Am I overdoing it.



clearz

New Member
Feb 4, 2006
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Hi

This is my first post here at cyclingforums but I have been a regular visitor for a while now.

I bought a bike (Trek 7500 06) back in Janurary as part of a decision to get healty and shed some weight by the summer. Before then I had been leading a very un-healty lifestyle with no exercise and decided it had to stop. I am 25. Since then I have been doing about three 8 mile cycles a week. I have deffently lost weight and feel far better inside.
I have really come to like cycling and want to take it to another level. I would like to clear up a few things before doing so.

First of all my heart rate is ususlly in the 170's when cycling and can even drift into the early 180's sometimes when im not paying attection to it. I am completely comfortable training at this rate and if I go any lower I feel like im not benifiting from the exercise. Is this normal because its over the "zone" im suposed to be in.

I have decided to try and do ten 16 mile cycles over the next 2 weeks and see how it goes. Am I pushing myself too far with this challange. I already did the first 16 mile cycle yesterday and all that I found was my legs to be a bit stiff yesterday evening but it's now the next morning and I can't find any thing to be sore or stiff. Here is some data recorded.

Distance: 16.1 Mile
Time: 1h 25mins
Average HR: 169
Max HR: 185

I live in a very hilly area and it was quite windy yesterday which was blowing in my face a lot of the time.

What kind of food should I eat before and after cycling? When I was doing the 8 mile cycles I would eat nothing before and a medium sized meal when i would come back. Yesterday for the 16 mile one I had a banana and a yougrt before and medium sized meal when I came back.

Should I stretch before or after I cycle or both. I currently do both.

I would like to try a 70 mile cycle before the end of the summer. What sort of training should I be doing to achieve this goal?

Thanks in advance,
John.
 
just back from the same cycle today but it wasn't as windy.

Distance: 16.1 Mile
Time: 1h 16mins
Average HR: 166
Max HR: 178
 
Heartrate:

Have you done a max heart rate test? You mentioned "zone", so perhaps you have. 185 could just be loafing along for a 25 year old!

>What kind of food should I eat before and after cycling?

A banana 30 minutes before is OK, probably not much more just before riding. A big meal, say 2 hours before riding.

>Should I stretch before or after I cycle or both. I currently do both.

I have read that one should only do "positional" stretches before riding, ie anything NOT involving the power generating muscles. Stretch the power generators (glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves) afterwards.

>I would like to try a 70 mile cycle before the end of the summer. What sort >of training should I be doing to achieve this goal?

Build up your time in the saddle in easy stages, say about 10% increase a week or so. Check out Friel in "The Cyclist's Training Bible". If you have less time maybe 20% a week.

You'll tell if you are over doing it when something starts to hurt!
 
davef said:
Heartrate:

Have you done a max heart rate test? You mentioned "zone", so perhaps you have. 185 could just be loafing along for a 25 year old!
Thanks for the reply dave. I havent done a proper max heart rate test. I am just using the 85% of 220-Age formula. But it feels like my max heart rate is above 195

The max I hit on Monday (185) was probably due to the fact that I had a quite a lot of beers at a friends party on Saturday which lowers my fitness. Todays figure of 178 is more normal for me. Again I live in a hilly area and its easy to get this high going uphill if i dont have it in the proper gear.


davef said:
You'll tell if you are over doing it when something starts to hurt!
Sounds like good advice.
 
A lot of people use the 220-age formula, but it is inaccurate for about the same number of people that it is accurate for. A fun*sarcasm* way of finding your max heart rate is to just push yourself until you can't anymore. Preferably on an indoor trainer with someone close by, just in case. Warm up for 15 minutes or so, and then just keep gradually increasing the resistance until you physically can't anymore. You'll most likely feel like you are going to projectile vomit everywhere, and the room may start spinning. It will also give you an idea of what its like to bonk, and how far you can push yourself before you start to bonk.
 
You get your heart rate upto 185 easily? :eek:
What is your resting heartrate?

I'm 24, and even cranking on long steep hills, my hr doesnt get much above 170 (my resting hr 38-42).
But then again, maybe you have a higher than normal max hr?

I dunno, i guess i would say you should take it easy - 185 seems a little too high.
Do you have high blood pressure?
 
Maybe I spoke too soon. Its barely been 3 weeks since that first post and look at the data from the same route today. Keep in mind that this is very hilly terrain.

Distance: 16.1 Mile
Time: 1h 11mins
Average HR: 150
Max HR: 168

I guess my fittness has come along great in the last few weeks but I have been cycling over 100 miles a week over hills in this time period.
I still believe my Max Heart rate to be higher at arround 205 i'd say.

I have one more question. I did a 27 mile cycle last week over 2 hours. For the first one and a half hours my heart rate was arround 160-165 but in the last half hour this shot up to 170-178. I could not get it back down but I felt fine, as a matter of fact I felt elated during this time. Any ideas why this might be as I intend doing a 35 mile cycle this week and a 45 mile one next week.

Do you have high blood pressure?
Im not aware that I have.

Thanks,
John.
 
I would recommend to eat light before a ride. A big meal 2 hours or so in advance is not necessary in my opinion. If your body is recovered and ready to go, your leg muscles have enough energy (glycogen) stored in the tissue and liver for one hour of hard riding. Since your heart rate seems to be pretty high, I would be considering your rides vigorous or hard effort (are you breathing hard?). Since you are riding longer than an hour, you use up glycogen stores and your body needs a new source of energy. This my friend, is fat. You will burn fat calories alot faster after an hour.
Now if you are riding 2 & 1/2 hours or more vigorous to hard effort, than a hearty meal of 60-65% carbs would be a good idea beforehand, along with some fruit or an energy bar during the ride. Make sure you eat the food you bring along say an hour into the ride so that your body can digest it in time for the energy to be useful before the ride is over.
If you are training to eventually do a 70 mile ride, I am going to type some advice straight out of "Serious Cycling", Edmund R. Burke:

"Dont continuously increase your mileage. Every few weeks, level off your mileage before adding more to your program. Ocassionally, when you reach a level you are comfortable with, stay there for several weeks. These periodic plateaus help you regenerate physically and mentally before the next mileage increase..... You do not have to increase mileage every week."

Here is a tip for increasing mileage steadily: "Do not increase your time on the bike or miles covered by more than 20-25% from one week to the next."

On the heart rate increasing thing, its probably because you are not drinking enough water. HR increases when you get dehydrated. If you are a big guy, you need to pack some jumbo water bottles and be drinking probably a liter or more an hour. I am 150lbs and I drink one 32oz bottle of water or gatorade an hour.
 
I don't know but i have a naturally high heart rate...i am 20(female) and can easily get my hr between 170-180 during exercise and into the 190's if i am really sprinting or something. But it really doesn't feel like too much effort at all to get my heart rate into 170-180 zone. I think my max heart rate must be a bit higher than the standard formula 220-age. I have never tested that though because i dont know how to...the highest i have ever gotten my heart rate was 210 during max exercise however that was a few years ago and i am not sure if it has changed since then.

I would agree with what the previous poster said about nutrition. To an extent you do have to try and see what works for you. There is some evidence that eating low GI foods a few hours before are better for performance than high GI cos the energy is released slower and steadier. During or after exercise high GI is probably the way to go though.
 
bikelet said:
...the highest i have ever gotten my heart rate was 210 during max exercise however that was a few years ago and i am not sure if it has changed since then.

A 40 year cycling buddy of mine cruises at 190 in a race and his max is 208. Your real max could be higher than 210.

clearz and wh0areume, I would still suggest you do a proper max heart rate test, under supervision. The issue is . . . at 60 years old and according to the formulaes I should max at 160. Well I set my zones and training based on that and didn't really improve that much the first year. After testing at 188 it became obvious that I really wasn't ever going to improve my anaerobic capacity because I was never working in that region!

clearz at a supposed max of 205 your anaerobic threshold, I believe is somewhere around 188, i.e 92%. 92% is an often quoted figure for the heartrate that you can maintain for one hour, i.e a time trail. I am not suggesting that you could do this without (alot of) training!

If you just want to be able to ride long distances at a good pace then anaerobic training might not do much for you. If you want to win races, ie sprint and break off at the tops of hills then you will need to improve your anaerobic performance.