Road Fan

I've started to ride again! last year this time I was FTE working my butt off, and in early Feb I fell and broke my wrist. After a few months off of work I want back and they had a job for me but there wasn't much to it. Being just about 65 I decided to leave, finish my recovery at home getting used to new life opportunities, and again did not ride much through the summer. It was also ungodly hot and I needed trial and error time to find what are my "old fart" bike fitting requirements. In early Fall I could set up a saddle for a 10mile local ride and had occasionally done 20 and 30 mile loops out on Huron River Drive (the Ann Arbor classic ride), and even found I had some climbing chops returning. Then a month in Germany for conferences and technical contact-making, prep for setting up my own business. Now my goal is to ride the Coppi Centenario next September, organized by Robbie Tunes and iab, 60 miles in central Wisconsin rolling hills. So I need to grow from say 5 miles in nearby Ann Arbor to 100 km with 4000 ft climbing in 8 months. There's enough time in there to do a proper base training phase. If I can finish the ride with a minimum of lactate and maybe 10 mph average I'll be happy.

So, what to do? I paged back in the Forum to when there was a lot of talk about Polarized Training (2014), presented by Stephen Seilor. Most of the primary sources linked in BF are now dead links, but one poster said there is a discussion on Slow Twitch. Short part of the story is, our Carbonfiberboy has done his training under that and similar regimes for quite a while and claims it is similar to the advice given in Chappell's Base Training for Cyclists So my plan now is to read Chappell and make a plan on that basis. As I work through it I'll start on some generic training I'll call "pre-base." for the first week starting today I'll start with 30 minutes per day at a trainer pace based on max 120 bpm. Sounds wimpy, but I have to let my whole body warm up into it. In addition I'm restarting weekly yoga lessons and I'll do asanas focused on isometric body weight support (Warriors, Chair, perhaps Sarvangasana shoulder stand) to start rebuilding my lower body strength.

I'll let Chappell be my guide as to adding intervals or HIIT based on my progress, with dialogue here, too.

One intermediate goal will be to match Mrs. Road Fan's speed on our 30 mile Huron River route.

Me: 65 years old, 5'6", 204#.
MRHR upon waking ranges from 52 to a rare 70, when I really have not slept enough.

bruce19

Me: 72 years old, 5' 9" and 189 lbs. Have lost 5 lbs since mid-November just going low carb. Not keto.

I've been on a low carb diet and go to the gym to do moderate lifting every other day. But, I've been lazy as hell about starting cardio. Going to start riding my rollers today or tomorrow. Gotta get my butt in gear. I will check out that Chappell video. Thanks.

Road Fan

Just want to say, the Chappell piece I'm reading is a book, not a video.

Fatikngage

hmm

Road Fan

Problem? And, my bad, it's Chapple, not Chappell.

fstrnu

Within the time you have available, aim to achieve a cardiac drift of 5-10%. For me, a 1x120 ride at aerobic threshold will accomplish this but if I don't have 120 minutes then a 90 minute Tempo ride will also produce a cardiac drift of 5-10%.

Road Fan

Why? What does this demonstrate?

Seattle Forrest

... proficiency in math?

I like doing 13x73s at the cube root of the unladen speed of an African swallow.

Carbonfiberboy 

Quite. I don't regard cardiac drift as a goal. Quite the contrary. Interestingly, I don't have an outdoors which would permit a 2 hour ride at ventilatory threshold. 3 minutes? So rides like that I do on my rollers and limit myself to 80 minutes of concentration on a very small world. At the end of about 6 weeks of decent training, I'm down to about 4 beats of drift after an hour at VT1, so that's (bringing up my calculator) uh, 3.3%. Goal is zero of course, but that's not going ot happen. I do watch it because it is a good indicator of aerobic fitness. It was 8.5% (there's that calculator again) 6 weeks ago, same workout.

rubiksoval

fstrnu

It doesn't demonstrate. It regulates.

Road Fan

I'm glad somebody around here has the math chops to deal with intervals specified in prime numbers.