A week ago I finished by 3rd year of riding. My emphasis, at least towards the end, was mileage (ended up with 7583 miles - but remember I can ride year round). Still, I had a lot of miles to get in the last 11 weeks to reach my 7500 mile goal so I was riding between 163 miles and 260 miles (avg about 190) each of those weeks, normally riding 4 days. The last few weeks, I was getting much slower - I think the week after week effort was wearing me down.

Anyway, I have backed off considerably the past week. I did 38 miles today, but my other rides were 27, 26, and 15 miles. So, I was pretty well rested and hoped for two things today. First, some pretty decent speed (at least over 15 for the first 11 miles) and a long ride (like 50 miles).

Neither one happened. I was at 14.3 at 11 miles, 12.9 at 15 miles (top of Diamond Head) and after riding another 9 miles, was down to 12.2 mph. Now, I wasn't trying to kill myself, but for awhile when I was doing long rides, I could go 26 miles and, unless the wind was strong, average something over 14 mph (my best was 15.8, but that was a fluke). When I'm riding slow, I don't enjoy riding very much and am not motivated to push the distance.

Oh, after 24 miles, rest, breakfast, then another 14 miles home.

I'm thinking the weeks of distance, as I was wearing out, has "trained" my muscles to not be optimized for speed. After all, towards the end of that year, I was just doing long rides and trying to keep the wheels turning!

I guess it is possible that my body hasn't really recovered enough yet, but I have no prior experience to go on to know - other than 56 yr old will recover slower than a young adult.

Any other insights?

Related to this issue is the matter of doing intervals and I wonder about some options on them. I've been told to do 1 minute intervals, rest 1 minutes, and repeat. Well, after the first one - which may not even make it to 1 minute - I am so drained that it is extremely difficult to do another so quickly.

So, should I try to do at least a minute anyway and probably only be able to do a so-so follow-up, or would it maybe be better to start with 30-40 second interval with a 1 minute gap which I can do several times and work up to the longer interval?