fitness

After 15 years you need to take it slower starting out. What is you eventual goal? To do a century or a half a century? or just for fitness? Assuming you want to do a century here is a schedule you can follow: Training

I would change that schedule just a tad for you by adding on 4 more weeks at the beginning. Instead of riding 10 miles on Monday you ride 6 miles for 2 weeks, Tues ride 8 increasing 1 mile per week, thurs ride 10 increasing 1 mile per week, fri ride 8 increasing 1 mile per week, Sat ride 12 increasing 2 miles per week. Do this till you caught up with the schedule on the site then follow it.

Even though you may feel like you can do more this, the slower pace is intended to keep the muscle injury rate down while they adapt to riding.

By the way Easy pace means your pedaling fairly effortlessly not trying to beat the clock. Pace means your riding at a constant speed close to the speed you want to ride the century. Brisk means your riding at pace you want to ride the century at but using interval training methods. Basically with intervals you shift to a relatively big gear and accelerate hard. Stay in the saddle and go for 10 seconds all out. A 53x15- or 50x14-tooth gear combo should be about right. Make your effort 90% of maximum. Use good form, pushing the pedals with your quads and glutes. Keep your upper body steady. Don't rock from side to side in an attempt to generate more power, which mainly squanders energy. Then return to an easier gear and resume normal pace speed. Then After 5 minutes, do another hard 10-second all out acceleration then resume pace. You repeat every 5 minutes for a total of 5-8 reps. When you get good at this you can extend the 10 second acceleration to 20 seconds.