General fitness, how long until it faids?

wollow007

Hi Guy's

I have only been back in the saddle since September last year and I have this year completed a couple of charity rides and races. I have more booked for the year and have worked pretty hard to get my fitness up. I am at a stage where I am fine with climbs and descents, can get around the 'Y Wall' route at Afan without to much of a struggle and managed 6 laps at CLIC24 which was my first event (10 mile laps).

My question is, work has accelerated over the last month and i'm finding afternoons or night rides are dropping due to me being tired from work. At the weekend I always ride on Saturdays over at Swinley forest and make sure I push hard towards the end of the ride to challenge my legs and cardio.

If I do little cycling during the week will I lose ground gained over the last 7-8 months of training, at the beginning it was like once a week but over the last 4 months its been more like 2-3 times a week. I have been pushing bigger climbs, events and mileage at the weekends but wonder if not doing much during weekdays will kill off muscle or cardio gained?

My work is in engineering so I'm pretty active during the week, not just sitting around so I just hope I will be OK?

bob4026

Depends on your age mate. Along with your fitness level it is a major factor.

I'm 45 and it takes ages for me to get to the stage where i can ride/run with relative ease. If i have a period of say 4 weeks with no or little exercise, my fitness drops off drastically and takes ages to get back to the same level.

At 25 i could take weeks off and get back in the saddle and be still "on it".

Remember tho that when you're tired is when you should be riding/training. It's a vicious circle. Tiredness stops you training but you just get even more tired because your not training.

Hope this helps.

u05harrisb

for me as far as fitness drop out goes one week off is fine and im generally back faster. 2 weeks off and come back below what i was but quickly bring it back up after acouple club rides. 3+ weeks and i start to push it and feel that i am getting more "off the mark" but still by no means unfit or slow just struggling to lead the sprints or hills on our club runs but generally after the 3-4 week mark it will take about 1.5 weeks to get back to where i was.

mabye if your runiing out of time try doing little but often. dependant apon your displine, im assuming MTB. i would go out and do some road miles soem local bridleways etc. not sure what sorta miles your doing now but i tend to, if im in the same situation, do somthing like 30% of my normal sunday type ride. try to fit them in as substitutes for the other 1-2 rides you have been doing and just so it at a faster pace baring in mind length.

hope that helps bud and good luck!

diy

I think you do build up a bit of a base, so can recover quicker than starting from scratch. I would look to supplement the riding with a bit muscle training. You can't get proper fit just from cycling.

My routine is similar to yours, I will do a couple of 1-2 hour sprints in the evening during the week and then a 4 hour ride at the weekend. I'm doing the Southdowns way (100 miles) at the end of month, and am riding devils dyke to eastbourne and back this weekend (about 70 miles), just to gauge my fitness. Though there is not much I can do to fix it this late.

If time is the constraint, my advice is to find a couple of 1-2 hour challenging rides, that you can try to sprint. If you don't have a HR monitor get one, its the best way of finding out if you are training hard or not.