Today's Bike Ride

[daz h]

Daz, do you make a special effort not to ride too hard for that base mileage - i.e., take it easy on the hills, spin lower gears etc - so as to maximise the aerobic / fat burning benefits (as I believe the thinking goes ...).
Or do you just ride?

I just ride normal 19mph
I dont throw quite so many hills in over xmas as you need a rest at somepoint and I have done 45 races this year and Im now over 40.
Ive learned a lot about training this year though and I can tell you that taking it easy will not get you any faster. Id say most of us can ride steady for a 100miles but you have to look at what you want to achieve over the year.

So ask yourself what you want to achieve. ?
I ride my bike a lot over xmas simply because its a bit of time off work which I dont have in the year.
So yes steady but I do hill sessions dont forget

So my hill sessions which I have done two of them over Xmas are
20 x 2 min on then freewheel back down and go again.
These are hard and Im confident they have been how I have most improved. At the top of the hill its all I can do to turn the bars and head back down again.
This is the same hill that Dave Brailsord use to have the British Cycling lads do them on a few years ago before they had plenty of money.

[ZootHornRollo]

Ok mate thanks for that.

It's just a mate of mine is trying to get me to resist riding hard in any way (i.e., not near, at or above lactate threshold - only well in the aerobic zone) for at least a month to build the endurance base.
He reckons even if you do your steady base miles at the weekend and then do, say, an intervals or hill sesh in the week, the latter will 'interfere' with the work of the former in developing the aerobic system.
By doing high-intensity work alongside aerobic work (he says) your speeds at and above lactate might improve but you will remain a less efficient rider aerobically. The idea being that what we all want to do is to maintain high speeds while still ticking over nicely at relatively low HRs.

Whereas I have always been of the opinion that you do your long base miles at the weekend and complement that with shorter periods of high intensity work in the week.

I do fear that I don't do enough long steady miles - because even at the weekend out with the club run, I'm working pretty hard to keep up with the fast group. Like, I'm puffing away and they're pretty serene.

It's just always seemed to me that if you can ride 3 hours at 18 mph, then why ride 3 hours at 15mph?

[daz h]

I doubt I will be out on the MTB tonight as planned... Gale force winds, too dangerous!

Rollers it will have to be then... what sort of sessions do you do on the rollers Daz? I am out of my depth on them, as to me they only really provide me with a warmup and cooldown tool for (track) racing? I am building winter base miles, started last Friday so anything equivalent to a 2-3 hour road or MTB ride would do me...

There are many tricks to making rollers bearable.
You need music for a start.
But you must learn to use the repetition and endless sitting in one position to your advantage. This is why I think rollers are better than a turbo.
You learn to toughen up rapidly on rollers. People that say to me they have the turbo set up with the TV and a fan and one of those sweat catchers on your top tube just makes me smile.
I much prefer the shed with the same wooden blank wall and a bit of wind blowing through the door with my I phone music.
When your going through a bad patch in a fell race or on the bike just think well im not sat rollering and it helps you push on through.
As for sessions.

Ride to the turn which is half my session. So 30 mins 85,90 cadence
Get there and set my stopwatch then try and do 20 - 25mins on hard
14 x 1 min on and off
2 mins on and 2 mins off
10 mins on / 10off then another 10mins
4 mins on then off
you get the ideaaaaaaaaa Hann
The shorter the ON the faster you go.
It helps having the I phone stopwatch. If you just ride at the same pace start to finish you will quickly become so bored you will dread going on them. Its helpfull if you can learn no hands as during the off you can have a little stretch.

Throwing structure into roller sessions is completley different to just riding on them.
I wouldnt try doing an hour first off though.

[daz h]

Zoot
The idea is to get your body ready for interval/endurance work. Thats what a lot of riders do. Maybe up to a 1000miles.
But really you need to ask yourself what your ambitions are.

Racing
Sportives
LEJOG
etc etc etc
Racing requires you to ebb and flow with the surges in a race
Sportives a bit more even pace over a distance unless your with the fast ones.
LEJOG, could be as steady as you like for hours and hours.

What are your plans
If your going to race then 15mph at 3 hrs isnt going to cut it. 19/23mph is.
With racing its the surges that hurt you and this is where that endurance comes in. Thats why traditionally chain gangs had the ( If your dropped its tough attitude).

[Hanneke]

Thanks Daz I will do an hour tonight... so far I have only ever done a warmup of about 20 minutes, going into ever bigger gears, i.e. spinning less, then do 30 second full out sprint intervals x 6 with 1 minute recovery, then cool down again reversing gears from bigger to smaller for 20 minutes.

[ZootHornRollo]

Daz thanks again: racing is my aim, by, say May? Anyhow, I'd like to be able to ride those sorts of speeds at weekends, even if I don't go for it and race.
I can do a 21mph chaingang for two hours at the moment. Any faster or further and I'd be pretty broken.
It's just the idea of consciously riding very steadily for long distances - and doing nothing else - that I'm trying to get my head around.
Guess it's the same idea of LSR in running. It's just that I never did weeks and weeks of *just* LSRs, it was always mixed up with some sort of high-intensity training (intervals, hills, whatever).

If I go out on the club run or chaingang I will push my heart rate up into the upper zones on several occasions (if not much of the time - and maybe that's the problem?) - does that mean I don't go out on the club run while I'm training my aerobic system?

[Stagger]

Just hang on a cotton picking minute.

I have joined the nutters thread.

18 mile to work this morning (6.30am bloody freezing) but I want some of Daz's winter base milage, some of Steve and Nelly's daftness and some of Zoots fat burning.

I offically a dark winter fruitcake:thumbup:

[Stagger]

By eck that was tough coming home.

18 mile 1500' head wind, drizzle, tired legs and starting to get dark.

Rollers and turbo don't appear to have the same hills as the roads round here. Managed to keep the cadence up this morning but in the afternoon it was a case of survival.

Goal is to attempt 50 times to work in 2012

That would be 1800 miles and a great step towards fitness and weight loss down to mid 11 stone.

[stevefoster]

Well done me old fruitcake:wink:

[Hanneke]

I am knackered and about to head for bed now, on a Saturday night :w00t:

Went to the velodrome yesterday, 3 hard hours on the track with the vets... then I went out with a girlfriend and had too much wine and went to bed late, to be followed by a hard ride on the MTB around the Twrch trail at Cwmcarn... The ascent is very technical singletrack and pretty hard going, was blowing out of all orifices :w00t:

Now totally knackered, but hoping for 3 hours on the road tomorrow in my desperate attempt to get fitter again for my training camp in February...