Cycling Fitness / Training Advice

would be interested to see your pmc for the last month

But you heart rate is too low to push sweetspot no?

Tired?

but to test the turbo you just need to borrow a powermeter somehow.

@BeaconJon at some point in the next week I will likely be jumping on my turbo, i'll put a speed sensor on the bike and post a power ( I have a powermeter) vs speed plot for the whole thing, should give you an idea on how the resistance changes from start to end.

In the last 4 weeks I've done 6, 4, 8 and 5 hours training. Weds are TT's (10's including ride to and from, this week's was a 25) Monday's and Friday's are HIT's or commute (10 on 5 off for around 55 mins, easy ride home).
Saturday's usually 2-3 hours on the road or mtb just messing.

Last week I beat a 2 year old 10 PB by 5 seconds (course PB by 30) and Weds I took a minute off my best 25 with a 56-30.

Not sure if you can glean anything from that random lot but in there was also a 3 day lay off for a trip to London.

Maybe I'm in need of a few days off although I seem to be in some form.

That'll be spot on.

A mate's going to lend me his vectors so I'll do the same.

Sorry, thought that was aimed in my direction. I need to pay attention!

It's not that interesting, as jusy a picture. It's the trees in the forest that are interesting. Not the forest.
It's all personally relevant.

Why makes you interested? I might be able to expand in writing on the points your interested in?

just intrigued that you mentioned that 140 is a tough ride. I did 180 last weekend over 2 1/2hrs which was certainly a tough ride! It was one of the toughest rides id done in a while but had a day off and an easy ride the day before that.

Before commuting I was used to going for a hard ride, rest day, hard ride, repeat.. rather than riding everyday.

Im going to increase my hours, lower the intensity on rest days and see if I can commute every day without being a wreck by the weekend.

Did two 250TSS rides (3-4hours) on consecutive days monday and tuesday. This put my TSB to -40 or so, my legs feel like they are made of acid. Do I do recovery ride tomorrow or do I feet up and get drunk?

Feet up and beer.

Or 1h in the little ring like you've got glass cranks.

140tss is a fair ride, it's not hard but in the middle, but it's definitely not easy. You should recover by the next day, but it's not easy.
200tss is hard and you can recovery full the next day.

180 in 2h30 is 70tss pet hour, so no doubt, that's pretty tough riding.

If you have a big ctl then you can handle more daily stress. At a ctl of 60 you can't handle much. Ctl shows a few things,but typically the bigger your ctl the faster you can recover. And thus the harder you can train.

Ashamedly, feet up and beer is not the answer I wanted.

See second sentence then.

feet up and beer

is always the answer

I appreciate that this question might not be a perfect match for this thread, but the goal is improving my cycle fitness while the main exercise I can do is running. I am currently looking after my 5-month old daughter pretty much full time. She is too young to go in a bike seat, and there's not much room around the edges of our schedule for anything more than the occasional weekend ride. I can take her in the pram for a jog though, as it helps her get to sleep, so I have been doing that mostly every day. So my question is what running is going to help my cycle fitness more : longer runs at a slower pace or shorter runs at a faster pace, or sprint and jog HIIT-type thing? Probably the answer is at least partly contingent on type of riding I want fitness for...ideally would like to not be an embarrassment in a fixed crit, so not looking to be a mile-eating roadie.
If the answer is just "find some way to get on a bike", I could try a turbo trainer possibly. But likely not for more than an hour at a time.

Running won't help cycling at all. It will make you worse.

Get one of those buggys that attached to the bike and put her in that?

Or get a tubro and turbo with her in eye sight.

Don't run. If you want to improve at cycling ,cycle.

1h turbo is perfect. You don't need to do longer.

This is interesting.

I seem to remember Dr Hutch commenting on trying the two schools of thought over two consecutive seasons. Firstly, tons and tons of hours in the saddle then the following year, much fewer but higher intensity rides. His difference in performance across the two seasons was vertually nil.

For me personally I can't train hard on consecutive days and I'm always ruined after racing but then I'm limited to about 7 hours a week.

If I could ride more hours I'd have to drop the intensity as it would kill me I'm sure.

http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/11774068

Suggests otherwise, although is triantelope based and measured with HR.

Sure there was a recent study showing that running improved cycling performance but not vice versa but I couldn't find it in a quick Google.

Of course cycling is best for improving cycling performance, but running (with good form....) is much better than nothing (or swimming it would appear)

This also anecdotally agrees with a few very fast runners who I know of who have switched to cycling and quickly got VERY good.

Yeah, you get a good CV system with running but I don't think running helps cycling as such. Those runners would've been very good cyclists if they did the same training just on the bike. I believe the runners that switched to cycling would be less fast if they continued running while racing bikes. Specificity innit.

I used to run a lot (and ride) and it makes you very lean. Other than that, it just ruins your legs.

Running sucks.

You'll burn more calories for time spent running vs bike.
You'll likely be pushing a bigger HR for a given percieved effort.

But if cycling fast is Your goal. Cycle.

I dabble in the dark art of tri. But I minimise running. Swimming is awesome. So I keep doing that. But unless I have a particular tri/run to Train for. I stick to cycling.

That said I've broken myself again.

Had a brutal race on Saturday. Then the area we drove to for Our recovery ride on Sunday had a big bloody mountain at the end. Which it seemed rude not to ride up.

Garmon recovery advisor says 3 days.
Heart feels like its been directly injected With tranqs.

Blah.

Garmin recovery advisor? Tell me more

How low can your TSB go before you are 'over training?'

Deep ends.