How can I use my 60-90mins most effectively?

Thigh_burn

I try to do one longer ride 2.5-3hrs at the weekends, and a shorter ride mid-week of 60-90mins before work. Currently I do a loop I know and just try to get a bit faster each time but wondering if I can train a bit smarter.

I'm after some advice from more experienced riders of how I can use my time most effectively to improve my riding. I'm not racing and unlikely to be, I just want to be better.

In the grand scheme of things I'm pretty inexperienced - only been riding intensively for a year or so.

My climbing is appalling and I was thinking I could do a series of hill repeats. Sounds like hell to me, but maybe I should aim for this by increasing my frequency up (and down) a given hill over a series of weeks.

Really interested in views.

Finally, I've never done any of the heart zone tests. Should I? thanks

keef66

If climbing is your weakness, hill repeats sound a good way of improving that aspect of your riding and give you a good cardio workout. Also sounds boring though. I do something more interesting by creating routes to take in a lot of different hills. I'm still crap at climbing though.

(I should point out that I am in no way qualified to dispense advice on training, but when did that stop anybody on the internet?)

HTH

imafatman

Have you tried high intensity intervals? I have found these a massive help to my fitness. I don't get scientific about it, I just accelerate as fast as I possibly can for as long as I can and then when I feel like I can't take it anymore I take a couple of minutes to recover and then repeat.

torino

Do some intervals...

Examples:

20 mins warm-up, 5x (5 mins strong + 3 mins light), 15 mins cool-down

20 mins warm-up, 10x (1 min very strong + 2 mins light), 15 mins cool-down

Adapt as needed depending on the available time and terrain (sometimes it is not possible to do strong interval in an area with a lot of traffic for example).

The effort level should be such that after the last interval you are pretty much wasted, but you were able to do from the first to the last interval at more or less the same effort (i.e, you don't do the first one crazy strong and then suffer until the last one).

I'm also not qualified, but I trained a couple of years under guidance of a pro, and cycling training was basically these type of intervals (5/3 and 2/1). And of course the long long ride in the weekends. My cycling improved a lot.

This is just experience based. There are probably many here that could offer much more scientific advice than I can.

bobmcstuff

RPE (relative perceived exertion) will be fine for riding on the road and getting a bit of structure in. torino's intervals sound reasonable. If you look at any training plan (I've used the time crunched cyclist, Sufferfest videos and now TrainerRoad) they all basically use a mixture of those things, some longer intervals especially at the lower intensities but the principle holds.

You haven't mentioned your weight but if you've got any excess, shifting a few kg will be a big help on the hills. In terms of power, while hill reps are good in that going uphill tends to help you push harder (or it does me), hard intervals on any terrain will help.

I've got a route from work which is 33km with ~400m elevation across 2 climbs (160m and 125m, then rollers to make up the rest), which I find much more enjoyable than doing reps, even though if I just repped the first hill I would get more elevation in the same length ride.

Other thing is your description sounds like you're doing 1x longer ride and 1x 60-90mins ride, if you can add in one or two more rides that's probably going to have the biggest impact!

Midlands Grimpeur

Personally I wouldn't bother with intervals at the moment, you aren't really riding enough to get much benefit. I would do a 60-90 minute tempo ride. As you don't ride to HR yet should be a hard pace where you can just about speak in (broken) sentences. This should improve aerobic fitness and help make you a little faster. Those fitness gains will also help make anaerobic efforts (intervals etc.) a little easier in future.

pastryboy

Can you fit in more rides per week? Hard to improve with so little time on the bike.

LimitedGarry

How to best spend up to 90 minutes? Fasted rides. Get up, get dressed, drink plenty, do not eat anything and go ride.

Imho the best thing you can do for yourself in such a short time is some climbing and fast paced riding. For example, hit a short but steep hill right at the start, no warm-up. Haul ass up. Really, unless it's an "damn I'm gonna die" kinda hill, just hurry up and get yourself nearly out of breath. Once done climbing, do not allow yourself a full recovery, just get into a fast enough tempo to really want to slow down and rest, but do not push hard enough to need to slow down and rest. You'll find that you're not really going that fast. That hill at the beginning hits you hard and you can carry it for good 10-20 minutes, even longer if you're not used to it. Then get a bit of rest while riding at a slow pace. In the meantime, find yourself a few km long strip of pathway on which you will not have to stop and that gets you close to home. Then get 20-30 minutes of really fast riding. After the terror that you started the ride with, this will be a very pleasant part of your ride - the speed and elevated effort will make you feel really good.
Not very scientific but if you have some experience with what kinds of efforts you can put up for how long, you don't really need heart rate monitors to have a short but demanding ride in the morning.

Get home, make sure to drink plenty and have food shortly after the ride. Like preferably within an hour, even if you don't feel very hungry. This is literally the best time of the day to eat.
Personally, I get a shower, blast myself with a bit of cold water and go straight for the kitchen, even if it means being 30 minutes late for work (they're used to it by now).

And on the longer rides, try to make each ride involve a long climb. Or a series of shorter steep climbs. Or whatever. Just climb. If you don't have much time to dedicate to the bike, climbing is probably the best thing to concentrate on. A lot of decent riders I know ride maybe twice a week at best during main season and they all do climbs on literally every ride.

bobmcstuff

I'm not sure full gas efforts up hill with no warmup are an especially good idea...

LimitedGarry

bobmcstuff wrote:

I'm not sure full gas efforts up hill with no warmup are an especially good idea...

For a long ride, absolutely not. For 60-90 minute effort, it doesn't matter at all. You'll be home long before you burn out. And since it's such a short time, fatigue isn't a problem either. Unless you have a physically demanding job, that is.
The point is, that on such a short ride, efficiency is absolutely not a concern.

Alex_Simmons/RST

Thigh_burn wrote:

I try to do one longer ride 2.5-3hrs at the weekends, and a shorter ride mid-week of 60-90mins before work. Currently I do a loop I know and just try to get a bit faster each time but wondering if I can train a bit smarter.

I'm after some advice from more experienced riders of how I can use my time most effectively to improve my riding. I'm not racing and unlikely to be, I just want to be better.

In the grand scheme of things I'm pretty inexperienced - only been riding intensively for a year or so.

My climbing is appalling and I was thinking I could do a series of hill repeats. Sounds like hell to me, but maybe I should aim for this by increasing my frequency up (and down) a given hill over a series of weeks.

Really interested in views.

Finally, I've never done any of the heart zone tests. Should I? thanks

Your statements are too vague really, and there is no real goal stated. "I just want to be better". At what?

If you mean general cycling fitness then it's fairly simple for people that are relatively new. Progressively increase your cycling workload, by a combination of:
1. riding more frequently (work up to 4-6 days/week)
2. riding more hours per week but do so gradually (e.g. add 15-min/week for 2-3 months) and in a manner that maintains enjoyment for you, and
3. introducing some higher intensity into the mix but don't do intervals or structured work if you don't enjoy it. Hill rides provide natural intervals and riding with others can be good motivation for riding harder but it's also a doubled edged sword, depends on the group.

Essentially, just ride more and make sure you enjoy it.

If you still love it after doing the above then perhaps you might consider some more specific riding goals.

torino

bobmcstuff wrote:

I'm not sure full gas efforts up hill with no warmup are an especially good idea...

+1

I would never do that. Full gas effort without proper warmup is to ask for muscular injuries.

bobmcstuff

torino wrote:

bobmcstuff wrote:

I'm not sure full gas efforts up hill with no warmup are an especially good idea...

+1

I would never do that. Full gas effort without proper warmup is to ask for muscular injuries.

It was more that my full gas effort from cold is going to be substantially worse than my full gas effort when I've had a decent warmup.

Say hypothetically I can do 320 watts for 3 minutes after a warmup, but only 280 watts if I do it from cold, I assume that the training benefit of the effort is going to be reduced.

Thigh_burn

Thanks all for some very helpful tips - give or take there's a fair amount of commonality in the advice - starting with ride more, which is entirely reasonable. I'm going to take that on board definitely, will also focus on the intervals and hill repeats (with warm up ).

And for the advice above re weight - that is definitely an issue for me and something I'm very focused on losing - it's one of the reasons for focusing on my cycling. Thanks all for the very helpful advice.

keef66

Diet for weight loss, exercise for fitness. You can of course do both.

If you rely solely on exercise for weight loss you need to do an awful lot of it, and the sudden increase in energy demand can mean you start eating more to compensate. Been there, done that...

bobmcstuff

Yes as above diet is the most important factor in weight loss. I like to use the carrot that losing weight will make me faster up hills, it makes for good motivation.

Thigh_burn

Don't worry, I know that only too well re nutrition for weight loss. Cycling and strength and conditioning is my way of staying healthy as well as lighter.

LimitedGarry

Injury prevention is down to stretching. You can do that at home. In fact, you should do it at home every day.

Are you really going to spend 30 minutes warming up if you have only 60 minutes for riding in total, just for the sake of seeing a higher number on your gadget?

bobmcstuff

Who said anything about a 30 minute warmup?

And it's not a case of seeing a higher number on your gadget (I don't even have a powermeter on my road bike) - doing an effort at 320 watts is better for my training than the same interval at 280 watts - simple. Doing a (sensible) warmup means I will be able to train more effectively during the time that is available.

I can't imagine any serious coach advising that.

LimitedGarry

In that case you're talking about stretching. A proper warmup takes 20 minutes at the very least and your metabolism will reach the efficient burning regime after maybe 40 minutes IIRC.

The point of the exercise isn't to get to the top as fast as you can, the point is to teach your body to recover at an elevated effort and shorten the recovery time from that climb. That's the weakness of most riders - get to the top of a climb and instead of gaining speed immediately, they have to keep going at the same speed and rest.

bobmcstuff

Best get on the blower to TrainerRoad, Sufferfest, Zwift, probably also BC and all the other people who publish workouts to let them know that all their time crunched workouts are totally wrong and they should be going full gas from the start.