FasCat Cycling Training Tips Podcast

Happy spring! To shift gears a bit, Jackson and Coach Isaiah come to your ears with a special edition of the podcast while Frank is on vacation for spring break. We dive into the fundamentals of plant-based nutrition for athletes, and discuss many aspects of our own diets and philosophies on food and fueling for cyclists. It's a fun and educational conversation, so grab a pen and paper and take so...

Welcome to another regeneration week (AKA our monthly Q&A episode)! We field questions from the FasCat community to provide our best responses to questions about training, racing, nutrition, and more every 4 weeks. We're back with answers to questions like how to properly perform full gas efforts, thoughts on active recovery rides, what we eat after hard rides, and more. Thanks for listening, and...

Continuing with the progression in early season training periodization, we're now getting into the real work of the race season and everyone's favorite part of training: intervals. We did an episode way back in the beginning of the FasCat podcast on intervals, but we wanted to revisit the topic in order to prepare you for getting ready for your target races and to simplify this often overly compli...

It's getting to be that time of year when the first races of the season are quickly approaching, you've been (hopefully) putting in some solid base training, and your A race is on the foreseeable horizon. It's time to start thinking about switching into race specific training with our sweet spot part 3 plan with over unders and criss cross intervals. Coach Frank and Jackson are here to discuss the...

We're back with another Q&A episode, taking questions from the FasCat podcast community to help you get faster! We answer questions ranging from the proper usage of sweet potatoes to building watts/kg and everything in between. It's a great episode, so thank you to everyone who contributed questions! Remember to send in your questions for our monthly Ask FasCat episodes, and share this episode wit...

Training camps are one of the quintessential components of cycling. Putting in a highly focused and productive week of training in a warm place, combined with good nutrition and recovery in the early season can pay off tremendously for the upcoming race season. In this episode, we recount some of our favorite training camp stories, how to best design your own personal camp, the three pillars of a...

This week we are talking about the Haute Route ('oat root'). We're joined by cycling jedi master Colby Pearce (also a Haute Route Elite Ambassador) to discuss the Haute Route culture, training, and experience. Both Colby and Frank have multiple Haute Route events under their belts and have a wealth of knowledge, advice, and war stories from their experience. We discuss what the Haute Route actuall...

You asked, we answered! Once a month, we will take questions fielded from the FasCat community (via email and social media) and spend the entire hour answering them! The entire purpose of this podcast is to help you go faster on the bike, and we want to be more engaged with our podcast community (YOU!) to achieve that goal. This is the first installment in the Ask FasCat series, and we answer ques...

We get a ton of questions about how best to pair and sequence our training plans to connect them through an entire season or a specific situation. With many permutations of how to combine plans over the course of a training and racing block, today's podcast is about giving you the tools to decide how to approach it. Don't forget to use code  25podcast  at checkout to save 25% off any of our traini...

We're back with Coach Isaiah to discuss the value and importance of collegiate cycling not only for the development as a cyclist, but creating more long term enjoyment in the sport of cycling. We chat about our experiences from both the rider side (Jackson and Isaiah) and the coaching side (Frank) to share insight for young athletes and parents alike. Use 25podcast for 25% off your next training p...

  It's officially 2019, and that means time for some reflection and some discussion about what's next for the FasCat podcast. Frank and Jackson sit down to talk about some of their New Year's resolutions and goals for the year, and then jump into the tentative content calendar for 2019 and what you can expect from the show moving forward. We're beyond excited to roll the podcast into the new year...

Coach Frank sits down with FasCat athlete Phil Gaimon to discuss the current state of cycling, the gravel craze, training and racing, training with WHOOP, and the role of social media influence on cycling sponsorship and rider value. Plus more! This is an interesting and engaging conversation that is perfect for your post-holiday travel. Learn more and connect with Phil: http://philthethrill.net/...

photo: Snowy Mountain Photography FasCat Athlete Sunny Gilbert recently had the ride of her life at the 2018 USA Cyclocross National Championships, netting second place in one of the most technical and demanding races in recent years. But what's more fascinating is the path she's taken to arrive at this place. A national champion in collegiate running, PhD level biochemistry science nerd, and a lo...

Coach Frank drops a solo episode this week on the FasCat Podcast discussing how he "invented" Sweet Spot Training and how he integrates it into his coaching philosophy. Here is the training tip referenced in the podcast about the simultaneous development of Training Stress Score (TSS) and TSTWKT (the Performance Manager Chart) 10075Train Less, Go Harder, Get Faster! For more on Sweet Spot and to a...

Steamboat Gravel is shaping up to be 2019's hottest new gravel event! This week on the podcast we sit down with Steamboat Gravel (SBTGRVL) founder Mark Satkiewicz to discuss 2019's inaugural event, and what you can expect to encounter from the course this Summer.   We dive into what inspired Mark and his team's vision, what the different courses are like, and who you can expect to see show up at t...

A Thanksgiving gratitude podcast because we are thankful for our all awesome listeners!  So we sit down and talk about how grateful we are for this podcast and for YOU, the audience! We also dive into a couple other topics to get you through the holiday weekend. Enjoy! Jackson's Ted talk: " Make Pooping Great Again " https://youtu.be/oVDh6w6secs Why Sweet Spot is Superior to Zone 2   https://youtu...

This week's show is all about cyclocross. The final month of the season is upon us, so how can we make the most of it? What should we do to keep the momentum flowing into Nationals? Coach Frank sits down with FasCat coach and cyclocross crusher, Brandon Dwight **, to discuss this topic. The two discuss Secret Training techniques, how to do better when it's cold out, and plenty more. **Brandon is a...

This week we're doing something a little different, and hosting a sort of "grab bag" podcast, inspired by listener and athlete questions we've received in the recent days. Typically our conversation revolves around a central topic, but instead we hit on four topics that are relevant to our entire podcast audience! We discuss our new 30-day Winning in the Kitchen Challenge , how to effectively perf...

  It's beginning to become that time of year where the clocks change, the days get shorter and colder, and we inevitably spend more time inside on the bike. We can hear the groans of dread for the early morning trainer rides echoing across the northern climate cycling communities, but we promise it doesn't have to be dreadful. With a few simple tips and some structure, you can make indoor cycling...

Training with power has become the norm in the sport of cycling. Objectively speaking, it's probably the most beneficial tool we have at our disposal for quantifying our training so that we may train smarter. But as Uncle Ben said in Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility (pardon the pun). For those of us who are new to this tool and technology, it may feel easy to get overwhelmed...

On this week's podcast, we sit down to discuss how to plan your races for 2019. We break down all the races we are thinking about into A, B & C races and talk about what factors to consider when planning out your whole season. Coach Frank and Jackson walk you thru their choices for races like the Belgian Waffle Ride, Dirty Kanza, the Crusher in the Tushar and Rebecca's Private Idaho. What races ar...

On a follow up episode from our extremely popular Winning in the Kitchen podcast , it's time to dive into the world of nutrition and weight loss yet again. It may sound counterintuitive, but the time to lose weight is NOT during the peak of the racing season, but instead during the offseason and winter base period. This is an incredibly hot topic of discussion among cyclists and other endurance at...

Following up after our last podcast with FasCat coach and professional cyclist Isaiah Newkirk, we bring him back to the show to discuss how Tour of Utah panned out, the major lessons learned, and what his favorite late night stage race snack is. We then dived into more talk on the topic of the offseason, and how Isaiah approaches it from both his personal perspective as a cyclist as well as a coac...

It's that time of year when the racing starts winding down and all of our excitement and energy for the season begins to dwindle. Fall is nearing and we start thinking about other things than training and racing our bikes. Do you smell that? That's the smell of offseason. Ahhhh. However, there's a right way and a wrong way to take a post-season break and shift into the offseason. By strategically...

Cyclocross season is upon us, so it's time to start thinking about your cyclocross skills. Cornering is a HUGE skill that can take your cyclocross racing to the next level. Think about it: you take two dozen or so turns per lap. Carrying your momentum thru the turn saves your energy that you would otherwise have to spend re-accelerating back up to speed. In today's podcast, Coach Frank talks with...