Back to back 30 milers
 

Rode 32 miles yesterday. That makes my 3rd 30-32 in a month and 2nd in a week. The legs were pretty wore out by the time I finished. Dare I try another 30 miler today with no day off to rest or is that just looking for trouble? I know I need to keep pushing, but I don't know if back to back is too much to expect.

If you are new to riding 30 miles and feeling it, take one day off for recovery, then ride 40 miles the next day. It won't take long to ride a century.

Does it still count as a 40 miler if I stop for a few minutes a time or two? :) My 30 milers have all been non-stop.

Well, everyone has their own standards. Personally, I don't really count short breaks like pit stops, getting more water, and getting off the rest the contact points. It is best to keep stops relatively brief because otherwise your legs start to think your are done for the day. If you are doing a long ride, you need food and water. I don't a team support vehicle to hand out goodies, so I just stop when I have to.

Do what you want, your legs aren't going to fall off from riding 30 miles two days in a row.

There have been involved discussions about what counts as a "ride". Generally, if you go to the store, come back home, watch TV for 20 minutes, then go somewhere else, that's two rides. But if you ride 30 miles and hang around somewhere else a while and then come home, that's one ride. If you ride 1200k in 90 hours, it counts as one ride, even though you manage to sneak in some overnight sleeping along the way. Most people don't go more than 30-50 miles without a stop, so most people that ride 100 miles will have a few stops along the way. The exception would probably be people trying to do that in 4 or 5 hours.

My problem in my early days of riding was to ride back to back on two consecutive days. Wasn't fitness or lack of energy- It was Butt ache. Getting on that saddle the day after a longish ride hurt. Don't have that problem now but IF I do a long ride that I push hard on- the ride the day after is a recovery ride. Only about 10 to 20 miles but high cadence- Lower speed- and no effort. It is just to get the muscles working again before I do another hardish ride.

The thing is, nobody got faster, stronger, longer, while riding a bike. As a matter of fact you are worse off after you are done than when you started. You get faster, stronger, longer, while resting and giving your body a chance to rebuild itself.

Then again, this applies mostly to maximal effort. If you are a newbie at distance, improving comes so readily that maximal effort can't even be measured; you can indeed improve that fast.

As long as you are feeling fine go for it. Eventually you will over train and that's not the end of the world. At that point rest as hard as you train and you'll start improving once again.

Thanks for the thoughts. I ended up only riding 5 miles today. The butt and legs were saying 'oh no, not again' for the first 10 or 12 minutes, but then it felt much better. I have a wedding to go to tomorrow, but I hope to get a long ride in before I have to leave. Hopefully a new record. I hope I can hit 40, but we'll see how that goes :)

And 40 miles today! Yea!!! I ride a hybrid (Mendota) and my neck is the main thing that bothers me. Butt and legs not too bad. If I could fix the neck, it'd make a big difference. My seat is good, both height and fore/aft. I'm wondering if a shorter steering stem would help to get me a bit more upright so I could see the road better. I try not to crane my neck, but some is inevitable in order to see the road and surroundings. I'll check with my LBS next time by and see what they say.

I ride 20 miles on my daily exercise run, usually 4 days a week (5th day is a long endurance ride), and usually end up doing 20 miles 3 days in a row. I can't imagine 30 is too much more difficult.