On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 03:35:22 GMT, Blair P. Houghton wrote:

I'm getting steady improvement in my times doing hill repeats at this
point. Remember this is only a 2 mile long 5% grade with one short summit
at about 6% for 200 yds.

I got one of those. I might ride it tomorrow. Actually,
I think it's like 4% to rolling 6% and 8% bumps...

I did this twice a day two laps each workout last week and quads are fine.
Calves have obviously respondingto this regime though.

Calves are near impossible to train. One reason even competition
bodybuilders give up on them.

bodybuilding babble
Calves can be stubborn. I started out body building many years ago with 14"
calves. Within about three years, they were up to 17", but it took a lot of
donkey calves, and seated calves, and heavy squats. It's genetics, though.
Some ppl have high, small calves and those are nearly impossible to build.
I have pretty classic calves and they weren't too hard to build. Within a
year of starting back, my calves now measure about 19.25 inches, with the
tape pulled as tight as it will go, and very good tibialis anterior,
soleus, and gastroc. development. In good body building, the key is to have
medium to small joints. That makes the muscles look larger in proportion.
/bodybuilding babble


In this case, it's affecting your normal riding.

I'm not sure why it takes two days to ride the flats at normal spin up
right after spending so much time in the hills. But it's more a 'mentally
switching gears'. After one or two rides, I'm spinning up as usual. That's
too soon to have 'affected' my riding by non-optimal training

Just stretching can affect your riding. A day of light
work after a day of heavy work can act like rest.
But non-optimal rest in terms of allowing the heavy
training to "take".

Right. As I've said before, I ride the bike very similarly to how I weight
trained. I hit it hard and often and hardly ever take 'rest' days. Since
I'm a beginner, I get very good improvement no matter what I do, and b/c my
legs are already strong from the weights, I don't seem to overtrain.
However as you said, I need to concentrate now, in year 2, on the training
of the various fibers (if that's possible), by incorporating speed work,
and tempo rides, and stomps and all the stuff that Carmichael talks about.
This I'm doing. I'm also trying to get my 'climbing' legs. Success has been
very optimal, imo, for someone 'starting back'.

The thing is I live and train in a hilly area (Central Va/Piedmont), and
group ride in a flat area (Va Beach)

curve to intermediate rider. Once there, I'm sure one's cycling transforms.

Sure. You start beating more people.

Works for me.

I need some work.

You said it brother. Although ppl talk about recovery rides and soforth,
imo, most beginners and intermediates are not riding hard enough during the
'hard' days to require the 'rest/recovery' days. Now as a former jogger and
weight trainer I may have some misconceptions, but my improvement times and
the difficulty of the hills I can ride are steadily going up and up. Once I
start to see some 'overtraining' then I'll start worrying about that.

This (training) year, I really plan to up the time in the saddle. To do
this I may have to travel to Surry, Chesapeake and Isle of Wight where
there is a lot of fairly flat rideable roads. I'll still keep banging on
the hills here in the Piedmont, and by spring I hope to be doing short
rides on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. Got to time it right,
though, b/c it can be dicey up there.

-B