Road Cycling - New to sport.....how long to get in shape for long distance?

Just started riding 2 or 3 weeks ago and could barely go 2 miles without falling over when I started. Last night I went six miles in about 25 minutes and felt like I could have easily gone another 2 or 3. I see people talking about riding 20, 30, 50, 100 miles and I'm just curious to see how long some of you rode until you could ride these distances? I am in my early 40's and was a fairly good athlete in high school, playing football and running track. Anyhow, whatta ya think?? How long before I can ride 20 or 30 miles??

I bought my "old" road bike in April 1999.
Sat on my butt a lot and didn't get started riding regularily until May 2000 when I was 55 years old. I was doing 25 miles within 2 months.
Did my first metric century in Oct 2000.

What bike are you riding? Road bike, mtn bike, steel, aluminum, etc.?

It all will depend on how often you ride. The more you ride the sooner you will reach your goals. Riding a few miles every day or at least four days a week to start off with will be much more benificial then trying to do one or two long rides only a couple days a week. It will also depend on how quick your body responds. Some folk can jump on a bike and in just a week or two riding 25mi w/o a prob. Others may take a few months.
Slainte:beer:

In '93 I quit smoking and with the money saved I bought a Huffy mountainbike from a hardware store.I remember riding maybe 3 blocks and having to go up a hill (hills every direction here).My legs locked up so bad I didn't think I was going to make it home.My wife said "Home already?" when I walked in the door.I work so many hours that I can only ride on my days off,Sun and Wed.I know within 2 months I was riding 30 mile rides and I was in bad shape when I started.Still just riding that amount I rode 60 milers during charity events starting in '94. 1998 I rode a 85 miler. 1999 I did a century training that way.I messed up a hamstring for about 7 months doing that one. Since then, I'm happy doing 60s with some nice hills. I'd say the rate your going,you will be putting in some serious miles in no time.EVERYBODYS different .

How long before I can ride 20 or 30 miles??

Depending on the terrain, I would say 2-3months.


It all depends on how often you ride. Ride as much as possible but don't get too obsessed with your average speed just yet, otherwise you risk pulling hamstring and calf muscles that aren't ready for this exsertion. Just ride at a comfortable pace, take plenty of water and food, and try to keep your heart rate down, don't blow yourself up. Within 12 months you will be able to ride 50 miles at a good pace.



I have been riding for 10 years and I still haven't done a century, it doesn't interest me. I like hilly rides up to 120km/70miles at a good pace. That's enough for a solo rider.

Good luck and keep us informed of your progress.

CHEERS.

Mark

Dragracer,
I had surgery 4 months ago and have been riding about 3 months. I started out with an old tank of a mb. I kept at it and trying to increase my distances. I ride about 60 a week. My long rides have been 30 & 35 miles. I've been noticing the way my legs are toning up and loosing weight (250>240). I haven't been able to do a whole lot since I injured my knee a yr ago. Now, 20 is ok, the challenge is 25 & above for me.
I've been watching what I eat and making sure I have plenty of water and snacks. I tried to do too much one time and my body told me so. So now I take a couple of breaks for water and munchies. I have to keep my sugar up.
Have a great ride!!
keith:D

One rule of thumb is that in order to avoid "over-training" you should increase your mileage by no more that 5-10% a week.

My guess is that you can easily exceed this rule in the first several weeks of riding. But, once you get to the point where you are doing rides of 25 miles or more (say 75 miles a week), you should probably start to respect it.

Of course, it also depends a lot on what you are doing during those miles. Are you doodling along? Or, are you seriously pushing the pace? (Also relative concepts.)

My advice is to challenge yourself, but gently. Don't forget that you need to allow your body to train orthopedically (joints, tendons, etc.), as well as in the hearts and lungs. The chances for injury to joints and tendons is much higher for someone who is new to a sport. Unless you have a medical condition, you can scarcely damage your hearts and lungs--they'll tell you when they can't do any more. But you can easily injure joints, tendons, and muscles (the first two being rather slow to heal).

One way you can minimize the chance of injury is to keep your pedal cadence high, which means keeping the gears low. Many will say 80-90 rpms, I would say 90-100 (counted as revolutions of one leg per minute). This will drive the strain more to your hearts and lungs and less to your joints and tendons. Since you are new to the sport, you can develop good pedaling habits now, and not have to re-tool later.

Welcome to the sport. Have a great time. Be patient with yourself--overall, you'll enjoy it more if you are.

Cheers,
Jamie

Before you can ride a full day you have to learn how to ride the bike, not push it. What I mean is, you need to learn to spin the crank, if you push th pedals round and round you will tire quickly. you need to spend time in the saddle, a century takes 5 to 8 hours depending on your physical condition and the terrain, if you can't tolerate that much time in the saddle, it won't be fun. You should ride clipless pedals, they are far more efficient, and your bike has to be sized correctly for you. You need to learn how to eat and drink on the bike for performance, energy is a very important thing. You need to carry things like tire tubes and a way to inflate them and water, and your clothing has to effective at evaporating sweat and be comfortable while you are on the bike.
My advice to you is, ride regularly at a pace that you can sustain for some time, as said above, don't over train, check your bike fit, get clipless pedals and shoes that work for you and enjoy the sport. Welcome aboard, if you have questions, just ask, We're a friendly bunch and we're all here to promote the sport and help new cyclist succeed and have fun. Remember a century is no more than 10, 10 mile rides around town.

Its true that clipless pedals will help you ride much more efficiently, but for someone just starting out, you need to be in pretty good control of your bike before you fix your feet to the pedals.
Make sure you can ride very slowly, dodge obstacles, even stop without falling off, you can control the bike in emergency stops and can handle the bike on lose surfaces with confidence.

Clipless pedals or toe clips will make you safer over rough ground and potholes, keeping your feet where they belong, but if you become unbalanced, it can be tricky getting out in time.

As a kid I used to spend hours just riding around, doing stupid stunts. By the time I fitted toe clips at the age of 14 I was a pretty advanced rider with 10 years of riding experience. Now I have 25 years experience of riding with toe-clips it is no big deal for me. For someone with 2 weeks experience, you still have plenty to learn about bike control.

As an intermediate system, you can fit mini toeclips, which will position your feet correctly and help you pedal a bit more efficiently, but dont hold your feet down with a strap

Originally posted by RonH
...................What bike are you riding? Road bike, mtn bike, steel, aluminum, etc.?

Well right now I am riding an old piece of crap, 40 lb steel, no name, road bike that a friend gave me. I threw some new tires on it, a new chain, some handlebar wrap, straightened the wheels the best I could and away I went. I'd been whining to my wife about getting a new bike for a while so when I got the latest Colorado Cyclist catalog in the mail and saw that they had the AL/Carbon Litespeed Hyperion on clearance($1699) I just had to have one. It may be more bike than I really need but I was tired of riding junk! So I ordered one almost 2 weeks ago and it's still not here. As soon as I get it I plan on riding (almost)every day until the time changes and it gets dark before I get home from work. My legs are already feeling much stronger, now if I can just get my lungs to cooperate! :D

David

Thanks to you all for your comments and advice. What you all have said is pretty much what I have slowly been figuring out on my own. I have a bad knee that got torn up playing football 25 years ago and about the second time I went out riding , I was trying to pedal up a small hill and the knee felt like it was going to pop out of the socket or some damn thing. After that I started riding in a little lower gear so I didn't have to "push" the pedal so hard. So far that seems to be working great and I have been able to ride almost every evening without any pain at all. I got a set of pedals w/toe clips from my LBS but I may take off the clips for at least a few days since I have never used them before and this is a new bike to me. Never used STI shifters so I want to get used to using those too. After a short time I will try the toe clips and probably next spring will go to a shoe/clipless setup. Thanks again for all your help! :beer:

David

STI shifters should be a breeze if you're used to shifting the old way. Good luck.

Congratulations on the new bike and welcome to the fold.

The difference between your present bike and the new one will blow you away. Your big challenge now will be trying to spend some time away from the bike. :D

Originally posted by dragracer
. . . I have a bad knee that got torn up playing football 25 years ago and about the second time I went out riding , I was trying to pedal up a small hill and the knee felt like it was going to pop out of the socket or some damn thing. After that I started riding in a little lower gear so I didn't have to "push" the pedal so hard. So far that seems to be working great and I have been able to ride almost every evening without any pain at all. . . .

It's good that upping your cadence was able make the pain go away. You might also want, if you haven't already, to search this board for previous threads on knee pain. There's a lot of good information on saddle height and pedal float to be found. Two examples:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?threadid=10642
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?threadid=11012


I see people talking about riding 20, 30, 50, 100 miles and I'm just curious to see how long some of you rode until you could ride these distances? I started riding as an occasional commuter when I was 45, and did that for five years, with my average ride being 16 miles, and sometimes months passing between rides (I am shamed to admit). At 50 I decided that I wanted more out of riding and set my sights on doing a century. Over a ten-week period I rode four to five times a week, increasing my mileage and taking on more local hills, and at the end of that time, rode a 108-mile, 9500-foot century. I was pooped but exhilarated. In the four years since, I have ridden 35 organized centuries and metric double centuries. Now I put in 5500-7500 miles a year with commuting, errand running, tours, club rides, and centuries. As 1oldroadie said, "Welcome to the addiction!"

Enjoy your Lightspeed!

I started out in early June riding 30 miles a week. I'm now up to 100-150 miles a week and can ride about 50 miles in one shot. The key is to follow a weekly routine of increasing, followed by a day or two of recovery. Lance's training program book describes the importance of recovery riding. I've tried it and it really works. Here is an example of my riding week, about where I'm at now, using my road bike. You can just adjust the miles proportionally to figure how you're riding:

Sunday: 10 miles, easy. Recovery day
Monday: 15 miles, clipping along
Tuesday: 18 miles, briskly
Wednesday: 20-25 miles, tough terrain, clipping along
Thursday: Day off; recovery
Friday: 15 miles, easy
Saturday: 30-50 miles, clipping along

The next week I'd increase all the numbers by 5-10%, roughly.

If you follow this cycle of increasing, then recovery, etc. you will notice vast improvements. If you ride and just increase your mileage every week, you still may not be giving your muscles recovery time and will therefore start to overtrain, and your body will become fatigued and rides will take much greater effort. I used to just ride all the time and keep increasing mileage without paying attention to this gradual increase with recovery periods, and I'd soon lose luster for riding and give it up. It was because I wasn't allowing for recovery.

I also had some hamstring injuries mid-summer because I did not have a high-enough cadence and increased my mileage too quickly. I've since corrected the problem with cadence in the 95-110 range, but the pains sometimes come back a bit (I usually just downshift one and it goes away). These nasty injuries take a long time to go away, and my plan is to do some weight training this winter to get them stronger.

Good luck and happy riding.

Damn guys!! Thanks for all the great info!! :)


Got home last night and my new bike was waiting for me on the back deck! WOOHOO!! :D Just had time to put it together and ride it up the rode a half mile and back since it was dark outside. Man I dunno but it seems like I am going to need a shorter stem. Maybe I can adjust it to fit me a little better but it feels like I'm really stretching to reach the bars. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be and the old bike was just not right....I dunno. Guess I'll ride it a few days and see how it goes. Kept hitting the brakes when I tried to shift....this thing is going to take a little getting used to. :beer: THANKS AGAIN!!!

David