rkwaki

(S)laying cougars...

Creatre

I commute 35 miles per day (~2 hours), and it tears me down. I have only been able to maintain commuting 3 days a week, and need the extra 2 days to give the legs and the brain (mostly this) a break. I only have about 2 hours of free time when I get home when I commute, and have to wake up slightly earlier, so it really gets to my head if I do it too much. By the third day my legs are toast though. I have trouble maintaining an easy pace because of how the route is, and end up doing mostly z3, which as you can imagine, doing 1hr every 11 hours at z3 really gets to the legs after 3 days. If you are going to be doing 50 miles 5 days a week, I would imagine almost all of it will have to be at z1/z2.

rkwaki

When I am really watching:
40/40/20 - protein/carbs/fat
Tough to do though so:
30/50/20 is a little easier and will give you plenty of carb energy.

MDcatV

thanks. i find getting protein > fat is challenging. my breakdown after the 2nd kid seems to be alot of 20/40/30/10 - protein/carbs/fat/alcohol.

AzTallRider

Cycling is my play time, so my challenge isn't play time, it's "honey-do" time. I haven't quite figured out how to make progress on a bathroom remodel, when what I want to do is put my feet up, snack, and read or watch mindless TV.

shovelhd

My three month bathroom remodel took me six, cut into my offseason training, ate all of my free time, and strained the relationship with the better half, but it was worth it.

AzTallRider

If I got a project done in 6 months, my better half would giggle with glee, while offering me all sorts of sexual rewards.

chasm54

I commuted at varying distances for many years. The longest was a 58 mile round trip, and I found that I did best if I did that only four rather than five days, taking the train or the car on Wednesday. This plus one decent ride at a weekend meant I was doing close to 300 miles per week. I was pretty fit.

25 miles each way is long enough for you to play around with it, do some of the journeys in Z1/z2, make one of them a tempo session, and so on. Great training.

My most recent commute was 16 miles each way, still a decent distance but I found I didn't need the rest day for that one.

As for nutrition, I'm with the big breakfast brigade.

carpediemracing 

My longest regular commute was 18 miles one way. Since I inevitably left late, it was an all out time trial going to work. I forget what I ate before I left but it couldn't have been heavy. I'd usually eat a bar of some sort while I was riding (very "euro"). On the way back my ride was much more leisurely. I gained a lot of weight at this job, mainly due to the gym (went from benching 90 lbs to 200 lbs).

Another somewhat regular commute was about 15 miles, to the shop. I'd meet up with a coworker/teammate (actually he'd ride to my house). We team time trialed together to the shop. He shelled me on some of the hills but otherwise we'd work really hard together. He won the Cat 4 Bethel Series, I won the 3-4s, and this was while the guys at the shop spent the evenings after work (7P to 1 or 2A) building up a new shop space. I was in my "poor bike shop owner" mode and basically got free food from the bagel place. So danishes, croissants, bagels. My diet consisted of stuff they were getting rid of in the evening.

dleccord

what do you guys do with the dirty clothes at work? and work clothes? it sounds a bit complicated then just riding in to work.

shovelhd

I have a Redline Conquest Pro CX bike fitted with the Topeak MTX bag/rack system that has fold-up panniers. It has a high powered lighting system and fenders on it so I can ride it year round. I am able to take between 3 and 4 days worth of clothes in it, depending on the season. During DST, I shuttle the clean and dirty clothes back and forth on this bike and commute on the race bike on in-between days. Once DST is over, I commute on this bike well into the winter. I store the bike in a spare office, change in the bathroom, and keep a towel, deodorant, hairbrush, and baby wipes on site.

Some old pictures:

carpediemracing 

I dropped clothes off at work (bike shop, IT) and had my own dufflebag hamper. When I trained after work in NYC, I'd drive in on Sunday to drop stuff off, then haul everything back Friday night after rush hour (since I couldn't take the bike on the train during rush hour).

Sometimes I rode in with my work clothes in my backpack (IT) with a second kit packed away too.

curbtender

What are your needs? It's usually cooler in the AM's and you may get by with some towelettes. I enjoy my commute and pretty much cruise. But I'm a garbageman and have Hi-vis clothes to take to work. I carry a backpack for my return clothes, but I've a bin for a uniform cleaning service. If you drive now, maybe try your ride on a day off and see what it takes mentally and physically. 50 is a good round trip and the more you do it, the less it seems to be a burden.

chasm54

I'd commute on a tourer with panniers once or twice a week, carting in clean clothes and carting out dirty ones. Actually, if I'd had any sense I'd never have bothered taking the road bike, one can train just as well on a heavy bike as a light one.

ijgoodwin

This is one of the things that drives me crazy...people say they need to add protein to their diets and then say they'll do it with nuts. Less than 1 out of every 6 calories in nuts comes from protein. If you're going to add protein, I'd suggest doing it with something with more bang for the buck. Greek yogurt or cottage cheese, maybe? You're much less likely to overeat and add too many calories.

shovelhd

My Redline has a power meter.

Enthalpic

Yes and no. Your nutritional advice is highly focused on maximizing muscle growth and repair, which is good and highly desired by bodybuilders, but is only one side of the training coin. Some beneficial adaptations come from the body being in a catabolic state and feeding actually suppresses those adaptions.

An easy way to conceptualize the different beneficial effects stemming from fed or fasted training is to imagine a predatory animal hunting.

In one case the animal exercises (chases prey) and is successful and therefore eats a very large meal. The big feed triggers anabolic processes (mTOR, etc) and the animal will then sit around digesting food, building muscle and maybe screw or fight off other males.

The other possibility is that the animal hunted but was unsuccessful and goes hungry. You seem to think that this animal will be worse off for the effort but that is not entirely true. The body recognizes that it went hungry and "knows" that if it is unsuccessful on a regular basis it will eventually weaken and starve to death. To prevent this the body improves both it's ability to survive lean times -like drought- by increasing its ability to metabolize fat for energy (via PPAR, AMPk, etc) and triggers adaptations that will make it more likely to be successful on the next hunt (increases growth hormone and "fight or flight" stress hormones that temporarily give "superpowers"). Notice that growth hormone release occurs at night during your dreaded fast. Downside is sex hormones are down-regulated, but offspring born during lean times would probably die anyways.

Everything comes with a trade off and neither situation is sustainable indefinitely. Saying there is no potential benefit from fasted exercise is the same as saying that chronic overfeeding will make you a super athlete.

bored117 

As for breakfast... I am in the mind set of do what's needed. Not a big breakfast. I eat pretty much equal portion of food 5 times a day. And couple of smaller snacks in between if I am hungry.
Right now daily commute is about 30-35 miles on normal days, on long days... 45miles... maybe a day off in middle of week depending on how my leg feels. Some weekend rides. (actually cutting down on commute a lot during the series of centuries called King of Mountain Challenge right now) I don't race so most of my training is in Z2 and increasing my hours on saddles, etc. I haven't seen radical improvement, etc but I am definitely not suffering from changing my diet to reduced Carb. Only time I eat high GI carb would be in form of HEED perpetum solid, granola bar, etc about an hour into ride. Don't like riding feeling hungry Even that... I supply only about 100cal/hour.
Hopefully in a month and half I can get the my easy pace HR (146) vs POWER chart as well as retesting of my FTP to see if the 4 months of these type of diet and training really has beneficial impact. One thing for sure... it's good for losing fat belly. Already lost 10lbs and 1.5 inches on waist line without losing any power.
Of course, everyone is different though.

krobinson103

While I'm no racer I've been conditioning myself for 3 months now with 30km+ every morning. Initially I had 10kg of fat to get rid of so I just rolled out of bed drank some water and off I went. 2 months of that took care of 8kg of fat. Now as I work on speed and endurance I tend to eat a small amount of cereal with milk before the ride. Then when I get back I refuel on a little toast and more cereal for the work day. In the evenings I try and avoid meat, but eat Tofu and beans a lot to get some more protein in the diet. I've noticed a definate improvement in speed and endurance by addings more protein. Also recovery time seems to be shorter. That being said I definately look at my wifes steak and have to use a lot of will power not to eat the thing. I feel my body is craving more protein lately. I don't want bread, rice or vegetables I want meat.

Right Said Fred

I've started commuting to work one day a week, 46 miles R/T. Might start upping that to two days a week once the weather gets better. Fortunately we have a gym and locker room at work, so it's easy to take a shower and bring clean clothes. If we didn't have that, I probably couldn't do it.

roadiejorge 

I'm fortunate to have my own office so in one of my file cabinets I keep some clothes which minimizes the amount of clothing I have to carry. I leave a few pair of jeans/pants in the office so I'm only carrying a button down shirt/underwear/phone/ipod in my back pack (or sweater in the colder months), I also have a coat in one of the closets so I don't have to carry that around either. I take pants home to wash every few days but it's not a big load in the backpack at all. I'm pretty lucky in that I have my own office so changing and freshening up isn't a big deal, plus we have some storage rooms where I hang my cycling gear during the day.

This is the stuff that makes commuting fun for me. There are a couple of racers who I run into pretty regularly who also commute into NYC and they've helped add more structure to my commute, but the entertaining part is the competitive aspect of riding with them. I've definitely become stronger and faster riding with them and since I'm competitive as well I would put the effort in to not get shelled, which now to their chagrin they can't anymore. There's also a Cat3 racer whose wheel I could never hold once he'd ramp up the pace and he now can't shake when he tries, so it's nice to see the rewards of pushing the envelope. I've always been the type of rider who just loves the work so I rode to enjoy being out and working hard, through these guys I learned to not only work hard but smart.

dleccord

the important question is do you guys bring your own lunch? if so, how do you pack them?

thanks

fastbub

I commute 3 days by bike. 35 to 40 round trip. Bring clean clothes and food in once a week by car. This way I can just commute on my road bike, in team kit and only carry my cell, ID and keys with me. No back pack unless I need to bring something else in to work but I can usually plan around that.

AzTallRider

We have a refrigerator and a shower. I can bring food in for the week on the weekend or a day I drive. Same for clothes. One credenza drawer for clean stuff; one for dirty. This also lets me ride my road bike with no bags.

chasm54

Yeah, fair enough. I didn't have one, and the HRM works just as well irrespective of the bike.