Hello all - I've been lurking here for a bit gleaning pieces of advice.
I'm a Coloradoan who road a mountain bike casually (10-15 miles/week, easy to moderate singletrack) for several years, and then took about a decade off due to illness.
The short version of my story is this:
After 8 years on dialysis (most of my 20's, and into my early 30's) I received a kidney transplant last March. It's been a very long recovery, as just 5 months prior to transplant I found myself in emergency open heart surgery to replace a heart valve that had been destroyed due to an infection (unrelated to kidney disease - what can I say, some of us get all the luck).
Anyway - I'm 33, and finally have a relatively "healthy" body again - at least in theory. The trouble is, I don't know what that means!
I'm getting back into biking, and we're planning to do a couple of rides this summer to raise money for a specific organ-donation charity. One of those will probably be Elephant Rock here in CO, but the big one we're "training" for is RAGBRAI.
We have a team together of several people, and are super psyched about going there, but I only have 6 months to get in shape, and am working hard to do it.
My wife and I picked up a couple of used roadies, and we're loving them so far.
I wound up with a several year old Cervelo Prodigy 9sp. double.
I've got it on the trainer inside (Tacx Swing), and am riding every day. I'm trying to either spin easy (lower resistance on the mag) in a larger gear for an hour or so, or crank up the resistance, and push harder for 30 minutes or so - I seem to be able to do that on about "two clicks" of resistance, and seem to sit on the smaller ring for most of that.
Here's the thing - I noticed a couple weeks back that the "small ring" here is a 42, so I'm running 53/42. Based on what I've read that shouldn't be what's on there, so I'm trying to figure out the least expensive way to "fix" this to better be capable of climbing (especially given that I'm making up for 10 years of relative inactivity, and life-sucking dialysis). My thinking is that I should get a 39 and simply swap it out, and then get a 9sp. 12-27 cassette for the rear. I'd love to go all out and get a SRAM Apex compact double, or something along those lines, but that's pretty pricey, and means replacing everything but the brakes - is moving to a 12-27 with the 39 going to make enough of a difference to increase my ability to climb some small/medium hills? I don't do any big mountain riding here, but we do have lots of hills, and RAGBRAI is also going to have lots of hills.
My second question is regarding training.
Is what I've described above a good starting place? Other than getting on the trainer and pedaling, I have no "program" that I'm following, other than that I try to go harder for a few minutes, and then spin for a few minutes. Does anyone have a basic training program that someone like me can follow to set specific goals, and see specific gains each week? I'd love to be ready to ride the Elephant Rock century in June - but that may be a bit far reaching. Is it possible to go from "I can ride 10 miles comfortably" to a tough century in 6 months?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated for diet, miles/time in the saddle, and specific training programs (if anyone has something like that) to get me from being comfy in the saddle for a short ride, to comfortably climbing hills (they scare the hell out of me right now), and able to sit 60-70 miles a day in the saddle for RAGBRAI.
Sorry for such a long first post - but I have so many questions, and am traveling blindly here through this world of "training." After being sick most of my adult life, I've never had to "train" for anything, because I've never been able to do anything.
- Goonies Never Say Die
I'm a Coloradoan who road a mountain bike casually (10-15 miles/week, easy to moderate singletrack) for several years, and then took about a decade off due to illness.
The short version of my story is this:
After 8 years on dialysis (most of my 20's, and into my early 30's) I received a kidney transplant last March. It's been a very long recovery, as just 5 months prior to transplant I found myself in emergency open heart surgery to replace a heart valve that had been destroyed due to an infection (unrelated to kidney disease - what can I say, some of us get all the luck).
Anyway - I'm 33, and finally have a relatively "healthy" body again - at least in theory. The trouble is, I don't know what that means!
I'm getting back into biking, and we're planning to do a couple of rides this summer to raise money for a specific organ-donation charity. One of those will probably be Elephant Rock here in CO, but the big one we're "training" for is RAGBRAI.
We have a team together of several people, and are super psyched about going there, but I only have 6 months to get in shape, and am working hard to do it.
My wife and I picked up a couple of used roadies, and we're loving them so far.
I wound up with a several year old Cervelo Prodigy 9sp. double.
I've got it on the trainer inside (Tacx Swing), and am riding every day. I'm trying to either spin easy (lower resistance on the mag) in a larger gear for an hour or so, or crank up the resistance, and push harder for 30 minutes or so - I seem to be able to do that on about "two clicks" of resistance, and seem to sit on the smaller ring for most of that.
Here's the thing - I noticed a couple weeks back that the "small ring" here is a 42, so I'm running 53/42. Based on what I've read that shouldn't be what's on there, so I'm trying to figure out the least expensive way to "fix" this to better be capable of climbing (especially given that I'm making up for 10 years of relative inactivity, and life-sucking dialysis). My thinking is that I should get a 39 and simply swap it out, and then get a 9sp. 12-27 cassette for the rear. I'd love to go all out and get a SRAM Apex compact double, or something along those lines, but that's pretty pricey, and means replacing everything but the brakes - is moving to a 12-27 with the 39 going to make enough of a difference to increase my ability to climb some small/medium hills? I don't do any big mountain riding here, but we do have lots of hills, and RAGBRAI is also going to have lots of hills.
My second question is regarding training.
Is what I've described above a good starting place? Other than getting on the trainer and pedaling, I have no "program" that I'm following, other than that I try to go harder for a few minutes, and then spin for a few minutes. Does anyone have a basic training program that someone like me can follow to set specific goals, and see specific gains each week? I'd love to be ready to ride the Elephant Rock century in June - but that may be a bit far reaching. Is it possible to go from "I can ride 10 miles comfortably" to a tough century in 6 months?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated for diet, miles/time in the saddle, and specific training programs (if anyone has something like that) to get me from being comfy in the saddle for a short ride, to comfortably climbing hills (they scare the hell out of me right now), and able to sit 60-70 miles a day in the saddle for RAGBRAI.
Sorry for such a long first post - but I have so many questions, and am traveling blindly here through this world of "training." After being sick most of my adult life, I've never had to "train" for anything, because I've never been able to do anything.
- Goonies Never Say Die
