Base training: with group or not?
 

I'm completing my first full week of base training with my HR in zone 2 or low zone 3 most of the ride. I am enjoying the slower pace for a change.:eek:

Several sources recommend not doing base training rides with a group in order to maintain one's own goals on the ride. It's very easy to slip up and start keeping pace with companions rather than stick with the plan.

There is no hard and fast rulel about group rides or not for base mileage afaik.
This makes sense. Stick to YOUR workout regardless of what others want you to do.

Keep doing your rides with others as long as your goals are met. Possibly the concerned rider was at breaking point and needed relief from your pace. Being the ride organizer does give you the ability to establish the parameters of the ride

I frequently invite others to ride with me on various training rides. I always call out the time and effort that I'll be riding. At times the pace might dictate that I sit in to keep my HR in the zone I want and some times my riding mates will just follow my wheel. A few of my buddies Z4 is the same pace as my Z3. As long as they are drafting they can keep their HR in check. It hasn't happend, but if the others started hammering I would just let them ride away.

Actually, my question should have been: Was I correct that I can lead for the entire ride as long as my HR stays in the desired zone? The need to draft on these rides seems irrelevant since group rides generally are not recommended for base training.

Perhaps the guy you invited on the ride was just bored sitting in at 20mph. If you're going to do a group ride I think you need a little more flexibility on your effort level. If you're doing 4-6 rides/wk one group ride with a little extra intensity isn't going to hurt your base training.

I think you'd be better off trading 2-5 min efforts on the front at Z3 rather than have you sitting at Z2 and everyone else at Z1 or below.

If you are riding at a constant Z2 or Z3 it is certainly possible to lead the ride. You ask your body for power to ride at a certain effort and your HRM reports back on the efforts you have expended. Other riders behind you have no effect on the effort.

My logic exactly! I think he misunderstood my goal for the ride.

Yen, you're quite right, of course, to ride the ride at the pace you need for your training purposes. And of course he's talking nonsense about your working too hard. If you are maintaining the effort level you need to maintain, it doesn't matter whether you are at the front, off the back, or somewhere in between.

Personally I wouldn't invite others to accompany me on such rides unless there was an agreement that we might end up riding at different speeds and regrouping at some designated point. Or unless the other riders were explicitly happy to ride at your pace, rather than theirs.

This can often be a difficulty for those who ride with their partners. I have a couple of friends who ride together most of the time. The woman is a much stronger rider than her husband, and because she doesn't like to leave him in her wake (or, more accurately, because she knows he doesn't like being left behind) she rarely gets the chance to ride at the pace she wants, and needs, if she is to improve. They are having to negotiate a routine in which she sometimes goes out without him, either alone or with some stronger riders, so she can do some more challenging rides. It's a situation one often hears about the other way around, with the male being the stronger rider. Seems more complicated when male vanity is involved...

Yen,
First, I admire your commitment to stepping up your bike fitness, you inspire me a whole lot. Second, I'll only suggest that your goals and intent for the group rides, if you continue to have them, is to clearly communicate your intent and purpose for your rides. If everyone knows what you are seeking they are more likely to cooperate with you. If you do/did this, my apologies, I just want to see you be able to use every tool we bicyclist have to achieve your goals. Best of luck in achieving your goal.

Bill

The world if full of busy bodies and know-it-alls. Nothing useful was ever accomplished by listening to such people. Good for you to stick to with your own goals.

Riding at the front is fine.

Finding a group or even a ride buddy who can keep discipline isn't always easy.

Thanks everyone; I needed the reality check. I doubted myself for the rest of the ride and wondered if my logic is wrong, yet no matter how many times I analyzed it I always arrived at the same conclusion: For this type of ride, riding in the front is appropriate as long as I maintain my target HR. Drafting may have dropped my HR into zone 1 -- not my goal!

You are a rare exception in being able to focus on your own training goals. When I was racing, I would usually lay down the early winter base by myself. Part of the reason is that you build up a lot of toughness just being out there by yourself in cold and miserable weather. The other reason is that if you go on group rides in the winter, there is always at least one clown in the group who is not a real bike racer but has something to prove, so the group ride becomes a hammerfest as everybody else's ego gets threatened.

It's usually understood that the pace is shared on a group ride. This allows everyone to get the benefit of being in front and being sheltered in back, and it also develops everyone's pace line skills, which are the fundamental core of bike racing, if that's what you're training for. The only place where this isn't so much the case is on randonneur rides, where one guy might hold the lead for hours and hours, and everyone behind him is perfectly content to let him do so. But if you're stuck behind in this situation, and you want to assume the lead, the best place to do this graciously is on the climb, where the deck tends to get shuffled anyway. Just zip past everyone up the hill until you're in the lead at the summit, then return to the original tempo.

Luis

Ain't it the truth... folks that race know training needs to be targetted, and if you say it's a base ride, they will ride base or go do something else. But for some, the group ride is their race, and they can't resist hammering. You have to just let those folks ride off.

Here are several of the invites that I put out on my rides. I always attempt to cover the ride purpose and any other extraneous info needed.

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7102...11-ride-invite

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6471...ril-29-mission

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6661...-2-ride-invite

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6609...y-19th-z3-ride

Some people just have a compulsion to correct people and tell them what they should be doing even when they don't have the foggiest idea what they are talking about. Sounds like you found one.

...

I assume you had to pay extra for the dancing and the queen.:D

The key to group rides is managing expectations which is always hard to do as well as managing egos which is impossible to do. The key to a successful base training ride is that everyone accepts it as just that and accelerating the pace or arguing about changing the rules are counterproductive.

Other than my general unpopularity, this is why I ride alone so much.

Addendum: your heart and lungs do not know or care if you are alone or not.

So, whether alone or in the group, as long as my HR is where I want it my goal is being met.

Best of luck Yen. the training diary is a good idea. I keep one, the Joe Friel bound diary from Velopress. I found it at Amazon.com, here is a link if you want to see what it has to offer:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193...ls_o00_s00_i01

I like the daily set up as well as the sections for zone training data and a section for test results if you have them done or conduct them.

Hope this helps you in your goal, mine has been a nice addition.

Bill

Thanks Bill, that sounds like a good one. I don't race (and don't plan to) and I want to keep it simple

Not a racer here, either, as you said it is a means to jot down the data you want to know and help you decide what to do. Best of Luck.

Bill