brett_beddow

How do professionals train for 6 hours a day (What I gathered from the nike commercial of Lance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIl5RxhLZ5U) without getting burnt out?

Surferbruce

epo
and podium girls

twahl

It's their job.

Amen

They are professionals. It is their job.

brett_beddow

Even if it was my job, how could I recover so quickly from a 6 hour ride everyday?

Machka 

You've obviously never had a job involving physical labour. Go work in the press room of a newspaper, on a construction site, in an oilfield, in an orchard, or something along those lines ... and then get back to us.


Also, have you ever done a cycling tour?

Duke of Kent

1) They've built up to it. If I had more time, I could ride 4hrs a day right now.

2) It's their job. If you work a job involving any sort of physical labor, you get used to it. I spent 8hrs a day walking through soybean fields, three summers in a row, then rode my bike 2-4hrs a day after that. How? I got used to it.

brett_beddow

No, I have never had a job like that. I go to school for 7 hours a day and then cut lawns two days out of the week.
I have never done a cycling tour either but I realize that sometimes when I go hard one day my legs are feeling sore the next day and I couldn't imagine putting 4 more hours on top of that and then riding again hard the next day.

twahl

You don't jump right in doing 6 hours of hard riding every day, you build it up. If you rode an hour a day for a few days, took a recovery day, then added say 15 minutes the next few days, yoou'd build on it. Diet is also a factor, they are very careful about eating the right foods at the right times to maximize their ability to get the most out of their bodies and to recover efficiently.

FlashUNC

Regular sleep also does wonders.

Machka 

This site might give you some tips on how to build up to longer distances and multiple day distances:
https://www.ultracycling.com/

swimmer88

think of it this way...if the pros only trained 3 hours a day, it wouldn't be that hard to be a pro. do you really think you can get a solo win in the TdF without training 6 hours a day?

actually, i wouldn't be surprised if they frequently go more that that, especially during heavy training periods.

CornUponCob

And even though he says "on my bike 6 hours a day"... I doubt that his yearly average works out to 6 hours every day in the saddle. There's a lot of other things one can do to "train" that do not involve sitting in the saddle.

A long massage after an intense ride could still be considered training, as long as you consider "training" to be something you do to make you faster in the long run.

The_Cretin

If it was just about riding 6 hrs a day, someone would ride 6.5 hours a day and have beaten Lance.

roadwarrior

Most "serious" racers start very young, and work their way up to big mileage over years of steadily increasing training and racing miles. Where I lived, I started at age 8 in a club and worked from there.

Professionals don't ride every day. There is an off season for them as well. But during the season, they are riding long hours, but not every day is intense. Some are just easy spins.

If you want to get a look at a rest day easy spin (during a grand tour) take a look at the film, "The Quest" and see what Simoni did when he won his last Giro on his last rest day.

The most miles I ever heard of was Ekimov, and he did close to 40,000 in one season. That was training and racing.

But, yes, when riding they will ride 6+ hours.

roadwarrior

Yes, and well said.

carpediemracing 

I'm no pro and I spent over 4 hours a day training in warmer climates in Feb of this year. Yeah, you get a little of that residual fatigue deep in your legs but it's definitely possible. One pair of days I went out and dd sprints the first day as the second day was to be "easy but long". I got antsy enough on that second day to start ripping out sprints and pursuit efforts after about 5 hours of riding in extremely hot conditions. Felt great and actually hit higher power than the prior day, a day where I was more fresh as well as intent on doing a sprint/power workout.

Pros talk about how they don't know how their legs will be until they start riding, and even then, they won't know how they'll feel until the end of the ride/race. Lemond was somewhat consistent on this, especially at earlier Worlds, where he'd say he felt horrible for the first 6 hours of the race, but then his legs came around and he did okay (like getting second or first). Fatigued legs do that - you get on the bike, they feel horrible. You go about a mile and you realize, oh, right, this is how my legs felt yesterday, and yesterday I did some good riding. Then you go another hour or two and suddenly you realized, hey, I'm warmed up *and* I just did that last little roller in the big ring. Then, as the ride winds down (at least for me) you start making some huge efforts, trying to simulate the end of a long race. For me, in CA, it means chasing cars for a couple miles, then doing a huge effort up a gradual 1 mile grade. Some days the legs fail and I can't even jump after cars. Other days, with the legs feeling exactly the same, somehow I'm catching cars, then, after the turn to the base of the big hill, the big ring just turns and turns and turns, and I round the corner at the top and think, "Crap, I coulda gone harder". You just don't know though until you're under pressure.

Pros *do* take days off too, except Ekimov when he was a "pro amateur". I remember he was astounded to learn that pros take days off - apparently he hadn't taken a day off in 5 years while on the USSR team. He thought being a pro was much easier. He must have also thought they were kinda slow because he rode away from the field a couple times in the last 2 k to win Tour stages on his own. Eventually he adapted down to their standards

Keep in mind a pro rides for a living. When I'm in CA, I'm living the pro dream - all I do is ride and recover. When you wake up at 7 AM and go to sleep at 10-11 PM and all you have to do is ride, that is a LOT of time. I'd eat 2-3 times before I got out the door, do 4-5 hours, then 2-3 times when I got back. Smaller meals, sure, but meals nonetheless (my hosts would laugh because after eating dinner, when the plates just got cleared away, I'd announce I was ready for my next dinner). And the rest of the time I'd nap or peruse BF or watch TV (I don't have cable so any TV show or ad is fascinating to me) or blog or whatever in the 10 hours (!!) I didn't ride.

On rest days I'd have to find a way of killing an extra 2-4 hours (some rest days I rode an hour or two just because it was so nice out - but I'd ride at 11 mph or something). But still, killing 12-14 hours of time is, well, time consuming.

An ex-pro friend of mine started working for real (i.e. a job) and he said it was sooooo hard to get on the bike after standing at work for a couple hours. All us hacks just shook our heads and laughed - one of those "Oh, so that's how real life is" kinda moments for the pro. Suddenly our comments about "dude, I appreciate the training tips but I just can't do 7 hours on Wednesday" started to make sense to him.

cdr

GernBlanston

6 hours is probably an average figure. They don't just go out for six hours of riding...it certainly varies day to day depending on the training plan and what the day's objectives are. Long days they probably go 8-9 hours, short/rest days, 3-4. Davis Phinney once said that if you aren't out for at least three hours, you're wasting your time.

As for recovery between rides, they do have a lot going for them in that department. Apart from years of training to hone their fitness and plenty of sleep and carefully regulated diet and supplements, it helps to pick the right parents so you recover faster. And let's not forget the massages, the vitamin B injections, the daily naps...

GB

merlinextraligh

In some ways it's easier to train 6 hours, then go lay on the coach, and repeat, than it is to work 50 hours, train 4 hours a day on the weekends, 2 hours during the week, and take care of a house and a family.

brett_beddow

Ahh, I see.
Yo carpediemracing, what does your training schedule look like? I have a lot of time this summer so I mean, I might give it a shot at training a whole lot more than I do now.

bdcheung

naps and supportive wives.

carpediemracing 

My training schedule from Dec to end of Feb was pretty informal. I wanted to lose some weight, gain some fitness, and try and undo some of the damage I did by not riding too much for about 3 years. I tried to go out on the bike (or trainer) with a plan of doing one of the following:

1. Easy ride, meaning low average HR, 130-140 bpm or less, work on spinning, experiment with position/equipment (newish bike), active recovery, burn calories while mindlessly riding, save legs for the hard days.

2. Hard ride, meaning high average (for me 150-160 bpm), I check power but don't go by it.

3. Sprints, usually sprinkled in the hard rides.

4. Days off, usually to catch up with friends or family obligations, or even (potential) work related stuff. Also to actually rest.

I find I can do two hard rides in a row (4-6 hours, 140-150 bpm avg or higher, usually a few jumps/sprints in there, and typically a few sustained efforts due to long climbs), then I take a day off. I can do this pretty consistently for 2-3 weeks. Then I got much easier for a week (max 2-3 hours/day) then repeat. After about 2 months of this I was pretty cooked and went much easier for the next 6-7 weeks.

I napped frequently, drank a lot of protein shakes (not weight gaining shakes, just protein replacement types), ate good food but whatever quantity I felt like, and went either 100% electrolyte drinks on a ride or 50/50 water/electrolyte, along with some gels and Enervit "crack packs" (fluid packs). On really hot days I'd get peanuts or some other salty fatty thing on the ride.

cdr