Saddle Up and Ride

Your body stores about three seconds of ATP. The fastest systems for rebuilding it run out inside a minute. So what's powering a 25-mile time trial? The aerobic system. Glucose into pyruvate, pyruvate into the Krebs cycle, the Krebs cycle into the electron transport chain. Three stages, each with its own bottlenecks, and at the end of it, 32 ATP per glucose molecule versus 3 from anaerobic gly...

You store about 80 grams of ATP. That's three seconds of flat-out effort. After that, your body is scrambling to make more. This video breaks down the anaerobic energy systems that power everything from a track sprint launch to a hard 60-second bridge in a road race. Phosphagen system, anaerobic glycolysis, rate-limiting enzymes, hydrogen ion accumulation, and why the sixth sprint in a crit ne...

Your technique is smooth for the first hour. Then it falls apart. That's not just fatigue. Your body finds stable coordination solutions. Movement scientists call them attractors. And fatigue destabilises them. This episode covers what attractors actually are, how they show up in cycling, why fatigue makes your technique fall apart, the research on seated vs standing transitions, why indoor tr...

You wake up feeling rough. Sore throat. Congestion. And immediately you're calculating – can I still train? This episode covers when to stop, when easy might be okay, and how to come back without turning a short illness into a long hole. No fixed timelines. No arbitrary rules. Just symptoms, trajectory, and paying attention to what your body is actually telling you. Short-term restraint reduce...

Heat training used to feel like something for elite athletes. Altitude camps. Kona prep. Not for regular cyclists training through a British winter. But the research has moved on. Plasma volume. Haemoglobin mass. Durability. Things that matter even when you're racing in eighteen degrees and sideways drizzle. This episode covers what heat actually does, what the evidence supports (and doesn&#39...

Introducing Saddle Up With… conversations with local riders about how they actually train, think about racing, and what they're working on. First up, Jonah Jenkins - track sprinter, Welsh national team, current Junior Keirin National Champion, for a proper chat about how he trains, how he races, and what he's still trying to figure out. We covered a lot. Winter training blocks, structured...

I had the legs to win that race. I rolled in 15th. Two kilometres to go. Tenth wheel. Road narrows, pace lifts, and suddenly I'm getting swamped here, closing gaps there. Yellow flag, 200 metres to go, small crash happens just in front of me. If I'd been fifth wheel instead of tenth, I'd have been ahead of it. This episode covers why races are decided long before the finish, how corner...

A new paper by Tim Noakes is doing the rounds. The claim: you only need 10 to 30 grams of carbs per hour during endurance exercise. The 60 to 90 gram recommendations? Unjustified, according to the paper. It's already being shared like it settles the debate. One side treating it as vindication. The other dismissing it because it's Noakes. Neither response is useful. In this episode, I try t...

First episode from Saddle Up Cycling. Maybe there'll be more. I'm Matthew, a cycling coach based in London. I work with riders who have jobs, families, and six hours a week if they're lucky. This is for them. You proved something during Covid. The work got done from home. You had time for the lunch ride, the turbo before the kids woke up. Presence and productivity aren't the same t...