rsbob 

Not saying this happens to anyone else, but for a couple of days after and all out max effort over 1.5-2 miles, I experience more bursts of rapid heart beats/fluttering (AFIB?) which reduces over time. However if I ride at a moderate pace (16-18 MPH) with occasional burst of power over climbs or sprints, I don’t have that experience. It makes me think twice about pushing myself to the max for more than a minute. YMMV

Have to agree about the sentiment above about training and exercise. When I did centuries and doubles for best time, I was in training prior. Since I don’t compete other than against myself for PRs and one gentleman in the area with too many PRs for my age group, I consider that exercise punctuated with a few sprints. , I do work a bit harder to wrestle as many away from him as possible. Yeah, I know it is a sickness.

I do enjoy just tooling around pleasure rides too with no goal other than to enjoy myself.

RB1-luvr

I don't train for intensity, but I get my intensity workouts from cyclocross racing. I can put however hard an effort I'm up for into the race and am allowed to finish. How I place is a good gage of where I'm at fitness-wise.

Hermes

Word.

I was going to post something but the above says it all for me.

GamblerGORD53

What I do is sightseeing/ exercise/ burning off fat and the result is fitness. 15 miles doesn't get me to the highway and back. So unless I'm really pushing the pace in the city, my heartrate just isn't rising much. So far this summer, I've done highway day rides of 72, 90, 92, 96, 100 and 119 miles. This sure does get me stronger and fitter.
Last week the pro triathlon crowd was training and racing here. There is a 1 km park loop used for this. So I was chasing them a bit.LOL.
Also during the races I was riding beside a few hundred yards on a parallel MUP. So that was my HIIT for the year. LOL. I couldn't match their pace at all, the girls were doing 25 mph on the flat. All the guys had disc cover rear wheels, some had Z frames.

RB1-luvr

related to this convo: I used to get uptight when I could not find time to jog or ride for days on end (due to family and work obligations), but in the last ten years or so, I put myself at ease during the off days by embracing the downtime, and am thankful for the inevitable healing that is going on during those days, especially to the ligaments/tendons/joints. I extend that mind set to a hope that it may just be what keeps me able to continue running and riding late into life, by avoiding injury. I hope I'm right.

Random11

As a cycling enthusiast, I was interested in discussing some of my thoughts on the motivation to ride with other cycling enthusiasts. Can you suggest a website or discussion group where that might be appropriate?

caloso

I'm not going to try to convince anyone to start a structured training program if they don't want to. If you think it would be miserable, don't do it. But I would also point out that not everyone considers training a chore. For me, it's a process in support of a goal, but I have come to find a great deal of motivation and satisfaction in the process itself. I don't have a great deal of control over where I finish in a race--too many factors I can't control-- but I do have a lot more control over whether I complete a workout. For me, happiness is hitting all my wattage targets.

rydabent

I have ridden bikes for over 70 years now. I have never "trained" for anything. I simply ride bikes or trikes for exercise and fun. Or back when I was young, to get to school.

Hermes

Closed temporarily for moderation review.

StanSeven

Reopening is fine if you like. The thread needs cleanup by deleting several posts though

Chuck M 

I like the concept of "I'm not training, I'm exercising". One can pretend they are some racer wannabe or enjoy the ride. I want to enjoy the ride.

caloso

Some of us race, and some of us enjoy training. It’s not an either/or for every rider.

GamblerGORD53

Most of us go far enough to make a speedometer a useful. LOL. Too bad for the cranks that don't.

davester

Some of you are talking as though there is merely a dichotomy between training and mellow rides without acknowledging that there is a middle ground of exercising for improved health. Since I am currently not training for anything in particular, I try to straddle the line between mellow enjoyment and exercising for health. This means that I vary my pace and distances and put in some hard efforts every now and then.

OldTryGuy

I trained for a NON-STOP 112 miles of riding in my IRONMAN Triathlons

I trained for the 103 miles - 11,000+ feet of climbing in the Six Gap rides I did especially since I'm from SW FL where 100 miles has less than 80'

I trained for the 167 mile 1 day Cross Florida Ride to ride the first 100 miles NON - STOP in 5 hours or less.

The above were all in my 60's and the training was done solo with additional riding with the group 2 to 3 times a week for 40+ miles in paceline a 20mph to 30+mph just for FUN.

Thanks to my PCa (Prostate Cancer) and treatment I can no longer train or ride with the group so I ride solo for distances at slower speeds since that's all I can do and I consider myself to be EXERCISING but not getting the full benefits that the TRAINING AND GROUP RIDING provided.

p.s. -- on my Pete Cornell 10 year Memorial 100 mile Ride 3 days ago I was again hit by a wild hog, only this time got T-Boned resulting in a face plant on pavement. The pavement provided the "Road Rash" and the HOG FRACTURED MY TIBIA from its impact. Only made 30.4 miles of the 100 miles so next year I need to ride 100 miles THEN the 69.6 miles to complete this year's ride. That ride will follow my 101 mile 73rd Birthday Ride 16 days earlier on 7/10/2023 providing the PCa does kill me or another HOG ENCOUNTER :0)

bruce19

Train? For what? A Strava post? I fight with this instinct all the time as an ex-college jock. I keep telling myself that eventually I'll free myself from the mindset. OTOH I'm 76.

DiabloScott

It does bug me that Strava and such try to pretend they're helping me get better or faster or fitter or whatever with every post like they think they're anticipating my objectives. I use Strava to keep track of my rides and follow my friends. My Garmin scale even sends me text messages like "Wow, you're doing great at maintaining your weight - keep up the good work!" ie not accomplishing anything... just silly.

But of course I will train for a big event like a century or a charity ride.

bruce19

I just use Strava in ways that benefit me. The rest is blah, blah, blah. It's a tool.

wolfchild

I ride for exact same reasons as you... Fun, exercise, enjoying outdoors and sceneries and looking at the world around me.

wolfchild

Structured training is only for people who participate in races and other competitive events...The average recreational cyclists has no need to follow regimented structured training programs.

Carbonfiberboy 

Personally, I ignore the medical studies because all them which I've read contain either implicit or explicit bias in the direction of "more is better." I just look around and have a lot of serious riders to look at. I've been a member of a fairly serious invitation-only recreational riding group for 25 years with over 120 members. Most of them don't show up for rides anymore.

I've talked to many of those who no longer show up and the usual response is, "I'm not fit enough to ride with you folks anymore." At 52, I was one of the older folks when I joined, and one of the least talented. I trained and rode hard enough to get to be the A group leader for a few years and as soon as I wasn't on the front anymore and able to easily run the paceline up and down, I backed off on the intensity volume. Lucky boy.

I've never had an irregular heart beat problem. However some people in the group have had Afib. Some dropped out and others got a ablation which enabled them to continue. So who got Afib? The fastest climbers in the group. Why? They either did more high intensity riding than anyone else or they were k-hounds and they aged out of being able to keep that up without damage. It's rather a time-in-grade issue. And then there was the wonderful person, fastest current climber, who went BC skiing, came home, cooked dinner for his wife, watched a movie, went to bed and had a fatal heart attack with never a symptom That's not good, either. I organized his memorial ride.

The high intensity folks would go out and do long, steep climbs several days a week. The k-hounds had a great pile of distance medals, starting with 10,000 k/year of strictly brevet riding. Brevet organizers publish rider times on the web, so it's not just riding long distances, it's racing to see who can ride a brevet, especially PBP, the fastest, etc. All that takes a toll over the decades. I'm not aware of anything of this nature being investigated in the literature, but it's obvious if one rides with a lot a very fast long distance riders who've been at it a long time.

Yesterday, at 77, I rode RAMROD, 162 miles and 10,000' this year. It was one of the hotter RAMRODs I've ridden, with temps up to 100°. Nobody died, but a rider I tried to help was sagged off the course and had to get IV rehydration at an ER. I had bib #7, the 7th oldest ride to enter. Rider #1 had to be sagged off the course this year, not uncommon.

Basically, my guess is that there's a mathematical model which could be constructed using total time, time at the various intensities, and longest ride length which might give a reasonable result for Afib risk. I don't think total time alone is a risk, because we had a group member who did 20K-30K yearly mileage totals and up to 1.5M feet climbing. He's fine. Percentage of time spent at high intensity X total time looks like a risk factor. Very long rides with a large percentage of time spent above some unknown limit looks like a risk factor.

I think if one did enough HIIT to be able to ride PBP in under say 70 hours, that might just do it, and probably before that target date - or maybe one has to do that for a few years for enough damage to occur. As far as I can tell, no one really knows what's too much of what. There's some chance it might be individual, but I rather doubt that. The Afib-ers I know are a rather diverse lot. They just have that one thing in common, too much total time at high intensity.

BTW, the more total time one spends at high intensity, the faster one gets - for a while. It's quite seductive.

rsbob 

Your friends experience resonates with me.

For those concerned about HIIT and AFIB, they should read Phil Cavell’s, The Mid-Life Cyclist. I do have some moderate AFIB and used to enjoy hammering hills with my heart maxed. After reading the book, it appears that more senior athletes whom push themselves to the max repeatedly tend to more likely suffer from exercise induced AFIB. I have since backed off not wanting to exacerbate the condition.

caloso

There is no requirement that you have to be a racer to engage in structured training. It’s available to any rider who would like to get fitter and faster, benefits from structure, enjoys the data analytics, or who has limited ride time.

Like I have said earlier in the thread, I won’t try to convince anyone to do structured training who thinks it would make them miserable, or if it’s medically unwise for them. But I do push back at the idea that it’s necessarily a chore for every rider, or that you have to be a certain kind of rider to benefit from it.

DiabloScott

Structured training is for anybody who wants to improve.

Low-intensity exercise might be enjoyable, but pushing yourself is better for health, and being faster and stronger makes riding MORE enjoyable.
Consult your doctor of course.

rsbob 

And what is exactly wrong with pretending? If it makes them happy then it makes them happy.

Some days I like to take down fastest times for my age group and on others I enjoy sightseeing and doing some mileage. Both make me happy. Nothing wrong with either if they give me joy.