FIT CITY

How to become a faster cyclist? Quit riding with Lance

Korioth wins national masters road race.

By Pamela LeBlanc
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, July 28, 2008

You might think riding with the greatest cyclist of all time would make you faster and stronger.

But John Korioth, who has spent long hours riding the wheel of Lance Armstrong, one of his best buddies, would tell you differently.

At 41, Korioth just snatched the biggest win of his cycling career, a first-place finish in his age division at the USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships in Louisville, Ky.

The key to his victory? He quit riding with Armstrong.

That's not all he did, of course. He got a professional bike fit, something he'd long advised others to do but hadn't done himself. And he teamed up with a consultant at Source Endurance, who helped him revamp his training regimen.

It paid off on July 3, when he swept across the finish line of the 50-mile national championships ahead of a field of 70 of the top amateur cyclists in the country.

A new way to train

Korioth, 41, grew up in Austin, attended McCallum High School and played basketball at Tarleton State University. He helped found the Lance Armstrong Foundation and co-owns Six Lounge downtown. He started cycling seriously about a decade ago, and one of his first riding buddies was his good friend Armstrong, who went on to win more Tour de France titles than anyone.

For the past few years, Korioth has raced well at the local level, racking up wins in small races and establishing himself as a solid competitor. He rode with Armstrong regularly, cruising through the Hill Country on long, rolling rides. Those forays helped him in some ways, but hurt him in others.

"Riding with Lance is semi kind of really bad for you," Korioth says. "He is traditionally a tour rider, but Lance can ride at a pace that when you start out with him it's OK, but he can maintain this pace for literally five hours and that pace never changes. I don't care who you are; I've seen it every time. Right around the 2.5-hour mark, guys start to crack. (Lance) can maintain it with nothing, but if you try to keep up with him, it will wear you down."

Last fall, Korioth decided to step up his cycling program. Armstrong advised him to get a coach. He needed to work on going fast in short bursts and increasing his VO2 max, an estimate of the maximum rate at which your body can consume and process oxygen during exercise. "Riding with him doesn't do that; it buries you," Korioth says.

In January, Korioth connected with David Wenger, a professional cyclist and co-founder of Source Endurance, where he designs and manages training programs for endurance athletes.

Korioth also dropped Armstrong as a riding partner.

Wenger saw in Korioth a talented cyclist riding below his potential. "He's got a very big motor on him," Wenger says. "He's a V8, but I think we can make him a V12 — he's got serious horsepower." With Wenger's help, Korioth started focusing on interval training — riding three minutes hard, then two minutes off — with some days of rest scheduled into the plan.

"That's been a big change from what he's done in the past, which is ride with Lance and sit on his wheel and stare at it for five hours at a time," Wenger says. "To win masters nationals, you need to ride the best hour you possibly can — the last hour of a 2.5-hour race. So you need to ride harder and not for five hours at a time. Why prepare for a marathon by doing a five-hour walk?"

Korioth equipped his bicycle with a power meter so Wenger could monitor his heart rate and effort. Eventually, Wenger convinced Korioth to enter the USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships.

"I've always kind of been a scaredy cat," Korioth says. "I said to him, 'I don't know; it's a big ordeal.' He said, 'John, quit the excuses. They're not going to give it to you, and if you go and you race your bike, you can win.' "

To prepare for the race, Wenger had Korioth cut back on some of the weekly, ultra-competitive group rides around town so he could focus on quality workouts and give his body time to recover. "There's nothing groundbreaking about what we do. It's fundamentals and based in science," Wenger says. "It's meat and potatoes, but delivered in a way John can work it into his professional and social life."

Seeing results

The changes showed up in race results pretty quickly. Korioth opened the 2008 season with a second-place finish at the Copperas Cove Road Race, then took second in the State Road Race Championship. He added a second at the Belterra Hill Country Circuit Race and a win at the Fayetteville Stage Race in March, before winning the masters division at the AT&T Downtown Criterium on June 21. That was just a few weeks before the masters national championships, and Korioth was rolling smoothly.

"Along with Dave, what Lance said to me was, 'Look, it's very simple. Good training, good massage, good food and good sleep. Do those four things and you'll be good.' I've come to the revelation that he is right," Korioth says.

But the trip to Louisville didn't start out well.

At the time trials that Monday, he placed a discouraging 17th. The road race was just two days away. There was lots of talk about who would win, but Korioth's name never came up. He tried to remember what Wenger had told him: "Just race your bike."

The road race is contested over 10 laps of a five-mile loop at Cherokee Park, near downtown Louisville. Each age group goes separately. "From the gun they were going at it," Korioth says. He hung with the group, but knew he couldn't keep up the pace indefinitely. "After the fifth lap I saw the field kind of shut down. Instantly in my mind I could hear Dave saying, 'Just race your bike.' All the sudden I was up at the front."

On Lap 8, Korioth and two other cyclists made a breakaway. A pack of nine riders was just behind them, followed by the rest of the peloton. Two laps later, going into the biggest hill on the course, Korioth attacked, dropped the other riders and sped across the finish line in under two hours.

"I've won plenty of other races, and every time I've come across I raised my hands, smiling, happy, whatever. When I came across the line this time, I just screamed. I think (the victory came) just because of all that work," Korioth says.

Moments after the win, Korioth called Armstrong. "The best was telling Lance," Korioth says. "I told him 'Yeah, I just won.' There was a long pause. Then he said, 'Won what?' I said, 'You damn well know.' "

Armstrong did know. He'd won the same race himself, years earlier before his Tour de France victories.

"He was totally winded," Armstrong says. "It was part emotion, part elation. I've never heard him like that."

Armstrong credits Korioth's win to more structure in his training. And less piggybacking on the retired Tour de France champion's regimen.

"Anyone can train with me and adapt to that, but it's not their training," Armstrong says. "The best training is your own training program, that you dictate or your body dictates."

Cycling races are about far more than who has the biggest muscles, and Wenger says that what separates Korioth is how smart he is on the bike, making the right move every time and thinking critically on the fly. Yet even Armstrong chuckles that Korioth is stronger than he is now. "Those races are so tactical. It's one thing to be strong, another to be tactical and another to be lucky. You've got to put them all together," Armstrong says.

Yes, lucky.

Which brings us to one other secret that might have played into Korioth's victory: He borrowed Armstrong's Suburban for the road trip to Kentucky, in hopes of a little of that yellow-jersey mojo rubbing off on him. Apparently, it did.

"We're awfully proud of him; it's cool," Armstrong says.