Warming Up

I found this next article in May's Bicycling magazine. It's written by Chris Carmichael (Lance Armstrong's personal coach).

He States, "Some people...are troubled by the idea of exercising just before a strenuous event. They figure a warm-up just burns energy that would be better used during the event. What they don't understand is that there's a big difference between what's going on inside your body while at rest and what needs to be going on in order to be ready to compete.

During your warm-up, you're increasing your body's demand for oxygen, so your blood vessels dilate to deliver blood more quickly to working tissue. All that work increases working core temperature, and your body's responds by ramping up sweat production. There's a lag time in there, too, where you're producing lots of heat before you're producing a lot of sweat. Getting through that lag time is important because you want your body's cooling system working at full capacity before that starting gun goes off. "