Originally Posted by
goldfinch
Yes, it bums me out that I am so slow. This is not riding in the city either. I think years of sedentary life take their toll because efforts at increasing average speed have gone nowhere.
I emailed the tour organizers and told them that I generally overage only about 13.5 on long rides and may very well only average 11mph on the tour. I asked if that will be a problem and asked what people generally average.
A friend of mine did this tour last year and she was averaging about 13mph. Her general pace is about 14.5 to 15 mph.
The more I read the more I'm concerned. I think I would reconsider this trip till next year.
HOWEVER, and BUT, DO NOT GET BUMMED OUT. Look man, you have had a sedentary lifestyle, you can't expect to turn 20 years (or however long) into a full fledge cycling pro in a year. It may take another year to get the average speed up to the tour levels, you're already about 66% there!
In my book you've done a great job!!!
An increase of only 33% puts you into the 14.5 mph average club, you could easily, I and mean easily get to that 33% increase in a year. All you need to do is start working on a scheduled training program, so you know how many miles you need to do to reach a goal. Century training programs are great for this sort of thing, like this one:
http://www.kintera.org/htmlcontent.asp?cid=54755 I think if you started that program that in 8 weeks you could be doing a 100 mile ride because you've already done 75. But start from the beginning not in the middle because you don't want to hurt yourself, give your body time to build up comfortably. Keep an on going daily record of your average speed, then once that 100 mile ride has been accomplished start the program over and work on increasing your average speed by 20% from the last two weeks before the 100 average speed. Then in that second time of training work on interval training, interval training will bring your average speed up nicely; see:
http://www.bicycling.com/training-nu...s/get-fast-now Work this into a 16 week program instead of 8, so you'll be stretching out the 8 week century to 16 weeks working in the intervals on the days that the century training programs says brisk, do not work more in then 2 times a week with a day between of a slower pace speed but not an even slower easy pace. And every two weeks try increasing your average speed by 5% (which you should be seeing a natural progression toward faster speeds as the intervals are being done)
On the Century training program easy pace means casual sightseeing type of pace; pace means the average target speed must be maintained for the entire ride; Brisk means interval training. Your first time doing this training you won't bother with all the easy, pace, brisk stuff, your only concern is base miles and doing the speed you're comfortable at doing; the second time you do this training program is where you're going to concentrate on the intervals etc.