Long Rides
 

How many long rides (3+ hours) do you guys do per week? If only one, is it due to time constraints or something else?

Zero? Though these last few months I have hit the 3 hour mark on group rides a few times since there's essentially nothing else to do.

Long rides are boring. And in summertime, really ruin the rest of the day.

None.

I pretty much just train inside with trainerroad and the plans max out at 2hr workouts. Would love to do more long rides, but I get a lot of bang for my buck inside. Last weekend I did finally venture out and did 100 miles in under 5.5hrs, with only indoor workouts all year so I'm definitely not limited by the 2hr workouts. I just try and keep my riding reasonable and not potentially and take up time from family activities we might choose to do on weekends (although if I got up early enough I could do long rides and be home in time to go out)

Time constraints? Boring? Just don't want to?

Are you just curious or are you trying to figure out what to do with training?

Pretty much same with me. I usually start at 6am if I'm going to go long, not just so I have more time with family but after 10 am it's just too hot right now. We hit 106 yesterday haha.

Well, curious mostly but I'm wondering if would be beneficial to add in an extra long day during the week and not just on Saturday or Sunday. Seems most online stuff is geared towards "time crunched" athletes, and all of the advice is "try to get a long ride in on the weekend and do some SST and intervals during the week". Well, what if I can do a long ride Tuesday AND Saturday, or even three days a week?

There's no purpose to it. who has races longer than three hours? Not a lot of people.

Very little of what any of us are doing right now is going to matter when racing starts up again next year. I'd say just do whatever you enjoy doing, and do it reasonably consistently.

Last time I did a 3+ hour ride was as part of a group ride in The Before Times.

I'm doing around 350 - 500km+ per week with 2 rest days so 3hr+ rides are 2-3x a week. No time constraints, I'm semi-retired (51) and just need my phone with me to sort out any issues that might arise. I do 1 or 2 hard rides a week, a medium effort or two and 2 easy/recovery rides, typically.
I did a 3hr ride today. Last week 2, the week before 3. One, sometimes two of the longer rides are with others; Club ride or training group. HIIT days are always short.

My wife say's I'm basically living like a Pro now :lol:. I often train with top local riders of all age categories, some of them aspirant Pro's and a couple of Pro's who are waiting to get back to their normal routines.

Depends on the time of the year for me. Average lets say 1.5. More in the winter and early season. I do a small number or road races each year that might top out at 4 hrs. Having said that, I probably average one ~5-7 hr ride per month year round. Not sure why, other than than my body feels really good when I'm on high volume. Also often it feels really tired... But sometimes great! It feels good to be 5+ hrs into a ride with respectable avg power and feel like you have plenty of gas in the tank and are ready to hammer every hill and lift the pace into VO2 zone at will. I also like to feel really tan and skinny.

I am all in for tan and skinny.:D

1-2 depending on where I am in the block and always on the weekend. Sundays are 90% ~3hrs+. On the big weeks of the block, I'll do long rides both days. Saturday would be usually 1.5-2hr workout and the rest Z2. I do it because my coach tells me so and doing on the weekends helps keep the volume up and keep a job to pay for all of the bike stuff.

Back a few years ago 3 hours was a medium ride. I remember I once did the morning race ride at 6:30, then rode to half Moon Bay and back just in time to meet up with the noon ride and do that. That was during an unemployed period lol!

More typically I'd do 2 to 2.5 hours during the week and 3+ Saturday and Sunday. Often the 3+ was a road race or 2 crits+warm up and cool down.

Currently I finally got back to where I can do the longer rides and trying to get one in most weeks. I wake up late and for me a long ride is an all or most of the day activity. I don't think I'd really get more benefit from doing a few per week other than the total mileage benefit. At some point if you wanna get more time on the bike more of the rides end up more than 3 hours, considering 2 rest days per week.

I can't think of anything better than being semi-retired and having tons of time to ride! My retirement plan when I get to that age is to go to my parents' village in Tras-os-Montes and ride up Serra do Larouco a lot for training lol

Every coach that I have used seems to have their own protocol for adding endurance in a periodized training program to support a goal. Currently, I am not on any program other than stay fit and healthy and be ready for the start of next seasons periodization.

I like a 2.5 hour endurance ride that skewed toward tempo and do that a couple of times per week. My goal in those rides are very little z1 and coasting. However, during programmatic training, I do as I am told.

I am retired and can do what I please. I do not find long rides that appealing and prefer going to the track and working out with a coach and others in a structured workout for 3 hours. Due to the pandemic, that is not available.

I've got the tan part down; still working on the skinny.

Lots of sources say there are certain adaptations that only take place on long (4+) hour rides. I certainly respond well to longer rides and just hogging on the TSS in general (more riding, harder riding, or both).

I used to do a lot of mileage when I was in college, and I responded really well to it. Most of my rides were over 3 hours, hell even my hard interval days were around the 3 hour mark. I'd spin an hour or so to my favorite interval road, kill myself for 40 minutes to an hour, then spin an hour home. My racing really went down the ****ter when I started working and tried a "time crunched" type plan. I think it was two-fold: I just like long rides, and the short, hard efforts for every ride really burned me out mentally, and also I think that my racing style was well suited to lots of endurance. I'm a terrible sprinter, so my typical strategy was just to attack early and often. Get brought back? No biggie, got lots of matches, I'll attack again in 3 minutes. It seemed like the time crunched plan bumped my power in the 3-8 minute range, but I had trouble doing it over and over again once my endurance base dried up.

This was 8 years ago though, I basically stopped racing when I burned out. I tried to get back in it for 2015, (had the same problem) and again last year (err same issue), but having a kid now and a pandemic have basically killed racing for me this year. Maybe next year?

FWIW, I have observed racers who have attempted and succeeded at setting an hour world record. My coach has a protocol and it is a volume play that starts with strength and adaptation moving to 5 hour endurance rides and the 3 x 40’ @ 95% race pace at the velodrome with lots of motor pacing at the track thrown in.

What I find interesting is that success at the hour record is usually accompanied by setting a pursuit WR or PR. Since a 2k pursuit is so short one would wonder why hour record training would work so well. Hour record training builds a monster aerobic engine that becomes extremely valuable for most of racing except bunch sprinting or match sprinting.

It seems like the volume sets up the ability to do the 3x 40’ that in turn sets up the record assuming one is talented enough.

The hard part is making the training operational and hitting the record attempt window.

This protocol bodes well for the argument for big volume dosed properly against an objective.