Originally Posted by BigFloppyLlama
Two questions completely unrelated to each other in this case. The first is mainly dealing with good ride snacks (both before and during). Right now I’m just eating a granola bar every hour or so I’m on the bike, with one before the ride as well. I guess I’m just looking for suggestions regarding good “boosts” that don’t involve the power bar things. I'm usually riding about 2 hours (~45miles) a day and tend to run out of energy in the last 5 miles if I don't eat anything.
The second question I’ve heard a little bit on, but nothing really concrete. For about 2 months I’ve been spinning at about 90-100RPM’s but recently I’ve been trying to push larger gears at about 70-80RPM to achieve the same speeds. I can’t exactly pinpoint a dramatic change, but I do tend to have more energy after spinning less. After the ride however, my legs are absolutely dead at the lower cadence but not so when riding at a higher cadence. Is this more of a personal thing, or should I be looking to ride at an optimal cadence?
1) I think you need to experiment with your food to find something that works for you. You may want to try fruit as an alternative to the power bar things. I will bring a bag of grapes with me sometimes and it will help boost my energy. You can also bring apple slices, strawberries, etc. Maybe that will help?
2) Riding at lower gears will increase speed, and at the same time, it will help conserve your energy. If you're trying to go faster at higher gears, your legs will tend to be pretty tired- you're using your muscles way more than if you'd stuck with the lower gears. That's pretty normal and to be expected of someone doing what you're doing. You'll want to find an optimal cadence to ride with, and it will be different for higher gears vs. lower gears.
My advice, if you want to go faster with your spinning, stick with developing your spin in the lower gears. In the higher gears, you just want to concentrate on maintaining speed and power. I'm thinking that over the winter and spring months, you'll want to work on developing yiour power- after you've finished working on endurance and base building, the next step for you will be intervals, which will help you build even more speed, and then you'll be ready to add in power drills. If you get started on this now, you could be ready by early May.
Koffee