When ever someone sees I've done 100+ miles, they think I'm stupid or say it's bad for training. Is this actually the case? I enjoy long rides, and like yesterday, felt I was working hard, and today, as my legs should be, are feeling pretty stiff.
Do long rides lower FTP and actually end up slowing people down for say TT's and races, or could I not do specific training in the week for those events and keep on doing the longer rides which I enjoy at weekends, apart from when I am racing or TT'ing?
Thanks.
Are long rides bad?
Moderator: Moderators
(I should know better but) I'll try to answer this simply, with the usual caveat that I'm not a coach and have no sports science qualification, so the answer is based purely on my experience and reading over a few years.
Long rides in winter when you're building a base of endurance and aerobic fitness are useful things. During the race season, however, and assuming you've got limited time to spend on the bike each week, the following apply:-
-The body tends to hold on to endurance fitness longer than other sorts of higher-intensity fitness, so it needs "topping up" less frequently, and..
-Long rides drain the body of reserves and hence require recovery - possibly two days - before you can train hard again. That's two days when you can't do anything useful, and..
-The general advice is that for endurance ability during races you only need to train for the length of race you're doing, so if you're doing (say) 50-60 mile races, you only need to be doing similar distances for your longest endurance training rides.
So, at this time of year, most people who are racing will be doing maybe one long ride a week (hence the 3hr Saturday training ride) and the rest of the time doing more intense stuff - threshold work, sprints, tempo, hill intervals, etc. The more seriously long stuff you do, the less able you are to go to the limit on the more intense stuff (or the less time you have available to do it).
Incidentally, I've seen a fair bit of advice that completely emptying the tanks (in a crawling to the sweet shop kind of way) isn't helpful in training terms - largely because of the recovery load it puts on the body and the strain on the immune system. There seems to be evidence that training the body to burn fat on long rides is useful (I just use water or Nuun/Zero tabs in water on long winter rides) but the suggestion is to build this up steadily rather than ever get to the point where you can barely stand.
Long rides in winter when you're building a base of endurance and aerobic fitness are useful things. During the race season, however, and assuming you've got limited time to spend on the bike each week, the following apply:-
-The body tends to hold on to endurance fitness longer than other sorts of higher-intensity fitness, so it needs "topping up" less frequently, and..
-Long rides drain the body of reserves and hence require recovery - possibly two days - before you can train hard again. That's two days when you can't do anything useful, and..
-The general advice is that for endurance ability during races you only need to train for the length of race you're doing, so if you're doing (say) 50-60 mile races, you only need to be doing similar distances for your longest endurance training rides.
So, at this time of year, most people who are racing will be doing maybe one long ride a week (hence the 3hr Saturday training ride) and the rest of the time doing more intense stuff - threshold work, sprints, tempo, hill intervals, etc. The more seriously long stuff you do, the less able you are to go to the limit on the more intense stuff (or the less time you have available to do it).
Incidentally, I've seen a fair bit of advice that completely emptying the tanks (in a crawling to the sweet shop kind of way) isn't helpful in training terms - largely because of the recovery load it puts on the body and the strain on the immune system. There seems to be evidence that training the body to burn fat on long rides is useful (I just use water or Nuun/Zero tabs in water on long winter rides) but the suggestion is to build this up steadily rather than ever get to the point where you can barely stand.
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like my bike
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Cyan Skymoos
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Don't knock long rides, all I ever used to do was long rides when I was racing. I never enjoyed intervals, sprints etc so I didn't do them.
I would always try finish the ride fast and I might go hard on a few climbs but the rest of the time would be very steady spinning very low gears, and often with a cafe stop. I am a big fan of the long ride and it never did me any harm.
I would always try finish the ride fast and I might go hard on a few climbs but the rest of the time would be very steady spinning very low gears, and often with a cafe stop. I am a big fan of the long ride and it never did me any harm.
I don't take it steady on long rides, I go at the best pace I think I can maintain for the given distance and I'm not so keen on going out and doing a recovery ride steady so I've recently started implementing a "warmdown" session into the end of rides, hoping this will aid recovery.
I attempted some interval training tonight:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/40285235
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/40285227
I attempted some interval training tonight:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/40285235
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/40285227