Training

One test is worth a thousand expert opinions, engineers are fond of saying. As Bjorn had come up to our environs for the second time in as many months to reacquaint himself with our mountain roads and trails we—he and I both—thought a test might give us information neither of us had.

I set up a fit simulator to precisely mimic his existing set up. Seat height, the saddle's position relative to the bottom bracket, even the style of seat (SLR) and its tilt was replicated. Cockpit distance, the gap from the armrests to the extensions, distance between armrests, and the armrest drop (a mammoth 24.5cm) was recreated.

PROTOCOL

Bjorn was to ride the first set up at 370 watts applied by a Computrainer load generator attached to the fit bike, set in Ergometer mode. This meant regardless of the cadence Bjorn pedaled the Computrainer would compensate by requiring greater or lesser torque to spin the cranks, meaning Bjorn would always need to generate 370 watts in order to keep the pedals turning. This sort of "always moving, never resting" paradigm is more difficult than just riding on the road, and Bjorn and I agreed that 370 watts applied this way is probably worth about 400 watts of actual road power expended.

Following the cycling segment Bjorn, I, and the dogs would jump in the car and drive to the "aqueduct" that travels 400 miles from the Eastern Sierras to Los Angeles. It passes close to our house, is flat, the dirt road surface is groomed, it's accurately marked every half mile, and would give us a reasonably precise measure of running performance.

The goal wasn't to run as fast as he could, but for Bjorn just to see what a 5-mile run felt like after his "ride."

Then, two days later, the experiment would be repeated, this time off a set up and cadence rate of my choosing.

Bjorn rode the cycling leg during the first experiment with what seemed to me to be relative ease, considering he was putting out an amount of power I might be able to sustain for one minute, or two. For me, 260 watts for 30 minutes in Ergometer mode would be quite difficult. For Bjorn, 370 watts wasn't all that hard. He started at about 82 rpm, occasionally degraded to about 78 rpm, but generally stayed at about 80 rpm throughout.

Exactly 8 minutes later we were on the aqueduct, he and I running together for 5 miles. "Together" is a term I use loosely. The first half mile was at 2:52, which sped up to 2:47, and then to 2:44. One-and-a-half miles into this I could see this 5-mile run was going in the wrong direction—for me—and I dropped off, blown and spent. Bjorn kept going, again without much apparent effort.

Two days later we replicated the experiment, and this time around he was a bit steeper in the seat angle, higher in front (16cm of drop, still quite a bit), elbows about 3cm further apart, aerobar extensions pointed lower, and the cockpit a bit more compressed.

The position didn't seem to bother Bjorn, but the cadence did. I wanted him to ride at 100 rpm, more or less.

It became apparent quite early that he was going to have trouble. While the position was not problematic (according to Bjorn) the cadence was. His effort two days earlier required an average of 171 bpm, below his anaerobic threshold (says he) of about 185 (though his cycling threshold is, like the rest of us, a few beats lower than his running threshold). During this experiment he began to labor after about 7 or 8 minutes, holding about 177 or 178 bpm, and 10 minutes into the exercise he knew he couldn't make the whole 30 minutes.

"Just stop," I said, "and let's go run."

Bjorn's changes over the last two years have been incremental. "My freely chosen cadence in exercises like this seems to be about 83 rpm," he said with some surprise, as he historically has been a slower pedaler. "But I still seem to fall back to my old habits when climbing, and my cadence goes down."

Bjorn also rides a bit more over the saddle instead of behind it. When he and fellow Swede Jonas Colting were here last year, Bjorn rode with a lower cadence and rather pushed the pedals, like he was performing a leg press with every turn of the pedals. Jonas, meanwhile, was much further forward, but only turned a slightly faster cadence. Bjorn seems to have adopted a saddle position much closer to Jonas (though not that far forward) and ironically thinks he turns a faster cadence than Jonas does now.

Based on this one test, Bjorn either can't efficiently ride 100 rpm, or at least he can't ride it yet. Perhaps in another year he'll be back, and we'll take another look at his evolving talent. [For more on Björn Andersson, see our Slowtwitch interview with the young talented Swede.]