Regaining fitness after injury (especially speed)
dynamokev
Posts: 38
I broke my collarbone over Christmas and was off the bike for around 7-8 weeks and only able to walk by way of exercise. Started again towards the end of Feb and fitness has steadily returned. The endurance is certainly there as I've managed fairly hilly (just under 6,000ft climbing) 80 mile rides over the last couple of weekends and felt reasonably strong at the end.
However, there doesn't seem to be much sign of speed returning. I was regularly doing 40mile+ rides during the week and longer at weekends with an average speed at or around 18mph (in December). I can just about manage 17mph now - admittedly not helped by the very cold mornings still lingering but they're no worse than anything over winter. I've lost the weight I had put on (now around 61kg and 5'11") so was hoping for a gradual increase in speed, especially on climbs (it's returned a bit but nothing like where I was)
I'm aware it can take as long to get fitness back and lose it, and I'm about 8 weeks after starting again. Does speed just take a bit longer to return or do I need to do something specific to enable this? I generally just do rides of around 40 miles each morning Mon-Thurs and a longer one (currently up to 80 miles) at the weekend at a hard but not unsustainable effort. No intervals as such, but there's plenty of hills and undulations which I generally attack fairly hard anyway. I don't have a power meter and have no idea about FTP etc.
If anyone has previous similar experience or advice it would be gratefully received!
However, there doesn't seem to be much sign of speed returning. I was regularly doing 40mile+ rides during the week and longer at weekends with an average speed at or around 18mph (in December). I can just about manage 17mph now - admittedly not helped by the very cold mornings still lingering but they're no worse than anything over winter. I've lost the weight I had put on (now around 61kg and 5'11") so was hoping for a gradual increase in speed, especially on climbs (it's returned a bit but nothing like where I was)
I'm aware it can take as long to get fitness back and lose it, and I'm about 8 weeks after starting again. Does speed just take a bit longer to return or do I need to do something specific to enable this? I generally just do rides of around 40 miles each morning Mon-Thurs and a longer one (currently up to 80 miles) at the weekend at a hard but not unsustainable effort. No intervals as such, but there's plenty of hills and undulations which I generally attack fairly hard anyway. I don't have a power meter and have no idea about FTP etc.
If anyone has previous similar experience or advice it would be gratefully received!
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Comments
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You don’t get faster by just doing longish endurance rides. You need to do some shorter faster rides.1
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Dynamo?
As in London?.The camera down the willy isn't anything like as bad as it sounds.
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