Originally Posted by
hansen01
-I am riding about 80-100 miles per week in 3 rides. Is this enough?
No. Try to up your riding to 5-6 times per week. It's not the mileage you get in 2-3 rides a week that will give improvements, but the consistent, day-to-day riding that gives biggest, and quickest gains. You're trying to force your body to accept bicycling as a permanent movement pattern. As it does, it adapts to its stresses & demands.
Originally Posted by
hansen01
-Should I be start specific training (sprints, hills, spinning) or does that really matter at this point?
-Is it better to ride with the group as long as I can even if it means limping my way back the last half of the ride?
I group these together because they relate.
Yes, try and stay with the group as long as possible. What is probably happening, as it happens to 90+ percent of people who can't keep up, is the group is accelerating at some point, and this is when you fall off. Chances are good that the group relaxes the accelerations a bit farther down the road, and then gets into a constant pace with less sudden accelerations, working together to just move along.
Your body is having trouble with this cycle of accelerations followed by fast pace and more accelerations. Many people can handle the accelerations, but find that they can't recover at the in-between pace of, say, 25mph. This is simply because they don't regularly train or ride that way. What they do is, hard effort followed by recovery at 10-11mph or they just constantly ride at a middle-of-the-road 17mph. So when they get to a group ride, they follow the first acceleration, but the easing of the pace to only 25mph doesn't allow them full recovery before the next effort as their body isn't accustomed to that speed. So when the next acceleration comes, they're not recovered and they keep burning matches like this until they can no longer go with the acceleration. Then, they fall OTB, ride their own pace, and then recover. Then their body can get going again and push the pace. This is what is happening to you and why you pass all those other riders after they get dropped.
So, you keep going back. The accelerations of the group will function as your training, specifically as your intervals or sprint training. Each week, I would expect to see more and more improvement. Finally, one day, you'll be able to stay with the group the whole way (or nearly), like you suddenly broke through a barrier. (Keep in mind, you may have an occasional bad ride where it's worse than the week before, but ignore these, and keep going back & trying.)
And last... they have hills in Oklahoma?!?
