Originally Posted by
brianipmh
Hello, my name is Brian and I'm a beginner to cycling. I bought a hybrid bike (Giant Escape) a month ago hoping to try out cycling and I've been in love with it since day one.
Prior to my purchase, I have not ridden a bike in about 6 years and I was never a bike-to-everywhere kid so I'm pretty much still a beginner. The problem is though, is that it
seems like I have not improved after a month of what I consider decent training for a noobie. I rode about 120 miles/week at 15/16 mph for a solid month and for the past two
days I was hoping to speed up to a constant pace of 16~17 mph for at least an hour and I just couldn't do it. I've ridden 15mph for 2/3 hours non-stop but when I tried to
bump it up to 17 mph for an hour, I simply could not. I've always tried to climb the small amount of hills I have in my area and sometimes do some intervals but my biking
muscles just aren't building up. This is really frustrating to me and I'm really hoping to hear some advice from some more experienced people. Thank you.
your cadence (pedal revolutions per minute) needs to be 90 or more. With 90 you get the best efficiency. It might take a little concious effort to get there but that one at least is important.
You have not ridden much. It will take a while for your body to get used to the idea of cycling.
There is a HR training thread in the road cycling sub forum which you might want to check out.
http://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycli...et-faster.html
The basic idea is that trying to ride faster and faster at your limit is not going to do much for you. It is better to get some serious volume with lower level efforts and then crank up the intensity with near max and max effort intervals.
If you ride volume with low effort and hard intervals (google HIIT training and get a HR monitor) you might get the same result I did. Last summer I started doing lots and lots of volume with some hard intervals and my low effort speed bumped up from 14mph to 17mph.
The basic formula is:
80% of your riding should be in the low effort zone or "zone 2". You are not going to get lactate and you are burning about half and half carbs and fat. Well, in the beginning lots more carbs but this is also what low lever training is for: fuel efficiency training. So you need to be able to chat with your riding buddy at this speed. Not have a raging monologue filled argument but rather that little wheezy discussion with curt sentences. You get the picture when you try it. These rides are from 2-5 hours long.
10-15% needs to be in the so called "Zone 4" which has lots of definitions. I'm not sure what other people mean by this but I would say it's just above FPT. You get the feeling that it's really hard but you can sustain it for some minutes. 8 minutes maybe...? someone help me out here. But yeah, do 5 min intervals with 1 min breaks. Or shorter intervals and longer breaks or longer intervals etc. Vary it a little just to shock your body in new exciting ways. You need to be pretty spent after every interval. With the warmup and cooldown these rides are about 1 hour or less.
5-10% needs to be MAX intervals where you actually go to your max heart rate. It doesn't matter what number it actually is, you will KNOW when you are there. Your body can only sustain this effort for a few seconds but getting to that effort level will take some more time (you don't want to just rush there and rip all your muscles and tendons to shreds doing it) start with four to six 1 minute intervals with 1 to 2 minute breaks in between. You may puke. I personally do these running (not optimal for cycling but I'm going for triathlons anyway so whaeva) since blacking out during one of these is a risk. With warmup and cooldown these rides take 30-60 minutes. I would personally have my rest day after a max interval day.
Start our slow with the interval stuff. Your body needs to get accustomed to hard efforts and it will take some time.
And a really important thing! Go to the gym! Lift weights, do squats, deadlifts, lots of core training, stretching, kettlebell is awesome for cycling.
As you mentioned you are frustrated that your muscles are not building up. Well, doing cardio is not going to actually grow muscles that much. That work is done in the gym. Also, strength comes in some part from the gym as does several other very good things. A diverse gym regime is going to help with muscle imbalances ensuing from cycling and help with balance, power, joint durablity and a host of other things.
Good luck mate, you'll get there eventually. Just takes a lot of work.