You gonna cry?

The OP said he's riding 20 miles without getting exhausted. He can ride 30 miles without going to the hospital. We're talking about riding a bicycle, not a 12 mile rucksack run with 50 pounds on his back. I assume he's not riding a fixed gear, he can coast and take a break for a minute if he gets too tired. It's not a superhuman goal. Feeling pain doesn't mean you're injured.

What would be amusing would be to see you enter a Cat 5 mountain bike race. You would be walking your bike back to your car after mentally breaking down in the first 5 minutes. Because, I mean, we can't get exhausted or feel pain. That's for the sadists

Why would I cry? Your insults are Cat 7 at best.

Here's what you actually said: "If you aren't feeling exhausted or overworked then you're not riding hard enough to get stronger."

Now you're backtracking and saying he'll be fine if he rides 30 miles. I agree. I suggested he go 25 next ride and then 30 the next. I don't think he'll feel exhausted and certainly not "overworked", and he will also be getting stronger as he goes. I did it that way and rapidly increased to doing centuries and beyond without ever experiencing a feeling of overworking. I got plenty tired afterwards, and I had some very minor aches and pains, but I never once had to put myself in some sort of agony to achieve great strength and endurance gains.

I don't mountain bike at all, so I agree my racing on my road bikes in a Cat anything mountain bike race would be pretty pitiful. I'd probably drop you on any road hill, however. Not sure what you think you're proving by maligning my skills in an activity I don't do.

My conditioning is good enough that I can sustain 20+ mph for multiple hours and I don't get muscle pain, and I've never bonked. Should I poke myself with needles to show I'm as big a man as you?

Backtrack? My first reply in this thread I said he should ride 30 miles


You ain't dropping anyone. You probably started cycling when you joined the forum.

Your BS false internet claims of personal achievement hold less worth than a grain of sand in the desert. By the way, bonking is caused by glycogen depletion just so you know lol.

You try to say exercising until you get exhausted which you said was "miserable" does not make you stronger, and then you say there's no scientific proof. That makes it clear you have no clue what you're talking about. You have no education in the subject. To get stronger doing anything physical you have to push your body to exhaustion and/or muscle failure. That sends a signal to your brain which causes your body to adjust to the conditions you're putting it through. When you lift weights or do body resistant exercises you go to muscle failure on the last set or two. You don't stop when you start feeling a little pain. Cyclists who race, even amateur, even club cyclists do sprints, hill repeats, overall intervals into their training. If you don't ride to exhaustion then you've never even done a sprint lol. Hell, on my club rides we have guys older than you and we do sprints until everyone can hardly breathe. We get very exhausted but we like it because we aren't soft.

Oh, my hero!

I'm going to buy your action figure.
/ignore

I like it when someone starts an argument with you, then after you win the argument they started they want to ignore you

Why that's easy.

Avoid riding the same out-and back or the same hamster track circle time after time. That forces you to keep having to decide whether or not to start another lap. Try to find a different route to ride every time you go out. Putz around either exploring new places or linking together previous rides into longer rides. Bike computers are bad too because they can make you turn every ride into a competition.

Do that and far and fast will come naturally AND you'll have more fun doing it.

Is the show over? Did I miss it?

The show never really started ... and no one missed anything except the actual point of anything that mattered.

the real question here is how many miles can your backside take? How's the bike fit?

I don't think I've ever stopped because of fatigue, but sore backside, hands, or feet yeah

Yeah, I just figure about how far I want to go today, google map a destination half of that distance and do the round trip. It's a lot more fun actually going somewhere interesting than riding a loop, and the destination actually becomes an incentive,

You just missed some guy doing a bad GI Joe impression.

Ahh, now I see what your real problem with me is. Rest easy stud, I'm not a GI Joe anymore, I retired in 2010.

Remember ... when you are training ... No Pain ....



No damage.

x2. Lower back issues from typical work related activity that are only getting worse each cold season. I'll stand up for a few rolling feet & back in the saddle ticking off more miles!

Careful. Sgt. Slogan will call you "soft."

Having been personally beaten into shape by several Drill Sergeants, I can only appreciate your former efforts and thank you for your service!

That's definitely something im getting used to right now. Legs and body feel great but my ass hurts.

If you want to build up to 30+ and you're not sure if you can make it, then map out a 15-20 mile loop and do that twice. That gives you an out if you're not feeling comfortable halfway through. It also gives you a chance to grab a snack before going back out. If you don't want to do the same loop twice, then do the second loop in reverse direction.

As an aside, 30-40 miles, even for a beginner, is not that tough if you keep to a comfortable pace. A few years ago, my son (who was 10 at the time), decided he wanted to ride a century (100 miles in a day). He had done a few 50+ mile rides the year before, but he hadn't been building up to it before the attempt. I went with him and brought lots of snacks. We stopped every hour or so for about 10 minutes for a small snack and had a couple of longer stops for first and second lunch. He did the whole 100 miles on his own. It took us 11 hours total (8.5 hours riding + 2.5 hours resting), but he did it and even felt fine the next day.

^^^^ This. If you want to get stronger, you have to stress the body. You get stronger when you're recovering from being sore/tired. You need hard days, active recovery days, and rest days. Otherwise, you're doing nothing except acclimating to the saddle

Ahhhh ... so many people out riding ... and then coming here spouting so much BS about working out.

Being tired means you worked hard and is fine, being sore doesn't have any causative relationship with getting stronger and pain is nothing to strive for . The notion that overstressing a muscle to the point muscle cells are damaged is necessary to spur muscle growth has been thoroughly debunked, and was a classic case of correlation not equaling causation. People who work hard to develop muscle often overdo it a bit so you'll see both muscle destruction and development at the same time, but one isn't necessary for the other.

As I said above, I don't think there's going to be any problem with the OP increasing to 30 mile rides (and beyond) in the near future, but the idea that no significant development is going to happen until the OP makes himself miserable and sore is nonsense.

That's normal. The ass pain will go away with saddle time. Keep riding.

When it descends to the point where posters are posting naked bike-computer-screen selfies, the thread has jumped the shark, bitten it, and drowned.