James Hodson wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 10:55:22 GMT, Velvet <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
>>How: by not riding outside, I find, but just gently spinning along on
>>my turbo - I just *can't* ride slow or gently enough when I'm out on the
>>roads, or for a short enough time
>
>
> Hi Velvet
>
> I rarely ride hard enough to warrant any sort of recovery but when I
> do I force myself to remain in low gear.
>
> At other times, when I'm actually try to do some work, I usually end
> up riding in on of those lower gears anyway. It's called lack of
> fitness, I believe. :-(
>
> James
You might be surprised
I'm following a vague (ok, not that vague) plan at the moment for
training for the London to Camby bike ride this sunday. While a lot of
it feels very hard (given most of it is done on a turbo trainer), much
of that is actually no harder than what I do when out cycling - but
without the distraction of fields/trees/tarmac to look at etc, it's a
lot more noticeable.
I definitely feel it though - whereas I used to ride that hard maybe
once a fortnight, doing it 3-4 days of the week to that same (or close
to) intensity has been taking a toll and I definitely see a downhill
starting if I don't then take it easy occasionally (as said plan
prescribes) on a 'recovery' ride.
No, none of it is training like you'd be doing for a good performance in
a TT etc, but it seems that for proper performance cyclists they spend a
lot more time than I have working on just the basic stuff - whereas I
don't ride at all in the winters LOL - so they are a lot further along
into the pushing it REALLY hard stage than I am.
I just can't resist ramping up the gears and speed when I'm out on a
nice stretch of road. My bike's so nice to whoosh along on fast, I just
can't help it for the grin factor
Hills see me back in bottom gear
pretty much at the limit of my capabilities - hardly a recovery ride -
and there's no way of avoiding hills from anywhere starting at my front
door, hence doing much of it on the turbo ;-)
Keep at it, it really does improve, and I've seen VAST improvements in a
much shorter time since a) doing a long ride every fortnight and every
week if I can, b) getting stuck into cycling 4-5 days a week on top of
that, c) using those additional 4-5 days to work on both strength and
cadence improvement as well as just time in saddle work.
I think I started cycling again this year around the end of april, and
did a 10 mile and a 25 mile-ish, but didn't really do much till I had a
car again (bizarre but true) at the end of may, at which point the
fortnightly rides started. I think it was mid-june that I decided I was
really going to do the Lon2camby ride and started on a structured
training plan for it, took a week, week and a half to actually get into
the habit of getting on the bike nearly every day, but now it's habit
it's easy to stick to. I used to manage about 10-11mph on the flattish
stretches (not average over the whole ride) when I first started in apr.
That rose to managing about 12mph on the flattish stuff (again, not
average over the ride) once I'd done a one of the sunday afternoon rides
with the local CTC club - they ride MUCH faster than me, but were slow
to help me stay with them, but it meant I was pushing myself a lot
harder/faster than I'd normally manage to. Couple more of those and I
was up to 14-15mph, and having to be told to slow the pace so I had
stuff left to cope with the hills on a 45-miler ;-) Sunday just gone,
we spent quite a bit of the time on the flatter bits doing 16-17mph -
really quite amazing. Hills are still slow, painful, long, and often
involve walking. But the improvements on the flat - WOW! I'm relishing
pushing much bigger gears in my middle chainring - if I can keep this
improvement up, I may yet find a use for the big ring on the flat!
And I was convinced I'd never manage more than about 11mph on the bike
unless a downhill was involved... little did I know what even this
overweight unfit body was capable of with a little work!
--
Velvet