I usually do three bike workouts every week: 2x20s , tempo ride , and a long ride . Because I have at least one day of no cycling inbetween each of these, I would go hard on all of them. However, I’ve started to do easy outdoor rides inbetween these workouts, with my last week looking something like this:
Monday: 40 miles easy
Tuesday: 2x20s hard
Wednesday: 40 miles easy
Thursday: Tempo indoors, hard
Friday: 40 miles easy
Saturday: 60 miles hard
These easy rides basically doubled my mileage for the week, but are they going to make me a faster/stronger cyclist? I had the idea because in my experience as a runner I found it very helpful to throw in easy efforts instead of off days. By easy I meant I can hold a conservation throughout the ride, whereas my hard efforts I find myself wondering if I will be able to finish .
If it matters, I’m training for the 70.3 distance.
I’m interested to see responses to this as I’m in the same boat…
Only suggestion that I can make to you is that if you’re training for 70.3’s… build that long ride up to 80 or longer and keep it there… This will just help your body be more efficient plus on race day 56 will seem easy.
I’m interested to see responses to this as I’m in the same boat…
Only suggestion that I can make to you is that if you’re training for 70.3’s… build that long ride up to 80 or longer and keep it there… This will just help your body be more efficient plus on race day 56 will seem easy.
Thanks for the suggestion! I didn’t really think about that a whole lot, but I think it would be useful. I know running a half-marathon isn’t too bad after I’ve run 16-18 milers, so it makes sense to apply the same idea for cycling. I will try to ride 80 the next few weekends before my first 70.3 .
They work for me. I ride alone and go slow when i want speed up when i feel like it and i get faster. I race sprints and oly. I do better with a lot of long stuff (60-80 rides and 8-12 runs) then i add speed about 5 weeks out. My brother does better with shorter harder stuff. We are both over 50 years old. I think it is knowing how your body and brain responds to different types of workouts.
Everyone is concerned with how the body responds but learning what your brain responds to is just as important
Here’s what I’d say to add in those easy rides. Add in some stand up sprints every 10 mins or so, and see if you can negative split the rides without causing alot of difference in effort. Obviously the course you ride will have to be similiar throughout, but base it more on effort vs pace/speed.
So every 12-15 mins or so, just add in some 10-15 sec sprints. Those are short enough that they wont really add too much fatigue, and really in a 40 mile ride, you are looking about 7-8 sprints. It’ll also break up the monatony (sp) of the “long, slow” distance ride.
I’d say maybe focus on a skills session for one of those easy days. So instead of 40 miles, maybe do 30 miles (1.5 hours) but make it skills based (cadence, or bike handling or drills as the main sets).
I’m interested to see responses to this as I’m in the same boat…
Only suggestion that I can make to you is that if you’re training for 70.3’s… build that long ride up to 80 or longer and keep it there… This will just help your body be more efficient plus on race day 56 will seem easy.
80 mile rides are not necessary for a successful HIM. If you do enough 55 and 60 milers, along with good weekly totals, you will do fine in a half.
I didn’t do any rides longer than 60 in my last HIM, and I finished near the top of my AG.
But then, I don’t slog through the ride, I go pretty hard for 60 miles, and I always negative split.
didn’t say it was necessary… just that it’s helpful
example: last weekend rode back to back 6 hour days… this week my 70 mile ride seemed extremely easy… Wouldn’t it be nice to do a hard 56 and come off the bike thinking… man… that was nothing!!
The 56 may feel easy, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be faster. I’d rather spend more time at the race specific intensity, focusing on those adaptations. You still get a lot out of those longer rides, but I prefer to focus on the training that will make me fastest on race day…not the training that will make race day feel easiest.
For a 70.3, I’m going to be riding at a much higher intensity than I would be for a 6 hour ride. If you want to ride as fast as possible at that intensity(2-3hrs), you want to train at that intensity. Better to be efficient at that intensity than at a slower one. Getting more training volume in is not a bad thing…if you can fit in the recovery and it doesn’t’ take away from the race specific training.
I usually do three bike workouts every week: 2x20s , tempo ride , and a long ride . Because I have at least one day of no cycling inbetween each of these, I would go hard on all of them. However, I’ve started to do easy outdoor rides inbetween these workouts, with my last week looking something like this:
Monday: 40 miles easy
Tuesday: 2x20s hard
Wednesday: 40 miles easy
Thursday: Tempo indoors, hard
Friday: 40 miles easy
Saturday: 60 miles hard
These easy rides basically doubled my mileage for the week, but are they going to make me a faster/stronger cyclist? I had the idea because in my experience as a runner I found it very helpful to throw in easy efforts instead of off days. By easy I meant I can hold a conservation throughout the ride, whereas my hard efforts I find myself wondering if I will be able to finish .
If it matters, I’m training for the 70.3 distance.
I think that “easy” is the wrong effort for those rides. “Steady” would be better. Steady is not hard, but not easy. Besides burning some extra calories, noodling around at “easy” pace is not that helpful. Perhaps “steady” is what you meant by “easy.”
I usually do three bike workouts every week: 2x20s , tempo ride , and a long ride . Because I have at least one day of no cycling inbetween each of these, I would go hard on all of them. However, I’ve started to do easy outdoor rides inbetween these workouts, with my last week looking something like this:
Monday: 40 miles easy
Tuesday: 2x20s hard
Wednesday: 40 miles easy
Thursday: Tempo indoors, hard
Friday: 40 miles easy
Saturday: 60 miles hard
These easy rides basically doubled my mileage for the week, but are they going to make me a faster/stronger cyclist? I had the idea because in my experience as a runner I found it very helpful to throw in easy efforts instead of off days. By easy I meant I can hold a conservation throughout the ride, whereas my hard efforts I find myself wondering if I will be able to finish .
If it matters, I’m training for the 70.3 distance.
i dunno, to me that looks like alot of extra saddle time that may actually be overkill and may impede on your swim and run training? I guess it depends on how easy is easy? In any event, thats just one day without cycling a week. Do you have a wife/kids/etc that this may impact upon?
Im far from the expert and relatively new to the sport so your questions is also something i have often wondered re: benefit of ‘easier’ rides. To get faster, must one fight tooth and nail on all their long rides? FWIW i tend to break it up, i might do 5 or 10kms hard, then 5/10kms ‘steady’ etc. But like i said im new, i only get 2 spin classes, 1 quick 30km sprint, and one long 90km ride in a week for 70.3 training. I expect i will have to ramp this up too, but you seem to be doing a hell of a lot of miles!
That is 200+ miles of riding per week. Wow. I’m not questioning your training schedule at all, but how do you guys do it? I’m a cyclist only, and don’t get 200 (typically 150-175) miles of training in per week. I don’t know that I’d want to! Then, you guys have to fit in swimming and running. I’m impressed.
I don’t know how helpful they are in terms of performance year around, but I find they keep it refreshing and interesting for me. I love hard interval days on the trainer, but a long conversation pace ride with pals sure is nice to take in too. ‘Helpful’ to me in that it keeps me hungry to ride the bike, if all I did was puke sessions I’d probably tire of cycling.
They might make you a better cyclist. More miles tend to do that, but make sure they serve their purpose.
I was adding 40-50 mile easy rides like that. I have started cutting back on them because I felt like they were too middle ground (for me). I was riding them easy, but they were too long to truly be recovery rides and I wasn’t riding them hard enough to really build my endurance. All they were doing was making me tired and hurting the quality of my key workouts. If I want to do a recovery ride, I ride short and easy. If I’m riding hard, it’s really freaking hard. If I’m working on endurance, I ride long and it’s at 70% of FTP or harder (usually with tempo and/or sweet spot efforts thrown in).
I think you should give them a try and see what happens. If they start hurting the quality of your key rides, you may have to shorten them and/or redistribute those miles (make the rides short recovery rides and maybe add miles to your long endurance ride).
I am of the school of thought that there are no junk yards in the pool, junk miles on the run, but there are junk miles on the bike. Riding at very low intensities, I feel, provide no meaningful fitness benefit.
more info needed. what are you calling “easy”? maybe give a % of FTP for that and your tempo. also what are your priorities, is this affecting your swim/run? etc etc
I disagree about long rides being that helpful. I think the longest you need is the amount of time your crutch sits on that saddle. You don’t need to go 80 miles to do 56 on race day. Higher intensity rides and bigger amounts of rest between your rides is going to be more helpful. A lot more helpful.
There are different aspects to aerobic performance and ALL types of rides are needed to maximize your ability to perform…
LSD= v02 capacity increase and teaching your body how to be more efficient with energy.
Intervals= builds lactate threshold capacity and type 1 muscle fibers (aerobic)
short bursts= speed capacity and anaerobic metabolism
If you are limited in time, it is worth it to focus on intervals becuase this is what allows you to function at higher intensities… However, this is really only allowing you to function at say 85% of your peak performance… without building up your v02 and efficiency you are hitting your glass ceiling far to early… Long rides are very important if you have the time and you truly want to max our your abilities…
I would say doing long easy rides with sets of race specific pace. I have done 2 ironman at louisville (12:51,11:17) and my long rides were a slow progressive build of holding race pace or above race pace, followed by full recovery.(I trained by power for 2nd ironman and cut 40 mins off bike split and an hour off run. It was my 2nd year riding and racing tri’s. The benefit of becoming better cyclist is becoming a better runner as well as long as you pace yourself)
ex.
at beginning of season I would do 3-4 sets of 15 min race pace, 30-45 min recovery and as my fitness increased the race pace intervals would be 30 min on/30 off and eventually 30 min above race pace, 30 min off.
My race wattage was 200. I did 2- 40 mile rides during the week all year. 1 would be to hold 200 watts whole ride(making body become more efficient at creating that power) and 2nd was more specific either power/strength or speed intervals holding 280-300 watts intervals.
I would say if riding long rides well below race pace (50+miles) isn’t beneficial. Doing 30-40 mile rides are but you want to throw in race pace stimilus to the body on those long rides with full recovery in my opinion. I was trained by certified coach and thats where my training came from.
These easy rides basically doubled my mileage for the week, but are they going to make me a faster/stronger cyclist?
The answer is yes. Easy workouts will both build aerobic capacity and affect anaerobic capacity by lowering it. The purpose of training is a better performance. There are many aspects to a better performance but here the discussion is on physiology. In this context training has a twofold objective, building aerobic capacity and modifying anaerobic capacity to an optimal level for the event one is training for.
Training can also be looked at as a process of breaking down capacity through some stimulus such as a workout. Hopefully the body responds by building capacity to a higher level in the time period after the various training efforts. This is called supercompensation and there is a series of animations on our website that describes this.
Long slow distance (LSD) speeds the rebuilding or regeneration by providing muscles with necessary nutrients at a faster rate to develop higher aerobic capacity. So long slow distance is the best regenerative workout and regeneration is an essential aspect of training. If one trains too hard then one can break down too much and regeneration may not be enough for the muscles to reach previous levels of capacity.
Long slow distance besides being the best regenerative workout also is a stimulus in itself and affects the aerobic capacity of the slow twitch muscles and the anaerobic capacity of all the muscles being trained. So besides its regenerative effects it also can cause the muscles to build capacity and modify anaerobic capacity.
The other issue is that not all the muscle fibers react the same to a specific workout. So while some muscle fibers (fast twitch fibers) will respond more in terms of aerobic capacity to intense workouts these workouts have the danger that they may break down too much so intense workouts have to be limited. And as I said the long slow distance will speed the regeneration of these muscle fibers.
These ideas are from Jan Olbrecht’s The Science of Winning. Olbrecht is the sports scientist who trained Luc van Lierde as well as several other world class athletes. (The first chapter of this book which discusses some of these concepts will be available on our website in a day or two as a pdf file.)
So look at long slow distance as both the best regeneration workout as well as a builder of aerobic capacity for some of the muscle fibers, specifically the slow twitch fibers. The problem with these workouts is that they take a lot more time to cover the same distance and many athletes who are not professionals do not have this time to train. The reaction to time pressure is to do the mileage but at a faster rate and this can be sub-optimal because it could cause too much breaking down as opposed to regeneraton.
I usually do three bike workouts every week: 2x20s , tempo ride , and a long ride . Because I have at least one day of no cycling inbetween each of these, I would go hard on all of them. However, I’ve started to do easy outdoor rides inbetween these workouts, with my last week looking something like this:
Monday: 40 miles easy
Tuesday: 2x20s hard
Wednesday: 40 miles easy
Thursday: Tempo indoors, hard
Friday: 40 miles easy
Saturday: 60 miles hard
These easy rides basically doubled my mileage for the week, but are they going to make me a faster/stronger cyclist? I had the idea because in my experience as a runner I found it very helpful to throw in easy efforts instead of off days. By easy I meant I can hold a conservation throughout the ride, whereas my hard efforts I find myself wondering if I will be able to finish .
If it matters, I’m training for the 70.3 distance.