ltmark

I'm training harder than ever for a Century in August. I live at sea level and the ride is at 5400' in Salt lake City. I'm riding way more than ever before (age 62) and actually hate missing a day. I typically ride 5 days 20-30 miles and one long day 50-70. However, I have been doing a lot of hills and on some routes, I just grind out the hill miles until my legs just can't do it any more.

Some days, I start out and my heart rate is really low, even when working reasonable hard, but my legs are still pretty tired from the previous day. On days like this, should I take the day off? Is continuing to ride actually counter-productive?

cyclinfool

Sounds like your routine is correct. taking 2 days off out of 7 should not get you overtrained. On ride day where you are really tired from the day before just take it easy and do a slow paced ride (recovery ride). If the ride in SLC is in the valley you should be OK from a stamina perspective but if it goes into the hills Unless you spend a week aclimating you won't make that up.

I apologize if you already know or have figured out what I am about to write: The other thing you may need to watch out for is dehydration - your needs will be significantly different. I would recommend finding an electrolite supliment that you can tolerate in your water bottles (I use Nuun). Do it before so you don't experiment on the ride. Lastly - and if this is not your first century you will know this, but around mile 70 to 80 the bonk monster may get you. This can happen to first time century riders because they underestimate the caloric needs and also get caught in the moment early and don't pace themselves (happened to me twice!!). Taking in 100 to 200 calories at say two rest stops prior does not make up for the 4000 calories you have burned up to that point; eating an extra cookie, power bar, banana, etc. at each rest stop will help fight it off - Guu shots can be your friend.

Good luck and have fun!

BikeWNC

Remember, your body needs rest to recover and get stronger from the training. If you train when tired, are you really training at the intensity you think you are? HR can be a good indicator for when to take a rest. As we age, we need more rest time to assimilate the work load. I would say if your resting HR is high in the morning and your legs are sluggish to take a couple days off the bike. Also, if your HR won't respond with efforts on the bike it's time for a couple days off. You'll ride better when fresh and accomplish more. It would be best to plan more rest days in the first place before you get too tired.

tsl

Respectfully, my experience differs.

I live in flatlands at 500' ASL. Last summer I went to Denver and the Front Range of the Rockies. I trained for two major rides, both with altitude and long climbs.

The best I could think of for altitude training locally was to ride as much as possible on the cusp of Zone 5 on my HRM. While I wasn't able to change my anaerobic threshold, I was able to significantly increase my comfort and duration at threshold.

I arrived in Denver on a Monday night. I rode an easy metric around town on Tuesday. On Wednesday we SAGged to 10,000 feet and climbed the rest of Mt. Evans from there (14,160 feet). Sure, I had to stop and rest more often than the locals, but I impressed even them.

But, CF's point is well taken. No matter what your training, you'll need some acclimatization. I was very fortunate. My body adapted quickly. Others don't. No amount of training can change the rate at which your body will adapt--and that rate will be different than mine or CF's. However, for most (reasonably healthy and athletic) people, it's a couple of days, not a week.

As for climbing, remember that out west you'll rarely encounter anything more than 6%. But the climbs are long--miles and miles long at precisely 6%. Training on our short but steep hills here in the east doesn't prepare you for that.

Seek out long and not-so-steep (by eastern standards) climbs. Train on those, doing repeats. The longest I could find was only around two miles. And it's two hours away by car. I was able to get there only a couple of times a month. It helped a lot.

Rest days I find essential. The harder I train, the more rest days I need. I nearly always take Sunday off, year 'round. Training last year, Wednesdays were my heavy days, and I took Thursdays off, but still found Fridays (and sometimes Saturdays) to be painful. I'd just go lighter than I'd planned if I still felt Wednesday's efforts.

That's how I did it, and it worked for me. YMMV.

Retro Grouch 

I'm probably projecting so take this for what it's worth.

In my road running days I used to run a lot - 50 to 60 miles per week - sometimes even more. That's a lot for a runner. Even at my best, however, I was middle-of-the-pack. Looking back, I can see that I just piled on miles running medium-medium-medium every day. I just wasn't getting better very fast.

The thing that I learned from that experience is the value of having a coach. If I was to start doing anything competitive today, I'd hire myself a coach to monitor my training. Had I done that I suspect that I would have been a lot faster and maybe I wouldn't have messed up my ankles.

cyclinfool

Yep - from your posts we know you are a strong and experienced rider so one can only suppose that if you had been doing all that work at 10,000 feet you would have dropped them or at least not needed more rests.

I wasn't saying you would die - just that it would be harder. So I think your experience is a case in point of what I was trying to say.

HIPCHIP

If you're legs feel dead, but you can't get your heart-rate up, you may want to try some cross training, such as walking, swimming, etc, so that you are still working the major muscle groups, but in a different way, so that the mainly used muscles have a chance to recover, but you're not stopping your exercise and the legs are just being worked in a different way.

BigBlueToe

Try a day off and see how you feel the next few days. If you like it, try taking another rest day after different intervals and see what works best for you. I'm not regular about my training because life's circumstances always interfere, but when I'm free to ride or not ride as much as I want I find my body usually tells me what it wants and what it doesn't.

Hermes

"I am riding more than every before" Motivation = very high. Likely chance of success without injury or overtraining and / or poorer result = very high.

I wanted to challenge your thinking a little and point out a couple of things. Your event is a couple of months away. Long event rides require a lot of base mileage. These use your fat burning energy producing system so you need the longer zone 2 low zone 3 rides. You can gradually increase intensity for some part of the rides and do some hill climbing at Zone 3/4 and throw in a little Z5. Pushing hard up hills until you cannot do it anymore and having dead legs the next day and going on another ride is not great training and recovery. Training and improvement is about being able to recover. We measure our fitness / ability by our recovery capability after prescribed training regimes. The prescription you are following does not offer enough recovery.

You have not indicated the degree of difficulty of the course other than it was at 5400 foot altitude. I suggest using the last month training on similar hills i.e. a proxy of the course. As far as altitude, we live and train at sea level and our district TT championships 40K are at 5000 feet in the Sierras. We have tried a couple of simple things to improve but the fact of the matter is we cannot spend enough time at altitude to acclimate. The best advice is to accept that you will perform a little worse at altitude BUT your speed will be faster even with less power due to the thinner dry air. They key is not to push too hard and dry out the mucus in your lungs - very bad. The thin dry air is tough on your lungs.

On training and altitude, the best training is to sleep at altitude and train at sea level. This causes an increase in bloods oxygen capability and the lungs and other systems adapt to the altitude. The training at sea level allows you to process more oxygen hence an increase in performance. I suspect most of the pros getting ready for the TdF are in the mountains sleeping at altitude and training in the valleys.

The other solution is a hypoxic tent. https://www.hypoxico.com/ We have looked at this in a non serious way. It works but seems too much hassle. Good luck.

BengeBoy 

4 days per week * 25 miles = 100 miles
1 day per week * 50 miles = 60 miles

Total = 160 miles a week.

That's plenty of riding to get ready for a Century, as long as you are riding with some intensity and riding some hills.

Take two days off per week if your legs are dead.

reverborama

I train until I see bright lights and hear dead relatives beckon. Then I take a 10-minute break.

Seriously, though, I've spent a fair amount of time at the Bonneville Salt Flats and I would be more concerned with humidity and sun exposure during the ride than the altitude. You will have to ride a little easier than you do at sea level so just expect that and dial it back 15%. What could be your real problem is burning the ever loving sh*t out of any exposed skin -- even through your helmet holes and inside your ears. And your fingers. The sun is brutal out there. Couple that with 8-12% humidity and you will find out what happened to The Donner Party first-hand. I'd consider a camelbak and if I didn't have that along I'd make sure I had 3 bottle cages. You're nuts if you don't use at least 45 sunblock and reapply it several times on the ride. You also want to get SPF20 Chapstick. Make sure you do the insides and behind your ears. I've seen people get blisters there.

stapfam

I don't train very hard for a 100 mile ride- Although that may have to change with my lack of riding this year.

I do a 50 to 60 miler on a Sunday and two evenings with about 20 to 25 miles on them. One of the evening rides is on the flat and I just push myself a little bit harder that I feel comfortable with. Normal riding with HR at around 140 so I push it to 145/150. The other evening is spent doing hills. Only short 1 milers with around 600ft of climbing but 3,000 ft of that and I have had enough.

I find that if I can do this every week- then in a month from even the low base I am still at this year- Then a 100 miler will just feel like a long ride.

And having a days break at least from each ride means that I don't get tired on the rides.

I may do less miles in training- but I make certain they count.

And on the altitude- I went to The Alps and trained to do Ventoux for a week. First ride out was a 5 mile climb up to 3,500 ft and the altitude did not bother me. What did was finding that there was no PIE to be had at the Cafes.

Get the body fit- get the legs right and get the mind-set. The end of a 5 mile climb is just like the 1st mile- only you have done it and it was easier than you thought.

Allegheny Jet

You may want to look at taking a recovery week every 3rd or 4th week. During that week your body will recover and get stronger. Taking a day or two off during the regular week will allow the body to rest between workouts but will limit it's growth. Last year I stated to train for racing and thought I could coach myself since I was a college T&F athlete and coached HS Track & Field for a number of years. Long story short is that I overtrained and basically wrecked a whole lot of work during the off season. This year I've hired a coach and my riding has exceeded my expectations. A big difference, over last year, is the hard workouts are really hard and the easy workouts are much easier than I would have expected. The major change has been the "recovery weeks". During the recovery week, time on the bike does not change much, it's just very easy riding with some efforts such as a race or 1/2 of a group interval workout. At first I didn't like the idea of not working hard for a week but now savior the time. I can tell when I'm ready to hit the grind stone again where the slightest change of effort while riding sends the HR right up. Towards the end of a 3 week build cycle it sometimes takes extra effort getting warmed up enough up to just be able to get the HR up into Z3, my body is telling me it's going as hard as it can but the HR is just sitting at 128 to 135 bpm. That's not a comfortable feeling knowing that in 20 minutes I'll be asking my body to hit Z4 or Z5 for some intervals or hills.

NOS88

I know the feeling of not wanting to take a day off because you enjoy it so much. The older I get the more I feel that each day is not to be wasted. So, my rule of thumb when feeling tired is this, "Ride slower, less exertion, as if it were a sight-seeing day - maybe fewer miles. Stop smell the roses, feel the warm sunshine on your face, or revel in the cool shade of a forest canopy, stop and talk to people, but ride."

Often a recovery day or two like this makes a big difference in my physical and mental state. I'm fortunate to have several road bikes. One of them tends to be my recovery ride bike. I don't know exactly what it is about this bike, but it lends itself to "strolling along" as it were.

BikeArkansas

My home and most of my riding is around 450' ASL. Last year I went to Tucson for some riding. The altitude there was near 4000' and when we went into the hills it was well above 4000'. My legs were fine, but my lungs did burn. I was only there three days, so I never actually got used to the change. Good training helps, but nothing actually prepares you for the altitide difference, but time.

BCDon

Well, I live and ride at 3,700+ feet so I don't generally experience acclimation problems but I can tell you that when I go up to 5,000+ feet I do notice it.

And YES, in the West we have Mountains, climbs of 10 Kilometers with an average of 6% (which means some 8% and above and some down to 4%) are not uncommon. This takes a different approach than simply spinning up a short 2 or 3Km hill. You do need to train for it. If you don't have hills that long then do intervals on the longest hill you have. Up and down a number of times. This won't quite simulate a long climb (on a long climb there is NO resting, stop pedaling and you fall over).

stapfam

Now Ventoux was 21kms for an average of 7.5% And we don't have hills that long in the UK. I did train by doing repeats up the steepest 1 mile hill in our area- but got bored after 5 repeats. Found more enjoyment by doing a 10 mile ride and taking in 3,000ft of climbing.

I live at Sea level so any climb to altitude should have affected me- It didn't.

Hermes

This looks like some fuzzy math. 10 miles and 3000 feet of climbing and you do not have hills. If I climb Mount Diable 3864 feet in ~12 miles, I would get ~300 feet of climbing per mile. I live in a very hilly area and my other rides are generally between 70 and 100 feet per mile.

stapfam

Where I live we have a ridge. Its only 800ft max from sea level but you can zigzag across it to get in 5 climbs at around 600ft each with those hills varying between 10 and 12%. I normally leave the basket hill till last. .71 miles at 16% That one does hurt and is 530 ft of climbing.

We may not have mountains- but we certainly have some slopes.

But I have to admit that I live 6 miles from the ridge so it is 6 miles warm up- 10 miles or so of travel to get in the 3,000ft and then I normally round off with a trip to the seafront for Coffee and PIE.

And hate to say it- But this is on the road. If I wanted a hard ride then I would do a 30 miler offroad with 2,400ft of climbing with 4 trips over the ridge. When the Tandem could do that ride in 2 1/2 hours at an average of 12mph- we were fit.

And although the OFFroad scenes- attachments are of the ridge.

Hermes

Normally, when someone says they did a 10 mile ride, it is from start to finish. I am going to let this slide.