Road Fan

I think it does suit me well enough for now. I'm still just trying to get back my basic skills after a two year near-layoff. I've been on teh bike on the trainer, and I'm finding it tiring after just 15 minutes. I think I need to keep working at that to work up the duration to 30 or 40 minutes. At this point I would consider that an achievement.

I read and try to gain from this Forum, but for my own riding I'm not on the same page as, seemingly, the rest of you.

I googled "80/20" in several guises, and I don't find anything directly related to polarized training plans. But Dooner90 said he had a book about it for athletic training, and I don't see any titles on Google suggesting it's a strategy or criterion for how much hard cycling training you should versus how muckh lighter training you do. It's easy for folks with some familiarity with Seiler to see that as a description of the strategy Seiler investigated.

But, what books actually talk about the Seiler approach? If it's valid, what is it valid for? And if not valid, what is it not valid for.

For me it sounds like a sufficiently simple and sufficiently sophisticated way to see a training plan that will help me, though is it appears to be qute simple.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, it's really simple. A caveat is that it demands that one either have a lot of flatish ground to ride on, or be a pretty talented rider to stay riding easy enough on the easy days. I can ride my rollers easy enough, but out the door, everything is uphill. so there's that.

"Easy enough" means at a deep breathing rate where one can recite the alphabet (quickly) in one outbreath. If you can't do that where you live, better to do like rubiksoval says.

But back to where you are, exactly. Keep riding that trainer at the above breathing rate (big fan or two helps) until you can hold that rate for an hour. Another way to do that is to do it with power, even though you don't have a power meter. You can imitate a power meter by coming up to that breathing rate in the first 15 minutes, note the speed, and hold that for the rest of the hour, though stand every 15-20 minutes for a little bit.

Another, more fun way to approach the problem, is to ride outside. Ride away from home until you are tired, turn around and ride home. The tired part is important. For that training method, terrain, breathing, speed, all that nonsense is immaterial. When I started riding again at 50, that's what I did until I could ride 100 miles. Took me about a year. I started by just trying to ride 7 miles up a little local hill and back. Just doing that took a couple months. I remember sitting in a ditch, crying, and during another ditch sit, watching the world spin around me. It was a learning experience, but it worked. If you aren't that into masochism, you could start with the trainer method, then go to the outdoor method.

One doesn't actually need a training plan. Get to that solo century first, then worry about a training plan. By then, you'll have a good sense of what works for you. What did I learn? Importance levels:
1) Ride up hills
2) Food - fueling on bike
3) Clothing including clipless shoes
4) Monitoring effort - heart rate monitor
5) Nice bike

All you really have to do to live long and prosper is to ride your bike - a lot.

redlude97

A 34/36 low gear will do it. My commute home every day involves riding up through lake forest park that is the equivalent of a category 4 climb according to strava and 2-3 of them a week are zone 2 rides by neccessity

OBoile

I think he's referring to this book.
https://www.amazon.ca/80-20-Running-...6481620&sr=8-1