Make me faster

[Irish_Tom]

Thanks for the continued encouragement guys.

I made further progress yesterday (took another 20 seconds off) and that was on a run where I got held up at one point and I was focusing more on keeping a consistent (high) cadence than actually worrying about my time — so that's promising.

I'm definitely not using the KOM as my ultimate goal, but it does motivate me to do better. My thinking is, if they can do it five minutes quicker than me (and most of that time is on the climbs) then I should be able to shave ~three minutes off with a bit of training.

I've just agreed to do the Winchester to Brighton South Downs Way (100 miles) for British Heart Foundation in July with some of my riding buddies, so now I've got an event to work towards.

It will mean shifting the focus of my training from speed over a short distance to endurance over a longer distance. Hopefully, the increase in fitness I'll need to do the 100 miles will help with my personal target of the loop in the OP.

 

[TallPaul_S]

Looks like I'll be joining you on this road to improving fitness, went to QECP at the weekend and I was very disappointed with my lack of climbing endurance - my ability on long, technical climbs is fine, I just can't last that long

Gonna get myself an ant+ HR monitor to link to my wahoo bolt so I can actually see how much effort I'm putting in, I've only been back on a bike properly for 2 months, the last time I was decently fit was around 10 years ago... I rode a fixed gear bike around Bristol back then.

I'm riding loads now, but I know that going too hard could be negatively affecting my fitness rather than improving it, and having just turned 37 it's not just a case of riding loads to improve it! I did 71 miles in April and I'm currently on 79 miles for May, when I'm climbing I feel like my heart rate is through the roof, even when just sitting spinning away in the bottom gear.

I'll probably start a new thread once I've got a HR monitor and done an FTP test.

 

[Irish_Tom]

Snip!

Were you there for the demo day? Ride anything good?

I've found that a HR monitor has helped me track progress over time but I've also starting to use it to control my effort during the ride.

As I said earlier, as soon as I start riding up any kind of incline, my HR jumps to 170bpm+, but I've noticed recently that it's also dropping back down again much faster.

I did a ride over the BHW — all on the flat — and I was able to control my effort to keep my HR at around 130bpm (Zone 2) for 2+ hours.

Looking at the British Cycling training plans, they all suggest three rides per week with mostly low-medium effort rides, and then just increase the time/distance. I think my trouble thus far has been that I've been going for relatively short rides (<10 miles), once a week and going high effort every time, trying to improve my time.

 

[BennyC]

A properly periodised plan will see you progress faster than just picking random efforts. Equally (and essentially) a bit of everything in moderation will do you good.

Your ability to recover from a hard effort will indicate your fitness (reduction in HR), your ability to ride for extended periods will show endurance ability and your capability to sustain a hard or repeated effort highlights stamina.

The more you ride, the more you become conditioned towards it.

 

[TallPaul_S]

Were you there for the demo day? Ride anything good?

I've found that a HR monitor has helped me track progress over time but I've also starting to use it to control my effort during the ride.

As I said earlier, as soon as I start riding up any kind of incline, my HR jumps to 170bpm+, but I've noticed recently that it's also dropping back down again much faster.

I did a ride over the BHW — all on the flat — and I was able to control my effort to keep my HR at around 130bpm (Zone 2) for 2+ hours.

Looking at the British Cycling training plans, they all suggest three rides per week with mostly low-medium effort rides, and then just increase the time/distance. I think my trouble thus far has been that I've been going for relatively short rides (<10 miles), once a week and going high effort every time, trying to improve my time.

Yeah I was, I rode what will most likely be my next bike, Cube Stereo 140 2018, I made a post in the mountain biking thread.

And yeah I've looked at the BC training plans, I too when I ride tend to go into high HR zones, whether that's just climbing or general riding. Luckily I've got a nice riverside route a few minutes from me which is completely flat so I'll start doing some base mile rides (2+ hours at 65-75% of max HR/level 2 RPE) which is exactly what you say the BC training suggests. The route I can do gives me a pretty much unbroken 10 miles out and 10 miles back so a solid 2 hours easy.

I think that if you spend too much time in the anerobic zone (80-90% of max HR) you hurt your endurance, save it for intervals. Effectively when you're climbing and hitting 170bpm you're in that anerobic zone and working on an oxygen shortfall. Training intervals in this zone is so you can recover faster which it sounds like you're already doing Intervals are great, but I personally need to increase my base fitness a bit too.

Mountain biking is just one big interval session anyway really isn't it!

 

[TallPaul_S]

Apologies for the thread hijacking, I promise I'll start my own soon

Anyway, finally had my HR monitor delivered today and I've just measured my resting and max heart rates.

Max is 178, and lowest resting is...40 at times!! didn't expect it to be that low, however tested manually and as the wahoo bolt was saying 50bpm I was counting 25 beats for 30 seconds so the HR monitor is accurate.

Once my HR has recovered from the ride (20 minutes later it's still at 80-90 so I'm obviously not that fit!) I'll get my resting HR again to be sure, but I got my mum to test hers as I know it can be genetic (she's in her 60's and walks about 8 miles per day) and hers was low 60's so I don't think it's anything to be concerned about.

I'm 37, 175-180lbs, and I'm currently riding around 30-40 miles per week for info.

My biggest issue seems to be having zero energy left in my legs after a few minutes at high HR (150+, 85-95% of max, zone 4 of 5) I literally cannot stand and sprint for more than a few seconds after a few minutes of this. Which is basically every single climb for me.

Got my wahoo bolt set up so I can do a base mile ride tomorrow, zone 2 so 65-75% for a couple of hours.

Edit: HR is back down to normal resting rates for me, sitting around 45-50 if I'm very still for a short while, I can bring it down to 45 without much issue. The lowest I've seen is 38bpm.

 

[MrKnifey]

Pointless trying to beat KOM's as I found out really.. Set a few only to get beat, then realised people were using e-bikes for the climbs and straight lining the tracks on the way down..

 

[Begbie]

Pointless trying to beat KOM's as I found out really.. Set a few only to get beat, then realised people were using e-bikes for the climbs and straight lining the tracks on the way down..

Sometimes isn't that easy depending on what trail, plus in wooded areas Strava can go a little mental and take 10 seconds or so off randomly. OR place you half way into a segment and count it anyway.

But when it works, you normally find it's a local or a pro that has the KOM. E-bikes have their own strava place and should use them!

 

[Irish_Tom]

A properly periodised plan will see you progress faster than just picking random efforts. Equally (and essentially) a bit of everything in moderation will do you good.

Have you seen/used the BC training plans? If so, do you rate them or is there anything better out there worth looking at other than Trainer Road? I'm thinking for off the turbo.

Mountain biking is just one big interval session anyway really isn't it!

I've always thought that too!

Apologies for the thread hijacking, I promise I'll start my own soon

No worries, highjack away!

How did the base mile ride go? I did 34.85 miles today in 3 hours 17 minutes (pretty much all Zone 2). It was my first ever ride with SPDs and I can feel muscles in my legs that I never knew I had!

My biggest issue seems to be having zero energy left in my legs after a few minutes at high HR (150+, 85-95% of max, zone 4 of 5) I literally cannot stand and sprint for more than a few seconds after a few minutes of this. Which is basically every single climb for me.

I know this feeling; I've been building up my standing–sprint resistance recently by not sitting down at all on the downhill sections of my usual loop and gunning it whenever I can. However, when it comes to climbing, I find it much easier to say seated and try and keep my cadence high, even if it means going up slowly in the granny ring. Trying to grind out low cadence in a harder gear is a short recipe for knackered legs!

Pointless trying to beat KOM's as I found out really.. Set a few only to get beat, then realised people were using e-bikes for the climbs and straight lining the tracks on the way down..

Sometimes isn't that easy depending on what trail, plus in wooded areas, Strava can go a little mental and take 10 seconds or so off randomly. OR place you half way into a segment and count it anyway.

But when it works, you normally find it's a local or a pro that has the KOM. E-bikes have their own strava place and should use them!

My inlaws live in Germany and there's some decent riding where they live. There are a couple of hills with Strava segments and there's one guy who's KOM on everything. He calls himself the Doner Fox and, because they have a lot of Turkish takeaways in Germany, I swear he's a delivery boy and uses a moped!

In all seriousness though, that guy has done 2,500 miles already this year — he's clearly got the strength, stamina and fitness to smash those hills, so fair play to him.

 

[TallPaul_S]

How did the base mile ride go? I did 34.85 miles today in 3 hours 17 minutes (pretty much all Zone 2). It was my first ever ride with SPDs and I can feel muscles in my legs that I never knew I had!



I know this feeling; I've been building up my standing–sprint resistance recently by not sitting down at all on the downhill sections of my usual loop and gunning it whenever I can. However, when it comes to climbing, I find it much easier to say seated and try and keep my cadence high, even if it means going up slowly in the granny ring. Trying to grind out low cadence in a harder gear is a short recipe for knackered legs!

Good thanks, did 23 miles in just over 2 hours, mostly zone 2 with some low zone 3, tbh the hardest bit of the ride was trying to stay in zone 2!! It's very easy to slip into zone 3 without realising, you have to really rein in the tempo to stay within the 65-75% max HR range. I could have quite easily gone for another hour. I ride clipless 95% of the time (flats for messing around, practicing bunny hops etc) and I'm so much more efficient on them.

I think my plan is going to be 1-2 base mile rides a week, I can do a 2 hour ride in an evening now it's light until late, then a 3+ hour one at the weekend, then I think I'll slot in one evening interval session per week - just down the road from me is a nice hill with either a 50 second climb and flat section after, or a shorter more steep climb - one is about a 5% grade, the other 12%. A few intervals up those should do me in!! And there's another longer climb 5 minutes away too, so plenty of choice.

Of course if I do a 'normal' ride I'll be trying to keep in zone 2/3 for the most part, and then the climbs will be my intervals

I can sit and spin in hills no problem so long as I keep my HR down, it's when I need to sprint or the hill is so steep that I'm in zone 4+ that I struggle to keep going for long.

Looking at strava I have realised I've only really been properly back on a bike for 7 weeks, so I'm still very early on, got a long way to go! I did a couple of 10 mile rides in October last year which I remember my legs being done for at the end, I reckon a repeat of those rides will give me a good idea of just how far I've come!

 

[Irish_Tom]

Thought I'd update this as it's been almost a month since my last post.

Last weekend I did a 46-mile ride with 5,000ft of climbing, mostly along the South Downs Way, and it was tough. I'm not convinced I could do the same again (plus 8 miles) in one go.

However, a friend of mine suggested that part of the problem may be my tyres. I was running a Magic Mary / Hans Dampf combination which was very grippy and great for the downhill stuff, but heavy with a high rolling resistance for more XC stuff.

For today's ride, I decided to swap back to my old Continental setup (Mountain-King II / X-King) and I hit the blue loop in the OP hard for the first time in a while.

I took over 2 minutes off my previous PR — a 10.7% improvement! I'm now down to 17:32, compared to the 22:34 that I was pleased with in the OP. It also gets me into the top 50 on Strava (currently 43 /1,324).

I'm sure most of this was down to the lower RR tyres, but some of it must be attributed to my improving fitness.

I also think the lower RR tyres would have made my recent 46-miler a bit less of a slog. If you've read the 'Mountain Bike' thread recently, you'll have seen that I'm agonising over what tyres to buy next…

 

[Fusion]

Tyres are a huge deal, same with road cycling. It's probably trickier picking the right ones for mountain biking though as there are more variables. Will have a look in the other thread. Good work on the ride.

 

[toprock]

The number 1 improvement i've made to fitness/FTP/Power etc and in particular hill climbing, is a once a week spin class, sometimes 30 mins, sometimes 45, depending if the instructor goes overtime.

Its pretty much 20-25 intervals, of various types, heavy gear hill climbing standing up on pedals, fast spinning in a lower gear, seated, hovering over saddle, stood, with banging tunes. You exert the effort required usually a set RPM for given gear, then have a short 15, 30 or 60 second break, then do another effort. The only thing which I leave completely soaked to the skin in sweat. Heartrate graph afterwards is literally 25 pyramids of Z4, threshold, with recovery drops in between. Exactly whats needed for big cardio adaptations.

Even after 3 classes I started feeling the difference on the hills, huge amount of power in the quads to drive, and much easier to hold a higher cadence in all gears. Most hills I used to climb in granny gear, i'm now mid range on the cassette, with higher cadence, equals bike going much faster and further per pedal stroke = top 10 in lots of the local climbs now (currently dropping bike and kit weight to try and snatch the koms)

I've tried doing the intervals when out on the bike, but its much harder to have a consistent training session and hold heavy gears, stand on pedals with suspension going, spin at ridiculous RPM. I'm guessing the spinning is directly impacting FTP, which is why i'm seeing huge gains when back on the actual bike. The spin class "resting" cadence is 100rpm to give you an idea. So when on the actual bike you can fly along.

You can also really ease into the classes, as instructor has no idea what gear you are in, or RPM, so its not as daunting as you'd expect. I was reluctant at first, but its the fittest I've been in 10 years of biking.

 

[willhub]

I just wouldn't worry, just ride as far as you like and as hard as you like, if you fancy a sprint, sprint, if you fancy a good long chug along just put at a hard pace you can just about maintain for a good half hour or so, maybe 20 mins and then have a rest and do again, as long as you're having fun it doesn't matter.

 

[Irish_Tom]

Bit of a thread bump.

I went for Nobby Nics front and rear in the end, and I've been very happy with them so far. They seem to provide a good balance of grip and rolling resistance, although they haven't yet been tested in the clay and mud of the South Downs when it's wet.

@toprock — interesting thought on the spinning — I'll see if there's somewhere local to give it a try.

@willhub — I know what you're saying, but as per the OP, I felt like I was holding my friends up and that was impacting on the fun. Using the loop at QECP gave me a regular structured route that I could measure myself against, and I found it really helped.

This summer has been great. Apart from a brief lull moving house, I've been getting in two or three rides per week and it's made a huge difference to my overall fitness, confidence and speed — something noted by one of my riding buddies when we went out a week ago.

My last three rides have been 16 / 19 / 17 miles, with 1,600 / 1,800 / 1,100 ft climbing respectively — and I haven't found them too taxing. I've probably plateaued a bit recently, but the step up from where I was at the end of April has been massive. This coming week will be a good measure of my progress, as I'm going for a few rides with 'the boys' across a range of routes. I fully expect to be able to keep up with them this time!

 

[toprock]

Bit of a thread bump.

I went for Nobby Nics front and rear in the end, and I've been very happy with them so far. They seem to provide a good balance of grip and rolling resistance, although they haven't yet been tested in the clay and mud of the South Downs when it's wet.

@toprock — interesting thought on the spinning — I'll see if there's somewhere local to give it a try.

@willhub — I know what you're saying, but as per the OP, I felt like I was holding my friends up and that was impacting on the fun. Using the loop at QECP gave me a regular structured route that I could measure myself against, and I found it really helped.

This summer has been great. Apart from a brief lull moving house, I've been getting in two or three rides per week and it's made a huge difference to my overall fitness, confidence and speed — something noted by one of my riding buddies when we went out a week ago.

My last three rides have been 16 / 19 / 17 miles, with 1,600 / 1,800 / 1,100 ft climbing respectively — and I haven't found them too taxing. I've probably plateaued a bit recently, but the step up from where I was at the end of April has been massive. This coming week will be a good measure of my progress, as I'm going for a few rides with 'the boys' across a range of routes. I fully expect to be able to keep up with them this time!

Glad you like the double NN! Did you get the Addix Speedgrip with the blue stripe? Finding them super hardwearing along with the uber grip. I also went tubeless on mine 4 weeks back, definetely feel even more sprightly now, particularly on sprints.

Ride quantity, and some intense rides really helps, i've settled into a solid routine last few months, 45 minute tuesday spin, Thursday nightride 25 mile/2000ft ish, Saturday longer ride 35 miles/3000-5000ft depending on route, and i'll do a Friday ride too if i'm off.

Since adding this consistency, and doing some intervals with the power meter, fitness is at its highest in 5 years, fatigues at its highest after the Saturday ride lols, but recoverys nicely by Tuesday for the spin, form is also recovered for the Thursday. Been clawing in loads of top 10s, and couple of KOMS each week, which is encouraging. Pre power meter I was defintely soft peddling way too much, and not going intense enough each week, by a long shot.