Idak

I'm a 61 year old 6'2" 280 lb trying to get better. 20 years ago, I rode about 3k miles a year while also running and swimming regularly. Most of my riding is fairly flat. One of my hips has been replaced, the other one will need it in the next few years.

My training priorities are: 1. Lose weight 2. Do a century next summer and the 2 day Seattle to Portland the summer of 2020.

I started back biking in mid July and have done almost 600 miles since then. I did 100 miles in one week. I had lost a lot of weight walking. I can't do it anymore because of the hip problems.

My plan is to do about 15 miles a day 3 to 5 days a week. I will ride every day that I don't have a time conflict. This will be slow. These days are fat burn without being tired at the end of the ride. Target heart rate about 110. One ride a week for 30 miles. I have a 30 mile loop I did last Saturday at 14.5 mph with a HR of 114. When I can do it at 15 mph and HR 110, I'll bump it up 5 miles and keep doing that increase until I get to 50 miles each weekend. Maybe once a month I'll go longer. Then once a week, mid week to allow recovery before my Saturday long ride, I'll do an hour ride pushing my heart rate up to 130. I did one of these last week where I was at 126. Other than being a bit tired, it felt fine.

I will do hill repeats once a week once I get under 230 lbs, maybe

rubiksoval

Zero reason to wait until you're at a certain weight or hr to do a ride. Do hill repeats now. Do a 30 mph loop as fast as you can once in a while. Change things up. Have fun with it all. Doing the same thing repeatedly while waiting for results is really boring and not conducive to long-term improvement.

Also, weight loss happens in the kitchen, not on the bike, so I wouldn't worry about trying to do "fat-burning" rides. Those don't really exist. You burn calories, you consume calories. Make the latter slightly less than the former.

Good luck, have fun! Maybe find a group ride to join, too.

OBoile

This.
Adherence is the key, both on the bike and in the kitchen. It's good to have certain goals and targets, but also make sure to keep it fun. Group rides are often a great way to meet people and to stay motivated.

Carbonfiberboy 

Agree with the above, plus a comment that at your age, 110 HR rides are much too easy to do anything. Here's a thing to try: Go out on the bike and spend 20 minutes or so warming up at your easy pace. Then gradually increase your effort while noting your breathing. At 110, you'll be breathing slow and easy. As you pick up the pace, you'll gradually start breathing more deeply, but still fairly slowly. At some fairly exact point in you HR, you'll notice that deep and slow no longer is enough. You'll suddenly have to definitely increase breathing rate. Note that HR. Ease off, let your breathing slow back down and test it again. That HR is the HR to travel at when you're trying to do moderate work between hills. No point in riding much below that effort. Seek out hills on your rides. "See hill, ride up it." Nothing so steep you have to walk, no point in that. Nice 15 minute hills are good. Plenty of hills in the Portland area. I've had the best results losing weight from simply eating smaller portions. Gradually cut back on them. Your stomach will adapt.

OBoile

One thing I just thought of to keep in mind: you're 61 and overweight. Make sure you ease back into things. You're not 20 or even 40 anymore. If in doubt, err on the side of caution and live to train another day.

zacster

Go to your Dr and get a full workup, then the cardiologist for a stress test. Don't chance it.

As for advice, I would NOT suggest hill repeats. That's for fit cyclists looking to get even better. And riding to lose weight does work. Just don't eat more because you are burning more. Doing both, riding a lot and eating less, will do wonders. Start tracking yourself, it sounds like you already have an HR monitor. Use RidewithGPS, Strava, or some other software to track your miles AND your calorie burn. Get some kind of indoor trainer and use it during the Portland rainy season. Pick an app for training.

While I was never 280 lbs, I did lose 35 pounds in the last year doing all of these things. It'll work, but don't expect miracles either. You won't lose 20 pounds in a week or even a month. But once you start losing a few, then a few more, you'll be hooked and want to see it continue.

rubiksoval

What's the difference between riding hard up a hill and riding hard on the flats?

zacster

heart attacks.

rubiksoval

So when your heart is on an incline, it's more prone to heart attacks?

Is this some new field of cardiology upon which you've stumbled?

zacster

When you put out 400 watts on an incline vs. 200 watts on a flat, and your heart is going 180bpm vs. 140bpm, yes. The guy is 280 pounds and 61 years old, get real. That has to be some of the most dangerous advice I've ever seen on BF.

wolfchild

OP needs to ride at a lower intensity, get a lot of volume and gradually increase the distance and intensity and build himself a base of aerobic fitness and loose some weight before doing any type of sprints, intervals and hill repeats. You can't take a 61 year old who is overweight, out of shape and weighs 280 pounds and make him do intervals and high-intensity hill repeats.

rubiksoval

What about when you're putting 400 watts out on a flat?

I don't think you're reading the things you're responding to, and I don't think you're thinking too critically about the content itself.

rubiksoval

You don't think you should do intensity when you start riding?

What happens if he hits a hill? Is he supposed to walk to avoid the intensity? How about group rides? Just stop when the pace picks up?

There's no reason to avoid intensity in the beginning. In fact, due to not being in shape, beginners typically have more intensity overall in their rides because they don't have the fitness to take it easier on hills, headwinds, group rides, etc.

It's an effective way of getting faster, faster. This isn't running. You can increase volume and intensity from the get-go.

wolfchild

Yes I believe that intensity is essential in order to make progress but in OPs situation he needs to start of slow and easy and gradually build up to it. Don't just jump into it and expect to make progress overnight. It takes time, slower incremental increases are safer and more sustainable than trying to achieve everything fast. People who have no aerobic base shouldn't be doing intervals.



He doesn't have to stop and walk up hills, but he also doesn't have to sprint up hills and climb at max intensity. If the hill gets too much for him and he has to stop and walk, so be it, there is no shame to that, it's better to get off and walk than to have a stroke or heart attack on the side of the road..In OPs situation it's better to play safe than to give in to peer pressure and force himself to keep up with the group of riders who are much fitter then him.




The most effective way for OP to get faster would be to loose about 70-80 pounds...A 280 pound rider will never be able to keep up with a 160-180 pound rider no matter how hard they train.

rubiksoval

He's doing intervals any time he starts going harder than his baseline to the point that he has to slow and recover. IE, every hill or acceleration

If the hill gets too much for him, then he's already doing "an interval". You're contradicting yourself already.

That's fallacious and has nothing to do with anything.

wolfchild

I was thinking of interval training as a separate session lasting about 20-30 minutes long and dedicated strictly to max efforts repeated for several sets with set amount of rest in between.

Having 1-2 max efforts scattered far and between on a 2-3 hour ride or a longer distance ride isn't interval training. Sure you can still get some benefit from it but it's not really a dedicated interval training




But what happens if he doesn't go to failure and stops at a borderline between aerobic and anaerobic zone, would you still consider that to be an interval training ??

rubiksoval

Intervals can be structured or unstructured. It's all about varying intensity and duration, so there'a a million different things you can do with them.

But the majority of interval training isn't "max training" in the first place. Maybe that's why you guys are so confused.

When you start asserting that intervals should be avoided because intensity should be avoided, well, then you're just not making any sense at all.

Carbonfiberboy 

More thoughts for the OP:
When I started riding again in, hmm, must have been ~'95, I had exactly the same aspirations as you. I did it: first summer getting some fitness, second summer a couple centuries, 3rd summer the STP one-day. (Stupid to do the 2-day IMO. Who wants to put on a pair of cycling shorts the day after a century?)

So, how I did it:
1st summer I started by trying to ride up a nearby hill and back home, maybe 20 miles and 500' of climbing, some of it kinda steep. I thought my lungs would come out my throat. They didn't. After I could do that ride successfully, I started doing one longer ride/week. I'd ride away from home until I was quite tired, then ride back, mostly staying on flatter roads. Endurance doesn't start to build until you start enduring. It has to take some mental discipline or nothing much happens.
2nd summer, I bought a better used bike. I built on the first summer by riding hillier roads and working up to riding away from home for 50 miles. I did at least a couple solo centuries that summer.
3rd summer, I started doing long group rides, up to 125 miles, and then rode that one-day STP with some folks I met on the group rides.
4th summer, I bought a modern road bike and started doing more difficult rides. STP isn't difficult, it's just long.

And oh yeah, intensity definitely should not be avoided. To the contrary, it should be sought after. You can tell you're riding hard enough when your lungs start to hurt after an hour or so. Of course you can't keep that up forever. I've been sick and haven't been out on our tandem since July 1. So today we took the tandem out on a group ride with some of our buds. The first hour was mostly uphill. We did over/unders that whole first hour. IOW, we were within 3 beats of our lactate threshold HR, sometimes above, sometimes under, for the whole hour. Then we went off the back and caught them at the lunch stop. After that we did mostly touring pace, but at the end my average moving HR was 124, which is 90% of my lactate threshold HR. Yeah, my average for a 2-1/4 hour (moving) ride. That's how you get strong. Tomorrow we'll do 45' of zone 2 on our trainers and then lift weights at the gym for about 75 minutes. Etc. Our target for the next few weeks will be 7-8 hours/week with about 2-1/2 hours of that in the gym trying to get some muscular endurance and strength back. By next July, I should be able to do 10,000' climbing rides again.

Nessism

I'm 57 years old and lost 39 lbs in four months this year. I rode four or five days a week and walked the others. Cut out starches and increased the vegetables and protein. Previous to starting I hadn't ridden for about four years.

My ride took me up to the top of a pretty decent hill; the beginning is flat, maybe 15 mins getting to the hill, then it's 40 mins to the top. From there I just trace my route back, but push pretty hard, even when going down.

First month or so getting up the hill was punishment. But even after I got into better shape I still pushed myself just as hard (but got done faster). Actually, I had to do some flatter rides before going straight to the hill. Anyway, my point is that I pretty much went all out from the very beginning. That's how I was able to lose the weight so fast. I've never understood the "fat burning" rides business either. Guess my point is that the harder you push the faster you will lose. Everyone needs to manage their bodies needs though of course.

antimonysarah

Yeah. Check with your doctor about ramping up the intensity/etc, but don't wait for a number on the scale to start hills. Base your highest effort level (either hills or intervals) on where *you* are -- don't give yourself a heart attack, but unless your doctor says no, push yourself a little. You'll get stronger quickly. (Ugh, I need to start doing my winter hill training. Do as I say, not as I do.)

Group rides will be rough at your weight because if a group is averaging your speed, they'll be slower on the flats and much faster uphill. Unless you can find some other big guys/gals to ride with.

Road Fan

Carbonfiberboy, does that HR where your breathing needs to be faster correlate to the pertinent zone boundaries for the polarized training scheme (blast from the past!)?

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, exactly. That's VT1, the top of zone 1 in the 3 zone system.

Road Fan

Thanks, Carbonfiberboy, I'm finally getting a sense of understanding some of this stuff!

Based on these threads and reviewing Coggan and Friel's Cyclists' Training Bible, aside from pedaling in my free time, one of the first things I need to do is a 30 minute time trial with power to estimate my LTHR. I understand the basics of the test, so I have to look at how to do this with my Kickr, Elemnt, and Tickr.

Carbonfiberboy 

I think this test: https://trainright.com/cts-field-tes...-calculations/
is easier to do and gives good results.

Another test I used to do on my rollers: warm up in zone 2 for 20', then a 1.5' hard interval, 3.5' zone 2, another 1.5' interval, then zone 2 until 30'. Stop and reset HRM or put in a lap mark. Shift to a harder gear and pedal at (for me) ~95 cadence for 5 miles, holding what I thought was my hardest long effort level, then ramping up for the last 2 minutes to maximum HR, real torture that last minute. LTHR was the average HR for those 5 miles and was quite accurate.

Road Fan

That's a lot more complicated than the Friel one - 10 minutes non-lazy (upper Z1?) pedaling, Set lap and pedal at TT for 20 minutes, recording average HR over that time.