tgmcmonigle

I'm pretty new, but what has worked for me has been heart rate zone training. Build an aerobic base by putting in lots of miles in zone 2, adding in an occasional zone 3 (tempo) ride. I've found that by doing this I'm able to function better for longer periods of time in group rides. I recently completed a 100k ride at Hotter n Hell in under 4 hours, with an average HR of 160 (I'm 54 years old). My legs never gave out and I felt great afterwards.

Oh, and eat. The machine needs fuel

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, eat is #1. And eat the fastest carbs you can get. Anytime I start feeling a little off, HR is down, power dropping, I eat. Then in 15 minutes, I eat again. ShotBloks work well and don't make the mess that gels do. Cut an end of the package before you put it in your jersey pocket. Drink water after.

#2 is go hard, recover, go hard again, recover, etc. I define fitness as the ability to recover from hard efforts. If you know how to eat and hydrate and are fit, you can ride fast all day.

Toward that end, I tend to agree with the above advice to go out hard. On my weekly group training rides, my practice is to give it hell during the first 3rd of the ride, see what I have left during the 2nd third, then just try to finish, including a sprint at the end. "I always say" that if you can walk at the end of a 3-6 hour ride, you could have gone harder. Midweek, I see if I have the stuff to do intervals. Otherwise I ride zone 2, breathing deep but not fast. 150-200 miles a week of that will fix you right up in a couple of months. While you're doing that mileage, you'll learn how to eat and drink, what your best position is, how to fix a flat in 5 minutes, and many other useful things.

69chevy

Eating more and pedaling slower seems to be the advice, and also supports the fat cyclist thread.

You and I are doing it wrong.


Edit: And I forgot.. Buy a power meter!

Dan333SP

I thought after all the back and forth in your "pseudo science" thread, you'd at least agreed that what works for you will lead to diminishing returns eventually, and doesn't necessarily work for everyone if they have differing goals.

OP- Check out this thread. There's a lot of nonsense, but some good posts about aerobic conditioning.

https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycli...science-4.html

Particularly this from @Heathpack-

69chevy

It's funny you quoted @Heathpack from that thread, because in a much more refined way, she stated almost exactly what I was getting at by starting the thread.

Heathpack 

Aw, @Dan333SP, you quoted me as if I'm someone who knows something.

When I was in Scotland, I rode with 4 different guides/instructors. I am a terrible mountain biker, I fall inexplicably when nothing much is happening. But the comment I got from all the guides, "you are very fit". Sweet. At least that's something.

OP, it's my personal opinion that rank newbies should not ride hard at all for quite some time. Someone told me 2000 miles, so that's what I always suggest. But the exact number doesn't matter. Build some of that low-end aerobic conditioning first (commonly referred to as "base") before you push yourself hard. Base aerobic conditioning really is the fundamental thing upon which you build everything else in cycling.

Until you develop good base conditioning, stop and rest/eat as needed. A lot of reccs that I might make about hard work, threshold intervals, riding fasted etc really do not pertain to you right now. Ride easy, rest, eat & drink. Do that for months and then start to push yourself more.

Dan333SP

You take cool HDR-y photos of small ponies, so I trust you

On second look, those are sheep. Now I don't trust you.

Carbonfiberboy 

Back to the OP:
If you read my post 27, you'll see that my practice has been to do exactly what you did on this ride. I participated in many group rides where I got dropped late in a 60 mile ride, just stuck with it and made it in solo. I've climbed many hills late in a ride in an exhausted, half-bonked condition. I just stuck with it. Hung with the group. I'd get dropped on every climb, but then going over the top I'd just hold my same lactate threshold HR that I had on the climb until I made it back to the group, who were all taking it easy after the climb. I simply rode harder than anyone else.

Over time, that gave good results. After a couple of years, I was leading breaks off the front. Then the break would drop me and again I'd finish solo. After a couple more years, I was leading the break and winning the sprint. This was not due to talent particularly. Just that I always rode harder than anyone else. More lactate threshold time, more zone 5 time.

My impression is that my experience of group riding is a very common experience. If there's a difference in my experience compared to others in my group, it's that I wanted to ride well more than many others, enough to take the punishment and absorb the pain that accompanies seriously getting faster.

A long time ago, I read some advice by some famous racer, I don't remember who or where. This was long after I had begun to ride decently. His advice mimicked my experience. To paraphrase: once a week, do a training ride which takes everything out of you, where you struggle to simply finish. This ride should be in the 4 hour range, never over 6 hours. Making a training ride too long will inevitably reduce the intensity at which you can ride it.

You're after intensity, as much of it as you can handle. You won't know how much intensity is your limit until you go over that limit. Every time you go over your limit, you raise that limit. Eventually you'll reach your genetic potential. It'll be inevitable.

One reads of pros that they start to win when they learn how to suffer. This is correct.

I peaked while leading the fast group at about 63. Then I started getting slower, nothing I could do about it. That's when my wife and I bought a tandem. I gave up riding with the fast group and we started training on the tandem. That was in '07. The tandem is still getting faster. We had 8 Strava PRs during our group ride this past Sunday on roads we have done many times. We are still getting faster. So far, no diminishing returns. Obviously it's not me that's getting faster - it's my wife, who's 4 years younger than I. OTOH I'm not getting slower very fast. On my single, I can still ride with the same fast group people I used to lead, even though I'm at least 10 years older than any of them. Tandeming makes one strong, really strong.

We'll peak on the tandem eventually, when the downward turn of age crosses our line of increasing fitness. We're not there yet. I'm 71.

Carbonfiberboy 

I should mention, re Heathpack, above:
Before I started riding intensely with a group, I already had 2 seasons in my legs, several thousand miles, including a double century. All those early miles were at moderate intensity, though my ride plan was similar to what I did later. Building base, my method was very simple: ride away from home until I was tired, then ride back, staying mostly on the flat. I tried to increase weekly distance by about 10%/week, though I hit the wall with that pretty quickly at around 75 mile weekend rides or maybe 150 miles/week and then had to increase it much more slowly.

Heathpack 

Sheep sez: Wut? I have no idea what is going on.

goenrdoug

I'm about three years into this experience and can +1 it.

I'm sure there are some specific training techniques I could implement that might help me progress more effectively, but I question whether the difference would be worth the regiment-ization of my bike riding. I ride for both fitness and enjoyment. If I were to worry more about intervals and exactly how many minutes I were spending in which zones and so on.. I dunno.. I fear it would become a lot less fun.

Ilbiker

Some good basic advice. To the OP, you answered your question in your first sentence. What are your goals, recreational riding or training to race? There are training plans for both. Personally, I would avoid 69chevy's plan. I'm no expert, but I've never seen any training plan for running or riding based on "go until you drop, rest a day and repeat". And my time frame goes back to the low tech days of the mid '70s. Please show me such a plan. My physical therapist is a marathoner and ran Boston this year - doesn't train like that. I'm also fairly certain that no one in any of the area multi-sport groups trains like this (sprint tri's to Ironman).

OP, experiment and find which training plan works best for you and your goals. Then stick with it, stick with it, stick with it and don't worry about what others are doing. What works for me or someone else may or may not work for you. I race 5K and 10K's, so that is how I train. Most folks I know don't race competitively so they don't train like I do. They're plugging away on easy and moderate runs while I'm banging away with that plus tempo runs, intervals, track repeats etc. We have different goals.

ltxi

x2

ltxi

Yep, that. Daily beating oneself up to the point of exhaustion from the outset of building conditioning is not a really good idea. I did that once, about 35 years ago. It was not pleasant nor, as I came to understand later, necessary or healthy.

Carbonfiberboy 

I planned my rides to a certain extent. I tried to do the 3 weeks hard, one week easier mesocycle. I've uploaded my ride data ever since that was a possibility. I'd look to see what a "hard" week was for me in terms of time in zones 4 and 5. Then I'd look to see what I'd done so far that week in those zones. That would give me a ride plan for my group ride: intensity goals for the climbs, etc. It's good to have a ride plan. You want to sit in more or pull more, climb near the front or the tail, etc. It takes intensity to make progress. For a hard week, I'd try for a total of about an hour of zone 4 and maybe 20 minutes of zone 5, or none, depending on the season. That's just me at ~60. Everyone's capacity is going to be different.

I'm saying, have a ride plan. Be prepared to toss it in the trash. In general, have mini-goals. Ride your own ride. Ride with your head. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Try to figure out how to improve your weaknesses. What do you need more of? Work those things into your ride. Experiment. Try to find out, for you, what input creates what result.

Especially work on noticing symptoms of overtraining/overreaching, know the difference, and what to do in each situation. Those are the biggest mistakes the self-coached make: overdoing it or underdoing it. You want to walk the knife edge, but not fall over. To walk that edge you have to go there and then back off. If you never go there, you're not improving like you could.

I found that this amount of regimentation, if one could call it that, made the rides more fun, not less. YMMV.

rubiksoval

Which is a good thing. So you can train again the next day. Because a one-off ride doesn't do anything for fitness. It's an accumulation of rides that gets you better.

Carbonfiberboy 

I get that. When I started getting slower on the Sunday group rides, I started randoing. A Super Randonneur brevet series goes 200k, 300k, 400k, 600k. You probably know that, but for general info. The SR rides put on by the club here are scheduled about 2 weeks apart.

The 200 is not too bad. Any conditioned rider can manage that. Riding a 300k with 10,000' is another animal. My first 300 was tough for me. The club usually puts a long extremely steep climb late in these long brevets. After that, I had to dig very deep mentally to keep pedaling. It's common for randonneurs to say that they felt like taking a cab and never riding their bike again. On the 400 though, the 300k point goes by and is no big deal. And so it goes at every distance. Riding to utter exhaustion is not just a mental experience. It's a physical experience as well. Long distance riders here say that distance=strength. I've found that to be true. Every time you push past your perceived limits, those limits recede.

That's been my experience. Sure, one can do fine with the usual mix of prescribed training procedures, intervals, moderate rides, hours per week, all that stuff. But nothing beats pushing past where you thought your edges were.

My usual menu is to ride my heart out on Sunday, do a 3-4 hour recovery hike in the mountains on Monday, Tuesday is usually a long FastPedal interval on my rollers which is great recovery followed by weights at the gym, Wednesday a long zone 2 ride, Thursday is hill repeats or speed work with weight work again, Friday a short recovery ride, Saturday off. Brevets are always on Saturday, so then Sunday off. If I can tell I'm too tired, I just take a weekday off.

69chevy

My horrible advice somehow got me from barely able to ride 30 miles to averaging 18mph for a 107 mile century. Prior to the century, I'd ridden 300 miles, total for the season.

My last organized ride came right after I hit the 1000 mile mark. I went over 20mph for 44 miles with 2000ft of climb.

Three rides a week is all I can squeeze in. All 30 miles or less. Almost all have been as hard as I can ride.

Edit: reply was meant for Itxi

goenrdoug

Thx for the info. I'll try to digest it and report back in 27 years.