Long ride to race distance ratio - latest thinking.??

Johnpsanderson

Having been out of the loop of cycling for a while - i'm now trying to get back into shape with an eye on doing some racing (10s and 25s and possibly some circuit races up to 1 hour). I am however time pressed thanks to having a young family.

What's the latest thinking on 'length of long rides vs length of race events'. In the past I didn't really have to think about this - as I was doing fairly regular club runs etc which would take me over 3 hours most weeks. But now i'm looking to fit in some training in the most time efficient way...

crikey

You can get by on not very many miles, but you need to be 100% dedicated to achieve the benefit.

Long miles are not vital, but they are extremely useful in terms of conditioning and in terms of laying down a base of fitness that you can then tweak to get good performances.

Get up earlier is the best advice I can give; I used to be out at 5:30am and get 30 miles in before work...

supermurph09

crikey wrote:

You can get by on not very many miles, but you need to be 100% dedicated to achieve the benefit.

Long miles are not vital, but they are extremely useful in terms of conditioning and in terms of laying down a base of fitness that you can then tweak to get good performances.

Get up earlier is the best advice I can give; I used to be out at 5:30am and get 30 miles in before work...

This really isn't easy with a young family, you'll more likely have time after they have gone to bed in the evening. At the end of last year I followed the 8 week Time Crunched Training Plan, the short sharp focused sessions really worked for me, I increased my FTP by 20 watts. I did 1 hour on Tuesday and Thursday, then between 90 and 120 mins saturday and sunday. This was 90% turbo but you can do road work as well.

I'd also recommend reading the 2 books from Adam Topham, they are related specifically to time trialling.

Johnpsanderson

Cheers guys - I guess my question really should have been: has there been any recent change in the thinking about how long you have to exercise for to get type 1 fibres more efficient at fuel use - I the back of my mind somewhere I've got the notion that sub 30 min sessions don't create the adaptations (the body doesn't switch to the correct fuel source to provoke the change) - and so I was wondering if there was a "there's not much point putting in an extra x number of minutes" tipping point at the other end - i.e. the last 30 mins of a 5 hour ride is no more or less beneficial in this sense than the 30 mins from 2hrs to 2hrs30...

If you see what I mean...?