On Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 9:48:05 AM UTC-8, Joerg wrote:
On 2016-12-13 18:43, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 13 Dec 2016 07:54:13 -0800, Joerg
wrote:

On 2016-12-12 16:24, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 12 Dec 2016 07:21:20 -0800, Joerg
wrote:

On 2016-12-11 00:50, John B. wrote:

[...]

... by 10 minutes at 20%", or whatever, and is a
method of determining the intensity of the exercise.


Sounds like what cyclists call intervall training.

It is. If you add in the long rides. For example, Monday 1 min at 90%
followed by 1 min walk (continue until you vomit); Tuesday 1 hour at
race intensity, Wednesday rest, and so on. The long days can be
thought of single intervals.


I think it's different, more like what Lee said. Where a sprint maxes
out the muscles. I don't max out mine much, meaning I could hammer up a
hill faster but then I'd be pooped for many minutes and the ride would
no longer be an enjoyable one.

It gets very complicated. For example, there are fast twitch muscle
fibers and slow twitch fibers. Doing sprints certainly causes the fast
twitch fibers to grow but has a lesser effect on the slow twitch
fibers. On the other hand, a series of stresses placed on the legs,
for instance, certainly strengthens all the leg muscles.

I used to do hill climbs. A hill ling enough that I ran out of breath
and start in the lowest gets and ride to a certain place, coast back
down to the bottom, shift up a gear and do the same thing.

Theoretically this is a fast twitch exercise good for sprinters but it
also improved my average speed for a 2 - 3 hour ride.


With me that hasn't helped much. I get "natural climb training" every
time I return from the valley which is once or twice a week. The last
10mi are up, down, up, down, a lot. My muscles are strong, the
limitation seems to be that I simply run out of breath and general
energy. I am not complaining since I am usually among the faster riders.
Certainly not race material though.

My problem is that I can't convince anyone to join me for a ride unless
I promise to keep it under 25mi. Those are often people who like to
hammer it which I don't like to do.


Back in the primitive days people used do essentially the same thing
by training by distance, i.e., a quarter as hard as you can go
followed by a quarter at a walk, and so on.

As for your full tilt for hours, you really aren't doing that. What
you are doing is riding at an energy output that you can maintain for
some period. If you really were to exert 100% you might get a quarter
of a mile before you collapsed.


Yes, that is what I think as well. My limitation is more the breathing
and I don't enjoy being totally out of breath for a long time. I was
always an endurance kind of guy, never a good sprinter.

Yes, endurance is generally determined by oxygen intake. Yes, runners
and bicycle sprinters can perform at higher intensities but only for
short times. A "miler" will run three laps at about maximum oxygen
intake and the last lap he will accelerate and go into oxygen
deficiency.


Seen it but I was never good at that. Even in the army my better times
were long-haul. 5km on the sports field, xx kilometer on "hikes" in full
gear. With cycling it is similar. Yesterday was 43mi or 69km, to pick up
a $1.75 item in the valley that I urgently need. About 30% of that ride
was extra and just for fun. However, after this discussion I tried some
muscle max-out phases and paid for that the last 10mi which are almost
all uphill.

Sure, you exceeded the effort that you can maintain for the entire
ride.


Yup. Or in other words my age begins to show.


I see that sometimes where guys blast by me at high speed and then on
the next long hill I pass them.

I also see that sometimes guys blast by me at high speed and then go
on out of sight :-)


Oh yeah :-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

You don't get ANY training at all unless you have a really easy warm-up period of about 10 minutes. You can only go anaerobic for maybe 30 seconds for a non-athlete to perhaps a minute for a trained athlete. the "80%" mark is what changes with training.

If you don't warm-up at perhaps 50-60% for the first ten minutes you are mostly riding anaerobically and eating up your lactate reserves. Now if after you warm up you ride well below your threshold you can restore these reserves but it is VERY slow. One of the reasons I stopped riding with my local group because their idea of a warm-up was riding across the parking lot and out onto the street.

Within a couple of minutes they would be going flat out up a 7% grade. And the guys that got to the top first would be figiting to leave before the last arrived.