Heathpack 

I bought a road bike last March and have ridden it quite a bit (1500 mi). In June, I set a goal of riding a flat metric century in late August. Initially I trained with a combo of rides: long slow (low heart rate, high cadence, pay no attention to speed) and once-a-week intervals. Eventually, I dropped the intervals because of logistical issues (I ride along riverbeds, lots of long slight incline/decline miles, but once I got my fitness level up, I could no longer raise my heart rate to target range when going down hill. There are not enough flat or uphill miles where I live to get a decent interval ride in). When the intervals weren't feasible, I substituted hills. I found a hill which I call The Big Hill- ave 6.5% grade for 1.5 mi, about 900' climb. I rode up and down that hill multiple times on interval day.

Then I got notice that the metric century route changed due to construction on the route and now there would be 2000' of climbing. So my training just morphed into some long rides with hills and high heart rate allowed and some long slow rides at a low heart rate. In June, the I rode 250 miles or so, with 12,000' climbing at ave speed 12.0 mph. July was 375 miles, 18,000' climbing at ave speed 12.5 mph. August about 350 miles, 25,000' climbing at ave speed 13mph.

The metric century event went well. I rode it in just over 4 hours, 14.7 mph, ave cadence 80/min.

The next plan is to ride a century with about 3000' climbing next Feb. I would like to pick up some speed so I spend less total time on the bike during that event. I'd really like to complete that event with an average speed of 15mph if that's at all reasonable.

We are also sailors and will be away sailing several weekends in Sept/Oct and then will be on vacation the first two weeks Nov. So I will begin real training for the century ride in midNov, about 10 weeks before the event.

What should I do between now and midNov to get faster? I know the standard answer is intervals, and I can try to make that work again, but it's much easier where I live to ride hills. Can I substitute hills for intervals? Will I continue to get faster if I just keep doing long rides with hills or at some point does that improvement plateau out?

I work 4 days a week most weeks, so I have 3 weekend days. Two long rides (30-50+ miles) and one or two short rides (1.5-2hrs) is very doable. I've stopped riding consecutive days because I found my cycling performance is better when I do this, but I will probably need to go back to riding multiple days in a row just to get ready for the century.

BTW, I am 47 years old. Technically normal weight but honestly could stand to lose 10-15 pounds. I swim one day a week about 3/4 mi and try to make it to yoga twice a week.

Thanks for any help.

H

Carbonfiberboy 

Almost but not quite lol. You got problems we'd all like to have. "would like to go faster:" wouldn't we all.

You know, what I'd do is add base. What you get out of intervals goes away pretty fast. What you get out of base stays all your life. IOW, go for the hours on the bike. A great thing is to go out hard the first day for say 4 hours. The next day, go out easy for that same 4 hours. I mean really easy. Gear way down on the hills, below the leg strain level. Legs permitting, the next day do some cadence or one-legged pedaling drills, nothing very long. That's potentially 9 hours/week right there. A 400 hour year is good.

Heathpack 

Ha, when I first started cycling I didn't try to get faster, I just tried to go farther without getting hurt. So I was thinking how about maybe now trying to get faster and seeing what happened. But I like what I've been doing, the long rides and the hills, and I'd be perfectly happy just doing that. I do worry about riding the century at something like 12 mph and being on the bike for 10 hours, though, that seems brutal.

H

mr_pedro

It seems like you are using heart rate to determine the intensity of your training, which is fine. So what I am wondering is, do you know your Functional Threshold Heart Rate and in your training how often are you in that range and for how long?

jon c. 

You make me feel lazy. That's about what I do for a metric (with less climbing) and I'm happy just to get the distance.

aramis

You probably just need to really push yourself at this point and you'll get faster. Choose a route and time yourself over it, try to do it faster each time. Riding with other people will help, riding more and faster will help.

Multiple days riding in a row won't hurt you, it will just seem harder the second day but you can make yourself go just as fast.

Heathpack 

No, I did not even know what that is until I googled it just now. I have been using a theorectical calculated max heart rate of 178. I know that's low, though because I was passing a guy at the top of a steep hill during the metric century and my heart rate was 183. I learned this by looking later at my computer, at the time I just remember being concerned the guy ahead of me might fall over (he was struggling) and I really needed to get around him- ie I was not at the end of my functionality. So I would guess my max heart rate is something like 185, if that is possible.

Easy ride for me means keep heart rate 135-140, except up hills it drifts up somewhat depending on the hill.

Tough ride means keep heart rate 150-160.

Maybe I should do the test? I'd have to do it in the gym, I'd be afraid of riding to exhaustion on the road and then not being able to unclip (being trapped on the bike by my shoes is my cycling phobia).

H

olds cool

Pedal as high a cadence as your body can handle. 100 rpm is pretty fast in the big ring.

rumrunn6

isn't it true that AFTER you get set up with a proper road bike (not comfort bike for example), tires, basic training and a bunch of miles, that your speed is your speed and that's not really gonna change?

Carbonfiberboy 

Totally not true. My RAMROD and STP times came down substantially every year I rode them, and I already was a 5000 mile/year rider. After 6 years on our tandem, we are still getting faster. In fact the delta seems to have increased. It is said that you keep getting faster for the first 7 years. I'd say longer than that because it takes the self-coached years even to figure out how to get faster.

Carbonfiberboy 

You're doing it right. Don't worry about the century. You get enough base and you can average almost the same on a century that you do on a 50 mile ride. Maybe 1/2 mph slower. In my late 50's, I averaged 16 on RAMROD, 154 miles and 10,000'. And I'd say you have more potential than I did.

Century in Feb? What state? Do you want to do other events next year? Goals? You should consider doing the century as a training ride, not a goal ride. Just a stepping stone. I say this because winter is such a valuable time for losing weight, doing strength work, doing pedaling drills and base rides that having that as a goal isn't necessarily the best use of your winter training time.

I usually periodize my year so that I do that sort of stuff until about February. Then I start with climbing drills and hill repeats, nothing too hard. Then I do a series of long distance rides in March and April, but mostly lower HR. Then I recover from those and start my serious prep with intervals and long, hard rides in the mountains, looking to peak around the end of July.

Carbonfiberboy 

Making some further generalizations . . .

Average speed over a long ride depends on one's ability to recover. Because wind resistance increases as the square of the speed, average speed is most easily increased by increasing climbing speed. Because long rides will have multiple climbs, average climbing speed is also governed by the ability to recover between climbs. So the first thing to work on is increasing climbing speed.

On your 900' climb, the highest HR you can sustain for the last 600' without blowing up will be your functional HR or LTHR. Push it, so you know right where blow-up is. Base your zones off that. You don't really need to do a test since you have that hill to test yourself on. Next of course is to work on recovery, meaning the ability to recover between zone 4 efforts while remaining in zone 3. That's how you work your aerobic system. During a century or other long ride, you'll want to climb at ~95% or so of your LTHR, which is also where you'll want to do your training climbs to maximize recovery.

Next is strength. I do three things for strength:
High cadence drills, meaning to hold a cadence of 115 or better while staying in zone 2, meaning low resistance. Continuously, starting at 15 minutes and increasing to 45 minutes over a month, then repeat.
One-legged pedaling. 2 minutes each leg at 50-55 cadence, 2 minutes legs together zone 2 90-95 cadence, 2 minutes OLP 80-85 cadence at much lower resistance. Repeat for time as above. The low cadence gearing about the same as the legs together gearing. If you cry for your mommy, you're doing it right.
Tempo drills. 70 cadence in upper zone 3. 15-30 minute intervals with 15 minute zone 2 recovery between. When you can do an hour of Tempo at the same resistance without substantial HR drift, you are in good form. Be careful not to overreach when doing this. It's quite a strain. Once a week for 3 weeks, then a week or 2 off.
Muscle tension intervals. 10 minute intervals of steady hill climbing at 50-55 cadence, upper zone 3 - lower zone 4. Recover during descent then repeat. 2-4 intervals.

You can also do speed work on the flat: ride at 100 cadence in upper zone 3 for 1/2 hour continuous, 5 minute recovery, then repeat. Very important not to let off that cadence, so flat or small rollers. Oddly, that seems to help my climbing quite a bit.

When you do your century . . . You've probably heard people advocate to start slow. Don't do that. Go out fairly hard but not to the point of leg pain. You'll probably pass a lot of people. That's the idea. After 15-30 minutes, ease off and wait for a group of riders to go by about 2 mph faster than you're going. Latch on. After you go hard on the first couple of hills, things will get sorted out and you'll have good people to ride with.

Heathpack 

I am in Southern California. The century is in Palm Springs. It's brutally hot where I live in summer- at the end of today's ride at 10:30am, it was 97 degrees. I hadn't really considered backing off in the winter, I was really looking forward to being able to get up a little later on the weekend days. I don't really have any goals beyond the century ride. I don't like to set goals that are unrealistic, so usually I meet one goal and then see how it went, then set the next one. I was thinking if I enjoyed the century and it went well, the next logical thing would be some sort of century ride with more climbing, maybe 4000 or 5000 feet? Again, it would depend on how it went. Maybe I won't even like the century distance.

H

mr_pedro

Actually to do the test for FTHR you need to be outside as the HR will typically be much higher inside on the trainer. To do the test you go as fast as possible for 30 minutes and take the avg HR of the last 20 minutes. HR zones based of FTHR are much better then using calculated max HR.

To be faster over longer distances you need to increase your power output at the FTHR. You should look into interval training for that, key words to look for is "FTP intervalls".

Heathpack 

Ok, I just want to make sure I fully understand each part of what you've written. So I'll take it one bit at a time.

First, your comment about increasing speed climbing makes 100% sense to me, thanks for explaining it so logically. I instinctively feel like the hill climbing is key, and now I have some knowledge to support that.

Second, I will try to do the heart rate thing on Wednesday mornings ride. I'll scurry up that hill and she how high the HR goes. For the sake of further discussion for now, let's says its 185.

Third "work on recovery from the hill climb going from zone 4 to zone 3. So what exactly does this mean? You climb the hill in zone 4 but then somehow keep your heart rate up in zone 3 when descending. I'm not sure how I do that, the effort is over. Even in the big ring pedaling as fast as I can, I will probably be in HR zone 2 going downhill.

This is from today's (easy) ride:


Note the biggest of the hills is actually comprised of 4 little hills. Heart rate raises when I climb and drops when I descend. Or are you perhaps meaning something else?

Thanks so much for this help. It is a lot to take in, hopefully I don't seem too dense,

H

Heathpack 

I have somewhat started to do this- Wed at dawn I ride a 25 mi course with 1000ft climb. I discovered it 3 weeks ago and ave speed was 12.7, then 13.2 and last week 13.6. I was planning on repeating this ride weekly until I can reliably ride at at 15 mph.

This Wed I plan on tearing up the big hill as per CarbonFibers instructions. So hopefully that will make the the ride a little peppier.

H

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Carbonfiberboy 

Ah, I thought you had a single 900' climb, which would be perfect. Around here, we have one nearby 1000' climb, but mostly shorter ones like yours. So that makes it harder to get your LTHR by simply doing a long climb. You only have about 400' climbs, which you should do in 10-15 minutes, too short. OTOH, if one takes you 20', that would be perfect. You could do the 2 X 20 sticky at the top of this forum. Even 2 X 15 minutes would get you close.

By "recovering in zone 3", I meant if there are flats or rollers after your descent, keep some pressure on until the next climb. This route is just one climb after another, so you'll recover just a little on the descents and then hit it again. See what you can do. Looks like a hard course. Looking at your HR graph, you seem to have a lot of peaks around 150. If your MHR is really 185, my guess is that your LTHR is around 166, which you don't even touch. But maybe it's much lower. Anyway, the theory of climbing is that you make a constant effort. So coming into the climb, don't slam your HR up there. Go as fast as you think you'll be going at the finish of the climb and hold it. Wait for your HR to come up. If it stops coming up before you are panting like a broken steam engine, add more power. Keep doing that until you do start panting uncontrollably. That's too fast, back it off a hair until that quits.

When you breathe, breathe from your stomach. When you breathe in, it should look like you're pregnant. Fill the bottom of your lungs first, then the top. You want to completely fill your lungs every breath and do that as fast as possible as you add power until you just can't control it any more and start to pant. That's too fast, back off and note your HR. If your legs hurt, suck it up. You can't really get fast without them hurting pretty good. It's called banking the pain. You bank enough pain, you can make withdrawals against it in the future.

I'm leaving in the morning on a 10-day backpack. You have fun now, OK?

Heathpack 

Ok, so I went out last evening and did what you said. Seventeen miles, I know a short ride. Except for the initial downhill part of the ride when I was warming up, I kept it in the big ring and pedaled as fast as I could. I did not manage a 100/min cadence but was mostly at 90. A flat ride, but it was my personal best time 15.6 mph. I know that's nothing for some of y'all, but for me that was fast.

I realize now that I had been thinking a short ride was useless. But now I'm coming to understand that there is some utility in a short ride for my current purposes of trying to get faster. I'll see how it goes riding this ride as fast as possible once a week. If I can get my cadence up to 100 and keep my heart rate at 90% max, then I will try to go farther.



Thanks for the help. It's a little funny to realize that if I want to increase speed, I need to pedal faster. Seems kind of obvious now that I think about it.

H

cyclezen

no one has mentioned group riding.
sure you can focus on TT discipline, but at your current level, big gains can be made just by doing a weekly fast paced group ride. It has the same effect as motorpaced training, which was also an effective way to add speed. It's mostly depricated (motorpacing) on the street because it is dangerous and much of the same can be done in group doing strong tempo. One of the things you learn in group is how the shift points of your gearing can help keep your speed/momentum going.
You can gain in two months of wkly fast group rides what might take a yr of grinding the miles out on your own.
There are quite a few such rides within not too far a drive from where you are. Check the big shops and local clubs for info on these. A query in SOCal forum might also give some good references. Along the way you'll also develop some good bike skills.

Heathpack 

I would love to do some group rides but I don't think I'm quite there yet. Realize I've only done one ride ever in my life >15 mph and that was yesterday. Also knowing my own psychology, getting dropped 5 min into a group ride will just turn me off on group rides. I would be better off working on my own until I can at least hang in there for the duration on a group ride. Being the worst one on a group ride would not bother me, but failing to complete it would be a big deal (to me).

There are two cycling groups in our town that I am aware of. One is a pretty intense cycling group of men. Their website says their group rides are 18mph. Obviously that group's not for me. There is also a group sponsored by a local cycle shop who seem like a friendlier bunch- still pretty intense including a racing team. But that might be an option fairly soon. The one thing I really don't want to do is drive anywhere in a car. I have a pretty nightmarish commute and voluntarily hopping in a car and driving 40 min each way to join a group ride will take all the fun out of it.

I also have the phobia I mentioned up thread about getting unclipped. I have to get over that but in my defense I've only had cycle shoes for 7 weeks now. I think I rode the metric century way faster than I expected to because I don't like anyone immediately ahead of me, I'm afraid they'll stop suddenly and I won't get unclipped and I'll crash and fall over. I'm not even really that afraid of getting hurt, I just don't want to look like a doofus.

H

cyclezen

totally understand...
it's hard to tell from posts just what anyone's comfort level really is.
up here we have a very tight group of women riders, from dedicated national caliber riders to those just into the fitness thing. They really support each other, and do fairly regular rides intended to bring along those who want to step up some point of their skills and riding.
I Think this type of women's support is more common, than not.
Maybe try to hook up with similar women's groups in your area.
Totally appreciate not wanting to drive. I don't drive at all if it's not absolutely necessary. But when you do gain some further confidence and comfort in the skills side, getting some group experience goes a long way to quick improvements.
Sounds like you're having a great time on the bike. Props to you.

Heathpack 

Can you message me the name of the women's group? After saying I would not drive, Santa Barbara would not be too bad and that group sounds great. One hour by car, only 8 hours via sailboat, lol. We love Santa Barbara and are always looking for a reason to head up there.

H

aramis

Doing group rides with people above my skill level was the best thing I did for my riding. Get faster or get dropped! At first I killed myself and got left behind, now I even stick my nose in the wind every once in a while. Well I'm still not as fast as the people I go with but during the non climbing parts a much weaker rider can tag along with fast people just by sitting in. I still can't get short max power numbers by myself that I can get chasing someone down on a group ride.

If I had to do a bunch of 1 legged drills and high cadence drills and crap like that all the time I'd probably quit riding.

RiPHRaPH

Quite simply, they say if you want to ride faster in events, then you've got to ride faster in practice. When you train, say 60 miles - -> don't try and 'save' anything for later. ride as hard as you can for as long as you can. break it up into 3 x 20 mile rides. Who cares if you limp home on a training ride. You would have ridden at a greater speed (goal) and you will have gone faster than you've gone before. and on subsequent rides, faster & longer, even if for a few miles.... till you ride faster for the prescribed length.

CommuteCommando

I ride river trails and do intervals on them. The trick is to go by landmarks rather than time. These are urban and have underpasses at major streets. I often start the intervals by not shifting up going down and spinning up, then powering out of them.