Junk Miles

Pantani98

I used to think that every time I went out on the bike I was doing some good, fitness wise. But now I'm reading more and more about "junk miles" and I'm concerned that I might not be gaining anything from a lot of my rides.

I normally ride three times a week, including a ride of about 60-80 miles at the weekend. I do about seven or eight Sportives a year and my goal is to keep improving my finishing times. Generally speaking I've managed to do this, but perhaps I could be making bigger improvements.

My two midweek rides are about 90 minutes long and normally consist of me burying myself to beat personal bests on favourite routes. Is this a pointless exercise and am I guilty of putting in junk miles? Perhaps I should I be using my HRM to better effect?

Bobbinogs

Junk miles are rides of medium length during which you don't get out of your comfort zone much, if at all. If you are going out midweek and burying yourself then that is not junk miles but good training, particularly if combined with a longer ride at the w/e to get some endurance in. Better still would be to replace one of the midweek rides with some interval work, best done on a turbo but can also be done outside (just not so controllable).

Pantani98

That's encouraging, thanks for that. I was worried I'd been killing myself for nothing.

I've got a decent route with a couple of long flat sections that will be handy for interval training.

slowbike

Bobbinogs wrote:

Better still would be to replace one of the midweek rides with some interval work, best done on a turbo but can also be done outside (just not so controllable).

I can control my bike on a turbo placed outside just as well as inside ...

Although last time I did that it started raining ...

fitnesswontlie

Pantani98 wrote:

I used to think that every time I went out on the bike I was doing some good, fitness wise. But now I'm reading more and more about "junk miles" and I'm concerned that I might not be gaining anything from a lot of my rides.

I normally ride three times a week, including a ride of about 60-80 miles at the weekend. I do about seven or eight Sportives a year and my goal is to keep improving my finishing times. Generally speaking I've managed to do this, but perhaps I could be making bigger improvements.

My two midweek rides are about 90 minutes long and normally consist of me burying myself to beat personal bests on favourite routes. Is this a pointless exercise and am I guilty of putting in junk miles? Perhaps I should I be using my HRM to better effect?

Anything that gets you respiratory system going is exercise however once you become adaptable to this motion your respiratory levels decrease and your Mitochondria slows down meaning your body has accepted this tolerance and it no longer alerts the body and muscle fibers but instead just works at combating it without adding extra muscle fibers to the body (hypertrophy) and with out building up your VO2 max and so on. When you have hit a plateau anything you do within these training regimes is just maintenance, it's not necessarily junk miles and lately I see the junk mile band wagon has been out and a few people using it in their speeches but instead your maintaining your existing performance and fitness levels without improving them. But certainly not junk miles as with every ride even decreasing in training your muscle fibers build a maturity to your training and each fiber becomes stronger and more robust to that motion in which it is used. Thats why most older guys in pro cycling still do well and dont fall away like other sports because their muscle maturity level is high.

Only junk miles i can think of would be to train on no energy and you body uses it's white muscle tissue as it's supply of energy and increases your bodies cortisol levels (Stress Hormones) which also feed off white tissues meaning a decrease in good body tissue.

From what you have said though I think your doing fine and your body will be benefiting from what you do. Good luck

danlikesbikes

Bobbinogs wrote:

Junk miles are rides of medium length during which you don't get out of your comfort zone much, if at all. If you are going out midweek and burying yourself then that is not junk miles but good training, particularly if combined with a longer ride at the w/e to get some endurance in. Better still would be to replace one of the midweek rides with some interval work, best done on a turbo but can also be done outside (just not so controllable).

^-^ Totally agree with this.

Doesn't sound like your doing junk miles if your working that hard in your midweek rides.

As others have suggested you could always build in an element of intervals into one of your rides so your learning to rider harder/faster and getting your body used to multiple sessions of recovery.

Guess it also depends on the types of terrain your on & any specific weaknesses you think you have. For me the intervals helped a lot, but also hard efforts of hill repeats also helped. I live in rolling countryside but found training on 1 steeper hill and learning to ride it hard in repeated efforts really helped me get comfortable in getting the power down over the rolling stuff.

Pantani98

I really appreciate everyones comments on this. The junk mile bandwagon had me seriously questioning my efforts. I also live in an area of rolling countryside so most of my rides include a fair bit of hill work and this definitely takes me out of my comfort zone.

I know average heart rate doesn't mean much on its own but last nights 30 mile ride was done at 84% of my max. Given what's been said here I feel reassured that this was 90 mins well spent.

I've just signed up to Motivo. I think I'll adopt one of their training plans to add a bit of structure to my rides.

danlikesbikes

There were a few pieces in the cycling & tri press about junk miles which were good if taken in context.

Think what they were getting at is a club run at an average speed where you are not pushing yourself whilst might do you some good is no where near as good as a structured training ride.

TBH sounds like your right on track with what your doing & as for HRM your right it is a bit old school but still a good tool to use. I use mine on the bike & run :-)

diy

If you have a HR monitor, or better still one integrated to a gps/speedo then try to build in at least 3 interval at zone 5 (90% of max) as part of the 90 mins.

I've actually reduced the amount of distance I do, on training rides to concentrate on maxing out at least 3 times a lap. I used to do 4-5 laps (approx 10 miles a lap) of my route, now I am doing 2-3, but trying to max out on each lap at least for 2-3 mins at max or 10 mins at 90%. Its very hard, but it does massively improve your ability.

I used to just go out and do 40 miles on the MTB off road and think I was a hero. I'm going to be really interested to know how all this short distance road sprinting is going to help the summer's MTB enduro season.