halfspeed

Don't do this. If you try and go hard every day, you never recover and your hard days aren't as productive as they could be.

halfspeed

The advantage of "my" plan is that it works while being extremely simple. It's a way anybody can improve without being overwhelmed by the details of structured training plans. Do it, and you'll find out if you want to go off the deep end with Friel and a power meter.

Mr Sinister

Thank you for the advice. i will try to no longer do rides as hard as I can every day. I have a nice group ride tomorrow, and will take it kind of slow. I did want to try and go all out, but that would be a bad idea, and I need to start treating this like when I lifted. day on, recovery day.

Thanks again.

banerjek

Trainer time and road time are totally different. But YMMV. My experience is that trainer time is tougher despite the fact that I ride year 'round in anything. It's all in how you set your trainer up and how you ride it. Some of the spinervals dvds are no joke -- I can barely stand after finishing some of them.

JustinHorne

Agreed.

The 27.0 Threshold Test and Suffer Fest DVD turns me into a noodle in an hour flat.

WHOOOSSHHH...

That's funny...

twobadfish

I can get an insane workout on the trainer, no doubt. But I don't think there is a great translation between that and riding on the road.

jr59

careful there big guy, you are turning into Botto

tbonez

I really like the grainy plan and will follow it for the next month or so and see how it goes..My plan to win the tour is unfortunately at and end for this year. What is a respectable speed a 36 year old should be averaging on a rolling 30 mile ride or is that impossible to say.

tbonez

One additional question...I was told that training with a hrm is basically useless for faser paced rididing. This was because if you were working hard enough in training that your hr would be extremely high and not in the 80% range.is there any merit to this line of thinking?

halfspeed

It's impossible to say.

While you're too old to become an elite pro, you are nowhere near too old to be a fast amateur. There are guys in their 60s still kicking ass.

revchuck 

Nope. The part where it doesn't work well is with VO2 max intervals, since HR is your body's response to the effort, and takes some time to show. Since you're going as hard as you can in a VO2 max interval, HR is irrelevant anyway - you just push until you can't push no mo'. HR works well for longer, less intense intervals like sub-lactate threshold intervals, and also keeps you honest on recovery and endurance pace rides.

ultraman6970

Wonder if the OP is a smasher, if he is a smasher and has no cadence even a 14 y/o kid with 42x16 can make him sweat big time going at that speed or with changes in the pace making. Would be good to know what is the gear multiplication he uses for training and for the ride.

We don't know also if the position in the bike is good also, it could be a problem a position dialing problem also.

Even could be that he simply sucks at the sport, thing is have seen before, training and training and they suck anyways.

For the record 17 mph are around 27 km/h so we are not even talkin' about going super fast.

Hope you find the answer.

nycphotography

Ironically, you may BOTH be right. Yes, the guy probably hasn't ridden, and feels horribly out of shape. Yes, he is still probably going to kick YOUR butt.

I find myself saying that this year... because I know I'm slower than I should be, slower than I was in past years, and will be slower than people (who know me) expect me to be.

But at the same time, to new riders who are still getting their fitness started, I seem really fast.

I think Einstein had a theory about it.

hhnngg1

Don't sweat it. 17mph with zero stops over 30mph is respectable, especially coming off winter.

I trainer harder on my trainer for intervals than I do outdoors. It's legit. (I go way longer outdoors, though - mental issues.)

The other two guys are sandbagging or were significantly better cyclists than you to begin with. As said above, sandbagging is rampant in cycling - I've been known to even do it myself, saying that "I only rode 50 road miles in the past 3 winter months" but in reality have been logging at least 4/hrs/wk on the trainer AND running 2-4/hrs at very high intensity on top of that.

ancker

The comments in this thread are interesting to me. Mostly because my experiences are backwards to what most of you have been saying. I find myself being able to go much faster on the road than on the trainer at the same perceived effort.

## Long part most of you won't read ##
I've been riding for a little over a year and just recently started group rides.I didn't really start to get serious until fall last year so I've done nearly all of my training on my KK road machine. I started doing Spinervals but couldn't stay motivated. I switched to SufferFest for workouts and watching TV/Movies on rest days. I rode 5-6 days a week at around an hour average. I started the winter around 15mph and worked my way up to 17mph by the end.

A few weeks ago I went outside for the first ride of the spring. It was a bit chilly and windy but I managed 18mph over an hour (solo).
https://connect.garmin.com/activity/73886554 A couple days later I got back out and bested myself with an 18.2mph ride (solo). I was pretty happy. https://connect.garmin.com/activity/74403789

I recently joined a local racing team to give myself a bit of extra help and something to push for. I do much better when I have a goal or specific outcome I'm trying to achieve. I was invited out to their Wednesday Night "Fast Guys" ride. I expected to get dropped almost immediately as these guys had been riding for years (and included an Olympic Medalist). It was my first ever group ride and I didn't know anything about group riding dynamics not to mention how to take advantage of the draft. I was dropped after a turn where I lost the draft but caught up at an intersection and stayed with them for another 5 miles. They finally dropped me (for good) after about 28 miles out of the 34. I rode into the park only about 10 minutes after the main group. My average was 20.3mph over the 1:40 ride. https://connect.garmin.com/activity/76261471

I rode with them again yesterday for the "Medium Pace" Saturday Ride. We rode 36 miles and I was in it the whole way. I was much more confident and able to take advantage of the draft. The group was probably only half as big as the Wednesday ride so we still had to work hard. The group managed a 19.9mph pace over the 1:50 ride. https://connect.garmin.com/activity/78093211

After all that, my point is that I find it a LOT easier to ride on the road versus the trainer. The OP mentioned his group only averaging 17mph. I'm never going to say that is 'slow' but it seems a bit less than what I'd expect for a group ride (based on my limited experience). I feel like the trainer is harder due to the fact you're going all the time. You never really get a break and it's hard to stay comfortable for miles and miles without getting sore. I'm surprised a lot of you seem to think the road is harder.

Am I the only one who thinks this?

Thunderkiss4.5

I do not have any group ride experience yet but I do fully agree with Ancker. The trainer is far more challenging than the road.

surgeonstone

your probably too fat for this sport.

Mr Sinister

OK I lied... I said I would go slow on the group ride this past weekend, and when everyone started to pick up their pace, and things started to thin out, I decided to try and hang. I found myself hanging, and it really wasn't much of a problem. I then decided to be me, and try to out do them... Went OK for a while, but then I got a flat, end of speeding. Sometimes even when you decide to go against what you said you'd do, something makes you do it anyways....

Taking 2 days off to recover, so tomorrow its balls out.

RacerOne

I would hope so, unless you ride your trainer in the back of a truck going down the highway.

Seriously though, unless you have some way to monitor how hard you are working on the trainer (heart rate / power) you'll really have no idea of how hard you're working. 183bpm on the road or rollers feels pretty much the same to me: painful.

One of the hardest things to come to grips with as a competitive cyclist is that the numbers on your speedometer don't matter. Ever. (Ok maybe a little if you're in a time trial with a goal). In past years I was obsessed with average speed, if a solo ride came in below 20mph, I'd be bummed. I was always shooting for a higher average. This year, I've been purely focused on interval training with heart rate and haven't had a solo ride average out much over 19mph. However, people now curse under their breath when I show up for the Thursday night hammerfest. Winning the town line sprint by 20yds is much more fun than looking at speeds >20mph in my training log.

Everybody new to cycling will completely ignore this advice and continue to focus on average speed, that's fine.. just realize that at some point, you will stop getting faster.