"BB" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 16:11:17 -0800, Penny S wrote:
> > Dan Volker ran this through spell check:
> >
> >> And now I'll expect some of the regular posters, who
> >> consider training to be a crime against the sport of
> >> mountain biking, to start pissing and moaning about me
> >> approaching mountain biking like a roadie...
> >
> > nah, I wouldn't do that. I did have fun today out with
> > Tuffgirl. The few times I glanced at my bike computer it
> > was either at 3.4 mph or 17. I'm
sure
> > it would give me an average but I'd have to find the
> > directions to
figure
> > out what button to push. We did ride 10.43 miles, I know
> > that for sure.
>
> Yeah, but that was mountain biking. Your speed, and
> whatever friggin' "zone" you happen to be in, is dictated
> by terrain. I was freezing for ~20 minutes last night on a
> looong one-way downhill, and definitely in "zone zero" or
> something like that...until I turned around.
>
> Training is a necessary evil for MTBers who don't happen
> to live in a place where they can ride off-road year-
> round. But its not rocket science and you don't have to
> measure every detail. You can FEEL it when you're pushing
> yourself, and when you're pushing yourself too hard. Its
> just a matter of paying attention. I have a roadie friend
> who's never owned an HRM, and he won the Oregon state hill
> climb championship in his second year of racing. He just
> rides a lot, and climbs a lot.
>
> --
> -BB-
Ignoring that many on this list hate the idea of training,
and feel that a "training program" to get better/faster is
like selling your soul to Bill Gates, I have to disagree
once more.
Plenty of people who mountain bike are fat, and they don't
want to be. Training in an "optimal" way, will help them,
while "just riding" alot may ... or may not, make a big
change in their body fat. There are huge numbers of fat
cyclists on the road--people who ride all the time, 3 and 4
hours per ride, 3 to 5 days per week, and they stay fat.
Part of this is diet, part is riding in the wrong heart rate
zones too much of the time. You can hate this idea all you
want, but its still going to be true.
Plenty of mountain bikers want to be faster on trails than
they now are...just riding alot will help with technique,
and that "is" a big deal, but where constant turns and hills
are an issue, recovery ability and aerobic power ( good VO2
max) are going to make them a lot happier with their riding
experiences ( assuming again that riding faster out of turns
and up hills is important to them).
For you to talk about some guy with great hill climbing
genetics, who does not need to train to win hill climbs,
is ridiculous in the context of this discussion. Of
course genetics is important. If a guy is built like a
Tour de France mountain climber, and weighs about 140
pounds, he ought to climb well, even if he only rides a
bike once a month. Big deal. That is information that
helps no one on this NG.
You can't "feel" the difference between zone 1 or zone 2
reliably, you can't feel the difference between zone 2 and 3
reliably, and if you want to stay in zone 4 for an hour ,
some trails may make this easy, some will be hard to pace
this way on. The cumulative difference over 6 months will be
huge, if you train in zone 2 on long rides 2 days per week,
stay in zone 4 for at least an hour on two other days per
week, and have at least one of these two zone 4 days
including major interval type explosions for 1 to 4 minutes
at a time ( into zone 5)...and this is pretty easy on many
mountain bike trails. The hard part is limiting to zone 2,
for 3 and 4 hours at a time...this is what gets some
mountain bikers to do this on a road bike, since alot of
trails make this kind of modulated exertion almost
impossible. And again, the changes a cyclist will undergo,
if they do all of this, are extreme, compared to the ones
who are so mentally lazy that they can only go out for
unstructured rides.
If you are happy with where you are, then the unstructured
rides are exactly what you need. If you are not happy with
the speed you climb at, or how fast you can come out of each
tight turn, in a long twisty section covering many miles,
then you should not just stay unhappy--you should do
something about it. I don't think people should accept their
obesity and be happy with it, anymore than I think slow
riders should accept having to be slow, if they don't want
to be slow. If a fat or slow rider wants to get faster or
leaner, telling them to "just ride" is **** poor advice,
unless you want them to fail. The "training" for a fat or
slow rider, is very likely going to be "easier" than the
rides they could be doing by "just riding", and they will be
much happier with the end result.
Dan V
