The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Tour de France Femmes Podcast - Stage 2 Recap & The Science of Heat Training for Female Athletes
Welcome to the Tour de France Femmes Podcast, from the producers of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast"
CTS will publish daily Tour de France Femmes podcasts with Coaches Adam Pulford and Renee Eastman. They'll recap the stage, but the unique aspect of these podcasts will be coaching insights about how athletes prepare for the demands showcased in that day's stage.
STAGE 2 PODCAST OVERVIEW
Stage 2 of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift saw a new leader in the yellow jersey and a stage win from a 41-year-old racer. CTS Coaches Renee Eastman and Adam Pulford recap the stage, catch up with CTS Athlete Alison Jackson who sent in a post-stage audio clip after Stage 1, and talk about how heat acclimation works differently for female athletes compared to male athletes.
RESOURCES
- https://trainright.com/ultrarunners-heat-acclimation-cheat-sheet/
- https://news.ultrasignup.com/your-quick-guide-to-heat-acclimation/
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Co-Host: Renee Eastman
Renee Eastman is a CTS Premier Level Coach and has been coaching with the company for more than 20 years. She has been a professional bike fitter for 15 years and was one of the first fitters to use the Retül bike fit system. She has a master's degree in exercise science, has worked for USA Cycling, and is a 6-time Masters National Champion.
Renee Eastman bio: https://trainright.com/coaches/renee-eastman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renee.eastman/
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Welcome back Time Crunch fans, TDF fans and, of course, to my co-host, Rene Eastman. There was another exciting stage of the Tour de France Femmes. I've exwifted and I'll turn that over to Rene for a quick stage recap, but I got a good update from CTS athlete Allison Jackson this morning, so let's have a listen to that now.
Speaker 2:Let's have a listen to that now. That was a quick stage. You got to be race ready for a 80K stage like that, so chaotic, but guess what? I love the chaos, I embrace the chaos, and every time when I feel like I almost died but I didn't, it gives me so much confidence and that's kind of how you have to race these races. So anyway, we did a pretty good performance as a team. A bit sloppy in our teamwork, but um, yeah, I mean it's hard to put it together in a smooth way on a chaotic first day of the Tour de France FEM.
Speaker 1:But yeah, one day down eight to go loves to hear, and she said this today went well. I'm so F and strong right now. I was on the back of the group in the final two K, but I sat up to save it for the next two days or for the next days, sorry. So all of that super exciting way to start a stage two and it's always great to hear that your athlete is is doing well, doing well, heading into a big race like this. Renee, I'll turn it over to you for stage summary and recap of what we saw today.
Speaker 3:Thanks, adam. Well, yesterday I said today could get spicy, and we did have a little bit of spice at the end of the stage today, today. For those of you who want to maximize your time and coverage, I'd say start watching with about 25K to go, because that's when it really starts lighting off. Get a little closer Renee, when you talk, Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Spice is nice. I appreciated the stage today too, because it ended. I didn't see that coming. I don't know. Are we doing spoiler alerts? Can we name?
Speaker 3:we have to name names well, now that we, oh we're absolutely. I'm just telling people start watching with 25k to go, because that's when it starts kicking off. And it was around 20k to go that niwa doma slipped off the front a little bit Last year's winner and PFB chased her down, followed her. I was like what is going on? I think she saw the bonus seconds were still up for grabs but there was a break off the front. You remember that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was like, oh dang, like getting exciting. But also I was like, oh man, if she goes to PFP, because again, it's all about the fantasy competition that we have going on. I'm like man, this is going to ruin it, because I had Vibas for the win today. That didn't happen, but she came in second. So I mean won't take it all away, but I was getting excited there.
Speaker 3:We're going to get to that. Let me start with the doomed early break. This we're not gonna get enough press on this one because they were out early. Nothing happened of it. But local french rider odd bionic was up there today showing her showing her colors for her team. Fun fact about her she is a mother and she missed last year's Tour de France. You want to know why.
Speaker 1:Having a baby.
Speaker 3:She was having a baby. She's not the only woman in the peloton. She may be the only mother in this race, but she's definitely not the only woman professional.
Speaker 1:No, anna Vandenberg. Anna Vandenberg. No, anna Vandenberg.
Speaker 3:No, Lizzie Deignan and Little Trek Ellen Van Dyke. Both of those guys aren't in the race. Fun fact Lizzie Deignan, I was so mad that she didn't get picked for Little Trek this year. You want to know why she didn't get picked? Pregnant again, Mother for the third time.
Speaker 1:Well, mom, wats are a thing, as they say.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, after that early break got caught, elyse Shabby went up the road with Seek a Smolders. No surprise there, elyse Shabby. That is her thing. Her thing is to chase the mountain points. She's won the mountains jersey at several races. So no surprise there. She's Demi Vollerine's teammate on FDJ. So she was out there gobbling up points. It was actually pretty competitive. But I want to make sure I mention her because I got all the fun facts. She's a medical doctor. I didn't know that During COVID because there was not much racing, she actually went and did medical relief at a hospital in Geneva.
Speaker 1:That's super cool. I did not know that All right.
Speaker 3:One more fun fact she was a 2012 Olympian in kayaking as well.
Speaker 1:That's massively impressive.
Speaker 3:So the Swiss in general overachievers Always, she's Swiss, always All right, well, that break was off. They get brought back with about 10K to go and Mavie Garcia slips off the front. That's no surprise. M navi is an attacking rider. She's not a great sprinter, she is a good climber, but this isn't a high mountain finish. So you know, it was one of those things where I'm not surprised they let her go.
Speaker 3:She lost five minutes yesterday, or however many minutes, she lost minutes yesterday well, she had a crash, yeah, um, so she slips off the front and then there's, you know she's just dangling there 15, 20 seconds and I'm like who is going to bring her back? Because by that point it was a small field, like we anticipated. It was hilly enough that there's probably only 30 or 40 gals left by the end. And visma wasn't chasing it down. They had the jersey. She was no threat to the jersey. Um, fdj didn't work to chase it down, they didn't have a sprinter and you know Garcia's not a threat. So dangling off the front, you know, within sight, as they're in the last couple hundred meters, and she ends up winning with, uh Mary, with Lorena Ruivas hot on her heels, both of our pick for today. We just didn't count on Garcia getting off the front?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. I mean it was go back to stage one where it's like PFP went and I was like, oh man, she's going to win. This is crazy. With Mavi up the road and I was watching it with my wife Kristen. She's like, oh my God, is she going to get caught? I'm like I don't think so, cause like Mavi's all in right, like she knows there's no teammate behind her, that's going to, you know, faucet around her. And she had, I mean, she had more of that gap. But I think, to your point, confusion of who's chasing what's what. Capecchi doesn't have her normal super human power with a back injury right now. So even her lead out kind of pulled off a little bit late. And that's no shame, it's just I mean I'm impressed she's still doing her thing. But then, yeah, vivas in second in my Tour de France FOMS fantasy team. A little light on points today.
Speaker 3:Navi also oldest stage winner. Yeah, 41 years old, still crushing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I texted you. I was like, at some point we need to talk about the two wrecking balls of the Tour de France, foms, of XWIFT right now, because Mariana Voss is 38, Bobby Garcia 41. These women are crushing it into their 40s. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:It's not uncommon to see women riding later into their careers, often starting later. You mentioned Elise Chavi just a minute ago. She didn't start racing until she was 27.
Speaker 1:You know mentioned Elise Chabby just a minute ago. She didn't start racing until she was 27. Yeah, and you know so much to say about that and it goes. It's starting to change because there's a lot, there's a big push for juniors, men and women, but to get women into the sport earlier for that talent identification, development and kind of change that development and and and kind of change that. But right now we're still seeing these crossover athletes where you know they were runners, rowers or soccer players, just coming from different sports. They get on a bike, maybe sometimes cause they're injured or they want to change. Um, kristen Faulkner is another one, you know, late to the sport, crushing it and, uh, you know there's no, there's no cut pattern. Uh, pro tour cycling, which adds to the element of surprise and excitement and watching this thing because it's so cool to see.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. We have plenty to talk about with all the other ladies who will show their faces through the stages, but let me wrap up with the end result, for today there was a little bit of gc shake up kim lacorte pinar, who I will refer to as klcp because that's just quicker. Uh, she actually ended up taking the jersey. That was a surprise to me it's a surprise to her.
Speaker 3:She said she was like Rolling back to the team vehicle and they were like no, no, no, you're needed at the podium. So awesome to see For her. She's actually still Somewhat of a new rider on the On the high level I should say On like world tour. But she got a couple of bonus seconds. She got third Again today. She's crushing it. She takes over the jersey. We still have PFP and Voss up there, but she got a couple of bonus seconds. She got third again today. She's crushing it. She takes over the jersey. We still have PFP and Voss up there, the top two or three.
Speaker 3:But no big surprises otherwise on the GC side, other than confirmation that Kapecki is. There's something up with Kapecki because she was dropped a couple times today, so it's clear that she's just not feeling well. Same thing with Elisa Longobrigini, the Jira winner from a couple weeks ago. She she's clearly not going for GC. She was up at the front working for their team today. So the GC battle is very clearly. You got Kasia Nwodoma, you got PFP, you got Demi Vollering, maybe Kim LaCourte. Let's see how the week goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's exciting and you know it's no shade to the men's tour. But, as I was telling a friend this morning, this is more exciting than wondering if Todd is going to attack for two and a half weeks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we definitely have even already some surprise people up at the front who could do well all week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So should we turn to today's coaching topic, Renee?
Speaker 3:Yeah, adam, because I wanted to follow up on something that our guest speaker, head of performance, said at EF Talk about topping up heat. And I was like I bet a lot of people were you know what is that about Topping up heat? Can? You help us out there, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a quick term that coaches and physiologists use. For once, the athlete is heat acclimatized. You then have some intermittent heat exposures to top off on the heat. Okay, so what all that means is there's acclimatization and acclimation processes to the heat. What you want to do is get your body trained so that it can tolerate heat better. And the reason why this is important is when you go out in the heat to ride your bike, race your bike or to even garden, you'll realize that heat is a stressor, right, so it's going to hit you harder. And then, in cycling, what we want to do is expose ourselves to the heat in various ways so that it's less of a stressor to us. That is the primary reason, so it doesn't minimize our performance when we go bike racing. The other benefit is when you go into cooler conditions and your heat acclimatized, you might get a little boost in performance.
Speaker 1:Now, how you do this is it's pretty scientific. We have protocols. We'll talk about that in a minute, but it's like the full detail of all of this. I actually did a podcast, maybe a month ago, and it is entitled best heat training strategies for time crunched athletes and it's episode number two4. So if you're interested in, if this sparks an interest and you're like, yeah, I want the protocol, let's do it go there. But some of the protocols are both, I would say, native heat as well as artificial heat, or using the heat that's outside versus a sauna or hot bath or something like that. And, renee, I don't know, do you use any heat protocols with your athletes?
Speaker 3:I use the poor man sauna, the bath, the bath. Yeah, a lot of my athletes don't have access to sauna, so you know, myself included. So you know getting in the bath. But yes, I can think of a couple of recent ones, and one probably most dramatically. I had a guy, older gentleman, looking to qualify for Gran Fondo World Championships, went down to the UAE I think it was in February or March from Colorado so we had to do a little heat training for him for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and anybody can do that. That's what's so kind of cool about heat training is anybody can do it. I think it gets a little hyped. You got to be careful with it a little bit more, and at the highest level. So with AJ Allison Jackson, we used a combination of all heats because, you know, the it's also probably the most accessible.
Speaker 3:If you have a bathtub let's talk about that a little bit you can use a sauna, you can use a bathtub to get really hot, or you go ride your bike outside. Well, let's talk about that for a second. Riding your bike outside, or getting in the trailer in your winter parka and turn the heater on, and you know the the pros and cons of that active versus passive kind of exposure of like. You know how stressful it is on the body if you're exercising in the heat and why that those passive measures might be a little bit better. Can you speak? Yeah?
Speaker 1:I think it's first important to recognize, just like, how the system works. Okay, because, keep in mind, stress plus rest equals adaptation. Heat is a stressor. So, just like training, stress of doing threshold intervals or VO2 or whatever that stress is, if you rest, you then form the adaptation to become better at threshold, improve your VO2 max or whatever the case is, in this case heat is the stress. So if you expose yourself to heat in any form or fashion, sauna, hot bath, outside, whatever then you rest, you form the adaptation.
Speaker 1:What's the adaptation? You sweat sooner, you have increased plasma volume, which is the watery portion of your blood, to sweat more and sooner, and perceived effort comes down in heat as well as a. There's a lot more adaptations that are going on, but those are kind of the key physiologic adaptations that happen. The net net is I hurt less in the heat, meaning I perform better relative to the heat itself, and also increase performance in that cool conditions. So now, once you have an understanding of why that system works, I would say very simplistically and cautiously, you can ride in heat.
Speaker 1:However, when we do that, initially you want to bring the intensity low, because if the goal is to do intensity or have a high intensity session. Doing your first heat exposures with intensity is a poor choice. You need to start at low intensities, expose yourself to heat if you do that kind of simultaneously. Or what you can do is go do your training in cooler conditions or normative conditions and then expose yourself to the heat post ride which is in the sauna or hot bath 10 to 30 minutes depending on kind of where you're at in that protocol. And the whole idea is again, increase core temperature, get your body stressed from heat, then chill out, then form the adaptation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think something that might be surprising to our athletes who are going to try this is that even that I'm going to go jump in the sauna or the bath after my ride and you're doing that for your protocols five, seven days, ten days is that is a stressor? Is a stressor Like you're like, oh, I'm just sitting in the bath doing nothing, but it's making your body work harder. So you have to pay attention to your recovery and certainly your hydration. The hydration status day to day is huge when you're doing that, like heat acclimation. But I think that's one of the things that probably is surprising to a lot of people that that is just sitting in the bath for 20 minutes, 30 minutes post ride that that makes your day harder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you got to recognize that. And what to look for when you're in the hot bath or sauna is like you know your face is getting red, you're sweating on your forehead. If you're in the sauna, your whole body sweating. You're like, oh my God, how much longer? Right, Like that's a stressor. When you come out of that, then you need to give your body the tools it needs. You need to rehydrate, you need electrolytes, you need to lay down and rest, you need good sleep, all these things. And so when you're doing a protocol like this by the way, typical duration, right, If you're going to do this heat training, listen to my episode number 254, but for most athletes, seven to 10 days back to back to back to back, so all continuous.
Speaker 1:You need these heat exposures and you need to plan it during a time period where you have time before your main event. So maybe six weeks out, or so six to eight weeks out, and maybe have a couple of rounds of it so that you know how your body reacts. You're just, you're adding stress to the whole equation. So you have to make sure to adjust life, stress, training stress accordingly, because you don't want to crumble during this time.
Speaker 3:And let me jump on that to talk about. You know you talked about the life stress and everything else going on. Is that this, uh, one of the things we want to do this week is highlight some parts of a women's physiology. With this and the heat tolerance uh tends to shift throughout a woman's monthly cycle. Now, these aren't absolutes because everybody's unique, but during usually the second half of the cycle, the luteal phase, it's harder to regulate core temperature and you know feelings of heat people are going to feel.
Speaker 3:Women are going to feel often a little bit more intense. I can kind of put my hand up, I would say back in the day I'm a little bit past my time for that now, but back in the day, yes, I had, I recognized I had a little bit more problem of heat in the second half of the cycle, in the looped field phase, of heat in the second half of the cycle, in the loop-tweak phase. So the implications to that is maybe that's not the best time to do your heat acclimation if you have a real flexible time frame to work with. It doesn't mean you shouldn't or you can't, but maybe it's just a little bit harder. You're going to feel a little bit more intensely, usually in the first half of the cycle, in the follicular phase is when thermal regulation tends to be a little bit better, and that might be if you have free reign to plan where you're going to do. Your intense heat adaptation exposure might be a little bit more tolerable anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now contraceptives, adaptation exposure might be a little bit more tolerable anyway. Now contraceptives, oh well, I was going to say to add to that too, I've had athletes go through menopause or perimenopause, where everybody's very different, very individualized here, but they just the heat exposure in general. It just starts to hit them way harder, right. So even if you've been fine your whole life and then menopause hits, now everything changes. I think that that's a crucial thing. And I don't, I don't know, I don't think and I don't know if heat training during that time period has been official, because hormones are changing anyway.
Speaker 3:Well benefit my opinion. I'm not a doctor and I'm not an expert on this. I have been a woman for 50 something years, so, um, some expertise there. That the difference between most effective phase or it's terrible, like I think maybe most effective during the first half of the cycle, and just because it's not maybe the most effective, doesn't mean that it's not effective at all. But it's a consideration that heat adaptation is a stressor and it is hard, and if maybe you could have the flexibility of when when you were going to time that Well, that's it.
Speaker 1:And I think the biggest takeaway is to like if you're going to do that, well, that's it. And I think the biggest takeaway is to like if you're going to do this, if you're working with a coach and you're going to do this, communicate with your coach. Like if heat hits you in a different ways, you know, in different elements of your cycle and different time periods of your cycle and if it does just say hey look, in the first part of my phase he doesn't hit me as much, but in the luteal phase or later on in the cycle it hurts a lot more. Like, have that conversation so that you can plan and train accordingly. Just like, just like anything else.
Speaker 3:And I think that there's a whole lot more to talk on this subject, which you know. I hope we get to later later in the week. Yeah, but you know, I would just say that if you know that you don't deal with the heat so well in that luteal phase, it's, you know, time to maybe pay extra attention to hydration strategies, maybe being a little bit more gentle on the protocol, every other day instead of every day, you know, so that you can adapt to what makes it a little bit more sustainable for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it, and I think too, for the time crunched folk is like you. You factor all that into the equation. I think heat training sexy right now because the pros are doing it and it is so readily accessible and there's devices out there that measure your core temperature, so it can be pretty cool to dabble with. But at the end of the day, if you're a time crunched athlete, you're averaging six to 10 hours of training and you're scrapping to get that volume. It's like adding in a heat training protocol for 10 days. That's an extra. I mean several hours a week. Math is hard to do when you're podcasting, but so like six, seven hours, something like that, to that 10 day protocol. Do you have the time? Do you have the time to get to the sun? Do you have time to draw the bath and spend 20 minutes in it post-ride before you get on to the next Zoom call or whatever? It is right, it's a lot of time.
Speaker 3:Zoom calls in the bath, adam, oh, that's how Renee does it.
Speaker 1:So the net effect is like, when it comes to the ideal training, it's the ideal training for you, it's not what's ideal for the pro or what's ideal based on the latest research. It's like yeah, understand that the latest research suggests that heat training will optimize performance in heat and probably increase performance in cool conditions. But there's a lot of other low hanging fruit for time crunched athletes, ie high-quality training, high-quality rest, more duration when you can get it, and then all these little marginal gains should be added on after those aspects.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Let's look at tomorrow's stage Renee. What should we be looking for in stage three?
Speaker 3:What should we be looking for in stage three? Well, adam, tomorrow is truly a sprinter's day, a fast, flat stage. We expect maybe crosswinds potential. There's only one little itty bitty climb on there. So it truly is a flat stage. We should expect Lee Shabby keeps the Polka Dot jersey because she's got enough points. No danger there, no reason for KLPC to lose yellow unless some kind of crazy shenanigans happen. And I think the big battle for tomorrow is going to be Voss versus Weebs, because they were going for the intermediates today they were both up there in the sprints. Flosses got the jersey and weebs would like to have it yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:So, you know, battle for the green, battle for the stage, win I think is going to be, um, you know the heated battle for sure. Uh, I think the crosswinds like you talked about, and maybe let's see what happens on the stage, because just the cross wins and what that means, could be fun to talk about, maybe tomorrow. So, uh, we'll pick renee's brain on that and overall, I think we leave it there, uh, for today well, first adam, who are you picking for tomorrow?
Speaker 1:I was gonna say I think we leave it there for today, because we all know vegas is going for the win. Well, this is going to be the third stage in a row that I think we leave it there for today, because we all know vidas is going for the win.
Speaker 3:Well, this is gonna be the third stage in a row that I pick. Weeb is so.
Speaker 1:Third's a charm, renee I am she's trying, man, she's been up there I, I hear you, which is why I'm kind of like don't want to get, uh, jinx myself, because I feel like I have, like I mean I got, I got the win on stage one with voss, but I was very worried, worried. And then today I was like Vivas for sure. And then you know Neodoma and PFP. I was like God, it's all over now, but it was cool to see Vivas up there in second. She is just a massive sprinter. Tomorrow will be fun. And then I think we'll have a lot more different things to talk about in GC stage four onward.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome. Well, I hope all of our listeners today learned a little bit more about heat training and how to think about it, especially if you're a woman and you have, you know, different experiences in different perceived efforts with heat throughout the cycle and throughout the time of year. So I hope you can apply it to your training on that one and I look forward to seeing Renee again tomorrow morning to recap more about the stage and talk about fun physiological stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been great, Adam. I will see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Sounds good. Thanks, renee, bye.
