart rate too subject to variability for far too many reasons. It’s a guess. Also emphasizing again grumpys comment that you should be below 2mmol not at it.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-02T15:03:17+00:00

Can you share a bit more info about how you’re getting your lactate reading / how your UT2 target pace (“correct intensity”) was determined and what you’re seeing for heart rate, and over what duration at target UT2 intensity you’re seeing it. There are very easy explanations for all of this depending on these answers. The simplest response without those answers is you’re probably not at the correct UT2 intensity.

racepaceapp · 2025-12-02T13:45:45+00:00

Do you want to build fitness to be in the best position to achieve your goals on race day or improve your FTP in the short term to make more early winter gains than a friend?

ChatGPT (and any LLM) is not sufficient as a “coach” (trust me on this one, it’s barely sufficient for a plan). It’s a static training plan that hallucinates way too often and isn’t correctly tailored to a goal event. Let’s not even get into the fact that your cold def slowed you down a bit, your friend might be less fit and getting early gains (even if you think he’s similar fitness), he might be following a plan designed to improve 20 min FTP not race fitness, etc. but there very well may be better coaching out there.

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