Topic Title

As far as I know there's no magic painless path to race fitness, although if anyone knows different then post on here!

Well, the needles only hurt a little bit......

I want the fun path to race fitness, and that I believe is intervals on the road. If I was confined to the turbo I think I'd scrap trying to get fit, I rekon I'm pretty race fit already tho, as in, I think I could hold on to a fast group, I'm almost back up to my performance of last year, just need to do some mega hilly stuff and eat more meat.

Surely there must be some decent standard (Cat 1/2/3) training rides in the Manchester area you can get involved with Will?

Surely there must be some decent standard (Cat 1/2/3) training rides in the Manchester area you can get involved with Will?

There is one setting off fro the velodrome, I might try get to it on Saturday, apparently they're ramping it up on Saturday.

the Wheelers to intro chaingangs. Last chaingang I went on was last year and they said I was doing ok keeping up with some people who are Cat 2.

I think the first time I race will be in Yorkshire, I don't want it to be in the Manchester area.

Well since I got my turbo I've only used it once, but I found a place with a turbo, watt meter and all that so been doing that, 10 mile on tuesday, 15 on wed, 12 on thur, 15 on friday, 70mile chaingang on sat, 100mile hilly on sun.

The turbo sessions really help, despite being told wattage does not matter I can't help but put a dig in and see what I can get up to, so far I've managed 901W peak but it's bound to go up, I can hold 600W for only around 10 seconds though. I love the stats.

Hi Will

I love stats too, but (as per contents of this thread) you'll get more out of your sessions on the turbo if you have some structure and purpose to them - and the purpose shouldn't be to just see what are the biggest numbers you can crank out. Check out http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2305428 if you haven't already.

This may sound a silly question, but I can't help wondering.

I don't know if it's a good or bad sign.

But basically, for the last 3-4 weeks I've being doing racing/ chaingang on the Saturday and a hilly ride on the sunday, then 3 sessions on trainer on tue, wed, thur, tue will be chaingang soon. Now after each of these 3 sessions, my legs ached abit until the morning, same after the rides at the weekend, but like tonight, I gave it a good thrashing on the turbo, Sunday I also pushed hard, and Saturday I did in the race, we averaged nearly 25mph over 31 miles which was tough for me.

Anyway, my legs aint aching that much any more, since like the middle of last week, they just feel a little stiff/tight until the morning after and feel totally normal again, on Monday and Friday my recovery day has a 30min spin on the turbo not going over 130bpm.

And I was wondering if on my recovery days I should actually not even do a steady 30min spin on the turbo as it might be hampering my legs ability to recover and repair the muscles?

Or am I just worrying over nothing and it's probably a good sign? I know on Sunday my hill performance shown signs of improving as I was flying up the hills until I was forced into the big ring for the rest of em due to an error I made which bent my front mech.

Thanks
Will.

Half an hour on the turbo at a low HR isn't going to do any harm to your recovery; not sure it'll do too much of benefit either tho. Might be good for the soul just to give yourself a day or two a week well clear of a bike saddle - five days on the trot on the turbo is a bit serious. Why not just do an hour's recovery ride if it's sunny, and otherwise just put your feet up and enjoy life outside of cycling? If you're generally not feeling fatigued, sounds like you've got the overall workload about right.

Well 3 days a week I'm on a computrainer, that trys to simulate climbs and all that and got a big projector so I don't mind that, from next week I'm going to be doing a Tuesday night chaingang and then 2 days on the turbo, but I think what I will do is rotate week in, week out, with Tuesday night chaingang and a 70 mile hilly ride. Because I'm racing it seems that I should only focus on mileage under 70, but I worry this might end up killing my endurance and my performance will crash when I get over that so my days of doing long rides will be gone.

I'll try staying off the bike tomoz, I just did steady sessions on a mon/fri because people say that these steady rides is where the hard work actually goes into the legs?

I think if I went on the bike outside and did 1 hours recovery ride I'd end up pushing it too much unless I was at home, since it's all quiet roads there and pan flat, here either way you've got crap loads of drags, hundreds of traffic lights, mental drivers, traffic jams.

Or am I just worrying over nothing

Generally, you only need worry when this starts to happen.

Ahhh... that looks a bit like the hard work going into his legs...