Commuting proved to be useful as training
 

I signed up for Ride the Ridge, a 50-mile hilly ride in the central Hudson valley. For the weeks leading up to the ride, through the moment I started, I had doubts as to whether I would finish easily or even finish at all.

My commute has only a few hills, none of them very tall, and only one incline is steep. Most of my commute is flat. It's 13 miles each way.

The ride was yesterday (Sunday). As luck had it, I found it to be fairly easy, even with the one very long climb. There were over 100 entrants in the long route that I took. I certainly wasn't the fastest, but neither was I the slowest. And I seemed to be the fastest descender around me, for whatever that's worth.

I kept waiting for the route to be difficult, and it never happened.

Here are my tracks, complete with speed and elevation graphs. They include the 4 miles from my home (in High Falls) to the ride's start. Funny, on my commute, I average 12 mph, and on this ride, I averaged 14 mph. I guess with all that company, I challenged myself without even knowing it. I'm capable of more than I thought.

I thought I was ill prepared because I hardly ever take a long ride these days. (I define a long ride as 30 miles or more.) But I wasn't ill prepared at all!

Given how relatively fresh I felt at the end, I'd say that if I wanted to ride 100 miles in a day, I could do it, but that's not saying it would be easy. I noticed my legs didn't have quite the oomph at the end that they had in the beginning. I'd say my ideal very-long-ride length would be 75 miles.

I've wondered about this, since I too have very little time for training. Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

several years ago when i had a much longer 15 mile one-way daily bike commute (30 miles/day), i did a 900 mile tour across great britain with some friends where we averaged ~75 miles/day for 12 straight days.

i did no other specific training for the tour other than my regular commuting and some occasional longer weekend rides that i would have been doing anyway as a matter of recreation.

the tour was a breeze for me, and an unbelievable amount of fun! trip of a lifetime for me. some of the other guys struggled at times here or there, but my legs powered me assuredly and relentlessly across every mile and over every hill and mountain range. going from 30 miles/day to 75 miles/day for two weeks was no issue at all for me, no doubt due to my 30 miles/day of daily bike commuting.

i now have a much shorter 5 mile one-way daily bike commute and a beautiful little baby girl who joyfully eats up MASSIVE amounts of my free time (long weekend rides are few and far between for me these days), so i'm pretty sure that were i to attempt a similar tour right now, i'd be seriously hurting without a lot of proper training and build-up to it.

I usually increase my miles for a week or two before a trip, and never have any issues putting in longish days with a fully loaded touring bike. Last summer I rode back to back 90 mile days two weekends in a row, and wasn't at or near my limit. Consistent fast commutes of one hour every 12 hours 5 days a week is great for conditioning. I have a trip coming up next week, and have been riding during the week and on weekends around 30 miles a day, which should be plenty for the 50-70 mile days ahead.

I have found that commuting helps to bridge me between "real" workouts, i.e. I don't lose conditioning when I can rely on my typical 50-70 miles per week of commuting.

I definitely ride faster in an event ride than on my commute, but part of that is that you have a designated course and you are among hundreds or thousands of other riders, rather than being constantly on the lookout for cars and potholes and whatnot.

That and I think most of us bike commute alone, where on event rides you even if you are not with a group you will tend to find yourself in groups of riders going at a similar pace, which is generally a faster pace than I would use on a solo commuting ride.

Well, one factor was that I was on a faster, lighter bike. But yes, the pace of the group was definitely a factor, though it wasn't very conscious. The route was a heck of a lot hillier than my commute, so I'm surprised. Go me! ;)

The vast majority of my route is off of public streets, on a bike path and a multi-use path. But I guess watching out for cyclists and pedestrians does slow me down, even though I hardly have any red lights at all.

I might try picking up the pace on my commute and seeing what happens.

I say, do it! There are those who feel commuting should be leisurely, that "it's not a race", but I find that the harder I push myself, the happier and more energized I am by the end.

I use my commute to follow a ten week century training schedule with daiiy mileage quotas. It gets me riding more than I would with the routine commute, and enjoy the nice weather, but is a sacrifice of time. After I do the ten weeks, I retrench back to week six for maintainence.

Care to share your 10 week training plan?

I'm lucky in that I can just hop on a bike and ride 100 miles whenever I want (because of the daily commute), but my wife definitely needs a training plan to get ready.

Commuting is great training. I ride several bike tours every year, and my training consists of commuting along with occasional longer rides on weekends. Never have a problem on any of the longer rides, even on weeklong tours where we ride 50-60+ miles a day.

Congratulation! Sure doesn't look like an easy ride from the track and elevation gain and lost and the distance in between them. I would like to try something like this some day, just to see my level of fitness.

I'm here in Thalahasse visiting my son and brought my commuter with me. Some killer hills in town! Had to use gears I never used before in south Florida! I like it! Makes for slower commute but the up and down adds a level of fun.

I have the same experience. Over the last few years, I've done a century every summer, plus few metrics centuries. My primary riding is about 20 miles a day of communing. I've never felt like I'd over-done it on these rides. Most 'impressive' was riding the 2014 Westside Dirty Benjamin (gravel century), I had no rides over 30 miles in training for this, but I'd bike-commuted every day for the year. I was tired at the end of the ride, in part because of the galeforce winds and in part because I added 10 miles of wrong turns.

I know a guy that is really in to the 'roadie thing', I was telling him commuting it good training, he dismissed me without any discussion (he's kinda a tool). Don't underestimate the power of daily commuting!

Thank you!

Killer hills in Tallahassee? Where do you usually ride? Northern Florida doesn't strike me as hilly, but I guess that shows it depends on your perspective.

@Hypno Toad, I guess if he hasn't tried it, he doesn't know what he's missing. But it's pretty arrogant of him to dismiss what you're saying without experience. He could have expressed surprise instead of doubt. Some people!

Oh, I forgot to mention another bragging point! I never shifted to my small chainring! I never needed to.

Tallahassee is very hilly. In February I did the "Capitol Ride" it went from Moffit Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida to Tallahassee. 325 miles-4 days, (3 centuries and one 25 mile day). The first day was all hills (hard to believe outside of Tampa) and the last day -well actually the last mile was the hardest to the Capitol. I too used my commute as part of my training and then did long rides on the weekend. Probably the last few weeks or so before I wanted one extra long ride during the week, (I would ride my road bike in on Wednesday and get off work an hour earlier so I could ride for about 40 miles after work) my commute was a big portion of my training plan. I only had 9 weeks from finding out about the ride and to the actual date of the ride so it wasn't as many weeks as I would have liked but I feel that my commute with a loaded commuter helped with the training and on my next upcoming big events (2 in October) I will use my commute as part of my training for the weekday rides.

Here it is:

Nice job Tom! I wanted to ride that but this weekend was booked so hopefully next year. I think my 13 mile hilly commute through Yonkers has made my legs comfortable with climbing hills.

Ohh and what bike did you ride?

+1

congrats [MENTION=152773]noglider[/MENTION] ! how wonderful. i did something similar (altho a lot less) - a 30 mile ride 2 weeks ago and noticed how easy it was and how fast it was over. i thought to myself, that's it? and it was beautiful. i'm pretty sure if i wanted to, i could do 60 miles. i did take a nap 3 hours later and slept like a bear. hahah.

it sounds like the 13 mile commute was the perfect training schedule!

lol. i love that!!!

I rode my 1982 McLean which I recently renovated. It has lightweight wheels on it and a 3x9 drivetrain. Previously, it had a 2x7 drivetrain. The new drivetrain has a lot of problems, and I had to keep making corrections. It needs more work. The bike got tons of compliments. Someone remarked that it was the oldest bike on the whole ride. I hadn't thought about it before, but it may be true. Funny that I'm into old bikes not because I love them more but because I haven't felt the need to buy a new bike.

I have only one on-road toolkit, and I forgot to bring it with me from the city. I cobbled together another one, with a spare tube, allen keys, and tire levers. When I finished the ride, I realized I had forgotten a pump! I was lucky I didn't get a flat. If I had gotten one, I would have had to borrow a pump from someone.

Pictures will follow soon.

Well done!

I'm also in the commuting as training camp. I have a number of detours where I can use a country road for intervals or the bike trail for tempo, depending on the day's workout. Also, if I ride from work to a group ride, and then ride home, that technically counts as commuting. A lot of racers I know combine commuting and training. A friend of mine who's a former state TT champ will occasionally ride his TT bike to work.

That's terrific! I discovered something similar on a smaller scale last year. I had been commuting 12 miles round trip for about eight or nine months and not doing any other kind of riding. Then one weekend, I thought I'd go out for a little spin just for fun. I came back 35 miles later and felt like I could have kept going another 35. I was really surprised because I don't push myself on my commute at all. It adds up.

I suppose what one does is a factor. Someone locked in a cubicle or office all day is going to have more energy to burn than someone doing a physical job in the outdoors. After 10 hours of making deliveries, sometimes leisurely is all I can manage.

And that's fine! My point is that people shouldn't be telling each other what the "right" way to commute is. Fast, slow, fenders, naked... everybody has a preference. :thumb: