Tips for improving speed???
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First of all rules for roadies are dumb and don't apply to triathletes.
More contravention of the rules; rule #1 & rule #42!
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Oh trust me. We don't claim to hold bike races.0 -
For the record I don't typically ride with a camelpack because they look like crap, but I wondered about the trade off for ease of use for this application. I tend to have a rough time with hydration, and think I'd rather look stupid than lose time every time I reached or more specifically when I replace the bottle.
Drink plenty beforehand, take a "disposable" bidon with you. when desperate (or if a downhill allows it without "breaking aero" too much) drink it and drop it. For a short event like a 25 (well - it's under a hour, surely!) I never bothered with a bottle tbh - just drank well before and after ( though I did occasionally use the old-school cyclocross trick of putting a wedge of lime/lemon under my skinsuit on my shoulder, and if my mouth was dry I'd bite on that.)0 -
Alright checked out elevation profile and it is flat as a pancake, not what I wanted to hear since most of my training over the last few months has focused on climbing (ride was canceled, but I was ready for 200k with 2600m of climb). Here is the plan...
1) hydrate well starting now.
2) eat at maintanence and hit macros starting now.
3) take extra crap off of bike, 1 bottle (unlike local long rides I promise not to wrap a ball cap around my bars - no matter how bad my hair looks)
4) Do 60 minutes (or until I puke) of threshhold intervals on the trainer every other day until about 3 days prior to ride.
5) Take as much ibuprofen as my liver and kidneys can stand
6) Drive the course the night before, from the looks of it it will be all big gear all the time, only one elevation change and its short & doesn't look steep probably just stand it up.
6) Ride hard, then ride harder, then have a beer or a few.
Thanks y'all!
Nikki0 -
Sounds like you have a grand plan there Nikki :-D You'll smash it I'm sure!!
That said - had I found out a ride was mainly flat I would have been jumping for joy - a chance to go for some real speed demoning. I still HATE hills....when does hate slowly melt to love/hate and then become love?!?!!!! Oh and I hate wind too - unless it's behind me but that never friggin happens!!!0 -
Sounds like you have a grand plan there Nikki :-D You'll smash it I'm sure!!
That said - had I found out a ride was mainly flat I would have been jumping for joy - a chance to go for some real speed demoning. I still HATE hills....when does hate slowly melt to love/hate and then become love?!?!!!! Oh and I hate wind too - unless it's behind me but that never friggin happens!!!
I started loving hills when I decided to quit dreading them. I used to roll up and say "Oh, ****, hope I can get up it" made it about 70%. Then one day on an 18% grade section from hell with riders on each side, I couldn't get off my damn bike without wrecking us all, and you know what, I made it up. From that point on I decided to change my tune to "If I made it up Dry Run, I can make it up this" and I started making 95% of my climbs, but I still doubted on the long steep. Then I got a little more confindent and I started planning my rides so that I hit every hard hill from Point A to Point B and back, and now my self talk is "Bring it on, you've got nothing I can't handle" and I haven't failed a climb since. I found a killer loop at a local park and rode repeats, God they sucked, but I timed my loop and saw improvement on the ups & downs (down is harder for me mentally). Let the mind take your body for a ride, don't let it stop you.0 -
...had I found out a ride was mainly flat I would have been jumping for joy - a chance to go for some real speed demoning. I still HATE hills....when does hate slowly melt to love/hate and then become love?!?!!!! Oh and I hate wind too - unless it's behind me but that never friggin happens!!!
You should come out for a ride to the east of where I live Fran... if you look at some of the 100k rides I do sundays, you'd see that nearly all the hills are in the 6 miles around where the ride starts from - once you get maybe 7 miles east of me you're into the flat stuff allmost all the way to the coast! Can't guarantee it'll not be windy though
Oh - and I found that I started to enjoy hills when I got my body fat % into single figures... so this time around, I'm guessing that I've a LOT of hill hating left
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For the record I don't typically ride with a camelpack because they look like crap, but I wondered about the trade off for ease of use for this application. I tend to have a rough time with hydration, and think I'd rather look stupid than lose time every time I reached or more specifically when I replace the bottle.
Not to hijack the thread but Camelbak's have their place. I recently rode up Glendora Mountain Road (GMR to locals) and there is NO WATER from the base to Mt. Baldy Village which is about 23 miles from the base and the climbing is rather steady and some rather serious elevation gain. I just did the "gate to the shack" and that was over 2600 feet of elevation gain in 8+ miles.
Here is my first attempt and I took two bottles and used them both up reaching the turn around at the shack.
http://app.strava.com/rides/17770453
Here is the 2nd attempt on a day that was about 95 degrees by the time we reached the shack. I used up two bottles and nearly all the hydration in my Camelbak by the time reached that point:
http://app.strava.com/rides/20511420
For what you are doing...a camelbak is not truly necessary so I would go with bottle(s) on bike instead.0 -
For the record I don't typically ride with a camelpack because they look like crap, but I wondered about the trade off for ease of use for this application. I tend to have a rough time with hydration, and think I'd rather look stupid than lose time every time I reached or more specifically when I replace the bottle.
Not to hijack the thread but Camelbak's have their place. I recently rode up Glendora Mountain Road (GMR to locals) and there is NO WATER from the base to Mt. Baldy Village which is about 23 miles from the base and the climbing is rather steady and some rather serious elevation gain. I just did the "gate to the shack" and that was over 2600 feet of elevation gain in 8+ miles.
Here is my first attempt and I took two bottles and used them both up reaching the turn around at the shack.
http://app.strava.com/rides/17770453
Here is the 2nd attempt on a day that was about 95 degrees by the time we reached the shack. I used up two bottles and nearly all the hydration in my Camelbak by the time reached that point:
http://app.strava.com/rides/20511420
For what you are doing...a camelbak is not truly necessary so I would go with bottle(s) on bike instead.
I use them if I'm riding solo in no mans land for > 50 miles, but try to plan rides around refueling options when possible.0 -
...had I found out a ride was mainly flat I would have been jumping for joy - a chance to go for some real speed demoning. I still HATE hills....when does hate slowly melt to love/hate and then become love?!?!!!! Oh and I hate wind too - unless it's behind me but that never friggin happens!!!
You should come out for a ride to the east of where I live Fran... if you look at some of the 100k rides I do sundays, you'd see that nearly all the hills are in the 6 miles around where the ride starts from - once you get maybe 7 miles east of me you're into the flat stuff allmost all the way to the coast! Can't guarantee it'll not be windy though
Oh - and I found that I started to enjoy hills when I got my body fat % into single figures... so this time around, I'm guessing that I've a LOT of hill hating left
Sounds good to me, I need to vary my routes, I could do some research and plug in some routes to my Garmin, that's what I got it for in the first place, I just haven't quite got it to give me instructions when I'm supposed to turn yet - but I'll figure it out !!!
I don't struggle to get up the hills with regards to my legs, they're fine, it's my breathing - I have exercise induced asthma and can struggle when trying to breathe in hard, especially if it's cold. I take a couple of puffs of the inhaler before I leave and that generally that means that my throat doesn't close up so I can get my breath, but it's still hard. I'm hoping as my fitness keeps improving that I won't need the inhaler so much!!
And thanks for your tips Notfortyyet too, I can't imagine I'd ever want to do repeats, but there are plenty of hilly routes near me I could go out on if I get braver and fitter, up Winter Hill or Rivington Pike which are Bolton way, a few miles from where I live0 -
Franny, I actually have exercised induced asthma also and it is one of the reasons I used to fail (sometimes spectacularly), especially on long climbs. I'd hit it too hard at the beginning and once my breathing passed a certain rate it would spike my heart rate to the point that I couldn't recover on the climb and had to get off and walk.
Here is how I've learned to deal with it... I still attack the hills, but my main focus on my climb has to be the breathing or I blow up. When I start to edge toward gasping, I lower cadence (or gear) and let my body catch up a bit, then I bump it back up (often bump up a few gears & stand to regain momentum & power). If I pass that point and get to gasping its all over. So basically I try to ride on the edge. That being said, if its a short steep (If I can see the top), I risk it because I can usually rush the top before I max out and recover on the down.0 -
Franny, I actually have exercised induced asthma also and it is one of the reasons I used to fail (sometimes spectacularly), especially on long climbs. I'd hit it too hard at the beginning and once my breathing passed a certain rate it would spike my heart rate to the point that I couldn't recover on the climb and had to get off and walk.
Here is how I've learned to deal with it... I still attack the hills, but my main focus on my climb has to be the breathing or I blow up. When I start to edge toward gasping, I lower cadence (or gear) and let my body catch up a bit, then I bump it back up (often bump up a few gears & stand to regain momentum & power). If I pass that point and get to gasping its all over. So basically I try to ride on the edge. That being said, if its a short steep (If I can see the top), I risk it because I can usually rush the top before I max out and recover on the down.
Wow, that's really helpful - thanks for that...good to know you can still tackle all hills if you plan them properly. Like the tips. I did tackle the hills in a similar way on that 100k ride the other week, stuck it in a low gear and just spun as much as I could. but I was gasping at the top, so I might need to meter it better.
Thanks - so good to know I'm not the only one!!0
