the only way to get stronger..

[bYuPride]

ride until you are about to die. does that sound accurate?

i went on a short ride yesterday trying to figure out new routes and places to go after moving into our first home and it dawned on me, i'm totally just riding for fun and a little bit of fitness.. i ride until my route is done,... i'm not really working on climbing or sprinting or anything else i just put on my stretchy pants and ride around. sometimes i'll sprint, just because i know it's good for me, but i rarely really push myself.

i really need to find somebody to ride with that will teach me the ropes and push me.

[mtnbiker310]

That doesn't sound healthy to ride until you're about to die. Look at the training guides they have on bicycling.com (click the training tab). Think about what they do in spinning classes or on a Spinervals workout. You can model rides after stuff like that.

Or you can ride for fun and a bit of fitness, as you say. Nothing wrong with that, really, unless you want to expand your skill set.

Try doing some intervals on the flats, or do some hill climbing, or do your own time trial by seeing how fast you can get from point a to point b. Lots of stuff you can easily do yourself.

[Quisqueyano]

You need to have a mix of different kinds of rides. You need a workput plan and you need to stick to it. You are right, just going for a ride will not get you very far.
You need to do long, slow ride days, Days where you do intervals, hill repeats etc. But you need a training schedule that you stick to. There are books out there that help with this. A book I use is the "Cyclists training bible". But there are others. They can get quite sofisticated with things like power taps and heart rate monitors.

[creekster]

Originally Posted by Quisqueyano

You need to have a mix of different kinds of rides. You need a workput plan and you need to stick to it. You are right, just going for a ride will not get you very far.
You need to do long, slow ride days, Days where you do intervals, hill repeats etc. But you need a training schedule that you stick to. There are books out there that help with this. A book I use is the "Cyclists training bible". But there are others. They can get quite sofisticated with things like power taps and heart rate monitors.

Q! Where have you been? Off season cross-training?

[bYuPride]

Originally Posted by mtnbiker310

That doesn't sound healthy to ride until you're about to die. Look at the training guides they have on bicycling.com (click the training tab). Think about what they do in spinning classes or on a Spinervals workout. You can model rides after stuff like that.

Or you can ride for fun and a bit of fitness, as you say. Nothing wrong with that, really, unless you want to expand your skill set.

Try doing some intervals on the flats, or do some hill climbing, or do your own time trial by seeing how fast you can get from point a to point b. Lots of stuff you can easily do yourself.

wow! thanks for opening my eyes.. looks like there's a lot of good info on the training tab of bicycling.com... thanks for the ideas!

[Quisqueyano]

Originally Posted by creekster

Q! Where have you been? Off season cross-training?

Lurking. There hasn't been much to talk about. This winter was really hard on me training wise. I ran. But not regularly enough. I have started to ride again and have been pushing myself pretty hard trying to regain something that resembles fitness. But it is pretty obvious that it is still EARLY in the season.

[bYuPride]

Originally Posted by Quisqueyano

You need to have a mix of different kinds of rides. You need a workput plan and you need to stick to it. You are right, just going for a ride will not get you very far.
You need to do long, slow ride days, Days where you do intervals, hill repeats etc. But you need a training schedule that you stick to. There are books out there that help with this. A book I use is the "Cyclists training bible". But there are others. They can get quite sofisticated with things like power taps and heart rate monitors.

There you are Q... I was wondering when you would come back! I enjoy going out on my usual routes, but you're right, I need to mix it up with different things. We need to do Big Cottonwood sometime this year..