az_cyclist

BCIPam has a lot of good advise; it is hard to improve on it.

Basically, the more you ride the farther you will want, and be able, to ride. Enjoy the ride and the scenery along the way.

Chaco

kleankanteen.com

FrankieV

Hi AuntieM,
Just do what you can do comfortably and increase slightly evertime you ride.
Before you know it you you will be noticing the distance piling on.
Padded riding shorts are a must once you start spending more time in the saddle.
Frank

oilman_15106

Or a proper bike fitting for the one you have now! Proper bike fit is the key to pain free riding. End of story.

Similar story here. When I started back after a 14 year layoff a 10 mile rail to trail was cause to click my heels together. 2 years into things: a 65 mile ride is something I look forward to. Cycling is the one sport where performance gains are slow. Don't know why but that is the way it is so don't worry and keep after it.

Anymore I put on a pair of bike shorts if I am going for a spin around the block. At the 50+ fourm comfort is key.

Terrierman

Just keep at it with the burning thighs and sore butt and sore neck and sore hands and sore shoulders and pretty soon they won't be quite as sore quite as soon and soon thereafter you'll start to notice instead of being sore you are out of time to ride.

Road Fan

Beautiful!

Fixitman

The rides do get easier. As others have said ride at your pace and to achieve your goals. I started riding 6 months ago with about 3 months of training under my belt I did this ride https://www.tourdeblast.com/ and was pretty wasted at the end. With another 3 months of training I did this ride https://www.cascade.org/EandR/hpc/Details.cfm and felt pretty good at the end.

I just turned 50 in Mid June and had never ridden more than a few miles at a time and never more than once or twice a year ... certainly never any hills. I was not overweight and was in reasonably good shape before starting the cycling.

I list my recent accomplishments only to show you where you can go in fairly short order if you choose to do so. That being said you need to decide your own goals. I would recommend finding a ride that you feel you should be able to do by this spring and sign up for it. This will give you a training goal and a little motivation for your winter training. Keep after and you will get where you want to be

I just saw the hip issue pop up while I was writing my reply here. Go ahead and check with the doctor and listen to what you feel applies to you and ignore the rest of what the quack has to say. Sorry, but doctors have not done me a lot of good over the years. All my infirmities I have concurred through exercise and diet all self prescribed and regulated. This includes managing chronic pain and IBS which in doctor speak means I'm Baiicly Stumped.

You have to build up slowly when you have injuries and be careful as you can set yourself way back by pushing too hard too fast. I would look into a good yoga class where fitness, not humming is the main focus as well as a good strength training class. It will make you much more comfortable on the bike for longer periods and will help to loosen that hip up. O.K end of rambling on.

Regards,
Randy

howsteepisit

That was Greg LeMond who said that

Digital Gee

I thought it was Neal Armstrong.

tpelle

I started riding in, maybe, April or May of this year. Started out by dragging my 30 year old 10-speed out of the barn and cleaning it up, and I also received a mountain bike basically for free through an airline frequent flyer program. I'm just shy of 55 years old, overweight and diabetic. I live in Kentucky. The bad thing about where I live is that there are a lot of steep hills. The good thing about where I live is that there are a lot of steep hills. The hills are hard to ride, but they sure are good conditioning.

I started riding a four mile loop around where I live - all two-lane country roads with not much traffic. For the first few weeks I couldn't make the whole four miles without stopping and resting, and walking the bike up some of the steeper parts. However, I kept at it, and after a few weeks started noticing improvements. I could ride the hills in granny gear. Then I could ride the hills in a higher gear. Each improvement was it's own reward.

And, yes, I did have some discomfort from the saddle, but even that started getting better as my legs got stronger (supporting more of my weight with my legs and less on the saddle). I had been riding in regular hiking shorts, but finally bought a couple of pairs of "bicycling underwear" to wear under my hiking shorts. (I'm not yet sporting a full-spandex figure......I do it for the children.)

Eventually I found that I preferred a road bike over a mountain bike - easy-rolling high pressure tires, no energy being lost in boinging up and down on the suspension, multiple positions for my hands on the road bars - and ended up buying a Surly Long Haul Trucker set up with 700 x 28 tires and the low gears of an mtb. (I LOVE that bike!)

Now my usual loop that I ride is just slightly under 15 miles, and includes several long steep climbs. I used to be resigned to grinding up the climbs in granny gear. Now I attack at least some of each hill in a higher gear while standing in the pedals. I do the 15 miles now, and feel like I could keep riding - I'm looking for more road to ride.

Just keep at it. If I can do, you can too.

howsteepisit

I'd bet you are riding in too high of gear. The goal is to ride comfortably, so use a low gear and spin it a bit faster. Like try to maintain a cadence (how fast you spin you cranks around) of more than 70 rpm. This changes the stress from a muscular based effort to a more cardiovascular effort. You will very quickly find that doing this your endurance will increase rapidly. If you have a decent LBS, maybe stop in for some easy riding advise.

Nola_Gal

Hi AuntieM, I have an old 1989 Schwinn Sprint! It's royal blue with the yellow stickers. I'm a beginner too and I'm finding that the stronger I get the easier it is for me to handle/control the bike. I think a lot of my energy early on was just going into getting used to balancing/steering/staying upright. Now that I feel a little stronger, that doesn't sap so much of my attention or energy.

Road Fan

thanks, all for the re-education!

Road Fan

How about W, the First Cyclist?

Yen

Auntie, you've received a lot of great advice here, and you've come to the right place to ask.

My first thought was that you should try riding in a lower gear so that you are just moving your legs but not putting a lot of pressure on the pedals just yet. Then, I read your story about your hip, and that certainly does explain your hip pain.

So, my opinion is that it could be a combination of your hip condition, a gear too high, and your overall condition.

It sounds like your hip is already responding to your new activity (that's great news!!!) and with your doctor's blessing, so continue on but gently, slowly, gradually and keep it in a low, easy gear. Just moving your legs around in a low gear is great for the hips and you will build tiny muscle fibers as you are doing that. Gradually, you can raise the gear and see how that feels.... if still too high then go back down. Don't push it until it gets easier. You want to strengthen that hip, and let it tell you what you can and can't do and how much.

As for your overall condition, you expressed amazement at how much conditioning can be lost from doing nothing in two years. Every day we do nothing, we lose a little bit of muscle mass each day. Each day! Compound that over two years and that's a lot of muscle loss. And one day we get on a bike or do some new activity and we wonder where our muscles went.

We re-entered cycling in Spring of this year. My leg muscles hurt just test riding the bikes around the parking lot. Our first real ride together was 5 miles and we thought that was just amazing. Now we routinely ride more than 20 miles together on the weekends, and shorter rides during the week (time permitting since I work full time), but this came very gradually and slowly. I call it my "brick by brick" philosophy, which means that every time I ride, no matter how short or how easy, I am adding a tiny bit of muscle mass and strength that will be applied to the next ride, and so on. Over the weeks, that's a lot of improvement.

Do you do any stretching after you ride? That's very important to help the muscles relax and work out the lactic acid that builds up in the muscles and causes the some of the muscle aches we experience during and after a ride. Proper nutrition after a ride is also important.

So..... after you get your bike fitted and adjusted properly, now that you've gotten your doctor's blessing and are starting to see improvement, the next thing is to see if you can ride in a lower gear, and just take short, easy rides as much as you can tolerate. A rest day is important too. Look for little signs of improvement, and share them with us here.

Set your own goals to meet your own objectives, and keep rolling a little bit at a time. I'm truly very happy to read that are already seeing progress in your hip -- that is a major victory!

We're all pulling for you!

Jen

BluesDawg

Great advice so far. But I'll repeat what I said earlier. It would really help a lot to find someone local who could see how you fit on your bike and how things are set up. There is a huge margin for misunderstanding in trying to diagnose these kind of things based only on forum postings.

Oroluk Lagoon

Your keester should tell you if you need bike shorts for the length of rides you're doing. If it doesn't bother you at all then shorts won't make you feel any better. But if you have any kind of discomfort in the groin area then bike shorts and Chamois Butt'r will definitely help. I always wear my bike shorts and use the Butt'r if I'm going out for more than about 15 miles.

I would skip the gel cover for the saddle and just look for a new saddle rather try to make a bad fit fit. I replaced the original saddle on my bike with an inexpensive Serfas Reactive Gel and after a 65 mile ride my keester had no complaints.

Lots of good advice in this thread....don't give up.