steelbead

I've been riding for years but never get any faster. I stay about 13-14 mph every ride. I shun other riders because I don't want to slow them down. Am I not working my legs enough so they get stronger? I normally stay on the small chain ring, I hate shifting at every hill. Hills aplenty out here.

Cyclist0108

Climbing hills slows you down. If you don't shift to a high gear on the downhills, you are also lowering your average speed. Having said that, 13-14 mph in hilly terrain is perfectly respectable (and faster than I am).

Carbonfiberboy 

You don't get faster because you don't ride faster. It's as simple as that. It's not your legs, it's your aerobic and anaerobic systems that need work. You probably have plenty of base. What you lack is intensity. If you have plenty of hills, ride them and ride them at a pace that has you panting and about to have a lung up as you go over the top. See hill, ride up hill. Small chainring is fine. It's not necessary to go fast on the descents. In fact you might do better to coast the descents and go harder on the climbs. Climb your guts out.

No need to shun other riders. They don't have to wait for you. Just try to stay with riders who you know are faster than you. The desire to hang on a wheel is great encouragement to ride harder than you think you can.

Just be careful not to overdo it. If you've been climbing a lot and your legs start to feel dead near the start of a ride, you need some very easy riding time or a few days off. You get stronger when you rest, but you have to go hard enough to need a rest.

Getting faster is not easy. One has to overcome a natural aversion to pain and suffering. Getting fast is going to involve suffering. It's been called "making deposits in the pain bank." If you want to make withdrawals, first you have to make deposits.

wolfchild

If you want to get faster then you need to get out of your comfort zone and push a little harder more often.

NYMXer

Sounds like your speed isn't limited by your stamina but rather by your unwillingness to use your gears. The general concept is to maintain a comfortable cadence and let the gears adjust your speed and pressure on the pedals.
I think you would like the variety of speed and challenge by using more than just the small drive ring. You owe it to yourself to experiment with different gears and speeds to find your own personal sweet spot.

Machka 

Stamina is being able to ride long distances.

Speed is being able to ride quickly.

Two different things ... although some can do both.

Which is more important to you? Stamina or speed?

If stamina is more important, you'll gradually increase your distances.

If speed is more important, you'll gradually push yourself to increase your speed.

Or you could try mixing it up by doing longer distances on weekends and things like hill repeats or intervals during the week.

steelbead

I guess I meant both. After 10 years of riding I should be better than I am. I guess I'm not pushing myself enough on each ride.

steelbead

Do I do short rides and a lot of hills or long rides with few hills? The hills kill so usually the rides aren't long. The other day I did 31 miles with 1300 elevation. Less miles more hills?

Carbonfiberboy 

If you want to get faster, probably more of both. A minimum is ~100 miles/week. 150 and you'll see some real gains. I find ~50'/mile of climbing makes riding fun and not onerous. I like one 3-4 hour hard ride/week, one day focused on hill repeats, one day focused on speed work, and the rest of the miles moderate base training. "Speed work" is often misunderstood. Try 30" intervals on the flat, full gas at high cadence, every few minutes or less during a ride.

To get into the weeds of interval work, read Joe Friel's blog on intervals:
Joe Friel - Intervals, Part 5
The series starts here:
Joe Friel - Intervals, Part 1

All hills should be "intervals," because we ride them much harder than our usual effort. However formal intervals are a quicker and more effective route to speed on the bike.

caloso

Reconsider your aversion to riding with others. A time-honored method of getting faster is to ride with faster riders.

steelbead

I'll just slow them down and if they don't wait for me I'm riding by myself any way. If I'm doing 14 mph and they do 20 mph, then they're gone.

cyclezen

LOL!

caloso

If you can do 14, then find a group that does 15. Despite what you read on BF, in the real world most riders are riding much slower than 20 mph.

work4bike

I agree with those that say you need to increase intensity. There are two basic types of cardio: Aerobic and Anaerobic and no amount of aerobic training will improve your Anaerobic capability. See here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...2b4_story.html

Interval training is the icing on the cake, with respect to overall conditioning.

P.S. Get to know the other gears in your drive train.

work4bike

It's because you've plateaued, partly because you don't use a larger selection of gears.

The body is lazy and will only improve to the point that you don't push it anymore.

work4bike

BTW, one thing I forgot to add...While aerobic exercise will not improve your anaerobic system; training your anaerobic capability will definitely improve your aerobic performance.

In the beginning those heart-pounding sprints hurt really bad and you may need to puke, but over time they become addictive and hurt so good

work4bike

This dude got some stamina, granted he's going down hill, but it ain't a very steep descent (video on link) Internal Combustion Defeated As Bicyclist Passes Motorcycles

12strings

Imagine someone who's been jogging 3 miles a day for 10 years, and each mile takes 10 minutes (slow jog).

They are going to be really good at jogging 3 miles in 30 minutes, but they won't be able to to take their mile time down to 8 minutes without making some change: Either running faster, or running farther.

I personally reject the "BIG MILES" path, simpy because I don't have time, but I've gotten fast enough to hang with the 20+mph group rides by doing 3 rides a week: total about 40 miles/week.
1. 25 mile group ride, that pushes me to keep up. If some of the guys take of and leave me, that's fine. there's usually at least one other person who is not up to the speed as well. (though recently, I've been in the front group).
2. Doing a 20 minute interval workout (2 sets of FIVE 30 second sprints with 30 second rest...with 5 min warm-up) once a week. (Makes me want to puke or pass out).
3. Taking a short 8 mile loop ride with some rolling hills and one half-mile 12% climb once a week.

I'm still improving on this schedule simply because some weeks I don't get all 3 of these in, but when I do, I can tell I'm getting stronger fast. I expect if I stick with it I will at some point level off, but it hasn't happened yet.

Carbonfiberboy 

Try every other week replacing the 30" intervals with 4 X 8 X 4 intervals done at the panting level - anaerobic. It's totally possible to hold an anaerobic effort for 10 minutes or more. Hill repeats are the easiest format for this.

work4bike

A study that shows this to be true... The Surprsing Aerobic Benefit of Sprinting | Training Science


The really interesting thing about this study was the finding that six sessions of sprints both doubled time to fatigue during aerobic activity and increased the oxygen capacity of the muscles. Increasing from a max of about 30 minutes of endurance performance to a max of about 1 hour of endurance performance is a startling change – especially considering that 30 min – 1 hour of exercise at 80% VO2max clearly falls in the “aerobic” range of training. In their discussion of the impressive increase in endurance performance the researchers had this to say:

“Several studies have reported increases in VO2peak after 14-24 sprint interval training sessions performed over 2-8 wk. Aside from these observations, however we are aware of no data that suggest sprint training leads to an increased capacity to perform exercise that is primarily aerobic in nature. In the present study, we decided to employ an endurance capacity test in the form of cycling at ~80% VO2peak, a task in which the vast majority of energy is supplied from oxidative metabolism. Our data show that aerobic endurance capacity was dramatically improved after only six sessions of sprint interval training, despite the fact that VO2peak remained unchanged. Indeed, exercise time to exhaustion more than doubled in six of eight subjects who performed the training intervention and the mean performance improvement was 100%…To our knowledge this is the first study to show that short sprint interval training dramatically improves endurance capacity during a fixed workload test in which the majority of cellular energy is derived from aerobic metabolism.”

The researchers also noted that the 38% increase in muscle oxidative potential was unexpectedly high and was similar to that found from traditional endurance training programs. “Moreover, the increase…in the present study is comparable to that reported by some authors after 6-7 days of traditional endurance exercise training (i.e., 2 h/day at ~65 VO2peak).”

Consider the results of this study in the context of the quotes from Lydiard, Hadd, and Maffetone above. Lydiard, Hadd and, especially Maffetone, preach that a base building phase is necessary to build aerobic capacity and that anaerobic work interferes with or detracts from continued development of the aerobic capacity. However, this study shows that not only does anaerobic work (i.e. sprints) not negatively impact aerobic performance, it actually dramatically improved the aerobic performance of these individuals.

Dr. Ed Coyle, chair of the Kinesiology & Health Education department at the University of Texas, had this to say in response to this study:

“The findings…challenge the concept that aerobic endurance performance is only enhanced by aerobic endurance training. On the surface, this concept seems logical, but it has been long ago proven wrong both in the realm of athletics as well as in muscle biochemistry. In athletics, this concept is not generally held by elite athletes competing in middle-distance running because they incorporate sprint interval training to improve aerobic endurance.”(4)

Note that the results of this study do not negate the belief in the necessity of base building. Base building may be necessary and beneficial – this study doesn’t address this point – but this study does indicate that the physiological reason traditionally given for the need for base building (i.e. base building is required to build aerobic capacity) needs to be re-evaluated. Indeed, since anaerobic work improves aerobic capacity then the traditional physiological reason for the need for base building (to build aerobic capacity) is seriously in question. The point is that base building may be necessary and required for optimal performance but the traditional physiological explanation of the benefits of base building likely needs to be changed.

Richard Cranium

One aspect of exercise physiology not specifically joined to either aerobic nor anaerobic efforts is that of the concept of "training volume." I wonder how the study evaluated the differing exercise prescriptions with respect to the concept of volume.

There's isn't any mention that much previous research was obtained from subjects in running programs, not cycling.

12strings

Regarding base training, I'm not scientist, but from running experience, the reading for gradual increase in distance is not aerobic, it's physiological:

You can rapidly increase your cardio-vascular fitness, making leaps and bounds in just a few weeks of regular exertion...BUT...

BUT your joints, bones, muscles, ligaments, take much longer to build up strength. As a cyclist, I can ride for a long time at a high HR, but when I tried to run a few weeks ago, at about the 2 mile mark, my legs just started killing me...it wasn't my cardio fitness giving out, it simply that my legs hurt all over from the very different stresses put on them...

If I tried to run a 10K, I think I would definitely injure myself.

Carbonfiberboy 

The need for volume depends on the goal. 100 miles/week has always seemed a good minimum for me. For fitness, 150 miles. Goal: anything I wanted to do short of 1200k or longer.

I've always done the "sprint" training late in the macrocycle as a kind of polishing thing, already being pretty fit from volume, drills, and sub and super threshold intervals. I've always thought it helped, but with improvement more in the 5% range than the 100% range.

The PDF for the above 30" "sprint" study is here: https://www.budopoint.de/en/science/a...seTraining.pdf