Beginner base miles

jnobles01

I keep reading that a beginner need to put in some seat time before moving on to other things. What is this mileage and are you using time, distance, cadence, HR. What is the best way to accomplish this.

imposter2.0

What other things do you want to move onto and what are your ambitions for 2014? How much riding have you already done?

PerformingMonkey

Just ride the bike as much as possible and try and enjoy it...

I wouldn't worry too much about HR and cadence (or the kit to measure), just try and get some miles under your belt. Learn what type of riding ("other things") you want to do before doing anything too targeted.

Find some hills!

markhewitt1978

jnobles01 wrote:

I keep reading that a beginner need to put in some seat time before moving on to other things. What is this mileage and are you using time, distance, cadence, HR. What is the best way to accomplish this.

Keep riding your bike until you can ride 30 miles on a regular basis, then 50 miles on a regular basis, then 62 miles (100km) on a regular basis, doesn't matter about speed at this point.

Then come back here and ask for more advice.

Tom Dean

You don't 'need' to train a certain way - the point is that as a beginner you will likely make good fitness gains by simply riding more - make the most of it! When you start to plateau you can add some structure.

OverTheHillAt21

markhewitt1978 wrote:

jnobles01 wrote:

I keep reading that a beginner need to put in some seat time before moving on to other things. What is this mileage and are you using time, distance, cadence, HR. What is the best way to accomplish this.

Keep riding your bike until you can ride 30 miles on a regular basis, then 50 miles on a regular basis, then 62 miles (100km) on a regular basis, doesn't matter about speed at this point.

Then come back here and ask for more advice.

Supposing the aim is to ride a good 10M TT and race no further, do you still think those lengths of ride are needed in the base phase? And what does 'regular basis' mean, like several times a week or just on a Sunday (regularly )

bahzob

OverTheHillAt21 wrote:

Supposing the aim is to ride a good 10M TT and race no further, do you still think those lengths of ride are needed in the base phase? And what does 'regular basis' mean, like several times a week or just on a Sunday (regularly )

The straight answer to question 1 is no, if your goal is not endurance you probably won't get any significant advantage from doing a 5 hour ride as opposed to a 3 hour one. Indeed if you do the 3 hour one at a faster pace it may well yield more benefit.

Regards your second question. If you are training relatively seriously you don't really want to have 2 consecutive days of doing nothing regularly unless you are recovering from some really tough efforts. If you only train once per week then you won't gain much in terms of fitness (compared to your potential) and will very likely plateau quite early.

Doing something doesn't have to be a long ride, a short session of 45 minutes doing hard short intervals is enough.

One piece of advice for all beginners, get a good bike fitting. It will make the long rides more comfortable and help get more training benefit from doing them.

ianbar

get out as often as you can but generally stay consistent i too am looking to take part in 10m TT's next season but the only main target training at this point will be my turbo sessions, plus targeting some 10m strava segments while i am out.

OverTheHillAt21

bahzob, sorry I thought we were talking about the weekly long ride you might do at the weekend rather than the daily medium length one. I wasn't suggesting only training once a week! I currently ride about 5 days a week and one day I just twiddle to the park and do a run on grass. But with the shortening daylight hours I can only really manage a multi-hour ride at the weekend, don't fancy dark roads much. I do have both a canal and river bank path that I do in the dark but tend to need the mtb for that due to the surfaces. So its about 1-1.5h on the daily ride and my best long ride is about 3h so far. As it gets darker I think more of the weekday rides will have to be on the mtb.

slowbike

OverTheHillAt21 wrote:

As it gets darker I think more of the weekday rides will have to be on the mtb.

I doubt the type of bike will make any difference ...
At our level it is basically the more you ride the better/faster you will become...

gryfon23

It is good to build a solid base a low intensity. This will help reduce injuries or other problems when you need to crank it up for 10M TT training in the future.

bahzob

OverTheHillAt21 wrote:

bahzob, sorry I thought we were talking about the weekly long ride you might do at the weekend rather than the daily medium length one. I wasn't suggesting only training once a week! I currently ride about 5 days a week and one day I just twiddle to the park and do a run on grass. But with the shortening daylight hours I can only really manage a multi-hour ride at the weekend, don't fancy dark roads much. I do have both a canal and river bank path that I do in the dark but tend to need the mtb for that due to the surfaces. So its about 1-1.5h on the daily ride and my best long ride is about 3h so far. As it gets darker I think more of the weekday rides will have to be on the mtb.

kk crossed wire there. Another option for the winter is a turbo trainer. Apart from avoiding the roads turbos provide the highest ratio in terms of training value vs time spent.

Every minute usefully contributes towards training and you can focus 100% on nailing efforts without the interruptions/distractions of traffic.

Also if you are planning to use a TT bike or bars turbos provide much the safest/best way to get used to the new position.

bahzob

gryfon23 wrote:

It is good to build a solid base a low intensity. This will help reduce injuries or other problems when you need to crank it up for 10M TT training in the future.

Sorry but I am afraid I do not agree. Its very hard to injure yourself while actually on a bike, that's why its such a good form of exercise. Falling off a bike is ofc another matter.

If you do have problems it will be down to bike fit and, as already suggested, the best advice on this is get yourself properly fitted. If you don't do this then riding at low intensity won't necessarily help. When you up the power you will most likely find issues anyway.

And just to reiterate, if your goal is events of less than an hour or so, you will likely get more benefit from riding 2-3 hours as fast as you can as opposed to 3-5 hours slow.

OverTheHillAt21

bahzob wrote:

OverTheHillAt21 wrote:

bahzob, sorry I thought we were talking about the weekly long ride you might do at the weekend rather than the daily medium length one. I wasn't suggesting only training once a week! I currently ride about 5 days a week and one day I just twiddle to the park and do a run on grass. But with the shortening daylight hours I can only really manage a multi-hour ride at the weekend, don't fancy dark roads much. I do have both a canal and river bank path that I do in the dark but tend to need the mtb for that due to the surfaces. So its about 1-1.5h on the daily ride and my best long ride is about 3h so far. As it gets darker I think more of the weekday rides will have to be on the mtb.

kk crossed wire there. Another option for the winter is a turbo trainer. Apart from avoiding the roads turbos provide the highest ratio in terms of training value vs time spent.

Every minute usefully contributes towards training and you can focus 100% on nailing efforts without the interruptions/distractions of traffic.

Also if you are planning to use a TT bike or bars turbos provide much the safest/best way to get used to the new position.

I think some people are better than others at coping with the tedium of turbo trainers and treadmills, I go mad if I'm on one! I live about a mile from the Forth and Clyde canal so I treat that as my turbo trainer, with just the occasional encounter with a dog off a lead to keep me awake and alert. But I wouldn't take my new road bike on it hence dropping back to my decrepit mtb.

The point about trying out new TT equipment is a good one though, living in the middle of a big city and not having a car, not sure where I would go outside to try it out, probably have to go out at 5 in the morning...

bahzob

Fair enough, over the years I have fallen in and out of love with turbos. Low turbo point was having to thaw frozen water bottles in the garage before starting. Moving turbo indoors and Spotify has firmly put me in the turbo camp now. GL with your training.