Alpine Cols

Coaching for road cycling; training camps in the French Alps. Official coaching & training partner to the Marmotte & Tour du Mont Blanc. Posts by Marvin Faure.

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@JeroenSwart I gave this exact message to a group I was coaching this week. However, for those suffering from imposter syndrome, it’s hard to see the “incredible things you have achieved”. Journaling can be a useful tool for this.

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@StephenSeiler I suspected as much (with all the caveats). It’s a useful warning. A little salt improves the meal; too much destroys it…

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@StephenSeiler Very sorry to see this spelled out so clearly Stephen. I sincerely hope there’s a path for you to full recovery. Do you think the cause is linked to an excess of high intensity in your tests?
Best wishes, Marvin

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@Alan_Couzens Hard truth

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@Alan_Couzens Well, I’m sitting on my indoor bike riding in Z1. Is that OK? 🤣

[Iñaki de la Parra @inaki_delaparra]

Most people get this backwards.

I’ve been saying this for years together with @Alan_Couzens and now the GOAT @kilianj puts it in the simplest possible way.

1) First creat work capacity = oxidation, real metabolic engine flexibility

2) Second ensure absorption = gut capacity, “training the gut”

3) Third give opportunity = fuel availability

Build capacity first.
Complexity comes later.

But what most do is the opposite:

- They start with the fueling
- They move to training the gut
- They want to graduate from base and work capacity, skipping the engine development

Result?

You end up learning to eat more, not to use more.

Big intake + small engine = wasted fuel, GI issues, early fatigue.

Principle > protocol

https://t.co/wuXuPgAMFI

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@inaki_delaparra Also known as ‘feedforward’: “next time, try this”
A coach using this approach sidesteps reactive resistance.

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@feelthebyrn1 Thank you!

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

Great post. If you are a 40-something amateur cyclist trying to train like a professional, just stop and THINK for a moment.

[Anthony Walsh | Roadman Podcast @Roadman_Podcast]

Pro cyclists are optimizing for a career that ends at 35. You're optimizing for... what exactly?

I watched one of our group ride get a complete hunger flat (bonk) last Saturday. Not because he lacked fitness. Because he'd been doing fasted morning rides all week, copying some protocol he saw from a WorldTour training camp.

He's 47 years old. Works in tech. Has two kids. And he's systematically destroying his health chasing marginal gains (without context) that only matter if you're chasing UCI points.

This is everywhere in amateur cycling now.

Weekend warriors running pro-level training stress on amateur recovery capacity.

Fasted rides.

Extreme calorie deficits at the wrong times.

Training through illness because "pros push through."

Every club has riders doing this. It never ends well.

Pro cyclists aren't aiming for health.

They're performance machines with expiration dates.

Their job is squeezing every watt out of their body before it gives out, then retiring at an age when most of us are just hitting our stride.

Hormonal disruption, immune suppression, bone density issues, chronic inflammation - these are features of the pro system, not bugs.

The performance is extraordinary. The cost is brutal. And they're getting paid to make that trade.

You're not getting paid. So why are you making the same trade?

I see this mistake in business constantly.

Copies strategies without context doesn't work.

Silicon Valley talks about "move fast and break things" - brilliant for a startup racing for market dominance, terrible for a profitable company trying to maintain customer trust.

Same principle applies to your cycling.

Performance can be downstream of health, but health isn't always downstream of performance.

That's the critical asymmetry everyone misses.

Build your training on a foundation of health - proper recovery, sustainable stress, adequate nutrition, consistent sleep - and performance follows naturally over time.

Do it backwards, chase performance while neglecting health, and you might get faster temporarily. Then you get injured. Or sick. Or burned out.

Strava created a culture where riding yourself into the ground is celebrated. Overtraining is a badge of honor. (festive 500)

Most riders I know could be faster, healthier, and still riding strong at 60 if they just stopped asking "What would Pogačar do?" and started asking "What serves my actual goals?"

PS. I'm building something very special for riders who want to make 2026 their best year ever. The distilled knowledge from 1400 Roadman Podcasts, coaching, nutrition, mindset (it ain't free).

Comment "not done yet" and I'll DM you a link.

Official launch in January.

[Bas Van Hooren @BasVanHooren]

How much energy can the world’s best endurance athletes sustain over long periods?

Find our in our new paper: Longitudinal Assessment of Total Daily Energy Expenditure in Professional Cyclists Supports a Maximal Sustainable Metabolic Ceiling

More details and link in comment

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@inaki_delaparra @Alan_Couzens You’re going too hard 🤣🤣🤣

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

This realisation has made a huge difference to my own training. Progress again!

[Alan Couzens @Alan_Couzens]

2 mmol/L is *never* easy.

The key is to do the vast majority of training at the *lowest lactate that you can reach*

If this is 2mmol/L you've very poor metabolic health 🔴

If this is 1.5 mmol/L you have some work to do 🟡

If this is 1.0 mmol/L, you're on the right track 🟢

[Anthony Walsh | Roadman Podcast @Roadman_Podcast]

This guy tried to convince he doping is good for sport.
It's the first time i've lost my cool on the podcast.
Aron D'Souza, president of the Enhanced Games, just spent an hour trying to convince me that doping should be legal in sport.
He's polished, he's persuasive, and he's got answers for everything.
As someone who lives and breathes cycling – a sport that's watched people die from this exact vision – I should have been able to dismantle his arguments immediately.
The problem is, he sounds reasonable. And that terrifies me.
Because D'Souza isn't some fringe lunatic. He's an Oxford-educated lawyer who's raised serious money and has elite athletes already signed up.
He asks compelling questions about fairness, about athlete welfare, about why we accept some technologies but not others.
And if you're not paying close attention, you might actually believe him.
He's really selling a sanitised version of the same underground doping culture that's destroyed careers, ended lives, and corrupted sport for decades. He calls it "medical supervision" and "transparency," but it's still asking young athletes to chemically modify their bodies to compete.
He talks about "choice," but once the Enhanced Games exists, every athlete who wants to see their full potential will face impossible pressure to participate.
His economic argument sounds good on paper. Elite swimmers making $30,000 a year is shameful, and he's right about that.
But the solution isn't to create a pharmaceutical arms race with million-dollar prizes for whoever's willing to push their body furthest.
That's not fixing the problem – it's exploiting it.
D'Souza kept comparing performance enhancement to other technological advances. We don't limit surgeons to 1950s techniques, he said. We don't cap engineering progress.
But sport isn't surgery or engineering.
The entire point of athletic competition is testing human limits within agreed constraints.
Remove those constraints and you're not watching sport anymore – you're watching a biochemistry experiment with human subjects.
He promised comprehensive health monitoring, professional medical teams, elimination of dangerous self-experimentation.
But who's monitoring the monitors?
What happens when an athlete's health markers start declining but they're three weeks from a million-dollar payday?
What happens when the medical team is employed by the same organisation that profits from record-breaking performances?
We've seen this movie before in cycling, and it ended with body bags.
The most insidious part of his argument is how he frames the current anti-doping system as bureaucratic and hypocritical.
Sure, anti-doping has problems. Yes, there's hypocrisy in what we allow versus what we ban.
But the answer to an imperfect system isn't to abandon all limits – it's to fix the system.
D'Souza isn't interested in reform. He's interested in profit.
And make no mistake, this is about money.
He talks about athlete welfare, but he's creating a product for spectators who want to see superhuman performances without caring about the cost.
He's banking on our collective inability to look away from a car crash. Faster times, bigger performances, world records tumbling – all while athletes mortgage their long-term health for short-term glory and financial survival.
What really bothers me is his vision of "different tiers" of competition coexisting. That's not choice – that's segregation.
Within a generation, you'd have "natural" sport as the minor leagues and enhanced sport as the real competition. Every young athlete with Olympic dreams would face a simple calculation: stay clean and stay poor, or enhance and maybe make a living.
That's not freedom. That's coercion with extra steps.
D'Souza kept asking what we're protecting.
Here's my answer: we're protecting the kid who discovers they're talented at cycling and wants to see how far that talent can take them without having to become a chemistry experiment.
We're protecting the fundamental idea that sport should test what your body can do, not what your pharmacology team can do.
We're protecting athletes from having to choose between their dreams and their health.
I left that conversation more convinced than ever that the Enhanced Games is exactly what it sounds like: a game.
But the stakes are real athletes' lives, and the house always wins.
D'Souza is charismatic and his arguments sound sophisticated.
That's what makes this dangerous. Because somewhere, a young athlete is going to hear his pitch and think it sounds reasonable.
And that might be the decision that destroys their life.
So no, I'm not convinced. I'm alarmed.
We need to share this and push back against this worrying trend.
Don't watch it, support it or celebrate it.
These aren't our champions!

[BikeRadar @bikeradar]

Research shows that failure of cognition, not lack of visibility, needs to be addressed.

Read more 👉 https://t.co/kzpNCQuttO

[William A. Wallace, Ph.D. @WilliamWallace]

Most people think “protein is protein”… but this chart tells a very different story.

Some foods deliver far more usable amino acids per calorie than others, and when you line them up side-by-side, the differences are apparent.

A new comprehensive review broke down protein quality, not just protein grams, using the most advanced scoring system we have (DIAAS). And here’s the takeaway in plain English:

Not all protein builds the body the same way.

Protein quality depends on two big things:
🔹 Amino acid profile: especially essential amino acids
🔹 Digestibility: how much your body can actually absorb and use

Why this matters:
• Older adults need more high-quality protein to maintain muscle
• Athletes need more usable amino acids per meal to recover
• Plant-based eaters may need a higher total protein intake
• Low-income regions relying on cereal grains face a real risk of deficiency
• And when calories are low, protein quality becomes critical

This review also explains why the U.N. recommended switching from PDCAAS to DIAAS:
👉 PDCAAS measures what comes out in feces
👉 DIAAS measures what actually reaches the end of the small intestine - i.e., the amino acids you can absorb

That means DIAAS reflects the real biological value of a protein source.

A few eye-opening findings:

• Grains are typically low in lysine
• Legumes improve with soaking/fermentation
• Animal proteins score higher because they provide more essential amino acids per calorie
• Complementary proteins (rice + beans, bread + peanut butter, hummus + pita) can fill amino acid gaps
• Older adults may benefit from easier-to-chew or liquid protein sources
• And yes, plant-based diets can build muscle when intelligently combined

Even with perfect scoring systems, protein quality is only one part of the full picture. Diet, inflammation, age, health status, and digestion all matter too.

But understanding which foods deliver usable protein vs. just grams on a label is important

The image: Protein sources, scored using the DIAAS

Source: Examine

Citation: Matthews JJ, Arentson-Lantz EJ, Moughan PJ, Wolfe RR, Ferrando AA, Church DDUnderstanding Dietary Protein Quality: Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Scores and Beyond.J Nutr.(2025 Oct)

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

https://t.co/vatQaRH8XR

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@feelthebyrn1 Hi Gordo! My wife is in the 16th right now and has just called the pool in Auteuil. They have some lines set out for laps. You have to get lucky with the number of other swimmers. Hard to predict.
Good luck! Marvin

[Alpine Cols @AlpineCols]

@inaki_delaparra Very sorry for Katarzyna. Come back stronger!