Hi all. I am a 61 year old female who is in good shape for her age. I play hockey and skate and cycled about 15 years ago. Got back into it ever since the pandemic around May. Bought a new bike and invested in power meters. Since there was no hockey and no skating(until very recently), I threw myself into cycling and renewed my passion for it. I decided to try a training plan so I had some structure and could see improvements.

I checked out Training Peaks and searched for a Masters level plan. I was given a slew of options and I realize that each plan is commensurate with your level (FTP and VO2 max score at the start). I chose a 20 week off season plan to get me ready for next Spring.

Now I realize at 61 stuff is going to hurt a little. I am an all out type so rarely "scale it down". I get one full day off a week on this plan and some days I am doing a double workout (cycle plus a lift). While I can do this, I am tired...A LOT and have to take naps. I did a net search and saw that some articles advocate tough rides only once a week for us over 60. My plan has stress score in the 300's per week. Not sure if that's normal or I am just being a bit of a baby....

I am just starting week 8 and it just gets harder. I am wondering if I am doing too much from a standpoint of others here over 50? I get that I am the litmus test as in, if I am hurting or can't get out of bed, yeah way too much. Or is this the norm with Masters plans and I just need to suck it up?

If anyone has or is doing a plan for Masters I would love to hear about it and possibly compare and even change mine out. I am grateful for this forumas I have not found much online on this subject.

Everyone has their own limits so it's hard for me to say what is too much for you but in my case, I have to have rest days if I am riding close to my limits. Like 2 or 3 rest days per week. I'm 66 and have been riding since the early 80s. Never raced, but have done 100 fast paced club rides per year for 20 years straight before this year.

Are you planning to race? Or do you want to achieve a certain level of fitness?

There are a number of forum members who follow strict training plans for racing and some of them are in their 60s and above. There is a racing forum here called "The 33". They will also be happy to answer your questions.

Thanks Big John! I shall head on over to check out that section of the forum. I may race in the older categories if I feel I can complete and not be left trailing. Hence my training plan now to get some bike fitness under my belt.

maybe I missed it but what are you training for?

At this point I am building bike fitness. Going forward I think I might want to do road races (not massively long ones) or crit.

Sometimes it's good to just go ride without the training schedule

Forum member Hermes is a racer and is very knowledgeable about training and he seems helpful. Also, check the "Training status" thread there. Interesting stuff sometimes and you can ask questions there also.

Thank you kind Sir!

As Greg LeMond said, "It never gets easier. You just go faster."

Oh wow. Good for you! You're embarking on a long and interesting journey. First thing. Being self-coached (that's what you're doing) is very difficult because one coaches from experience and you are just starting to develop same. Everyone's different. The huge advantage that experienced coaches have is data for hopefully 100s of athletes. A coach is the way to go if one can and is so inclined.

Putting that aside, I like training plans. I think they encourage accountability and consistency. I've always had a training plan, though I've almost always devised my own. I like to know what I'm going to have to do in the next week or so.

Do you have a power meter? So is your TSS from HR or power? Do your TSS scores align with the planned TSS? Whichever you use, have you tested, how often and how accurate do you think your testing has been? Over-optimistic testing will have you undercounting your true TSS and thus working harder than the plan's author had in mind. That's easy to do. If you feel like you're doing too much, simply reduce your LTHR or FTP depending.

Me: I'm 75. I've been cycle training for 25 years, so I have a lot of built-in. I took most of this past summer off or easy due to some physical issues, I've been back at it since early September. I'm completing 300-400 TSS/week, mostly using power. That's fine. If I don't feel up to it, I miss a workout and get a red box. Fine. As it is said, you don't get stronger when you train, you get stronger when you rest. Thinking about that, your plan should have easy weeks built into it. The idea is that yes, you get tired, in fact maybe very tired and maybe you even have trouble hitting your numbers in maybe the 3rd week, but then there's an easy week and you recover, now stronger because of the stress. Stress is good. Too much stress is bad.

How do you tell the difference? Take your morning resting and morning standing HRs after you get up and pee. Lie down, let your HR settle to as low as it's going to go, and take your HR for 3 minutes. Save the average. Stand up and take it for another 3 minutes. Save the average of the last 30" of that period (approximately). Log those 2 numbers and the difference between them. The difference is called your orthostatic HR.. Over time, you'll get a feel for how those 3 numbers relate to your state of rest and exhaustion. IME if my orthostatic HR goes up near 20, it's time to rest a day or until it comes down near normal. See: https://fellrnr.com/wiki/Orthostatic_Heart_Rate_Test
If one's resting HR goes up by 6-8 beats over normal, that's also a signal to rest.

Another good guide is that if you can't complete the workout or can't "hit your numbers", that might be a signal to ease off, but not always. Sometimes just going as hard as you can is all that's necessary to get the benefit even if you can't manage perfection.

On double-up days, I always ride before I lift, never the other way 'round.

Daneh, I am in awe at your drive, dedication and commitment and hope you find the info to hit your marks, he says as he finishes his piece of chocolate cheesecake washed down by a glass of red wine. You will find the guidance you want on the forums here. Please wave as you pass by.

When Greg LeMond said, "It never gets easier. You just go faster," he was young and in his prime.

After a certain point we don't get faster. It doesn't get easier and we go slower.

The first thing I had to accept when I got more serious about training after age 60 was that I was never going to reach the level of fitness I had in my 20s. I can't train as hard consistently, I need more rest, and no matter what I do the body can't compensate for inevitable biological changes that accompany aging. Even with every legally available supplement I can find, at age 63 now it's difficult even to match my cycling performance at age 60.

Per Strava's guesstimate for relative efforts, I'll do a week or two in the 800-1,000 relative effort range, then try to cut back to 300-500 relative effort to recover. Mostly depends on my energy and soreness. I did a few consecutive months of 600-700 miles a month and occasional rides in the range of 300-400 relative effort. By late September I wasn't recovering and was constantly sore and exhausted, so in October I cut back to 400 miles and did more walking and core work to ease neglected muscles.

I don't stick to any rigid schedule, but I try to do one seriously difficult workout ride a week. It may be a 30 minute HIIT session, with a long warmup. I need about 30 minutes just to warm up now, and another 15 to cool down, so my rides usually take 90 minutes regardless of effort. It may be an FTP type effort, going flat out as hard as I can sustain for an hour. Just depends on what I feel like doing, the weather and wind conditions.

I'll do a tempo ride of around 2 hours, trying to mimic the same effort as group rides. I've avoided group rides this year due to the pandemic, although other folks have continued as usual. But they're 20-30 years younger and at lower risk. But I know their patterns, which I find annoying -- but that's how it goes with most club rides with folks who've never actually raced. Instead of maintaining a steady pace, they coast downhills, loaf on the flats, then hammer on climbs to drop everyone, so the group turns into a ragged accordion. I don't do tempo rides like that and keep a steady effort throughout, including climbs.

The rest of the week I try to stick with zone 2 rides for a couple of hours or longer. Depends on how my neck and shoulder feel. Old injuries often prevent me from riding longer than 50-60 miles. And I tend to push harder than necessary even on those rides. Sometimes I'll switch to my hybrid for longer casual rides, since I'm less tempted to push harder than planned. I can't do zone 2 rides on my carbon fiber road bike. It's just too tempting to push too hard.

Occasionally I'll switch to walks instead of low effort long rides. Due to chronic neck and back pain since October I've cut back to 400 miles a month riding, and take walks of 3-5 miles, two or three times a week. My main goal is to maintain an endurance effort, relatively lower heart rate, for at least a couple of hours.

In winter and wet weather I'll drag out the trainer and do long, light effort sessions on the trainer while binge watching TV series or movies. Some folks are motivated by cycling training videos and programs, but I'm not. They bore the hell out of me. I'm self motivated and prefer riding outdoors for real training sessions. Indoors I can relax, keep my heart rate down and do long, low and slow efforts.

I need to resume that soon because I can tell from chronic soreness and exhaustion that I overdid it this summer and early autumn. I lost most of my Strava top tens to younger guys, some of whom were riding pacelines, so while that's my motivation to train harder, I have to be realistic about what I'm asking of an aging body.

My next goal isn't training harder -- I'm already doing that -- but getting more flexible so I can stay aero. I know I'm pushing hard enough to regain those top tens. But back, neck and shoulder flexibility force me to sit up too much, so I'm losing time and speed to wind resistance.

An old neck injury hinders my ability to use aero bars and TT/tri-bikes are painful for me. But with physical therapy I've been able to slam the stems on a couple of road bikes, switched to narrower bars (38 and 40, vs 42 and 44), and get as aero as practical on drop bars.

daneh : Major kudos to you for your drive and committment to a plan!



So much good advice in this post from Carbonfiberboy!!! However, the comment that stood out most to me was "you don't get stronger when you train, you get stronger when you rest". This is so absolutely true, and it's by far the hardest element to incorporate into my own training. I just love to ride my bike (as we all do), so it's hard for me not to be out on my bike nearly every day of the week. Nevertheless, when I do take rest days the benefit is obvious. I don't necessarily feel more rested, but my heart rate activity is much more reactive and dynamic after a rest day. It's really quite dramatic. When I don't take rest days my heart rate remains steady and in it's "proper range" for long, steady efforts, but for periods of harder effort my heart rate will remain lower than it otherwise would after a rest day. It's a definite sign of fatigue.

Listen to your body and don't be afraid to scale back from your training plan if your body needs some rest. "Sucking it up" and pushing through pain and fatigue is a common mentality for people our age because it's what we were taught as young athletes (at least I was). We know so much more these days about the benefit of rest and how it actually makes you stronger, healthier and generally more fit. If I were still a competitive athlete I'd do a much better job of implementing rest days and following a training plan... not because I was the most disciplined, but because I hated to lose. Since those days are long behind me and I'm primarily riding for fun (and it's fun to be out riding every day) it's harder (and much less fun) to rest.

Yes, HR reactivity to effort is the tell. If I'm out to do a hill repeat and my HR doesn't come up like it should and usually does, I take it down to zone 2 and ride home. That's not the same as not being able to hit your numbers on the 3rd or 4th repeat.

61? All-out type? Never scale it back? 6 hard training days per week?

Check back with us in a decade, let us know how the body feels. Who knows your future?
If you are training to feel good and stay active until you die, I would suggest some rest days or 'small ring rides' when you feel overly tired..TaiChi or Yoga over MMA.
Training for a competitive event, then Go For It. And good luck to you.


Lots of programs available for seniors. A good program should include low impact aerobics and strength training.
My exercise cardiologist told me to eliminate lots of things. No riding mower, no powered leaf blower, no electric hedge trimmer, no elevators/escalators, etc. Basically, she instructed me to Find Joy in Movement, forget all the 'human-energy saving devices'.

The best results (non-competitive) are achieved with a lifetime of consistency over intensity.
YMMV.

You just made me laugh out loud and thanks for your post with added humor. Yeah I am a little like that however in order to not be prostrate when awake I did cut out one day and one lift. I want to see where I can go with this. My program does include strength training x a week. And I do scale back...a little, no i am laughing again. You guys are a tough crowd but I adore you all.

[QUOTE=Carbonfiberboy;21784546]Oh wow. Good for you! You're embarking on a long and interesting journey. First thing. Being self-coached (that's what you're doing) is very difficult because one coaches from experience and you are just starting to develop same. Everyone's different. The huge advantage that experienced coaches have is data for hopefully 100s of athletes. A coach is the way to go if one can and is so inclined.

Putting that aside, I like training plans. I think they encourage accountability and consistency. I've always had a training plan, though I've almost always devised my own. I like to know what I'm going to have to do in the next week or so.

Do you have a power meter? So is your TSS from HR or power? Do your TSS scores align with the planned TSS? Whichever you use, have you tested, how often and how accurate do you think your testing has been? Over-optimistic testing will have you undercounting your true TSS and thus working harder than the plan's author had in mind. That's easy to do. If you feel like you're doing too much, simply reduce your LTHR or FTP depending.

I do have a power meter, I have Assioma pedal power meters. My TSS is from the PM. My TSS scores align and sometimes surpass the planned ones, I am coming up on my 3rd FTP this Saturday. Pretty accurate considering I would be dying if they were overestimated with the work I have to do so it's pretty on target.

Me: I'm 75. I've been cycle training for 25 years, so I have a lot of built-in. I took most of this past summer off or easy due to some physical issues, I've been back at it since early September. I'm completing 300-400 TSS/week, mostly using power. That's fine. If I don't feel up to it, I miss a workout and get a red box. Fine. As it is said, you don't get stronger when you train, you get stronger when you rest. Thinking about that, your plan should have easy weeks built into it. The idea is that yes, you get tired, in fact maybe very tired and maybe you even have trouble hitting your numbers in maybe the 3rd week, but then there's an easy week and you recover, now stronger because of the stress. Stress is good. Too much stress is bad.

My plan does have easier sections that then ramp to harder. Over the 20 weeks it looks like an amplitude wave. I added an extra day of rest so that makes two full days of relaxing and recovering.

How do you tell the difference? Take your morning resting and morning standing HRs after you get up and pee. Lie down, let your HR settle to as low as it's going to go, and take your HR for 3 minutes. Save the average. Stand up and take it for another 3 minutes. Save the average of the last 30" of that period (approximately). Log those 2 numbers and the difference between them. The difference is called your orthostatic HR.. Over time, you'll get a feel for how those 3 numbers relate to your state of rest and exhaustion. IME if my orthostatic HR goes up near 20, it's time to rest a day or until it comes down near normal. See: https://fellrnr.com/wiki/Orthostatic_Heart_Rate_Test
If one's resting HR goes up by 6-8 beats over normal, that's also a signal to rest.

Thanks for this test and I shall do that. Geez you really are a fantastic mine of info and you have no idea how much I appreciate the thought and time you put into this reply. I am very grateful!

I’m NOT a trainer.......but if you feel like you’re tired a lot (or too much), common sense says some adjustments might be helpful. Personally, I think rest and recovery might be the least understood aspects of training. It’s critical to allow your body to recover in order to get stronger and faster. You don’t have to be inactive to rest or recover from intense workouts. I think you can continue to ride but maybe at a lower intensity. Since you have a power meter, you should be able to modulate your efforts very accurately, without guessing by just using other metrics like heart rate, speed etc. Everything I’ve read indicates that as we age recovery takes a little longer. I’ve certainly experienced that myself.

Whatever you do, make sure you’re enjoying what you’re doing!!!! You will get there!!

Sounds good. Life is good. Enjoy it.

Just curious - When working your plan, how many points has your CTL been increasing per week? I like to go slow, so I limit mine to 3 points/week, and then drop maybe 2 point in the 4th week. I start training in October for my A ride in July. and can't hold a CTL over 80 for more than a few days, so that's tons of time. When I got going again, my CTL was about 30. I'll probably level it off at around 65 for a while in early spring. Helps to have years of data for that. But I'm curious about the intent of your plan's designer. Thanks.

[MENTION=78894]Carbonfiberboy[/MENTION]...so this plan is kind of cyclical in so far as it has me working three hard weeks and then a softer week My CTL goes up anywhere from 3 to 6 in the tougher weeks. As for my ATL, for three weeks it is more than my CTL and week 4 it reverses. So I get three weeks of negative TSB and one week of a positive. I know it looks like a lot but I can manage and am not overly sore or tired. I get plenty of sleep and nap if I need to. I am also on top of my refueling aka diet...lol.

I did a 10 week block of less intense riding also following a structured plan. So all told after 15 years, I have been riding plans for 18 weeks. I have zero data, but not worried. I am good to my body in that if I don't feel like seated low cadence grinding for an hour I will ride zone 2 for 2 plus hours to reach my TSS.

Thanks. That sounds good. An hour of low cadence grinding does not sound fun.

[MENTION=529503]daneh[/MENTION],
There's also a Training and Nutrition forum. Several folks there are in their 60s and 70s, and very experienced at training. But willing to advise and help people at any level. Look for "Carbonfiberboy" ---- Never mind, I see from the above you have found Carbonfiberboy!!

I've also seen very little "attitude" in there!

From your description, I would scale it back. The key element in any training plan is, REST. Period. You ain't 25 any longer and being over 60, you need more rest.

Back when I was turning 60 and attempting the Assault on Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina, I signed up for training classes. These were big boy spin classes with compu trainers. The guaranteed that I would complete the ride if I did the classes and sure enough, I was successful. At 11,000 ft of elevation gain, it is a hard 100 mile ride.

Anyway, to make a long story short, they only recommended that I do these workouts 2 times a week, max. Most only go once per week. They said the intensity level is just to much for more than 2 times a week. So, in between those classes I went to the basic spin class since this was during the winter. It worked wonders for me but I did not work out every day.

From my experience, every other day is good. I am now fast approaching 65 and putting in 75-100 miles a week is max for me. I need more rest. If you do not get proper rest, the training will suffer.

Of course, racing is another whole issue. I have no delusions for racing at my age. Event rides are plenty for "me". I lost all my competitiveness long ago. I am just thrilled to get through a metric century now. Of course you ambitions could be much different but I personally would scale back a bit and get some more rest.

Good luck!

john

AT 75, I've been riding and doing weights for the past couple months, coming off a long period of taking it easier than I would have liked to and having my fitness go in the toilet. I'm now able to ride or lift every day. Two lessons: everyone is different, and it depends on the intensity of your workouts. I'm doing ~120 miles/week plus 2 days with weights. In my 60s I lifted the same day I rode. Had to quit that in my 70s. My training goal is 154 miles and 9800' in July, so I started this program in October. I've been doing this ride every year for the past 5 years. I'm not an athletic person at all, untalented except for an ability to research, plan, and execute. I'm good at that. I'm slowly getting in shape and will gradually add in intensity in early 2021.