At PEZ we are not only “dyed in the wool” cycling journos chasing about trying to do our race write ups. We have a very clever member of the staff – Stephen Cheung Ph.D. He writes and edits the all important “Toolbox” articles to set you right on all things training and sport science related. Here is an insight into the life of our Professor of the Peloton…


PEZ: Stephen, you’re a University Professor, a training consultant and now you have a book published! Tell us your background?

Stephen Cheung: I was born in Hong Kong but grew up in Vancouver. I received two degrees at different universities in Vancouver, my Ph.D. in Exercise Science at the University of Toronto, and a short post-doc in your bonnie homeland of Scotland in Aberdeen. I was a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax 1998-2007, and came to Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario as a Canada Research Chair in 2007. My first degree was actually in oceanography, but I got so keen about cycling that I figured I might as well spend my life reading papers about that instead, switching to kinesiology for my Masters. I met my wife Debbie through cycling, and I’m looking forward to doing tandem bike tours with my boys Zachary and Jacob.

I’ve done some work with setting up the Canadian Sport Centre Atlantic in Halifax, and also a top-secret Own The Podium project for the Canadian Snowboard Team for the upcoming Winter Olympics – can’t say any more until the closing ceremonies! I started racing bikes in 1986 when I started Uni and every pro was older than me. Now every pro is younger than me and I’m still in Uni!

Work is just another excuse to ride.

PEZ: Can you explain more about your book?

Stephen: My new book, Advanced Environmental Exercise Physiology, has been sitting on my “goal” shelf for quite a few years. Our field lacked a concise yet comprehensive summary of the entire field of environmental physiology. So whenever I had new students in my lab, I’ve had to send them away with a whole potpourri of textbooks, review papers, and specific scientific articles to get them oriented into the field. It was really haphazard that way, so I wanted to do a bit of a “one stop shop” that would have information on all the different environments and issues in our field. The trick was to do that while not turning it into War and Peace on the one hand, or “Environmental Physiology for Dummies” on the other! That’s definitely where my years writing for Pez and mixing hard science and readability have come in useful!

The book has chapters on heat and cold stress, hydration, SCUBA diving, altitude training, high altitude mountaineering, microgravity, air pollution, and chronobiology (e.g. time of day and jet lag). My core background is in heat and cold along with hydration, but I’ve dabbled scientifically in most of the different environments. So at the end of the day, it was an amazing opportunity for me to sit down and say “this is what I’ve learned over the past 18 years.” And while I’ve published lots of scientific papers in my life, there is just an incredible thrill to holding your own book in your hands!

PEZ: When you watch the Tour de France in baking heat or the Giro d’Italia in the snow are you watching the action or thinking of the effects of thermal stress on human physiology?

Stephen: I’m a fan first and foremost, and I just love the whole spectacle of racing. So I’m not watching a race thinking “Wow, he’s cranking out 400 W right now and that means he’s generating 1600 W of heat and that means…” But at the same time, I love seeing how adaptable the human body is to different environments and stress. I think that understanding the science behind something only makes you appreciate the artistry even more. For me, the fun of science is seeing and testing the limits of human performance, and the epic nature of cycling certainly lends itself to that exploration.

Earning his keep by giving lectures around the world – if it’s April it must be Amsterdam!

PEZ: How did you get into cycling?

Stephen: 1984 Olympics. The men’s RR was on the first main day of coverage, and they showed the entire race live on TV. I had zero notion that people actually raced bikes, and I just sat transfixed the entire 4+h watching this Canadian dude Steve Bauer. I was 16 at the time and playing high school basketball (star bench-warmer was my ability level), but this light switch literally popped on in my head. Right after the race, I grabbed my $100 department store road bike that must have weighed 15 kilos and went for an “epic” ride of 35 km. Man do I ever remember that ride. I had no toe clips and just running shoes, basic gym shorts, a T-shirt and the insanely ugly and heavy Bell Biker helmet. It was my first-ever “ride” and I ended up completely bonked, chafed, and sore, but also insanely happy. Basketball quickly fell by the wayside and that was it for me – I was hooked!

Fave ride part 1: tandeming with his wife Debbie.

PEZ: I think you’ve been writing “Tool Box” articles since 2002, how did you get involved with “The PEZ”?

Stephen: I was a prof for 4 years by then, and I obviously still had too much time on my hands! Growing up with the sport, I was always dissatisfied with the fitness writing in the magazines and whatnot. They were just so generic and mostly just passing down the same advice repackaged in different form and words. Nothing was at the scientific level that I wanted to read in that they weren’t really based on actual scientific evidence. So I wanted to write some articles of my own – after all, I got into exercise science because I wanted to read papers about cycling and study the sport, so what’s more natural as a scientist than wanting to write about these ideas? I still don’t know how I came across the early Pez. Probably procrastinating and web-surfing instead of working, just like our target demographic! But the very few articles -you haven’t created the whole Daily Distractions yet Al! – that were on the site somehow just clicked with me in terms of tone and perspective on the sport. I fired off an email to whoever the manager was saying who I am and what I wanted to do. Rich emailed back that he couldn’t pay me, but if I wanted to do something like Toolbox then to go ahead. I couldn’t have cared less about money – I just wanted to write!

Somewhere under all that equipment, Stephen’s playing in his new one-of-a-kind research lab.

PEZ: What advice would you give to a young cyclist just starting out?

Stephen: We have a few really talented and keen cadets and juniors in my club, and one of them is even doing a high school mentorship program in my lab. The main thing I feel is that it’s got to be fun and it’s got to be your passion. So I think it’s a bit ridiculous to say that young athletes must focus only on cycling or indeed any single sport to the exclusion of others. The thing with endurance sports is that building the aerobic engine is the biggest thing, and that can be done with a lot of different sports. A cadet or junior rider should just focus on doing lots of endurance work to build that aerobic capacity, and at the same time try as many different disciplines of cycling and racing as possible to gain experience and see what really sticks in terms of passion. The racing will take care of the high intensity work, and there’s plenty of time in your late teens to get “serious” with your training.

Fave ride part 2: any bike ride with my boys Zachary and Jacob.

PEZ: Would that advice differ from an old cyclist making a “come-back” after a few years of inactivity?

Stephen: The first thing is to relax! While it’s great to have goals, let’s realize that cycling is a hobby. Weekend warriors face an incredible level of physical and mental stress juggling work, family, and exercise. If you’ve been in cycling for a long time, there’s a reserve that you can tap into and the progression might be faster. If you discover cycling later in life, that progression will be slower and more measured, and a lot of the above advice for cadets and juniors apply. For both new and experienced masters, the main thing is technique and skill. It doesn’t replace fitness, but it permits you to advance yourself much better in the long run. I saw this first-hand taking up short-track speedskating in my mid-20s despite minimal skating experience. There were others who joined up at the same time who were naturally fast from their hockey background, but they plateaued rapidly and couldn’t improve any more because they didn’t focus on learning the technique in speedskating.

PEZ: What is your view of doping in cycling and sport in general at the moment?

Stephen: It’s hard not to be cynical isn’t it? I’m not naive enough to think nobody cheats or dopes, but I’m also not cynical enough to say that everybody does it. The biggest disappointment for me was being at the Worlds in 2003 and seeing David Millar blow everybody away, taking over 90 s from Mick Rogers, and then finding out in 2004 that he was doped. It’s a real kick in the teeth as a fan. But the tragedy is that he was so talented that he likely would’ve won without dope anyway, only maybe by 30 s instead.

The other real tragedy is when the system itself manipulates a rider into doping. I think that’s what Paul Kimmage’s crusade is all about, given what he wrote about from his own experiences in “A Rough Ride.” I saw that too at Worlds 2003 with Canadian rider Genevieve Jeanson’s high hematocrit on the morning of the women’s RR. At the time, I absolutely blasted her as an idiot for not testing her hematocrit. But with her revelations over the past couple of years about the systematic doping her coach performed and her family knowingly permitted from when she was a junior, that’s just a whole level of systematic abuse that needs to be dismantled. That gives the honest athlete a fighting chance to not become cynical and also compete on an even footing without fear. But at the end of the day, if you’re not doing something for the right reason and that passion I talked about, then what’s the point?


Dope Schmope. The best reward from cycling is the desserts!

PEZ: The situation must be better than before?

Stephen I think the real improvement now is that teams like Columbia and Garmin are essentially standing up and willing to take a stand. The other critical half of the equation is that the riders on those teams also make the implicit agreement that they’re not going to use “we ride clean” as an excuse. That’s the grassroots movement that needs to happen. Being willing to ride clean doesn’t mean that you don’t care about winning or are somehow holier than thou. It’s about the process and giving yourself the best support possible, so I’m a big fan of their entire philosophy. I’m less convinced about the approach of outfits like Katusha, where they put all of the onus on the riders to not dope by slapping a big penalty clause into their contract. Sure, that might look great, but the bigger aim should be to remove the external pressure to dope.

PEZ: Could the UCI, WADA etc. do more?

Stephen I think the CERA busts of 2008 were a big watershed. Maybe it was luck and maybe it was pure stupidity on the part of the offenders, but for the first time the perception changed from the testers always playing catch-up to being able to keep pace and even surprise the dopers. Of course, given that people still are getting caught for CERA a year later on, either you can’t underestimate basic stupidity or else the inherent systematic pressure remain.

PEZ: You spent a summer in Barcelona, any stories?

Stephen Yes, the International Space University in 1994 during my Ph.D. degree. Take 120 hot-blooded young grad students or space professionals from 30 countries, an even mix of men and women with too many hormones, hot sultry weather, a “work hard play hard” mentality, and I’ve probably said too much already!

In other news, I packed my bike with me and went for amazing rides everywhere in the early morning before classes. I well remember preparing for my first ride by learning the Spanish phrase “Donde esta l’Universitat?” and figuring I’m all set. However, partway through the ride and twisting through endless small towns and villages, I quickly realized I was screwed because I’d have no clue about what the locals would say to my question! I eventually got back to campus, but it was a FAR longer ride than I intended!

Using science to pay his travel bills has been Stephen’s modus operandus through the years.

PEZ: Is there a Stephen Cheung cycling hero?

Stephen I’m generally not into the hero/celebrity thing at all, but Steve Bauer will always be the man for me because watching him in 1984 was what ignited my passion for cycling, a sport that has brought so much to my life. So probably the single greatest day of my cycling life was at the 2006 Tour de Georgia. At the base of Brasstown Bald, I bumped into this guy wearing a Pez cap so I stopped to say hi only to see that it was Bauer. We chatted for a while and then the two of us rode up this famous climb together just as two friends and spent the day in the VIP area eating and watching the race. It was a bit of a culmination and chance to reflect on everything that cycling’s been for me, and to share that with the person who introduced me to the sport. Of course, now I live in Bauer’s hometown (my house backs onto the Steve Bauer Trail!) and we’re both members of the same cycling club, so it must be destiny!

Coolest ride of 2009 – sneaking into the Roubaix velodrome for a few quick laps the day before the race.

PEZ: Which race is un-missable to watch, road-side or on TV?

Stephen I was there on l’Alpe d’Huez for the time trial in 2004 and that was staggering. But then riding on and being in the paves of Roubaix this year put my appreciation for pro cycling up another level. Even on a dry day like it was in 2009, there’s just no way to describe the craziness of riding over those cobbles. And pretty much the entire population of Flanders seems to get bussed over by government edict to the final pave sectors, turning them into complete nuthouses and providing incredible atmosphere. Even in the midst of the drunken party, the fans there are generally well-behaved and of course completely passionate.


It’s not a real bike race without a few drunken Belgians for atmosphere.

What pro races do I still really want to see? De Ronde and pretty much any cyclo-cross race in Belgium!

PEZ: How do you fit in all your commitments and find time to cycle?

Stephen It’s therapy for me. The busier I am, the more I need to exercise to balance life out. The good thing with being an exercise science prof is that I can rationalize time spent exercising as “professional development!” After all, if I’m out of shape, smoking and eating donuts all day, why should I have any credibility amongst my students? The other good thing is that my office and lab have always been right in or next to the university athletic centre, so it’s simple for me to exercise during the day.

I live the perfect commuting distance of about 35-40 min from campus through beautiful quiet farm roads. I can mix it up a lot depending on the route I take, including going through provincial park trails on the mountain or cross bike. So the majority of my cycling and workouts happen during my commutes. Apart from that, I try to regularly make our club’s Tuesday night races or cross workouts, and the Sunday hammer ride.

Stephen’s developed a bad case of cyclocross fever, but he’s not too interested in finding a cure.

PEZ: I had heard you were the last cyclist in Nova Scotia with non-indexed downtube shifters and wool jerseys?

Stephen Maybe not the last, because there’s lots of hardcore and older touring types. But of course, just like Scotland, the peloton’s got a perpetual wet sheep smell thanks to all that wool and the damp climate! I still have an old steel frame with a whole mixed bag of parts, fenders and downtube shifters that I use for wet weather riding. But the wool kit has all been retired except for the Pez sweater!

PEZ: What does the future hold for Stephen Cheung, Ph.D?

Stephen Well, I doubt I’ll be getting on Oprah’s book club with my environmental physiology textbook, so I’m writing my next book now. It’s tentatively titled “Cutting Edge Cycling” and is being co-written with Hunter Allen. It’s sort of “Toolbox Extreme” and a culmination of much of the philosophy behind my Pez writing so far. Just like my articles, we’re taking a close scientific “evidence-based” approach to many of the scientific concepts underlying cycling training and performance. I’ve always hated the vagueness and generality behind “popular” fitness writing, so this book will take ideas, examine them scientifically, and of course apply them to cyclists with real life case studies and practical ideas. The book will let me expand ideas a lot more than the Pez columns, as I’ll be able to survey and summarize multiple studies in much more depth rather than focusing on single studies.

The book will be fun. We’ll have chapters on periodization, peaking and tapering; pacing strategies; quantifying intensity and workload; pedalling biomechanics; pacing strategy; bike fit; overtraining and recovery; and ergogenic aids like cooling and hypoxic training. We’ll also have Q&A sections with some of the top cycling scientists in the world on topics that they’re passionate about. It’s with the big exercise science publisher Human Kinetics, and we’re aiming to have it out in time for Christmas 2010.

Aside from that, I’m also a regular guest on Bike Talk Radio internet radio (every other Sunday 2030-2130h) to talk about training and fitness, and will be contributing to Canadian Cycling magazine too. I got into studying exercise science because I wanted to learn as much as I can about cycling, so getting to write about cycling is living the dream for me!

PEZ: Any final words?

Stephen Science isn’t the reason I bike, but science has made my riding a heck of a lot more fun. Don’t be intimidated by the jargon, but make sure you get objective and evidence-based training advice rather than settling for “that’s just the way it’s done.” Above all, have fun!

Stephen must be the smartest bloke on PEZ, and hopefully some will eventually rub off on the rest of us hacks (don’t hold your breath). Catch up with Stephen on his Toolbox articles and don’t forget his book.