Taj Krieger

Creatine has a reputation as a lifter's supplement, not an endurance one. Here's what the research actually shows about its role for cyclists, from repeated race efforts to glycogen loading, dosing, and the water weight and kidney questions.

Most cyclists understand the principle behind fat oxidation training: ride at lower intensities, fuel a greater proportion of energy from fat, reduce carbohydrate dependency. The reasoning is sound, and the physiological goal is legitimate. The issue is how that principle gets translated into practice. The most common approach (ride below some percentage of FTP, stay "aerobic," log the hours) is mechanistically incomplete. It assumes that fat oxidation is primarily a function of relative...

VO2max might be the most famous number in endurance sport, and one of the most misunderstood. It's on your Garmin, your Apple Watch, and probably somewhere in your fitness tracking app. But it rarely explains performance the way people think it does. It's the number endurance sport has centered fitness around for decades. But most people optimizing their training around it don't actually know what it measures, what limits it, or, more importantly, what it completely fails to capture. That...