Jaysus cycling! (8 Viewers)

I bike so I always feel like I'm pushing myself, not flat out the fastest I can go, but always that bit more than my legs want to work.
I know how that feels, and that's the zone I strive for.
And on a flat, it's about 16 mph on my fixed gear. I can get to 20 or so, but it's difficult to sustain.
I can do 16mph or so for long distances.
Maybe with gears I can go faster.

My other rules is that if I get to a hill, I attack it


I want biking to feel like flying. That's what this does for me.


BUT I will be racing in the coming year (hopefully) so this is all very insightful and appreciated
 
yep, push hard to train, but you'll go further (and often faster) if you dial it back a notch. if you empty the tank too quickly, the speed you lose when you're tired can outweigh the speed you gained early while pushing hard.
 
yep, push hard to train, but you'll go further (and often faster) if you dial it back a notch. if you empty the tank too quickly, the speed you lose when you're tired can outweigh the speed you gained early while pushing hard.
I really do need to figure this out
I have some long rides planned - like weekends of 300 miles plus
It would be better to do it efficiently

This is a short run this morning
WHen I'm kinda pushing myself - but still within a range where I can maintain it

1656948410277.png

Bear in mind, this is on a fixie in sandals and on mostly city streets
 
you don't want to push hard if you're planning on a long cycle; one crude way of looking at it is your fitness may be that you can sustain say 80% power for four hours. but if you go at 90%, you've halved the headroom you've given your body to deal with that output.

or look at it like cash in the bank; your body can recover at a certain rate, call that the money arriving in to your account. but if you withdraw money faster than it's coming in, how long you'll last depends on how much more you're taking out than is going in. and if you keep under a certain threshold, you should be able to pootle along all day.

also, don't forget cycling gets harder the faster you go; air resistance squares with velocity, so sustaining 30kmh means you're dealing with almost one and a half times as much air resistance as you would to sustain 25km/h; and at 30km/h, about 80% of the total energy you're putting out is just pushing through the air, so it's significant.
 
you don't want to push hard if you're planning on a long cycle; one crude way of looking at it is your fitness may be that you can sustain say 80% power for four hours. but if you go at 90%, you've halved the headroom you've given your body to deal with that output.

or look at it like cash in the bank; your body can recover at a certain rate, call that the money arriving in to your account. but if you withdraw money faster than it's coming in, how long you'll last depends on how much more you're taking out than is going in. and if you keep under a certain threshold, you should be able to pootle along all day.

also, don't forget cycling gets harder the faster you go; air resistance squares with velocity, so sustaining 30kmh means you're dealing with almost one and a half times as much air resistance as you would to sustain 25km/h; and at 30km/h, about 80% of the total energy you're putting out is just pushing through the air, so it's significant.
Great stuff, man. Never even thought of the wind.
So you reckon 25km/h - 15mph is the sweet spot?
The plan is to break up a 340 mile journey into three days

Bike 30 miles 2 hours, Rest 1 hour
Times 4 of these blocks in a day. 120 miles.
Times 3 days.

I have difficulty thinking in km
Also difficultly thinking in general
 
yep, push hard to train, but you'll go further (and often faster) if you dial it back a notch. if you empty the tank too quickly, the speed you lose when you're tired can outweigh the speed you gained early while pushing hard.
or take drugs and do what you want

but don't say that shit on boards dot ie or you'll get a ban
 
Great stuff, man. Never even thought of the wind.
So you reckon 25km/h - 15mph is the sweet spot?
The plan is to break up a 340 mile journey into three days

Bike 30 miles 2 hours, Rest 1 hour
Times 4 of these blocks in a day. 120 miles.
Times 3 days.

I have difficulty thinking in km
Also difficultly thinking in general
is it a flat spin or are there hills? In my cycling days I'd have considered 25km/h a little on the slow side but yea, for a longer spin thats about right. Longest I ever did in a single block was 200km and never went slower than a 26km/h average, and thats with lots of climbing.

I'd also be an advocate of doing a larger block before your first break. Psychologically it'll give you a boost when you make it to that first stop. And a 1 hour break is too much imo. 30 mins max. Thats just me though.
 
Maybe with gears I can go faster.
if you're doing a long cycle, the benefit of gears would be that you can adjust to match the terrain. typically a cadence of 80-90rpm is considered the most efficient; grinding (i.e. pushing slow and hard in a stiff gear) requires strength and will sap your energy levels, and will be hard on your knees. spinning, i.e. pedalling fast and easy in a low/easy gear is more an aerobic/stamina friendly pedalling style.
for most people 80-90rpm or thereabouts is the sweet spot between the two; but on a single speed on hills, you won't have much choice but to grind up them and that will sap your energy levels.
 
is it a flat spin or are there hills? In my cycling days I'd have considered 25km/h a little on the slow side but yea, for a longer spin thats about right. Longest I ever did in a single block was 200km and never went slower than a 26km/h average, and thats with lots of climbing.

I'd also be an advocate of doing a larger block before your first break. Psychologically it'll give you a boost when you make it to that first stop. And a 1 hour break is too much imo. 30 mins max. Thats just me though.
Mostly flat
Canal and bike paths mostly
I like that idea of a larger block in the morning, and also shorter breaks.

if you're doing a long cycle, the benefit of gears would be that you can adjust to match the terrain. typically a cadence of 80-90rpm is considered the most efficient; grinding (i.e. pushing slow and hard in a stiff gear) requires strength and will sap your energy levels, and will be hard on your knees. spinning, i.e. pedalling fast and easy in a low/easy gear is more an aerobic/stamina friendly pedalling style.
for most people 80-90rpm or thereabouts is the sweet spot between the two; but on a single speed on hills, you won't have much choice but to grind up them and that will sap your energy levels.
How do you measure the rpm?

Jesus, I have gears on the Surly and I am basically never out of the two highest gears.
I may have been cycling wrong this whole time.
Heh
That is good advice though.
 
one of the easiest ways is to pedal at a rate which feels comfortable for you, all other methods be damned.
but if you're doing 3 full pedal revolutions roughly every two seconds, that's about 90RPM.
 
I was using a speedometer thing, but I think I'll just get one of those yokes that straps your phone to the stem of the handlebars
 
or just stick your phone in your pocket with strava or similar running on it. you can keep your spins private if you're not interested in the world seeing them.
 
or just stick your phone in your pocket with strava or similar running on it. you can keep your spins private if you're not interested in the world seeing them.
I run Strava on some runs
But it will be handy to have it mounted to help maintain a constant speed
 
'tow bar' joe barr has had to abandon his attempt at the world record for distance covered in seven days, on the second day, due to a flare up of an injury he received during race across the west.
he managed to cover just shy of 600km in the first 24 hours.
 
Was on my the bike for first time in about 5 years there yesterday. All the serious head cyclists were passing me out on the clontarf seafront - casting disparaging looks at my rusty mountain bike and jeans as they sped past on their sleek machines in a blur of upper middle class Lycra
 
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.
 

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