With everyone trying to train smarter, what better way to enhance your training than the old bastion of smartness: good old fashioned books. VeloPress has two new books out to help you get the most out of your training time. Joe Friel (author of the Training Bible series) helps us get the most out of our power meters, while Chris Carmichael updates his popular with some new workouts and chapters geared around specific disciplines. Ripley’s Believe It or Not! even has some cool bike stuff in their latest.
First up, Joe Friel’s The Power Meter Handbook: A User’s Guide for Cyclists and Triathletes:
Many of us have spent thousands on sophisticated power meters, so it seems another $16.95 to make sure we’re using them to their fullest potential is a no brainer. After a few chapters to make sure you understand your power meter and what those numbers you’re drooling over really mean, Friel helps you determine your individual power zones and functional threshold power. From here he helps you determine when and how to train harder, build a better base, and the crux of it all: get fitter and faster to improve overall competitive performance. Check out a sample here.
More previews after the break…
Next, the new and improved essential book of training smarter, Chris Carmichael’s The Time-Crunched Cyclist, 2nd ed.: Fit, Fast, Powerful in Six Hours a Week:
Those of us with busy work schedules, families, you know, lives outside of cycling, Carmichael’s Time-Crunched Cyclist has been the go to work for training smarter.
If you’re not familiar with the first edition, here’s the short of it: Carmichael, trainer to the pros, uses high intensity workouts to build strength and endurance in less time for the athlete who doesn’t have the time to treat cycling as a second job. The 2nd edition updates the original work in light of recent trends and advances in training such as threshold ladders and adds chapters on specific applications, such as centuries, cyclocross, endurance mountain bike races, and even a chapter titled “The Commuter’s Plan for Race-Ready Fitness.” Check out a sample here.
This next one’s been out for a bit, but Tyler Hamilton’s tell-all tome has been getting some rave reviews and changing (or just reaffirming) what folks think about professional cycling.
Written with New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle, the official blurb is this:
“Over the course of two years, Coyle conducted more than two hundred hours of interviews with Hamilton and spoke candidly with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive book that takes us, for the first time, deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to succeed that they would do anything—and take any risk, physical, mental, or moral—to gain the edge they need to win.”
It chronicles Hamilton’s growth in the sport and the choices he was presented with and ultimately made with regards to illegal performance enhancing drugs. Preview it here.
And the final installment in this book roundup falls into the entertainment category, and, as Jens Voigt points out, keeping cycling fun is key to sustaining successful training, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! News of the Weird:
Ripley’s newest book includes a number of cycling wonders and records that you can read about, or supplement your reading by scanning QR codes embedded in the book to bring you to online content and videos. Some of the cycling highlights include:
- The first ever triple back flip
- Toyota’s Think Bike that allows you to shift hands free via a special neuron helmet
- Kevin Robbin’s record breaking Canadian crossing
- New pogo hop record
- Reza Pakravan’s trek across the Sahara
- Krystian Herba’s bunny hops up 48 flights of stairs to the top of Vienna’s Millennium Tower
