warm up
 

I posted this question in here because things didn't really change until I turned 50 ( I'm 58 now) and I was curious of other opinions.

It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm well rested, tired, ate properly or not etc.etc

It takes me about 25-45min to blow out the cob-webs before my legs really feel like riding. But once I'm good then I feel fine.

Any takers, ????

When I run it takes me 1-2km before I settle into it, when I ride I seem to be fine from the start, or at least I'm as tired after 2km as I am after 20km.

Usually about 10 miles, give or take a little, for me before everything loosens up and works as well as it can.

About 4-5 miles for me preferably on a relatively flat course.

3-5 miles before I hit my cruising pace.

We just had a thread about this.

However, we all have some dementia here, so most of us wouldn't know the difference.

3-5 miles is what I like for a wrm-up.

Ideally about 7-10 miles for me.

The more muscle mass you have, the longer it takes to warm up. I've known track sprinters (LOTS of muscle) who don't think they're fully warmed up unless they've had an hour of riding. When I was racing on the track, I always enjoyed warming up with the sprinters. They'd start off real slow, you were afraid you'd slide off the bankings. Then they'd gradually pick up the tempo, and the last ten laps would be screaming fast, but I'd usually drop off before the final lap.

I've noticed that if I'm climbing stairs with people who are not that fit, I'm usually out of breath first, but I can keep going longer up the stairs at the same speed despite this shortness of breath, which fairly quickly disappears. Hypertrophied muscles require more blood/O2,so it takes longer to divert the proper volume of blood vs unfit people. I think this becomes more pronounced the older you get, but I'm not a doctor (although my undergrad degree had a kinesiology minor), so what do I know?

Anyway, when I first get on my bike in the morning or after a day at work, I like to start off real slow and just gradually speed up. It usually takes at least 10 minutes. On the track, we do a highly-structured warmup of 40 laps (each lap is 200 meters of our indoor track). Laps 40 to 24 are 22 seconds (about 34 kmh), 23 to 14 are 20 sec, 13 to 5 are 18 sec, and the last five laps are pretty much a burnout. Takes a little over 10 minutes, but I'm fully warmed up for the training to follow.

Luis

http://www.bikeforums.net/fifty-plus...g-warm-up.html

Yes, this topic was covered ~ 1 week ago. This thread has some good info for you.

57 here, I feel the same, takes me around the same 45min to 1 hour to warm-up before the muscles and cardio really feel efficient and ready to work. I believe this is why I struggle at times on my 1 hour commute back and forth from work.

Have to refer back to my post #9 in the linked thread for my reply.

Depends on the weather; my morning commute sometimes isn't long enough to get warmed up, about half an hour door to door. It takes longer now; I think it's age.

It takes me around 45 minutes to warm up on each ride . As soon as I leave the house I face nothing but hills . I really don't mind those hills except when its windy , like the last few weeks , which makes it hard to ride up those hills .

It does seem like as you get older, it takes a little longer to warm up.

However it seems that some days for no reason that you can figure out, you just feel stronger very soon after starting to ride. And again sometimes after a longer ride, right at the end you feel so good that you think you could ride up the side of mountain in the big ring.

Last night for example,

I had a good day at work, mentally focused, good energy. Got home just before 4p and headed out for 45km.
The first 25k felt like no-body was home. No power, the slightest head wind I'm down 2-3 kph. Then I could feel it kick in, the last 20k were awesome.
I was even riding some tempo.

Our club rides start out really fast (seems to me) so I have to struggle to keep up for the first several miles . . . then I'm all warmed up and good to go.

I try to get to the start early if at all possible and ride for 5 miles or so pre-ride which helps me get up to speed much more quickly when the actual ride starts.

Rick / OCRR

My problem is never the legs unless I rode very hard the day before. At 71 it takes about 30 - 45 minute to get the heart warmed up enough to get it to zone 4 -5. Before age 60 I only needed 15 - 20 minutes.

I'm 65. On my daily commute of 15 miles each way I don't have the luxury of a warmup. In the morning I have only about 5 minutes before hitting traffic where I need to be able to go when necessary. On the return I have less time before I hit a bridge I must get over and then turn left, and often with a headwind because it is heading west. It's a busy road but with episodic traffic because of the light pattern. So once I make my move I'm committed to getting over it as quickly as possible before the next wave of traffic whacks me from behind. After that the next 45 minutes are gravy.

About 10-15 miles for me before I feel loose and able to maintain a decent pace. It's probably more about the breathing than the legs, for me anyway. I seem to do better on the group rides when I arrive early and do 20-25 minutes pre-ride. I guess I'm within in spec for our age group

Sildenafil sulfate. No warmup required.

A miles or so is all I need. Not sure why but even back in my running days it was just put shoes on and go.

I'm not sure what the question is; but what everyone else said sounds good to me. I used to never need a warm-up and now I do. Sometimes I'm good in a mile or two, and sometimes it takes forever and finally sneaks up on me.

Question for ctpres: "sub-7 RT" - What's an RT?

He broke 7 hours on a Century at 75 years old......7 hours riding time. He did 5 hours elapsed time at 50.

RT/Ride Time or MT moving time as opposed to ET elapsed time. When young, ET is the only thing that counts. At 75 I figure I can take some bragging rights and use RT. My ET for that ride was 8:27.

Indeed. When you were young (and I was younger) no one had fancy computers to keep track of moving time vs. stopped time. You just looked at your watch. And according to the physics books, average speed is total distance divided by total time. That definition makes sense because time spent resting, eating, waiting for traffic etc. is an essential part of the ride. As an indicator of your accomplishment total time of 8 hrs is better than 8 1/2 hrs even if that extra half hour is just resting/eating.

Of course nowadays people quote the moving average figure because they can and it is more impressive. Even so, your 8:27 ET is dadgummed good!