How to best improve fitness

philmess

Looking for a little help here, I generally try to ride 3 times a week, More difficult with dark Evenings but here goes, normally do two week day evening rides of 15 to 25 miles and a weekend ride of 40 to 50 miles. On a 15 to 20 I can ave 17 to 18 mph, 25 miles drops to 16 to 17 ave mph longer rides of 40+ I lose a lot of ave mph on the last 10 / 15 miles when legs are tired. My question is; which is best for increasing general fitness? shorter fast rides with a higher pedal speed or longer tiring rides ?

NewTTer

Try to ride more, either further on each of your current rides or more often, preferably both. If however you have, like most of us time constraints, push harder on the rides you are currently doing, look to introduce some interval training into your current rides. Plenty of info regarding intervals available on the net from many a learned source.

Wrath Rob

It looks like you're spending the right amount of time in the saddle so it probably comes down to what you're doing on those rides. You can make the rides more effective by focusing on a particular goal for the ride. E.g. for the shorter rides you might want to do 20 mins hard effort, have a 10 min break and then another 20 mins hard effort. Add a warm up and a cool down and you'll be out for just over an hour. For the longer rides, you might want to work on "sweetspot" training.

If you're serious then do some searching about training with a heart rate monitor and heart rate training zones. This will help you structure your workouts to get the most out of them.

If your really serious then by a book like The Cyclists Training Bible and ignore the gumpf that random people like me spout on the internet

If you're really, really serious then get a coach and a power meter. But that costs a lot more.

IWearSpandex

I think Wrath Rob said it well, I'm just adding on here.

From my experience, you need to add interval training in order to build speed and power. I use intervals mostly in my winter/off-season training, because I can do shorter, more focused rides on my bike trainer in the garage. It's tough to ride long distances on the trainer, so intervals work best for me. I use intervals on my outdoor rides as well, but not as frequently as indoor rides.

I have used the heart rate monitor in the past for training. I still use it for my outdoor rides. But the best measuring device I use now is something called "perceived effort." Use a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest effort and 10 is the highest effort. A 1 would be very easy pedaling, almost no effort and a 10 would be so intense that you can't talk and can only focus on breathing.

For interval training, I push myself up to the high levels (8 - 10) for as long as possible. At the start of the off-season, I might do 5 sets at 1 minute on and 2 minutes off, for a short ride. Then I will work up to high intensity efforts of 4 sets at 5+ minutes on and 5 minutes off. I do short rides and then just do interval work more frequently if I want to increase performance. So by the end of the off-season, I might do up to 3 interval sessions per week.

For those high intensity efforts, you are pushing well above your regular average speed and you are going so hard that you can't talk and just focus on breathing and pushing hard...going into the "pain cave." You don't need to do long rides here. You will see results quickly with interval training.

That is the best way I know to improve performance without spending a lot of money on devices or coaches. And like I said, Wrath Rob had some great points, especially about how to escalate your training based on what you want to get out of it.

Good luck and I hope this helps you improve your average speed, especially over the longer distances.

-Brian
I Wear Spandex
http://www.iwearspandex.com

markos1963

Your riding frequency is nowhere near enough to see a significant improvement. You need to ride five times a week for at least three weeks in a row before a rest week. Can you commute or add a ride as part of your commute?(park an hour away from work and ride the rest) I found that riding an hour each way to work and then doing my club ride at the weekend has had a profound improvement in my riding. I ride at on or around my threashold level on the way in and then returning at recovery is working well for me. The weekend ride is done at my base endurance level.

pheez

With 3 days a week I would concentrate on intensity as you have enough time to recover between sessions. You need a combination of the shorter intense rides and longer rides to enable you to firstly make you faster and secondly give you the endurance to hold the speed over a longer duration.

As mentioned for the shorter rides Intervals between 30secs to 5 mins and the longer rides try and do some longer intervals or hold a good steady state.

bigmonka

pheez wrote:

As mentioned for the shorter rides Intervals between 30secs to 5 mins and the longer rides try and do some longer intervals or hold a good steady state.

Hope it's ok to chip in. When you say hold a good steady state do you mean speed, cadence, or effort (or are these the same? I'm a bit of a newb).

IWearSpandex

BigMonka, you want to aim for a steady state effort, for those long intervals or sections of a long ride. Speed and cadence can vary, but if you tell yourself that you are riding the next 10 minutes at an intensity of 7 (on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest effort), you can keep that effort consistent. That's why they call it "steady state."

For cadence, you will find that a narrow range will feel comfortable to you. Many people will tell you that a higher cadence is the best. Yes, high cadence is the most efficient, but it may not be comfortable for you. Many people recommend a cadence range in the high 90s or 100s rpm. My comfortable range is at about 92 to 95 rpm, and sometimes lower.

Go watch the Tour de France from the mid-'90s and you will see big gears being mashed at low cadences, even for climbs. Then look at the riders of today and you will see cadences at 110 and even higher. So that is where the high cadence advice of today comes from for us recreational riders. Good advice because it is more efficient, but find your own comfort zone.

Hope that helps.

-Brian
I Wear Spandex
http://www.iwearspandex.com