You are reading a single comment by @fussballclub and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
fussballclub
I went into 2020 with some goals. I planned three 300 km in a day rides in increasing levels of difficulty. Get the easy one done and if that's ok move onto the harder one etc.
Then in March I got ill. I was out of commission apart from a couple of short rides when i thought I was better but, as it turned out I wasn't. My fitness dropped and in the meantime we went into lockdown. My goals went out of the window. They needed to be completed by the end of July to allow maximum daylight.
Once recovered, I started to ride. Every day I rode 33km (apart from a couple of days on which I had mechanicals which curtailed my rides. As soon as they announced that we could ride longer, I upped my rides at weekends. In May I rode every day and a total of 1562 km. Not massive but pretty decent. My longest ride was only 106 km.
I am certainly fitter than I was. I started from a low base after my illness.
But one thing that seems strange is that my HR can no longer get above 130 bpm. On Sunday i rode 105 km with 827 m of climbing (so flat to undulating) at an average HR of 99 bpm and a max of 127.
My usual max is around 160 or so which is close to the notional max for my age. My resting HR is in the low 40s.
Am I just knackered? I can hardly be over trained. 33 km a day cannot constitute over training.
I don't really want to take days off because I really enjoy getting out of the house for a ride. Should I just slow it right down for a couple of days? Or just accept that my heart is pumping just as fast as it needs to pump and throw away my HR monitor and splash out on a power meter instead?
My goals are now postponed until next year. This year i want to consolidate my fitness and keep increasing length of ride so that the move up to 300 km in a day is simple when I do it next year.