Total Beginner, Lost and Confused
 

I know the first advice I will likely get is to search the forums, but after doing so I am even more confused. I have started commuting to work (7 miles, mostly uphill one way). I feel like I'm doing good considering I haven't been very active for a few years. I've been using strava to record my rides, and to see how I'm progressing. As I've only been riding regularly for two weeks now I certainly don't expect to see real progress yet, but I'm here looking for a bit of guidance.

Firstly, it seems that my legs tire much faster than my lungs. From what I've read here it seems like I should be searching for a good balance between depending on my lungs/a high cadence and depending on my legs/strength. So, as a beginner should I just be focusing on that?

My first goal is to be able to ride to work each day (5 days/wk) easily and somewhat quickly (right now I'm maintaining about 12mph, I'd like to maintain closer to 15-18mph).

As a beginner, you should be focusing on just riding.

It would be good to get your cadence up above 80 rpm, if possible, but you don't need to focus on that yet, and if your cadence is down around 60 or something, that may take a while ... work on it a bit at a time.

And a jump from 12 mph to 15-18 mph is quite a jump. That may not happen for a couple years ... or more.

Mainly, for now, just ride as comfortably as you can. Get a few hundred miles in. Oh, and make sure your bicycle is set up correctly for you.

What kind of bike are you riding and how much do you weigh? For now I would focus on just getting in as much riding as you can and don't worry about speed. Once you've got at least 1000 miles in your legs you can start think about doing some training to improve your speed.

It's likely there some free speed available by changing your tires and positioning on the bike.

I agree with Machka. Build a base of about 1000 miles of moderate riding before working on performance. This allows your body to adjust to biking without injury.

Good luck and welcome.

Charlie

Opps! I didn't see Gregs post = I agree with him too!

Charlie

I don't have a way to really measure my cadence, but I do know what 60 "beats" per minute is, and I would guess my cadence is below that most of the time. I get the idea of just putting in miles, but there must be something to focus on during those miles?

I'm riding a 94 Trek 370, and I'm about 125lbs and 5'6". The bike obviously isn't that great but it seems to be pretty good for what I'm doing. The fit is really good, though I'm still tweaking the saddle as I go.

Your cadence is measured in revolutions per minute ... how many times your pedal goes around in one minute. All you need is a watch and the ability to count ... count how many times your right foot goes around in 15 seconds and then multiply by 4 to calculate how many times it went around in 60 seconds. Or just count for the full 60 seconds.

And no, for now ... just focus on getting the miles in. But if your cadence is less than 60, you might want to work on getting it faster than that ... shift gears, for a start.

Okay, awesome. With that being said, is it reasonable, as a beginner, to try to ride 100miles/wk? Should I aim for more or less?

I would say trust your body to tell you if you are over doing it; many new riders start out riding too much then burn out and quit.
For me consist small rides helped me make the transition from coach potato to strong daily rides.


Anyway welcome again to this wonderful lifestyle; its truly the fountain of youth (I'm65 but now feel 50 or so).

Charlie

I don't know about what's standard or best for a beginner, but when I started it never crossed my mind to have a weekly mileage goal. There were too many other things to work on and improve, and regarding distance it was mainly going a little further, or a little faster. I'd pick something to work on and concentrate mainly on that for a few days or a week, then pick something else. Bike handling, holding a straight line. Smooth and fluid pedal stroke, never coasting. Breathing. Consciously higher cadence for a while, or sometimes lower in a harder gear. When the rides got to be longer, I'd focus sometimes on position and posture, and keeping relaxed, things that show up when you spend more time in the saddle.

As a rule of thumb it's reasonable to add about 10% per week.If you rode 23 miles a day 4 days last week, this week could be 4 25 mile rides, 5 20 mile rides, or 20 miles on 3 week days plus a 40 mile weekend ride. If you rode 10 miles 4 days, 4 11 mile rides are the next step.

There's a lot of latitude to trade lower intensity for more distance, although you don't have enough of a baseline for that.

Spread the total over 4-6 days.

Getting back in shape, my weekly mileage looked like this:
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=460212

10% sounds good. So if I rode 60 over 4 days, last week, then 70 miles over 5 days the next shouldn't be any issue, 75-80 miles the next. I guess after 3 or 4 weeks that 10% rule would begin to decline?

Also, what do you mean by latitude to trade lower intensity for distance?

The 10% goes on although there are other complications. When you get to 200 miles a week you can add another 20.

You do need periodic (1 in 4 is traditional) rest weeks at lower intensity/volume to allow adaptations to occur, and there are limits to how many consecutive months you can increase load before you need an easy one.

You can plan a lot of this, although ultimately you need to see how things are going and make adjustments when you're not performing well.

As an over-simplification, under popular models of sports physiology you can ride 4 times as long at half the power. From a fatigue perspective 90 miles at 15 MPH using 100W for 6 hours has impact like 30 miles at 20 MPH using 200W for 1.5 hours. Fast rides have longer lasting effect especially on subsequent hard efforts, recovery pace rides don't affect following days like endurance rides do, and there's probably an "all-day pace" you can sustain almost indefinitely. Fit issues which are OK for an hour aren't for a day in the saddle. Running out of carbohydrate stores can be a problem on longer rides. Regardless, it works well in practice - I never rode over 50 miles (some weeks) before my first century, and a fast 25 mile lunch time ride ~3 days a week was much of the ~125 weekly miles I was riding up to Ride the Rockies covering 418 miles over 7 days with 28,000 vertical feet.

Thanks everyone for your advice. This has been super helpful, and I'm super excited to get on my bike! (All the time!)

Just set yourself a weekly goal and work towards that. I started off at 50 miles/week and once I was doing that consistently, I moved it up to 75 miles/week.

You can also go by time instead of distance. Set a goal of 4 hours per week and don't worry about distance. It really depends on how much time you can devote to it not how many miles you can devote. This is the best time to go out and explore routes that you can use and places you can avoid (all on your bike of course).

Congrats on joining the world of bikes! Stick with it!

High cadence is harder on the lungs than the legs, so forget cadence (and numbers, strava, etc.) for now and focus on your weakness. If you want to go faster you'll need stronger legs, and quickest way to do that is practice going faster. You can increase your leg strength a lot quicker than you can attain a perfect pedal stroke. Just go all out for 2-3 days a week and give yourself time to recover with easy alternate days. For a 7 mile commute, it should be easy to get to your 18 mph goal within a month or two.