Preparing some team wins – achieving a world cycling sprint record

This is a story about a unique path to success. On how trusting and deeply sensing into ourselves, can lead to results well beyond our expectations. Particularly, this is about Cycling Mastery, and in that, reaching Olympic strength that in some ways is still with me 25 years later, as does the unofficial speed record. Read the summary, or the full story below.

SUMMARY

I set an unofficial but still standing world cycling sprint record in 1996, clocking 78 km/h (48.5 mph) for 2 mins. No one else is known to have done that on a standard geared road bike. Seasonal best pro sprints are typically around 76 km/h for 15-20 secs.

Back then I was a cyclist on the 3-times consecutive winning team for the longest continuous bike race in the world. Running from Trondheim to Oslo in Norway, it’s a full 540 km (336 statute miles) going across a mountain range early on in the race.

The winning formula was first and foremost a physical form enabled by listening to the body, see the story below for how. Along with it, and rather crucial, was having great equipment – where I went far in picking up the best parts from around the world. From Italy I bought a custom fit bike frame (steel to maximize stiffness, for all the power to the rubber), from the US came custom fitted shoes (Lamson Cycling Shoes, AZ) and in Norway an extra wide handlebar (more O2). Nothing left to coincidence, the body contributed by offering a resting pulse of 30. Getting ready, I planned to be the best contributor I could be on our remarkable team, hauling home another team win on the longest continuous bike race in the world – third time in a row if so. We did, and a still standing world speed record was the unexpected bonus enroute.

Being prepared the best you can, what great achievements can be next up for you?

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THE FULL STORY

Working at the Defence Headquarters in Oslo Norway, I started commuting on a found-again 5-speed Peugeot road bike. Three years later I proved to be the fastest cyclist on two wheels, ever. How on earth did that happen?

First of all, it's about how to utilize our talents to make the so-called impossible, doable. Listening to the body is core for the pinnacle experience I had. The body has a knowing which the mind cannot get to by itself. Thus, this is also a story of what listening to our soul may lead to in any field or profession, enabling beyond ordinary adventures. And to not underestimate talent built-in, I have an unusual balance towards lots of Type I muscle, the longevity one. Bulging muscles? Forget it! Sculpted powerful muscles? Yes, fully there.

Commuting to work – not so leisurely

I was 33 years, recently having moved from flying awesome military aircraft to managing investments in new aircraft and helicopters. My boss, overseeing all air force investments, observed me on this old bike that I had found in my mothers garage, stored there since I was 20 years old heading for Flight School. A great bike to commute on I thought, not caring about the totally outdated technology. Him and I commuting the same way, he observed from his car that I rode at speed, and asked how long time it took me to get home. "18 minutes" I responded. "And how far is that?" – he continued queering. That I had to find out, as this conversation in 1993 was before the era of smartphones and Google Map.

I returned the next day and told him it was 12 km home. He did the math, and said: "That's an average of 40 km/h on a somewhat hilly ride, that's fast and especially with that last steep hill up to where you live. You should compete!" I took that in, and thought it could be cool to find out, and regardless it would offer some healthy exercise.

The promising initiation – failing

Joining the local bicycle club of "BOC", I heard that they had a habit of winning the longest continuous bicycle race in the world, from Trondheim to Oslo in Norway. That's 540 km, 335 miles, in one go. Those who ensured that feat were in their esteemed "Group 1". They also had a Group 2 that aimed to make the trip in 17 hours, 3-4 hours slower. For me, Group 3 sounded perfect, aiming at 20 hours on the road. Being a rookie I thought that was a smart choice, likely the only one realistic.

I joined the BOC training a Monday afternoon in the fall of that same year. All groups set out together to do a slow warmup, to split up later on to spin further at each of their proper level of exertion and endurance. I found it really easy to hold pace with them. Then, about 4 km out of Sandvika where we started from, we reached this long and arduous uphill (I thought, then). Halfway up, they all just disappeared! Whew, was my boss all wrong? My talent perhaps not that great? No, those thoughts did not win me over, though they did pass through my head. Letting go, I realized two things: 1) I would have to invest in proper equipment, with click-on shoes and the whole nine yards; and 2) I would have to do some serious update of my physical power.

Doing the work to build endurance and strength

Winter approaching, I found a training partner on skis in my friend Ivar, a former fellow officer as I started flying out of Bardufoss base in Northern Norway, where he was an air defence officer. We set out on cross country skis as soon as the snow cover was solid, and twice a week we would do several rounds in this floodlit track 4 km around – up in the hills. It was a remarkable winter. The challenge often with skiing near Oslo, is the frequent mild temperatures melting the snow and then offering a refreeze, creating dangerous icy conditions in the tracks. Hard and especially so if you fall at speed, it could ruin the upcoming season of cycling if I was not careful.

We need not worry this time. Quite astonishingly we were served soft fresh snow every single time we trained, twice a week from late November to early March. An unheard of rhythm in the delivery of snow in our area, we could hardly believe our luck. But boy did we get in shape, much better than I had hoped for. Obviously, the weather gods were totally with us, every single time, so this felt just great.

BOC Group 1 pictured on the way: Riding uphill these cyclists look like leisurely having all the time in the world. But on the next straight or downhill, they will move in a way akin to a tempo team on Tour de France, riding two inches behind each other at speed, a perfect machine of cycling brilliance. Trondheim - Oslo in one go, winning!

With proper equipment, finding the right group to train with

Ready for my first cycling season, seven months after that failed initiation, did I have proper equipment! On a trip to the US, I had bought a current Trek racer with all the fittings, Shimano clip-on shoes and a lightweight frame. I upgraded the next-best gearing on it, to Shimano Dura-Ace. That, to ensure that the technology would not disappoint me when needed the most, and I never regretted that investment. That highest level of bike gearing technology, is just like buttery perfection, always delivering the perfect shift up or down. It never missed a beat, and proper maintenance was carefully ensured just like all my BOC racing colleagues did. I was learning a lot, and fast. At home I installed a bike tech shop in the cellar. For all the major races and whenever needed, wheels were trued and precisely pressured to 8 kg (115 lbs/sq.in). Air pressure was rechecked daily.

Showing up ready for training I started with Group 3, staying with them for half a week, yes, that's once. Finding more speed in my legs than expected, the second time that week I showed up with Group 2. I stayed with them for two weeks. Venturing for Group 1, I said: "I'll train with them, but you'll see me back for the Trondheim-Oslo race". Yeah, right. Once with Group 1, I knew this was my party.

How to ride the 'Chain gang' - and the trailing 'Sack'

What I had to learn fast, with some yelling my way and a couple of close calls, was how to ride close in line in this "chain-gang" riding at speed. Just 2-3 inches apart, rubber to rubber, a narrow margin of error. We typically raced two lines abreast, in the same way as for all competitions, to enable maximum group speed. This can be seen on any team tempo ride in Tour de France as well, and other major races.

'Chain Gang' riding explained: Half the group, say six riders, will move forward on the right, as the other half drift back on the left. In the front, the rider advancing to being first will momentarily add 15% power to keep the pace as he receives the windstream full-on. After a few seconds, as also the previous leader drifts back to give room, he ventures left for the guy behind him to take over in front. All of 15 seconds between each front rider, just about. Moving left the front rider lets up slightly and drifts backwards in that line. Becoming the last rider on the left, it's time to shift right again. To join the advancing right line, you'll add 10% power to compensate the speed difference in the advancing line over the retreating one you now leave. Biking in this circular fashion is thus dynamic and quite demanding, with these frequent power shifts in front and back. The more riders, the merrier. The fewer riders, all the harder.

'The Sack': Those who did not have their day, or were not able to handle the rubber-hugging riding at its swift pace, would stay in the sack behind, a group of able riders moving along right behind the "engine" of the chain. Together, we were quite a machine. During Trondheim-Oslo, everyone visited the sack from time to time, to eat, drink and rest a bit. When the chain up front had too few riders for comfort, one of us signaled to the sack that people were encouraged to add some power up front.

Stopping just once for 13 hours: Enroute on Trondheim-Oslo (T-O), we stopped midway to pee, for a minute and a half. Back on the road, food & drinks were distributed by a high-level rider properly adorned on this service bike, an odd contraption appearing magically from our team van at certain intervals, sporting a large basket of drinks in the back, with wrapped sandwiches and bananas up front. Divine team support!

First team win, hands taking a beating in cold wet conditions

Taking home the team win on Trondheim-Oslo (T-O) in 1994, I was surprised to be ordered to cross the finish line first. As a rookie, they honored me for staying in the chain up front, more of the time than most newcomers they said. I was elated over our team feat, though my hands were not themselves for the next six months. We had endured sleet enroute (rain close to becoming snow), across that 1200 m (4,000 ft) high mountain range we crossed four hours south of Trondheim. The rest of the day was cold and wet, and we won with the slowest time in years, 16 hours plus. A 13-14 h winning time was more like it.

For the second team win, even better prepared and equipped

In 1995, I was in even better shape, doing lots of cross-country skiing during the winter, and getting on the road as soon as possible that year. For this season I had upgraded to a custom-built Italian steel 64 cm bike frame. With both a longer, taller frame and a wider handle bar to match my chest, I could easily tell that I could draw in more air than on that narrower and shorter Trek bike that also flexed away some of the high power. Frequenting the US, I flew to Denver and rented a car to visit a custom cycling shoe maker then located in this northwestern Colorado mountain desert town, to pick up pro shoes that perfectly fit my feet. Three weeks prior I received a form-fit box to the house of my in-laws in Atlanta, GA, to press my feet into this semi-hard foam embedded, and return it together with several measurements. Back home and snow gone, the bigger Italian bike and the superb shoes proved to work absolute wonders. I would soon receive two honorary nicknames on the road with my team, the most able distance team in the country, if not the world. One was "Big Mig", the nickname for the 5-times Tour de France winner at the time, Miguel Indurain. The other, which I appreciated just as much if not more, "The Engine".

Experiencing the 'Flow-Zone' on and off the bike

Fittingly, that year I experienced the flow-zone for the first time, and I rechecked my resting pulse to 30 – pointing to an unusually high oxygen intake – enabled by birth and proper endurance training. Beyond that, in all kinds of sports, Olympic level athletes speak of a flow-zone where everything comes together at yet another level of performance and they win big. It was quite an experience when that kicked in, and it felt like there was no limit to what I could do. For the entire season, no one beat me downhill. They would try, I would play with them, then kick in that "extra gear" to set the record straight. I was hard enough on the flats, as well. But at 94 kilos I was no mountain goat, and some 70-80 kg guys would beat me there. Interestingly, even when racing hard downhill I could never get my heartbeat beyond 120 beats/min, I noted by the reading on my computer.

A surprise 'Mj?sa rundt' win in most beautiful surroundings

Speaking to our team strength, we took part in many other endurance races, from 140 to beyond 200 km and typically happening every weekend from end of April to when T-O happened end of June. The longest of these preparatory races was 'Mj?sa Around'. It is perhaps the most beautiful race of the season, with rolling hills and farmlands of great beauty next to the lake, with local roads sporting great tarmac and little traffic. Normally a 220 km race around this largest lake of Norway, a serious flood cut this years race to 170. Sporting the best endurance team of the country, our admin was not always abreast. So this time we enrolled the day before, getting bumped to starting last while all the other elite teams launched early.

Getting going from behind, never did we pass this many riders! It felt like we flew by, sporting an average speed of 45 km/h (28 mph) for the day. We likely cruised at 50 to 60 km/h as we passed most of these more leisurely going riders on the flats, 'tourists' as we would call them in a bit of arrogance alright. Approaching the finish line, we observed media interviewing the assumed winners. Crossing the line in a vengeance, we beet them by five minutes. That's the kind of delivery we did as a winning team, quite magical if you ask me. And as most of our team members, I felt the nice kind of exhausted. We won the Trondheim to Oslo race again that year, with a proper team winning time of 13h52.

Against all traditional wisdom, not exercising much enroute to Olympic level performance

Between 1995 and the season yet to arrive, I felt within that I needed very little exercise to be my best. All I did of training for five months was a total of six cross-country ski runs, totally out of whack with any traditional sport wisdom for highest-level aerobic performance. For the first trip I trained solo, skiing 30 km. The next five were all the famous long ski races in Norway and Sweden. We often formed a "BOC-team" for those competitions, getting the VIP treatment, but I chose to not show at our weekly spinning sessions. I just didn't need it, and something in my body told me exactly what to do.

With the new season dawning, on some occasions my body felt like a machine. I was fine-tuned to the degree that I was even told what to eat or not, that's the deep listening I mentioned initially. I would hold up a glass of skimmed milk, and suddenly my hand decidedly put the glass down as if saying: None of that! And it has lasted, no more cow milk for me. Another day, no red meat came up, just as clearly. Heeding those messages, I dropped red meat for years, and I should soon figure out why. The body was onto something totally beyond the norm.

A training camp in Mallorca served the perfect opportunity for the team to propel a sprint record

Late April, we had had six weeks on the road after nature thawed in early March that year. Flying to Mallorca for a week of intense training, we were 30+ riders of mostly Group 1, with a few from group 2. A normal training ride was 120-180 km, with this fourth day being a tough one through the mountains of the north. Out of that ordeal, we still had about 60 km to ride back to our coastal hotel on flat terrain. After a little while, the team leader and I found ourselves at the back, agreeing that the pace was rather uninspiring. He then came up with a ploy that he brought from his professional sports teacher training. "Let's start at 40 km/h (25 mph), adding 5 km/h (3 mph) every five minutes." "Cool!", I responded, and so we did. We both moved to the front to lead.

The whole team followed suit at 40 km/h, no problem. But as we shifted to 45, some were strained – naturally so with the mountains behind us. Five minutes later we accelerated to 50 km/h (31 mph), and with another five minutes gone, to 55. At this point we were seven riders left. At 60, we were five. At 65 (40+ mph), we were down to three riders. And right there and then I was the only one pulling, meaning, the one being able to ride in front taking all the headwind. I felt strong beyond any boundaries and decided to take it all out. Exerting a power I had never felt before, I left the other two and reached a whopping 78 km/h, 48.5 mph, and I kept that exact speed for a full two minutes. At this point I reached a crossroads and not knowing which way to turn, I slowed down and turned around. I could see the road for a mile behind me (1.6 km), and there was no-one to see! I could not believe my own eyes. The sense of being a living rocket came to visit. Not having exerted all my strength, stopped by running out of gears, I still felt joyous and ecstatic.

Core fact checks: Was there a downhill perhaps? Yes, for the acceleration a slight downhill was there to assist. For the continued holding of 78.0 km/h, the terrain flattened and I had more power in store but I was totally out of gears. On a standard 8-speed (16 gears) pro road bike of the year, I had 52/12 as my best gearing. Being in the flow-zone described earlier, I could actually check within to "see" if any muscles or tendons could improve its working to make the circling of the legs even smoother, but no. My legs were indeed at their max rpm, I was simply and surely out of gears. Bummer! I so wanted to see 80, a round number! Physically, everything was in absolutely perfect flow, and to hold that speed at all, and then over two minutes, is beyond what has been done elsewhere. Not knowing that, I was slightly irked I could not reach that round number. Not being in the professional circles, I didn't even know how this compared, then. Later, it started to sink in.

The whole run-up and explosion of power, was a totally divine experience. Concentration, training, deep breath, pro custom-made bike & shoes, preparations and everything coming together for a magical display of human potential beyond. I was totally amazed, as was the team, it shouldn't be possible and yet here it was a living reality.

What's your unique talent?

What is your own most unique talent? We won't find out without listening deeply to ourselves and feeling what is amiss in exploiting our genuine talents. I share my cycling story here, many years later, hoping that this can inspire those feeling talent, but not seeing themselves following a standard path with years of arduous training and all the steps "required". We're all unique, and trusting yourself, and the Universe, you'll find your way to what is your higher potential. What are your talents untapped, worth pursuing?

The numbers then and now: Best sprinter nowadays exert 1900 watts

Early in 2019, Cycling Weekly reported: "The top spot for max power came early on in the year from veteran sprinter André Greipel (Lotto-Soudal), as he raced to victory on stage six of the Tour Down Under, beating home favourite Caleb Ewan (Mitchelton-Scott). The German hit an incredible 1903w as he reached a peak speed of 76.8kmh [likely held over 12-18 sec] averaging in 1,326w in the entire sprint [could be 2 min]." Read the article in the Cycling Weekly >>

As increased speed demands an exponential increase in power, so while my speed of 78.0 kmh is only 1.5% more than Greipel's, the power required is likely 5% more. That gives a guesstimate of my power to 2000w. That's about 350w more than the 3x World Champion these days, Peter Sagan, as his reported personal best sprint power.

If you're a scientist on this, please correct my math. And then, I do wonder what my leg rpm was! And anyway, I did not exert all the power I had in store that day. I was out of gears and thus we won't know my true physical potential anyway. To me, connecting the dots, I assume it was between 2200 and 2400 watts. Holding 2000w over at least 1 min (the flat portion) and close to that over 2 mins time (the entire solo sprint) is up and above recorded worlds best, as the article in Cycling Weekly speaks to.

Back to the accomplishments of my BOC club, we won the T-O race that year of 1996 as well, rounding off a trio for me and many of my colleagues. I quit racing "on top" to focus on building our family home, but later that fall I utilized my leg strength to unintentionally "testing the limits of shoe/pedal connection". Again commuting, I did a powerful sprint towards 60 km/h going markedly uphill, all for the heck of it and to follow traffic. The shoe/pedal connection breaking, not withstanding the torque, I rotated mid-air before landing hard at speed. Breaking the four lower ribs on the right, I knew not to move until the ambulance arrived. It sure felt like my back was broken. Hospitalized for a week, I was elated that it was just some ribs that broke.

Arriving home to recuperate, I found out that I could do some other kind of magic, after dropping the morphine. That, for a whole other story.

The ingredients of a lasting world record (unofficial) in cycling sprint speed

• Height and build for cycling speed: 194 cm (6' 4") with broad hips to comfortably house lots of leg muscle.
• Muscles heavily leaning towards type 1: The aerobic, slow acceleration (internally), high-sustained power muscles. This is perfect for fast cycling and X-C skiing, less useful for body flexibility and sports like high jumping and basketball.
• Building a solid foundation age 12-16: Being a paperboy, back when papers were heavy and everybody subscribed.
• Proper equipment: Custom shoes: Form-fitted pro cycling shoes. Custom bike: The "Red Italian" one. To make a stiffer 64cm frame, a 62cm frame was made with extended front and seat stems. Extra wide handlebar: To fit my chest and enabling full-capacity breathing, difference easily felt. Best gearing: Shimano Dura-Ace, I still use it. Fluent shifts, always reliable, a true friend for the road.
• A resting pulse of 30: Yes, this cardivascular capacity was quite useful in my cycling career, and at the time I heard that some cross-country skiing masters, Thomas Alsgaard and Bj?rn D?hlie, were tested to have the same slow beat, at or close to 30. One of two 5-times TdF winners, Miguel Indurain registered a mind-boggling resting pulse of just 21, yes, twentyone! For what is more normal, I found this: "While the normal resting heart rate for adults ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute, conditioned athletes and other highly fit individuals might have normal resting heart rates of 40 to 60 beats per minute. This indicates a high level of cardiovascular fitness."

Steinar Almelid is a LtCol (R), former Senior Strategist; Chief Exercise and Training, and now a CEO & Senior Advisor. He's facilitating uplifting processes on strategy, culture and leadership, with his team of senior advisors presented on www.vistra.no