I'm wondering if I'm thinking about things the right way.

I started riding with a different group of guys more serious than my other friends. Every Sunday we ride 50 miles of "base" training. This new Sunday ride is much faster than I'm used to, and the 50 is much harder than what I'm used to as well. My older 50-60 mile ride was much flatter. It had climbs but more condensed. This new ride is constant rollers the entire way with a few 2-3 sustained climbs.

Also were riding mid 20's most the time. So, it's killing me and I'm getting dropped. That's fine, I suppose. I didn't start riding untill 10 months ago at the age of 52 and most of these guys are current racers or old grey wolve's that raced for 20 years. I'm also overweight too. 6'2" #245. Any way here's my question.

I have seen in most of the training material I've read that on weekends normally are back to back longest rides of the week. I get the time thing so that makes sense. So I have been riding as hard as I can on Saturdays by myself or "old friends" and showing up pretty spent on Sundays. Being so tired to start hurts my Sunday ride.

Do back to back hard days force me to adapt better? Or should I show up fresh on Sundays to run harder with the speedsters? Or am I not really gaining "base" type advantages by riding in HR zone 4-5 the entire way?

You might need more miles with your old group to build a better base. Maybe adding miles with them and doing a little bit of work on your own could prepare you for the faster group. Might try and start doing the faster group on their recovery days or something once a week to ease into it.

I started riding about 20 months ago. About 12 months ago i really started doing back to back rides on the weekend with the sunday ride being the harder ride. My Saturday rides (unless I have an event) have gotten more difficult also.

About 9 months ago I realized that a lot of times I will be even stronger on Sunday rides although I might do a hard Saturday ride. So give it some time, especially if you're trying to improve and lose weight. I would think losing weight will help with the hills. I'm 59 and weigh around 185 at 6'0.

Good luck

I can do two long rides in the weekend but it hurts on Monday when I go to commute. Usually limit myself to one 160km rixe and a 40km fun ride the next day.

If my priority was to be as strong as possible on Sunday, I wouldn't ride particularly hard on Saturday. There's a lot to be said for fresh legs. If I were really fit (which for me means averaging 200+ miles/week over a period of time) then I'd be OK with riding hard Saturday and expecting my best performance on Sunday too, but without those kinds of weekly miles, a hard ride on Saturday would diminish my performance on Sunday.

Your approach may depend on what else you can do the rest of the week, b/c if you want to ride a hard 50 mile club ride, you need to be putting in the miles at some other time in the week, and this may not be so easy this time of year.

From my perspective -

It depends on your body and your physiology. Some people feel strongest when they rest on the day before, while some people feel strongest if they put in moderate or even hard work on the day before. So try both ways, feel it out, see what happens. For instance, I generally feel strongest if I do moderate work every day. I feel pretty burned out if I do hard work the day before, but if I alternate hard days with rest days, then my performance is inconsistent. So for me, I like to do a little bit every day if I can. Your mileage may vary, so to speak.

This has been my experience and observation albeit related to running. I was a pretty serious runner 25 years ago, but not what would be considered a racer (2:42 marathon, 33 min 10K), but at 6', 190 lbs I think by body type just didn't take kindly to back-to-back hard runs. Our mid-week daily training runs were 10 miles and a really hard effort would have me taking it easy for a couple of days. Since back in those days we did run with HR monitors or all the science we have today we were left with simply listening to our bodies.

Three thoughts.

First, once you're fit then back to back days work well. When I'm trying to ride well I'd race Sunday, do a hard group ride Monday, race Tuesday, and race Wednesday. I'd do a short ride Saturday and repeat. This worked pretty well for me over the years (except in the old days I'd do a group ride Wed instead of race), most recently in 2009.

Second, if you really want to ride better on Sunday then Saturday should be easy. Many riders find a 30-90 minute ride, easy, with maybe an effort or two, will help loosen the legs for the following day while not fatiguing them. You should end the ride wanting to ride more. I personally find that 30 minutes works fine for me. My typical training rides are 1-2 hours long, and 3 hours is kind of long for me, and I do 60-90 minute races. Even when I did a lot of back to back hard days I focused on Sunday. Therefore the day before was easy, sometimes as little as 15 minutes of spinning and climbing off the bike just aching to go super hard because I felt so good.

The schedule thing is an incremental improvement though, a minor one. It won't affect your power to weight ratio too much, it won't help you dramatically on the hills. For something more substantial you need something that transforms you.

Third, the transformation - lose the weight first. It's the legal way of doping for us normal more-than-4%-bodyfat people. Instead of working on gaining power/endurance you make it so you need much less of it. "Install lightness", I think Colin Chapman said that about his race cars. You can have a 4800 lbs car that does 0-60 in 3.5 seconds but you need a massively powerful engine. Or you can get a econobox engine, drop it into a 1200 lbs car, and do the same thing.

It's a huge, huge, huge, huge struggle. I understand. The only time I have been able to stick to a diet is when I didn't ride due to my first ever serious injury. I was off the bike for basically 3 months. I lost almost 30 lbs from my end-of-season weight, about 40-45 lbs off my winter weight, all due to a strict diet (my wife called me "militant"). I lost power across the board, basically 10% from everything, yet I rode much better the following year.

To put things in perspective some comparisons and some numbers.
1. I am 5'7" and went from 190-ish in the spring of 2009 to 155 in the spring of 2010. I hadn't seen sub-160 since 1999.
2. I was so good on hills I dragged my brake going up the short hill in the Bethel Spring Series (I promote it but I also race in it). I didn't want to reveal my newly found power/weight ratio because I was afraid that I'd be accused of doping. Seriously. I ended up winning the Series, winning two field sprints (one for the outright win) on the way.
3. I've been actively racing since 1983. My best year was 1992, at about 135-140 lbs. I never managed a Cat 2 upgrade and I really tried for about 10 years, giving up in maybe 2001 or so. In 2010, in May, I was in danger of being forcibly upgraded to Cat 2 due to my consistently high performances. I immediately started working for teammates so I could finish the year as a 3. I upgraded in Aug 2010.
4. In 2011 the Missus and I tried to have kids. I eased back on training because I didn't want to "sacrifice" all my training when we had a baby. No baby but I gained 10-15 lbs. At the end of 2011 I downgraded to Cat 3.
5. By 2012 I was 175 again. I struggled at Bethel. Instead of dragging the brakes on the hill I was losing ground. I didn't win a single race. I was consistently annihilated in the field sprint. I couldn't finish races during the season that I got money in during the 2010 season.

Even more dramatic - in 2003 I was over 215 lbs - my mom just died of cancer, I'd been spending a lot of time with her, and I was riding every week to two weeks. I managed to win the 2002 Cat 3 CT Crit gold medal after 9 days of rest - I did a short warm up to loosen my legs and then went and did the race. I hadn't ridden for something like 11 days before that one day of training 9 days before the race.

Anyway after my mom died I started riding more consistently. I promised her, before she slipped away, that I'd win the Bethel Spring Series and the Cat 3 CT Crit gold medal for her "afterward", meaning after she died. I got shelled in my first Bethel of 2004, at about 200 lbs, on the third lap, about 4 minutes into the race. I was about 190 by the last week there and won a field sprint. In 2005, at about 175 lbs, I won the Series. In 2006, at about the same weight, I won the Cat 3 CT Gold medal (video not as illustrative of the race due to narrow angle lens).

I've seen the whole range of weights, and in the last few years I've seen a huge fluctuation of weight. The most important thing is to lose weight. I lost about 2 lbs a week when dieting as hard as I dared (1800 cal/day). Sometimes I had to eat 400-600 cal at night to get up to 1800 cal - I didn't want my body to go into starvation mode where my metabolism basically shuts down. I felt fatigued anyway. I could barely ride for 30-60 minutes at a time. I felt cold. But that drastic weight loss leveled off and I could keep it there for a whole year. Only because I totally stopped with the calorie tracking did I gain weight again - 1500-2500 calorie dinners will do that. One of my standard dinners out was, to my horror, about 3500 calories (rack of ribs, calamari, bread, and a few Cokes).

So lose the weight first. In two months you can lose about 15-18 lbs (2 lbs a week, 7-9 weeks, short yourself 500 cal a day and do a little bit of exercise to keep your metabolism going). If you continue to lose weight, getting down 20-25 lbs, even 30 lbs, you'll transform yourself as a rider. Go out to your gas grill. Pick up a full tank. It's 38 lbs. Imagine losing that weight. Even an empty tank weighs 16-18 lbs. Pick one up. Imagine carrying it up every hill. It's crazy how much extra weight we carry around.

It's okay to sacrifice a month or three of hard riding if when you return you're that much better. It's totally worth it. Lose that grill tank. It makes riding so much more fun. Most of us aren't pros, we don't get paid based on our riding performance. Life goes on and being significantly lighter in April will be crazy good. You simply will not believe the transformation.

Having said that I've only managed to get from about 181 peak last fall to about 171 in January. Now, after 3 weeks of the flu, and weighing myself kind of "off cycle", I'm about 175. I hope to be under 170 for March 3rd (4 weeks so just 1 lbs a week loss; 2 lbs a week and I'd be in the mid 160s), the first Bethel race for this year.

Good luck, I hope this helps.
cdr

Just about everything in carpediemracing's post correlates very closely with my experience with respect to losing weight, training, performance, etc...

First, carpdeimracing, great read. I could learn much from you.
OP, if you really want to improve, you have to do target training and spread out your work out days. To do back to backs at max level takes some one who is pretty fit and have their body proplery accustomed to that work load.
Do you know about intervals, cadence work, hill climb sessions, tapering, eating right and getting proper sleep?
I say that to show you that riding with a fast bunch a day after you kill yourself alone is a recipe for burn out. Keep it fun and keep growing. The fun is working on your weak spots and seeing inprovements. Spend more time alone working on the disciplines, a day of base miles, a day of intervals, a day working on climbs, speed training day.
You are probably doing too much too soon. Try rding only three to four days a week, but make them quality days. By that I mean have a targeted goal for that day and mark your progress so you can see if what you are doing helps.
Nothing comes easy for me, I'm not a natural, I have to train right, work on weaknesses, eat right and sleep well. I concur with carpdeimracing that, if you do the work, the weight will naturally come off. As far as how much depends entirley upon who/what you are. Are you a serious/determined person who likes to climb? Train in that vein and your body will find it's ideal size due to your training. Are you a hammer who sprints like Cavendish? Train as such and your body will adapt to it, you will weigh whatever you need to weigh to produce the outcome you train for. Are you an all rounder who can do well at everything? Well, we are all jealous and hate you (Ha!).Train that way and you will be that way. But as carpdeimracing says, in every scenario you will end up much lighter than you probably are now and in return more fit to handle what you have trained for.
I'm a short guy, most I ever weighed was while doing body building work (eggs, tuna, chicken, four to five days at the gym), 155lb. At my best while cycling (I'm a climber by inclination), I weighed 129lbs. I lost power on the flats at lower weight than that, but climbed better. So, everybody is different, you could be close to were you need to be weight wise, I don't know, my bigger question is what are you training for and have you fiigured out what your strengths and weaknesses are.
If you just want to hang with fast guys on rollers, train on those same rollers. Since you kill yourself with them Sunday, start Tuesday with a recovery, same route but ride longer than the Sunday ride at 60 or 70% of max. Go hard Thursday, same route but much shorter ride at 80 to 90% and target weak sections.. Saturday you just want to keep a medium heart rate level for thirty minutes to an hour, work on breathing and cadence and DO NOT do anything do build much acid in your legs, nothing hard. You will do that Sunday.
If you are serious about getting better for more than just the hammer ride, train like I said earlier. Find out what you are good/bad at and learn some drills for climbing, speed, cadence, etc.. Cycling has many facets, learn all you can and don't be affraid to try some new things. Keep track of your progress so you know what works and what didn't (like my advice, could work for you, could not, you have to find out what you need, but you find out by doing/trying).
Good luck to you, keep it fun to avoid the burn out, eat better, sleep better. There is so much more to cycling to enjoy than just the hammer rides (I do them too), make the prep work fun and the fittenss will come.

"Also were riding mid 20's most the time....the age of 52...I'm also overweight too. 6'2" #245. Any way here's my question."

I can tell you that I'm 52, 6'-2", about 220 now, and as far as I can tell, I'm NEVER going to be "riding mid 20's most of the time". Maybe I'm a pessimist and one of these days, I'll just wake up and be 10 mph faster, but I rather doubt it.

Hi everybody.

Thanks all for the great input. I suspected that after my thread grew a bit I would need to fill in some of the blanks. So here is some additional info. As you already know I'm 53, over weight and hadn't ridden a bike in 38 years. I'm serious and intense but also realistic. I don't ever plan to "race" for time but I have always been very good at everything I get involved in for sports and hobbies. I don't need to be killer per say. I just need to be killer for an old fat man LOL. The fat part has to change!!! I know the rest will come around. I already surprise lots of people and hear things such as" I couldn't have expected that from you" in regards to my abilities based on my size. I will always be a big dude. I weighed almost 200 lbs in high school even when I was a skinny rail. I bulked up lifting and my genes give me size naturally. I'm shooting for 225-220 by June 1. I am also training to peak the first weekend in June as I am riding in the most difficult tour I could imagine riding in. (at least in regards to my newness to biking). It's a 3 day event called The Death Tour. https://www.deathridetour.com/course.php

I doubt I will ever be a good climber.I'm strong as hell but even still will never be able to get my power to weight ratio close to where good climbers are, and tha'ts ok. I'm only wanting to do the Death Ride well enough that it will be fun instead of sucking because of the climbing at altitude and the distance. Rarely do I just go ride without having an intention. Meaning I ride witha said training purpose, but still so that it is fun. I have read many books, read web sources and watched everything I can find on youtube. I probably know too much at this point and need to pare down some as I have questions that should be clear in my mind and are not. Thus my original post here.

I do ride intevals, overunder, steady state, hill climb repeats ect. And for the most part I think I pretty much understand what they are supposed to do for me. Some of the way I have filed things away seem to contradict. So maybe I should just write down my questions here and you can clearify for me.

I believe I have read these things.

I need to ride no more than in HR zone 2 on endurance rides to burn fat and to train my body to use fat as my fuel source better.
My conflict is this. Riding in higher zones burn more calories per hour and force lactic acid adaptations. Thus increasing my power at lactate threshold. Thus making me faster and able to ride longer as well. Soooo, if I can ride 50 miles in 2.5 hours why ride it in 4?

Also if I hammer 2 days back to back it forces my body to adapt. Where as it might not take me as seriously as a one day/skip day rider. The climbing on the new weekend rides are not like the steep climbing I do on my climb/repeat days. I do intervals, and over/unders on the steeper grade (8%). And sometimes endurance rides on the steeper things. I have a 13 mile ride in the steeps I do.

Can someone tell me about changing slow twitch to fast twitch muscle fiber through works outs. or maybe the other way around. I thought they we different from inception. Somewhere I thought I caught wind that through training we force them to adapt to our style of training.

How about creating more mitochondria density, or, better quality mito. I guess we can create less efficient?

DO I need to mash some on my climbs to build leg strength? I think my legs are plenty strong if I didn't have to hump so much weight up the hill. Jezzzz I can fill the leg press machines totally full at the gym so as to not be able to put another plate on them.

I have planned on doing Chris Carmichaels beginner century workout plan to coinside with my Death Tour ride. ANy thoughts??

I know I can ride my best on Sunday if I come fresh. I don't care if my one day performance is less on Sunday due to riding hard on Saturday. I want best results in the long run to be able to ride my best century ride

Lots here I know. Thanks for the replies

Hey StephenH

I should clarify. I can't ride mid 20's for 50 miles. I start to fade before the turn. ANd I drop even more on the climbs. The racers however complain that low mid 20's is too slow and only tolerate that for an hour or so and then they hammer. That's when I turn into a solo rider

Ummm, that's probably too much theory, not enough practice.

This is true, but it requires the added emphasis that fitness is another significant component in this equation. I'm a person who responds well to a hard workout the day before, but it took me a long time to figure this out because this is only a useful thing to know about yourself if you have the fitness to recover from that hard effort by the next day. If you don't have that fitness, you're just going to be even worse off the next day.

Although keep in mind - if you have a LOT of weight to lose it might not be that simple. And if you lose a lot then your metabolism slows down a bunch. Right now I'm having a lot of trouble getting this last 20lb off, even though I have my RMR and am counting calories.

Congrats on getting back into cycling and making some health changes. I say that if your goal is to ride with the stronger Sunday group then base your training around that. If you ride hard Sat and that prevents you from hanging with them on Sunday then adjust your Saturday ride to be a bit easier and leave more for Sunday. Maybe get another mid-week ride in that equals the Sunday ride to help get stronger faster. Train hard, but remember recovery rides help and are needed.

More thoughts.

Your genetics determine your potential. Well genetics and doping. But genetics. You mention not being a strong climber. I understand - at 5'7" and 103 lbs I couldn't climb (as a Junior racer). I certainly can't climb at 170 and the same height. I've had people ask me if I had a mechanical because I was climbing so slowly (and I was actually pleased with how fast I was going until the guy caught me and asked if I needed help).

Fast twitch and slow twitch. You don't really change them. At 103 lbs I thought I was a climber but I couldn't climb. I didn't think I was a sprinter because I was way too skinny, way too weak (bench 90 lbs), but I'd accidentally (in my mind) win group ride sprints and even a couple races. Only after another year of racing (where I won a few races in sprints and failed when I tried to break away and got shelled on pretty much every hill) I decided that my sprint wins weren't gifts from everyone, that other riders were trying, etc.

If Sunday is an important day then make Monday a hard day too. Do your steep hill intervals etc.

Diet-wise I focus on diet and basically ignore training. The training happens later and the weight you lose is much more significant than any minor fitness gains you can get through training. I thought of this while I was on the trainer just now. I rode really hard for me, 160 watts avg for 2 hours. That's just slightly below race pace for me in a Cat 3 or M40+ race or even the Cat 2 Tour of Somerville. I was watching a Tour DVD while I rode. They discussed holding 325, 387, and 425 watts for an hour at a time.

I'll never do 425 watts for an hour. I could be doped to the gills but I won't improve my approximate 210w FTP by 100%.

Anyway back to my 210w FTP.
At 215 lbs, 97.6 kg, I can do a long climb putting down a massive 2.15 w/kg for an hour aka Functional Threshold Power aka FTP.
At 180 lbs, 81.7 kg, I can do 2.57 w/kg.
At 155 lbs, 70.4 kg, I can do 2.98 w/kg. This, by the way, is apparently the level of a low level amateur racer, i.e. a Cat 5. I upgraded to Cat 2 on this w/kg.

Here's a chart that sort of illustrates all that.


At 215, to climb as well as a 155 lbs me, I'd have to increase my FTP to 290w, an 80w or approximately 40% increase in power.
At 180, to climb as well as a 155 lbs me, I'd have to increase my FTP to 243w, a 33w or approximately 15% increase in power.

If you're already training pretty hard, and it sounds like you are, you're going to be pretty close to your realistic FTP max. I mean, okay, if you did some insane hours you might increase your FTP a bit but my FTP basically didn't change in my best ever year of racing in 2010, and it's remained constant through the next 2 years. I figure there's a 5% fluctuation, like 210 to 220w (10 watt difference, 5%).

Realistically it'll be hard to increase your FTP by more than, say, 15 or 20%. For me that would mean a 42-44 watt increase, a huge increase based on my low numbers.

The reason this is significant is that unlike a car you can't just jam a turbo on your body/legs/engine or nitrous or a supercharger or chip it or whatever. Your engine is pretty set, +/- a very small number. That number limits everything you can do.

That is why weight loss is so significant. It radically alters your power to weight ratio and it's the only way to radically alter that ratio. It take some discipline to lose weight, some to keep it off. It's not fun. You skip cheese and beer and cookies and deserts and any alfredo sauce etc etc etc. But when you lose weight it's huge, just huge. It's like increasing your power 10 or 15 or 40%, something that would take oodles of training time, much more time than it takes to lose a small but significant amount of weight.

I suppose you could lose 5 lbs off your bike but that's not that much compared to what you can lose from your body. I went to a 1-1.5 pound heavier bike when I lost all that weight, because of fit reasons, but my overall rider/bike combined weight was significantly lower than the prior year.

My lighter weight affected me even in flat races - I didn't have to accelerate a rider with a grill tank hanging off his butt, I just had to accelerate the rider. Do a few jumps and the efforts really add up. My peak numbers accelerating out of turns dropped about 200-300w when I was lighter, ditto my numbers on short sprint type hills. I didn't think more weight would affect me that much but it did.

If you want to estimate your power you can join Strava and climb the longest climb you can find. Strava, based on your weight etc, will be pretty close to your wattage on that climb. If it's a 20 minute climb and you're totally crosseyed at the top then divide that wattage by 1.05 and that's your FTP. There are other ratios but I don't remember them. Strava doesn't count wind resistance well so its estimated watts really only works on steady and significant hills. To give you an idea some of my rides get me 400w estimates from Strava, a wattage level I can barely hold for a minute.

Once you have your power you can start plugging in numbers. Realistic weights. Lose 10 lbs? 20 lbs?

Try going faster up the same hill. Check out the wattage difference. Think about how fast you have to go to get to the wattage number you need to equal losing 10 lbs. All of a sudden dieting for 5 weeks seems pretty easy.

Those are some thoughts I had on the trainer (I had to do the math after I got to the computer).

Very interesting. I'm sure you're almost entirely right and it makes me want to shed some more pounds. But for those of us who aren't always that fit, I think that training must have at least some modest effect on our performance and power output My weight has changed very little over the last 3 years - no more than ±5 lbs except briefly last year when I was off the bike for 6 months and I went up 10 lbs, but my speeds, average times, ability to do long rides/climbs etc. is SO much better in July than it is in April. I don't get heavy in the winter (I'm about as low now as I've ever been), but I'm not as strong in the spring as I am after a few months of riding hard...

Wow - detailed answers!

I did what you did a few years ago. It's not rocket science. Ride as much as you can and still recover week to week, and loose as much weight as you can. Both are equally important.

It really isn't that difficult. Really.

Great read as always. Remarkable how much weight you have gained and lost.
Totally agree on how transformative to riding weight loss is.

Two questions please:
- As you begin to cut weight for the forthcoming riding season, do you adhere to a particular diet?
- if you were to ascribe a ratio of calorie intake or eating/exercise in terms of weight loss, what would you say this ratio is? I believe it is close to 80% food/20% exercise in terms of contribution to body weight...for me at least.

One of the ironies of riding is...at least for me is...a lot of hard cycling generally leads to weight loss by mid summer...but I end up consuming more food because riding makes me hungrier. ...so I don't drop as much weight as I feel I should.

+1 - This is a great thread ... lots of good information. I too struggle with weight loss while training. Very difficult to balance and if I cut back too much on my caloric intake I feel dead when I go out for a training ride which can be very frustrating. Perhaps as recommended above I should just focus on weight loss for a month and dial back the riding intensity but easier said than done.

Dammit CDR...

Many of you may not know me as my time here is limited but with an answer directed towards the OP. Keep riding the the faster group but you will need to continue to drop the weight. As CDR said it is so important to ride/climb quickly. I am a big rider but being a bigger rider I have enormous power and can climb well at +200 pounds but I will call myself a bit of a special case.

When I was getting ready to turn pro I weighed a measly 156 pounds (on my frame that looks like a stick figure) and race very well at 180-200. Had a had a focus on anything but crits that weight would have come down into the low 170 range which would be a great balance for me.

For you to lose that weight set out small goals and stick with them, the weight will come off with time, don't get discouraged and like others have said give it some time, it will come and then doing back to back hard days will not be that big a deal.

Nope.
Cutting back on calories is one way but I can guarantee that if things like this are happening then your diet kinda sucks. Diet doesn't always mean cutting calories the nutritional content of your diet is more important.

I can almost live with bonking a bit during training rides in a effort to be slightly calorie deprived to drop some weight early in the season...though it likely detracts a bit from training benefit. But I find I eat a fair amount before heading out on long group rides..pehaps over eat, because I don't want to be dropped by my riding buddies due to running out of the fuel. Proof I am overeating I suppose is if I ride 200-300 miles hard in a week and don't cut any weight.