CyclingBK

52 years old, just picked up cycling last August, hooked and making nice progress.
My primary initial reason for taking up cycling was to replace “boring gym cardio” as part of a fitness plan that includes strength training and cardio.

Im different than many here in that my goals are not necessarily to be the best cyclist I can be. But more so to use cycling as a tool to gain cardiovascular strength and the muscle benefits such as they are from cycling.

For me, a guy who used to think that doing 30-40 minutes on a step machine or running on a treadmill was solid cardio, doing and hour or a bit more on the bike has yielded great results in my opinion as far as my goals go.

My rides are generally broken down like this:

15 minutes warm up. Pedaling pretty easy, probably at 50-60% or so, get a good cadence, start “feeling it”.

15 minutes of basically harder warm up, going between 60-75 percent, pushing more here and there, feeling very warmed up.

15 minutes of what I’ll call “intervals” although most here would laugh that I use the term for what I do. I have a good sized downhill after the warm up is done, I pretty much coast down it for a minute then, I let my self slow down as it levels out. I start to pick up some speed then I start cranking hard. I basically go full throttle for around a minute and when I done, I’m completely winded. Pedal very easy for a minute then pick up the pace back to 60-70%, then there’s a good sized hill that I take at the same effort level for a few minutes. At the top, I gather some strength pedaling easy then I hit the next interval at full throttle for a minute.

Then I go easy for a couple of minutes and then repeat the same “interval” thing as above for 15 minutes.

Then, the last 15 minutes I go at like 80% or more for about 10 minutes then slow down for 5.

And that’s the workout. I can’t even imagine the intervals many do. Like 40 on 40 off for multiple sets. Id keel over.

But, in my rudimentary way that I measure gains, I like my progress. I’m advancing to bigger gears over time on my intervals and on that stretch I go 80% on.
And my resting heart rate keeps dropping gradually to now just under 50bpm. Which I know sounds like nothing but I’m happy with it.

Anyway, just thought Id post this in case there are others who train like this, for basic fitness as opposed to hardcore cycling gains. And see if anyone has a not too insane one hour or so workout I could try.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get into going longer and more formal with actual cycling training as I get stronger. Either way, cycling is the best ; )

Garfield Cat

You don't need to get stronger. Just ride. The stronger comes with the riding. If riding is not fun, then it won't last. Keep it fun.

velojym

You are on to something with the varying riding types (easy/interval/etc.), but you can do them on different rides.
Hard ride, Long ride, Recovery ride, and so on.

Iride01 

The more often you ride, then less your need for so much structure in your workouts. But if planning them and doing them motivate you then go right ahead. Mostly just putting in the mileage on varied terrain and picking a few places to really go at it will have you near the top of your abilities.

I've seen someone else mention it in another thread, but I have to agree with them that if you don't have much time to devote to cycling, but want to be able to ride at the level of others in a group, or just know your numbers are competitive with others, then structured workouts will give you a lot of bang for the limited amount of cycling time you might have.

If you can put in a lot of mileage per week, then you'll probably naturally encounter the things that workouts force you to do. Unless you are truly in the flat lands with no hills.

caloso

I don't laugh at these. I work something very similar into my springtime workouts preparing for crit season. These aren't intended as sprint workouts, but to get comfortable (hah) with the ramp up on the last lap or so, either if you're part of the lead out or getting ready to launch.

My coach and I just call them drop-offs. I usually do them off a levee or overpass (it's extremely flat here). I pick a target speed (28 mph to start, progressively faster as I get stronger), use the hill to roll into speed, and then maintain the target speed for one minute. Easy ride back to the hill and repeat. You can do them all out, but I prefer to do them to a steady speed on each repeat. When I can finish the full set easily, it's time to add 1mph. They will get you fast, if that's what you're going for.

The question is what "basic fitness" means to you. If it's just to improve your aerobic base, you might try 2x20' sweet spot work outs. I do these to power, but you can also do them to HR or even RPE (rate of perceived exertion).

jpescatore

A great book is "The Time Crunched Cyclist" - explains lots of the science behind training, has workout suggestions for different types of riders, not just racers. Shows you the building blocks you can combine to make up your own.

CyclingBK

Great stuff, thanks gents, and I always appreciate the knowledge and encouragement.

Maybe part of it is this heat this summer as far as limiting my time. I’m not a very early riser so banging it out for a couple+ hours once the sun is up a bit plus the humidity is too brutal for me.

The other thing is that I live in Brooklyn, I’m near an excellent 3 mile loop but I’m not that comfortable riding in city traffic and there aren’t any nice “country” or rural stretches to do enjoyable, longer rides on. Loop sets up nice for training as far as a mix of hills and flats but it can get boring after 6-7 laps.

caloso-very much appreciate your feedback. That 2x20 looks like really good.

jpescarore-nice recommendation, thank you

Carbonfiberboy 

I looked at your area in RWGPS and I sympathize. I realize that I live in paradise. In a mile, I'm on a low traffic country road and half of that mile is bike path and the rest is low traffic city road. I look out my window ans watch seals and otters fishing.

CyclingBK

Nice! I’m pretty grateful that right in the middle of the urban jungle Brooklyn, I have this beautiful loop, good variety of hills/flats. Here’s a pic.

But, yes, Be very cool to just jump on my bike and head in any direction. There’s a ton of beautiful riding relatively close, but you either have to drive or ride to it and I’m not keen on riding in NYC traffic yet.

Here’s the loop, 3.3 miles, not bad and no cars allowed,

Carbonfiberboy 

Even in paradise, I put my bike on the car and drive a lot. We ride with a group that starts their rides about 30 miles south of us. We start with them and ride almost to our house and back. have a beer, put the bike on the car and drive home. We do it because we love it and really don't mind the drive.

CyclingBK

Yes, would love to do exactly this, I’m just missing the “we”

As in I just picked up cycling last year at 52 years old and have no cycling buddies yet ; )

Carbonfiberboy 

All right! Everybody, see this? The man (I assume) needs some help. Hit the interwebs - you got clubs, bike shops, and meetup. That's how I got started with groups. Then pretty soon you got friends, too. I was just a year younger.

Drew Eckhardt 

You don't want to do that.

Your "easy" efforts are too hard, recruiting fast twitch fibers so you don't train your slow twitch fibers.

Your "hard" efforts are too easy so you don't train your fast twitch fibers.

You go hard enough to reduce appetite suppressing peptide YY production, but not hard enough to reduce appetite stimulating ghrelin. You shift your energy substrate utilization towards carbs, deplete your glycogen stores, and hunger to replace them. Runners call the result "runger" where you can more than eat back the calories you burned.

https://www.quora.com/How-should-I-t.../Drew-Eckhardt
Total power is the sum of aerobic and anaerobic components. Target both with aerobic requiring more training time and intensities between the two having limited benefit for speed. Learn to pedal faster. Lose weight if the course has hills.

Figure out your aerobic (AeT, VT1) and anaerobic (AnT, Critical Power, FTP, LT4, LTHR, VT2) thresholds.

One day a week, ride 7–10 minute intervals as hard as possible, stopping when you can’t exceed your anaerobic threshold. Stephen Seiler’s research into polarized training with Olympic and other endurance athletes is very relevant.

Ride below your aerobic threshold four days a week, including a long ride at least double your normal distance. One hour short rides are OK but two are better.

Go for a fast long ride one day a week for experience pacing and to see how you’re doing.

I like a FTP test every 3–4 week mesocycle to quantify gains.

Otherwise riding between the two thresholds won’t do much for speed once you have a bit of fitness - it engages your fast twitch fibers and glycolytic energy system so you’re no longer stressing your aerobic fitness to force improvement, is not hard enough to stress your anaerobic fitness, and adds more fatigue than riding with lower effort.

Take an easy week out of every 3 or 4 without the hard rides and lower volume to recover. Growing older makes needing a rest week in three more likely. Add 10% on your non rest weeks.

Change things like rest week volume and frequency when you’re having issues.

Track training stress to insure you’re not adding too much each week and have easy enough rest weeks to allow adaptation.

Your aerobic threshold is where breathing becomes rhythmic, conversation doesn't flow, and lactate/hydrogen ions start to accumulate. It's an intensity you could sustain for 3-5 hours with an even split between halves.

Mark Allen set his 2:40 Ironman marathon split record which stood for twenty-five years after training below his aerobic threshold, initially dropping his pace to 8:15 miles with performance improving over a year to 5:20 at the same 155 bpm heart rate.

Not coincidentally, the aerobic threshold heart rate is often close to that predicted by Phil Maffetone’s formula. He coached Mark Allen.

Your anaerobic threshold occurs around your average heart rate over the last 20 minutes of a 30 minute all-out effort. In theory you could do that for one hour although that's very unpleasant - Eddy Merckx, the greatest cyclist ever, said it was one of the hardest things he'd done on a bike.
It's very, very hard.
I couldn't walk for a few days after I did it.
That's how hard it is.
It’s approximately your Critical Power, or Functional Threshold Power where 95% of 20 minute power is an estimation varying in accuracy because people’s anaerobic reserve (Anaerobic Work Constant, w’) differs.

Training stress is approximately proportional to the square of exertion, with quadruple the time possible at half the intensity. It can be quantified on long term (fitness, Chronic Training Load, Long Term Stress) and short term (freshness, Acute Training Load, Short Term Stress) bases as exponentially weighted stress averages with typical 42 and 7 day periods. There is a delta subtracting short term from long term (Stress Balance, Training Stress Balance) reflecting how much of your fitness you’re using. You need negative balance for endurance increases, and to approach zero for recovery allowing training adaptations to take place.

For sustainable increases and sufficient recovery, track it with performance management software like Golden Cheetah (which runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux) or Training Peaks. Prefer a power based system like Coggan’s using Training Stress Score or Skiba’s BikeScore, although Banister’s TRaining IMPulse points work.

Use a power meter to quantify anaerobic performance and monitor how close you are to that threshold. Heart rate isn’t useful for hard workouts because it’s a lagging indicator. Too much exertion will limit duration by exhausting your muscle glycogen in less time (it can’t move between fibers) and causing fatigue proportional to the square of exertion.

Use heart rate for pacing long efforts because it’s fairly constant at your aerobic threshold although power will change significantly with training.

Learn to pedal faster because higher cadences are less fatiguing. The hour record is usually set at over 100 RPM for this reason. A cadence field on your bike computer is a useful reminder when you’ve been off your bike for a while and your legs are sluggish.

If there are hills on those 23 miles, eat less and exercise more. You’re too fat to climb quickly if you can’t see your abs.

With a decent aerobic base, you can probably manage up to 4 hours riding without food which is a half a pound of fat. Eating 1/3 of your energy on long rides can be sufficient, with a 200 mile ride using up a pound. Accounting for metabolic efficiency, assume 1 kilojoule out is 1 kcal in.

CyclingBK

Thanks, cfb!
I did meet up with a forum member for a few laps in the park. Was fun. We agreed to ride again.
Before Covid, I did see at least one good cycling group on meetup, but now, there are no events planned.
Its cool, I’ll keep it up on the loop, it’s still great and I’m sure I’ll meet some folks to ride with soon enough.

Clyde1820

Varying intensity throughout a ride can yield some great benefits, generally speaking. As others have suggested, you can also vary the rides and routes.

Back in the day, my distance running training was much of that. Some was "long slow base" running, to keep up the general fitness and cardio. But much was variable-speed, pacing/tempo runs, hills, intervals, or a blend, depending on what performance aspect we were seeking to improve. Made great strides in a range of capabilities (stamina, strength, hill climbing, rejuvenating through in-run recovery stints, and so on). The more we ran, generally, the better our general fitness got (of course). But the more we focused on the variations, specifically targeting certain things, we would see solid gains over the season and the next season in those areas. Weight training helped, as well. As did strength-stamina training (moderate weight training but with stamina as the focus of the session.)

Was fun to play with. At the level we were training, a lot of gains could come in a few months, targeting certain specifics.
These days, my training is mostly in the gym, with cycling reserved for commuting and general fitness. Can't do the hardcore training, any longer, due to old injuries.

CyclingBK

Wow, thanks for all this. One day, who knows, I just may get this advanced.

But for now, the hour and fifteen minutes is getting solid results. There are 4 periods of about 1-minute each where I’m flat out, basically to “failure”. And then about 10 minutes of going about as hard as I can sustain.

How do I measure results?

First, my resting heart rate continue continues to fall and is now just under 50bpm. It was up around 65+ a couple of years ago. Just started cycling in August last year. I know this forum has crazy fit people with rhr under 40 but I’m happy with this.

Second, I’m incrementally increasing cadence in one gear, then advancing to bigger gears and Increasing cadence. This seems to indicate I’m getting stronger.

I know this sounds practically Philistine in this advanced era of sports performance measurement. I don’t have a bike computer or even a hrm. And I’ll plateau and need to get more advanced. But for now, the progress is good.

As far as weight loss. The bulk (no pun intended ; ) of my weight loss is done. I’m now trying to get rid of the last bit of fat but being patient. Keep in mind I’m also strength training and cycling is just part of my overall fitness plan. My goal is not to become a high performance cyclist, not not anyway.


“You’re too fat to climb quickly if you can’t see your abs.“


Not sure if I’m too fat, don’t think so, but here’s a pic. Hoping the abs start showing in the next month or 2. Not bad for 52 ; )

Carbonfiberboy 

I hope you either copied this from your records or bookmarked it, 'cause you could post this fairly frequently, as it answers most questions. My problem with the Mark Allen training method is that if I ran that slow, I wouldn't be running at all. That said, I might try it. Maybe a slow dog trot. I'll try running with my wife. (don't tell her I said that).

Drew Eckhardt 

It came from my Quora answer which I linked before it
https://www.quora.com/How-should-I-t.../Drew-Eckhardt

To my surprise, rides slightly below VT1/AeT without exceeding it (apparently fast twitch fiber recruitment is sticky) improved my power output at it although that's not much work for the first few hours.

Carbonfiberboy 

I used to do a lot of riding on my rollers - almost all of it - just below VT1 before another expert on here said that was a complete waste of time. And I had thought it had worked quite well for me! Turns out my main problem is that too much of my power on ordinary rides comes from anaerobic sources and I need to do MORE of that low end work, not less of it. I've always had a tendency to ride too hard, which also gets results, though perhaps those results could still be improved. I have exactly 368 days to see what I can do. Due to Covid restrictions cascading into a variety of unexpected health issues for me, my CTL today is about 30. Oy. I'm going for a walk with my wife, my 2nd today.

ZHVelo

VT1 is basically Zone 2?

Drew Eckhardt 

Somewhere in Friel's Z2 defined relative to experimentally determined Lactate Threshold Heart Rate. Unknown with a system based on a hypothetical 220 - age maximum where there's a 12 BPM standard deviation making you real maximum somewhere between 184 - age and 256 - age.

Use the subjective definition.

Supposedly it also lines up with LT1 1mmol/L blood lactate concentration.

Carbonfiberboy 

Not really. Zone boundaries as commonly defined by various authorities intentionally don't fall on AeT or AnT (VT1 and VT2). That's a reason that coach advice is, when trying to ride in a a particular zone, not to ride at the upper end of it. Both those zone boundaries are best measured by breathing rather than HR. After one get the feel of them by breathing, it is possible to develop fairly but not entirely reliable HR measures for those boundaries.

AeT is the point where one's deep breathing rate rather suddenly accelerates. You have to breathe faster. AnT is the point where one begins panting, deep breathing no longer being possible. There was a guy on here a while back who rode with a blood lactate meter and would stop and do a test to be absolutely sure of where he was. He was trying to do a lot of riding below AeT.

CyclingBK

Very happy to see that what I’m doing is recommended....

“Want your intervals to be simple and easy to remember, but still brutally effective? Try these, recommended by David Henderson on his blog. “Ride absolutely as hard as you can for 1 minute, then soft pedal as easy as you can for 3 minutes, repeat 5-8 times or until you think you see Jesus.”

This is pretty much exactly what I do. The full blog post is too involved for me to understand but some here may find it interesting.

Here is the full piece and the blog is hyperlinked within the quote I posted

https://www.roadbikerider.com/try-th...ing-intervals/

Carbonfiberboy 

Technically, this is known as "speed work." I've done these in final prep for a little extra strength on the flat, after doing a lot of FTP and climbing work I can make no sense of the T-Max interval recommendation.

CyclingBK

Thats amazing you take that on after so much work.

For me, I do 30 minutes progressive warm up.

Then, per the quote/article I posted,

Flat out/*alls to the wall for 1 minute so I’m blasted and practically can’t even pedal for a bit, then easy pedal, then that “big” hill I grind out but don’t go crazy on.

Gather some steam for minute. Then, another flat out minute. Gather for a few, then establish a cadence,

Then Repeat the period above.

So, really, I’m just doing 4 flat out minute intervals wit about 6-8 minutes of easy pedaling, and another 12 minutes of sustained effort mixed in.

Then, my final stint is about 10 minutes of pushing as big a gear as I can as at fast a reasonable, sustained, cadence as I can, then couple minutes cool down.

The biggest issue right now is the heat. It’s 90 degrees and 65-70 dew point and I’m just not interested in riding in that.

So, been hitting some 45 minute kick boxing workouts for the past 2 weeks every other day, strength training on the other days.

i feel good. The kickboxing is great because there’s a lot of lateral motion and upper body action. But I can tell I’m losing some riding power.

One day maybe I’ll endeavor to understand cycling from the perspective that you guys do. But for now, that’s a long way off. Nonetheless, you guys sharing your knowledge is much appreciated and very motivating ; )