Yen,

I don't think riding long rides would help you to go faster. To be able to maintain a higher cruising speed, you need to push yourself some. You can do intervals or just pseudo intervals. If you don't push yourself on a regular basis, you are not going to get faster. But beware of getting fixated on "no pain no gain". Making exercise a painful ordeal is a good way to sabotage your exercise schedule. I believe that most people tend to avoid pain. Pushing yourself for either a short period on most sessions or being intense on one out of every three sessions is a good idea.

For building a base or improving, nothing works like more workouts in a week. For some strange reason, I do fine exercising every day out of the week. Now I do understand that most people can not. I would suggest that 4-5 days per week of aerobic exercise is a good idea. I don't think riding just on weekends works very well. If you can't ride during the week, some aerobic exercise that works the legs will help also like stair climbing, walking at a high speed up a sharp incline or better yet spinning. Spinning is pretty close to cycling especially if you do it on your own. Spin classes, to me tend to change up the pace to often to really feel like cycling.

Since your heart rate recovers fast after a climb, it seems to me that you are already in pretty good shape.

Now there is another thing to think about. Are you forgetting that you are a female? For some reason, many women think that they should be able to ride as fast as men. Yeah, it isn't fair. But then again, women live what is it 7 years longer than men on the average so maybe it balances out.

I figure that a woman who is my age is in as good a shape as I am if she can draft me and hang on. So if you are riding with men, take really short pulls.

I hope this helps, otherwise just ignore it.


Good luck


Pat