Jaysus cycling! (3 Viewers)

[Deadmanposting]

general rule of thumb for getting good on the bike (from my day) was:

ride distance, under threshold. You can work out the threshold watching how your pulse rises with increasing effort, and at a certain number your pulse suddenly rises a fast rate per increase in effort. Every ride is prepping for the following day. You're on the bike 5-7 days a week, always leaving room for the next day.

Put miles in with a group. You can travel much further if you're sitting in with a group.

Keep the hard efforts (>170bpm for me) as sparse as you can for as long as you can.

Start putting long interval efforts into group rides.

Start putting hard short interval efforts in.

The group will start just doing hard rides too, or switch into the group that does harder spins.

Once you start doing these intervals you're switching out of the every day long slow distance mode, and you're switching between always riding for the next day and doing hard days with the view of taking a day off.

Start racing.
Take days off, or really really handy days after races. Sometimes I'd just walk the dog the next day or something.

We'd ride in and out to the race, probably around 20 kms. The ride home is good, because you're going to be in shit after the races.

I guess I noticed distinct bumps with each of these steps, racing being the biggest bump. Not sure if you're interested in that, but that's the sort of path we used to do 20+ odd years ago. The core of it all though was just getting 3+ easy hours in most days of the week, emphasis on the easy, for as long as you can get away with it.

Really thanks for taking the time to write all of this

Gonna go for a blast in the morning and see how i get on
I am looking for stamina more than speed. The ability to do multiple 100 mile days without getting gassed.

And I think the way to do that is with daily miles.

 

[magicbastarder]

i've decided to expand my quest to cycle every (non-urban) road in north county dublin, to include much of east meath.

 

[Deadmanposting]

i've decided to expand my quest to cycle every (non-urban) road in north county dublin, to include much of east meath.View attachment 16001

How do you plan that?

 

[Deadmanposting]

Ok, so I did a quick ride to my swim on Sunday
Happy with 18mph on a single speed, even over a short distance.

I have everything in miles. Sue me, I'm old.



So Garmin says that my heart rate bpm was in the 135-140 range for that

Is that too high or just right?
Am I being efficient?
Am I even thinking of this in the right terms?

 

[flashback]

Ok, so I did a quick ride to my swim on Sunday
Happy with 18mph on a single speed, even over a short distance.

I have everything in miles. Sue me, I'm old.

View attachment 16015

So Garmin says that my heart rate bpm was in the 135-140 range for that

Is that too high or just right?
Am I being efficient?
Am I even thinking of this in the right terms?

140bpm is guaranteed under threshold.
You can sit at that effort all day and be ok, no lactate build up, no cramping, you should be able to ride properly the next day.

Efficiency is something else, but it's probably not relevant. I'd be more interested in the power output, but if you're averaging 18 mph at 135bpm that's pretty good.

 

[magicbastarder]

i asked this over in The Other Place, posting it here too

say you do 60km at an average of 30km/h, and for the sake of argument we'll assume the entire effort is uniform in speed, power, etc.

but the first 30km are relatively easy, and the second is tougher, as you start to tire you ramp up perceived effort to maintain pace. is there any difference between the first and second half of the spin in terms of building fitness? or, to phrase it a different way, if you're training, will you gain more from the second half than you will from the first half?
to clarify - you do the exact same pace and power on the second half, but it feels harder because you're tired. are both halves equal in generating fitness?

 

[rettucs]

i asked this over in The Other Place, posting it here too

say you do 60km at an average of 30km/h, and for the sake of argument we'll assume the entire effort is uniform in speed, power, etc.

but the first 30km are relatively easy, and the second is tougher, as you start to tire you ramp up perceived effort to maintain pace. is there any difference between the first and second half of the spin in terms of building fitness? or, to phrase it a different way, if you're training, will you gain more from the second half than you will from the first half?
to clarify - you do the exact same pace and power on the second half, but it feels harder because you're tired. are both halves equal in generating fitness?

Joe Friel is your man for answers to questions like this. The simple answer is no, they're not the same, cos reasons. I couldn't even attempt to do an explanation justice and for a 60km spin, you won't be that wrecked so the difference might not be that stark. If we were talking >100km, that might be different and a lot of factors come into play.

That was no help, sorry.

 

[magicbastarder]

for a 60km spin, you won't be that wrecked

depends on how fast you go! could tweak the parameters and say 33km/h average for the 60km, which would deffo drain my tank (i don't think i've ever averaged that speed over that distance)

 

[flashback]

i asked this over in The Other Place, posting it here too

say you do 60km at an average of 30km/h, and for the sake of argument we'll assume the entire effort is uniform in speed, power, etc.

but the first 30km are relatively easy, and the second is tougher, as you start to tire you ramp up perceived effort to maintain pace. is there any difference between the first and second half of the spin in terms of building fitness? or, to phrase it a different way, if you're training, will you gain more from the second half than you will from the first half?
to clarify - you do the exact same pace and power on the second half, but it feels harder because you're tired. are both halves equal in generating fitness?

I've changed how I think about training in general. I used to think of it in terms of rides, and components of rides.

Like, if I do X Watts for 20 minutes etc. But then I realised that you tend to go out every day or 5 day blocks say, and every day is dependent on the previous one.

So, reeeeally broadly speaking: I think a good way of getting fitness is doing lots (eg 3-6) hours of easy miles, sub threshold, ideally with someone else, for 3 or 4 days consecutively. Every day you'll just about feel the previous day, but it should be nothing. The day on the bike is preparation for tomorrow on the bike. You can put in a little hard effort here or there, small hill, whatever, but no deep wobbly vision stuff.

Then, if you want to push it a little on the fifth day, assuming you still have the legs, you put in harder efforts. That last day you don't have to think about the next day.

Then you make sure you're resting, sleeping, eating yourself back a little weight.

And *then* you examine how that complete block worked, as a whole.

I don't really believe in this 30kms of effort equates to something something. I think if your body gets longer blocks, mainly easy, then spikes of effort at the end of the block, you see a more substantial benefit.

Shrug. No real evidence for this. But ever since I started this idea of blocks of training for tomorrow (not the Sunday ride, training for literally the next day), then transition into hard efforts (or not bothering with that), then 2 rest days or something, getting form seems easier.

 

[magicbastarder]

worth pointing out that i'm not training for anything; was just something i'm curious about.
e.g. is doing 30km at 30km/h on monday and tuesday going to make any difference to doing 60km at the same pace on monday?

 

[Deadmanposting]

I've changed how I think about training in general. I used to think of it in terms of rides, and components of rides.

Like, if I do X Watts for 20 minutes etc. But then I realised that you tend to go out every day or 5 day blocks say, and every day is dependent on the previous one.

So, reeeeally broadly speaking: I think a good way of getting fitness is doing lots (eg 3-6) hours of easy miles, sub threshold, ideally with someone else, for 3 or 4 days consecutively. Every day you'll just about feel the previous day, but it should be nothing. The day on the bike is preparation for tomorrow on the bike. You can put in a little hard effort here or there, small hill, whatever, but no deep wobbly vision stuff.

Then, if you want to push it a little on the fifth day, assuming you still have the legs, you put in harder efforts. That last day you don't have to think about the next day.

Then you make sure you're resting, sleeping, eating yourself back a little weight.

And *then* you examine how that complete block worked, as a whole.

I don't really believe in this 30kms of effort equates to something something. I think if your body gets longer blocks, mainly easy, then spikes of effort at the end of the block, you see a more substantial benefit.

Shrug. No real evidence for this. But ever since I started this idea of blocks of training for tomorrow (not the Sunday ride, training for literally the next day), then transition into hard efforts (or not bothering with that), then 2 rest days or something, getting form seems easier.

Runners train to run fast by running slow
They save all their fast running for their long runs and races
Most running training planes are full of "easy pace" training
The idea is getting the body to do the thing for an extended length of time. And by buolding that stamina, you will have the juice on the day you need it.
Broadly speaking
Which I think is what you are getting at.

 

[flashback]

Runners train to run fast by running slow
They save all their fast running for their long runs and races
Most running training planes are full of "easy pace" training
The idea is getting the body to do the thing for an extended length of time. And by buolding that stamina, you will have the juice on the day you need it.
Broadly speaking
Which I think is what you are getting at.

yeah, pretty much.

I guess I'm talking about sneaking training in gently, almost the exact opposite of no pain no gain. I used to go out and trash myself every ride. 100% efforts, up to the point of visual distortions, arriving home getting off the bike, sitting on the stairs and instantly falling asleep on the way up to the shower, legs semi collapsing randomly later in the day.

Like I thought you needed to absolutely hammer yourself for portions of every ride, then recover. Every ride was a separate event. Now I think that thinking was wrong in a couple of ways. Any single ride almost doesn't really matter, and constantly putting in 90-100% efforts is (unsurprisingly enough) hard to recover from.

So all the emphasis went away from that and trying to sneak as much mileage within reason into your body to knida nudge the level up from below threshold. As opposed to dragging the level up from efforts above threshold.

 

[egg_]

I tried that "greasing the groove" thing (lots of low-effort stuff) when I was trying to get better at chin-ups - ended up with golfer's elbow (even opening a door was painful) and had to stop doing chin ups for 6 months

 

[Deadmanposting]

I tried that "greasing the groove" thing (lots of low-effort stuff) when I was trying to get better at chin-ups - ended up with golfer's elbow (even opening a door was painful) and had to stop doing chin ups for 6 months

Are you back to them?

 

[egg_]

I did go back to them, not part of my routine ATM though. Had the idea that I'd work towards a one-handed one, but I got stuck on 3 sets of 5 with 18kg on my back ... wasn't able make progress past that and gave up

 

[magicbastarder]

huh. knocked over 30s off my previous PR on a 9km segment today, and i wasn't even trying that hard; and it's one i've done 81 times. wasn't a tailwind either.

 

[Deadmanposting]

I did go back to them, not part of my routine ATM though. Had the idea that I'd work towards a one-handed one, but I got stuck on 3 sets of 5 with 18kg on my back ... wasn't able make progress past that and gave up

Jesus, I can't do more than 2

I am carrying about 18kg on my gut though

 

[Deadmanposting]

What do you guys think of this blue on a bike?




Gonna buy this old thing and bring it back to life

 

[magicbastarder]

Good God, what size is that frame?

 

[Deadmanposting]

Good God, what size is that frame?

No idea, but they are fucking hard to find

I am only really buying the frame tbh

It's gonna get straight bars, new wheels, new pedals, probably a new derailleur


ETA I think it's 27" ..... 68cm