Century Training and the City

You need to train cycling endurance on the bike...weight lifting or sprint intervals between stop lights won't do it. But, understand your frustration with city riding....it's the same here in a city of 200K. Riding stoplight-to-stoplight in heavy traffic is too stressful and no fun at all. Great for wearing out the cleats, but that's about it.

As a result, most of our club rides start on the edge of town, and go out onto lightly-traveled back roads in the country. Suggest you check with some of the local clubs to see what country routes they have, and just get used to loading your bike on the car and getting out of town to ride.

Alternative would be to just enter events on the weekends now. Many Centuries will have 30, 50, and 62-mile (metric) options; doing these would be a great way to train and learn about group riding if you can stand the entry fees.

bump.

Good post. I'm in the same boat (on the same bike?).

There has to be some kind of weight training or strength that can be beneficial to building endurance. When i was swimming we would lift weights as well as swim. Obviously more riding isn't going to happen so what other suggestions are there? Thanks!

spiral said:

bump.

Good post. I'm in the same boat (on the same bike?).

There has to be some kind of weight training or strength that can be beneficial to building endurance. When i was swimming we would lift weights as well as swim. Obviously more riding isn't going to happen so what other suggestions are there? Thanks!

Lots of threads on weight training, including a sticky at the top of this forum. I don't believe weights will help for endurance cycling, any more than it would benefit a miler or marathon runner to do squats. More and longer rides are the only way I know to build cycling endurance.

If you go to the gym and put in a workout on an indoor bike trainer for 30-45 minutes, that would be productive. Add some light upper body and abs/lower back work for core strength and you're all set.

thanks, dhk and spiral, for responding.

well, the other night i met with a triathlete/spinning instructor to get an hour's worth of advice about century training. she wrote out a ten-week training program for me that includes four days a week of riding. only one of the days actually has to be done on the road, so i'll be able to take your advice, dhk, and get out of the city for that one ride each week. the other days are shorter distances/times that involve hills, sprints, intervals, high cadence, and/or a few miles at 'maximum output.' those are all things i vaguely knew about before, but she explained them all so now i know how to do them. so my training sessions will be much more effective.

spiral, she actually told me to cut out all my weight training while i'm training for the century. we settled on that i'll do strength training only for my core/stabilizer muscles. anyway, feel free to email me if you want more specifics about my new training program.

good luck and good riding to both of you!