How can stopping 4-6 times for the first ten and last ten of your ride equate to stopping for 30% of your ride? 4-6 times in 10 miles is nothing. I have 10 sets of lights within the first 2.5 miles of my rides starting from my house! Even if you catch them just turning red, you can't be stopped for that long can you?

I guess I'm comparing it to rides I used to do that were a 30-45 minute car ride away. On those, I' could ride nearly 100 miles and stop for a light maybe 2-3 times total. But that makes a 5-hour ride take up 7.5 to 8 hours of a day once you factor in drive time. Seems like a lot of stopping compared to what I used to do.

I always wonder about that on my runs as well. For a HIM race, I'm not stopping 3-4 times to wait for the light to turn green. Does stopping during my runs hurt the quality of the training session, or is it a non-issue.

Sounds like its a non-issue.

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I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. - D. H. Lawrence

You need to take a harder look at your math...45 min each way to a ride adds an hour and a half to a 5-hour ride, bringing you to a total of 6 1/2 hours. I'd buy maybe an additional 15 min on each end for packing/unpacking the bike and gear, but truthfully it doesn't take this long, or anywhere close to that. 45 min also gets you way past 8 miles from your house, unless you live in downtown DC/LA/NYC...

Stopping at a few stoplights won't hurt you. In fact, if you're doing a ride that is 100 miles long, the first and last 8 miles could probably serve as an excellent warmup and warmdown. Or, you could just drive 8 miles to get past the stoplights, which should take about 15 min tops. Boom. Problem solved.

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I tweet!

1) You're fine, don't sweat it
2) it's not 30% of your ride (at least not being stopped)
3) If you are that worried about it, put the bike in your car and drive 10 miles down the road

Just blow right through them.

+1 Perspective is a beautiful thing.
I live in the suburbs of a medium city and have avg 4-5 traffic lights in 35-50 mile loops. Riding buddies drive from the city to ride around here. They say they rather do the driving than deal with the city traffic and i don't blame them. In any case, i think you're overestimating the % of the traffic lights in your overall riding and perhaps more people will chime in with their own experience to put things in perspective...you'll see that 4-6 lights in ten miles is going to be a lot less than most people have to deal with.
AQ

Regardless of the time stopped, the beginning and end of the ride is warmup and warmdown. The quality part is the middle part, and the OP said there were no stops. Therefore, the red lights are having 5/8 of FK all impact!

Someone allegedly asked Mohammed Ali how many push ups he could do. He answered that he didn't know. What? He said he only started counting when they started to hurt. (all the previous ones were just the warmup)

I have a 100km ride (exaclty 100.0km from door to door) and I only ever time the middle 80km. 10km is warmup and 10km is warmdown. I refer to my 100km loop as my 80km ride.

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

I did the math once and I calculated that each stoplight is roughly the equivalent of losing 0.1 mph off of your average speed. This was assuming that the clock stopped when your speed was zero and that acceleration and deceleration were constant. It also assumed that your average speed would have been a consistent 20mph without the stoplights. Based on that data, you are losing about 1 mph. However, if this is your long ride, miles are more important than mph. I vote no, stoplights are not killing your long ride.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

Think of it like this, if I do one of my hillier rides around here, there are quite a few stretches where for at least as long as you are sitting at the stoplight I'm freewheeling. I don't think this is killing my ride at all. Just go harder between the lights.

4 lights in the first 10 miles? I deal with 2 in the first mile from my house. When I lived in Milwaukee... nonstop lights.

The beauty of a bike is that all you have to do is roll out of your driveway and the whole world unrolls infront of you... if you stop a few times, that's just a good time to take a drink or adjust yourself. And the beauty of a race is no stoplights :)

Don't drive to your rides... and don't worry about stopping 4-5 times in the first 10 miles. The endurance effect is completely negligible.

I would love to see this math...

I think everyone is mis-reading his post. He says that "30% of his ride is stop and go" not that he is stopped for 30% of his ride. Meaning that he is doing stop and go for 20 of about 30 miles of his ride.

I don't like stop and go either. I don't know if it has a negative affect or not, but I try to train like I race, and you don't stop and go during a race. Which is why I drive for 20 minutes (each way) 3 time a week to get to a state park where there are not stop signs/stop lights/etc. and I can ride aero non-stop for as long as my feeble mind can stand to watch the same 3.5 miles roll by.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

You were probably in a rush typing but.....uhh..... 20/30 =/= 30%

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< Quitting Isn't An Option >

26 mile ride -- 6 lights and 17 stop signs.


I think these stops make your ride harder not easier.

My race speed is always faster than my training speed and the only reason I can determine is that I don't have to stop during tris.

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Swim - Bike - Run the rest is just clothing changes.

Stopping sucks but think about why is sucks and you'll realize its not bad for your body, it just messes with your head. The reality is that if you accelerate hard to get back up to speed, all those stops are actually good for you. Thing of each stoplight as a hill or mini interval. Attack it and you'll get stronger.

LOL! That's what happens when you get up at 4, swim for 90 minutes, then rush to work, and answer a post while your admin assistant briefs you on the day's meetings.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

Haha, I'm right there with ya, so I understand :)

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< Quitting Isn't An Option >