lacking in leg strength and stamina exercises?

On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 08:23:45 GMT, "Yuri Budilov"
wrote:

hello all

I am a new rider, about 4 months now, 44 years old, male, 72 kg (165
pounds?) , riding on weekends only. Riding for fun and fitness only. I have
a Trek 1000 road bike (2004) and Shimano clipless pedals (M540).

I started at about the age you did and am now approaching my 6th season. I hope
you enough enjoyment so that you can continue to ride and as you have found: To
challenge yourself.

I find that I can pedal relatively well at cadence of 90-100 rpm but if I
have to push a big gear then I very quickly run out of steam. I also have no
stamina and have to stop for a drink every 15 min of so.....

I used 3 year time frame so that I wouldn't look too closely at the moment to
moment changes in my ability. I think the idea is to enjoy yourself, you
absolutely and positively will improve over time, but that doesn't mean that
it's easy. I'm a bit heavier than you at 190(now but 180 this summer and I'm
yet to develop the stamina for a regular 90rpm cadence so to an extent I cheat
by doing hills. I now do routes that I couldn't imagine doing just a year or so
ago, but I'm still not a particularly fast rider.

I am wondering what I can do to improve my leg muscle (quads?) strength and
general cycling stamina without ruining my knees and other parts of my body.
Perhaps some easy to do at-home exercises? I heard step-ups are good but I
have no idea what they are exactly....

I've always felt that doing longer distance rides resulted in the most
substantial over-all improvements. If you're riding for an hour or two now, try
doing a 50-60 miler. A week later, when you approach that hard climb on your
regular route, you may notice that it's a bit easier.

Good luck with it.

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 17:07:12 +0100, Jacques Moser wrote:
On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 17:39:35 +0000, Neil Cherry wrote:

SNIP I'm
currently up to ~50 mile rides on Saturday and about 120 for the week. I'm
just beginning to train for a single day 200 mile that is in June (this
will be #5 for me).


Neil,

I am very tempted to try one of these long rides (310 km in early July), but
still hesitating. I am commuting daily on short distances (13 km round
trip). I normally have no problems completing a 100 km ride with up to
1000 m climb. My longest distance ever is 190 km, mostly flat, but I would
have been unable to go any further. I know training will help, but 300 km
seems so far beyond everything I have done that I wonder whether it is at
all within my reach. Is there a way to "know" - or guess - whether this
would be realistic ?

Jacques, first understand that I ride an 'easy double century'. It's a
ride from Port Jervis, NY (near High Point, NJ) to Cape May, NJ (from
one end of the state to the other). The reason I label it easy is that
we literally ride from the high point in the State to the lowest
point. Also, all the hills are manageable. I'm not a good hill climber
and we have very few hard climbs in NJ. But what we do have is flat
lands in the lower half of the state. Where the biggest thing to call
a hill is an overpass. We end up riding in a lot of wind. We start at
4:30 AM in 40F (5C), ride through the Pine Barrens (nothing but pine
trees, cranberry bogs and heat) and finish up at the shore (windy) no
later than 8:30 PM (we've finished in less time each time). I also did
my 1st century training for my first double century. Bicycle magazine
has done a few good articles on centuries and double centuries as well
as a good book from Rodale Press called "Long-Distance Cyling" (ISBN
0-87596-155-X). It's only 118 pages long but I like it.

The first thing we do is start with base miles until mid April. I
normally lead a Saturday ride of ~65Km (~40 mi). Our team rides
together on Saturday (and this year Sunday) just to get used to
working together. A friendly group can make the long ride much better
and gives you another reason to finish. The longest ride I can do solo
is 100 km (62 mi). During the week we each put on additional mileage
(solo rides) so we don't ride sore on the weekend. We ride with 4
riders but would like to have a fifth. We had 6 on my first
double. This allows us to work on pace lines to reduce the entire
effort of riding with an avg. speed of 27 kph (17 mph). What we train
at is a higher speed, 29 - 30 kph. Once April hits we start cranking
up the mileage so by mid June we have at least 3200 km (2000 mi). In
mid April we'll start doing 100km (62 mi) rides, then 112 km (70 mi),
then 128 (80 mi) and so on until we get to about 160 km (100 mi). This
is just the Saturday ride. When we start hitting the around 112 km on
Saturday we also push our Sunday mileage up (we're already doing that
this year) but we never go past 100 km on Sunday (160 km on Saturday
followed by 100 km on Sunday). This gets us close enough to 321 km
(200 mi) that we are confident we can go all the way.

Here are some things that you will find out the hard way. You are
going to get certain sores. This may be certain muscles such as your
neck, your arms, your wrists, or some thing else (definitely your
butt). There are exercises you can do to minimize these problems. Push
ups work well for your shoulders, crunches (not sit ups) for your
back, something called bridges for your neck. Some of the other pains
are in the hands. They can go numb so you need to take advantage of
the entire handle bar (I hope it's a road bike). Move your handles
around and wear good gloves.

For saddle sores, wear good padded cycling shorts. Always wear clean
shorts as cycling can make a mess of your butt skin (you can rub the
skin raw if you try to do too many miles all at once). Also creams
such as 'butt butter' can minimize the chaffing before you get the
sores. If you get a sore keep it clean. If it gets worse see a doctor.
Saddle sores won't become a problem if you get in enough mileage. I
tend to get them when I start the season and go out hard or when I
make a big jump in mileage (such as from 65 km to 100 km). As for your
saddle you need to figure that out but it is my opinion that gel
saddle covers are no good for long rides they put presure in all the
wrong places. And on long rides little things add up to become big
problems.

Bordom: If you are doing this by yourself I don't know what to tell
you. I ride with a team and we use our imagination. An example is; on
one ride we were suffering from a nasty head wind when the sun came
out from behind the clouds. I started think about what could be
causing us to feel like we were draggin something. I noticed that our
shadows had appear (we hadn't seen the sun in several weeks). So I
noted to the others that our shadows were slowing us down. That led to
other ideas and now when we feel slow and the sun is out we blame the
Aussie's (no offense guys, you can blame the Americans for the same
thing :-). After a while everyone will chip in and you can tell some
really strange stories.

Weather: You may want to train in the rain, the cold, the wind
etc. You'll need to know what it feels like and what it can do to you
psychologically (cold rain can make you miserable). When I trained for
my first double we trained in the cold 40 F (5 C), the wind, and the
cold 60F (15 C) and rain. My 2nd century we rode at an 18.3 mph (29
kph) avg pace in the rain. We put in a lot of miles and we were
certain we trained for anything that the weather could throw at
us. The day of the big ride a tropical storm hit the state. The first
half was warm 80 F (25 C) and humid. Just after lunch it began to rain
hard but it felt nice. Later that day we got to the eye of the storm
and it was sunny. It ended up being a great ride! We got rained on
(Philadelphia got 9" in one hour, so did we :-), we got a sun burn, I
had a tire filled with water (really) and we had a great story to
tell. :-) Remember God has a sense of humor. ;-)

Eating: "Ride to eat, eat to ride". That's my motto! When I ride long
distances I eat almost anything I want. I won't eat fast food such as
McDonald's as I just can't eat it without it feeling like a lump in my
stomach (I've tested to make sure). I don't really like the fancy bars
but on long rides I will eat the ones I've tested and like. On a
century or longer I will have a normal lunch of a turkey hoagie with
swiss cheese, lettuce, tomatoe and too much mustard. I eat a small bit
now, a small bit later and so on. That keeps your stomach from having
too much food in it at any one time. I also use the gels but only like
'plain' Gu. On my second double century one of my co-riders gave me a
double caffine mocha flavored gel. I hated the flavor but found the
kick was worth it. I'm no longer allowed to have double caffine. :-)
I've also tried double Jolt cola (2x the caffine, 2x the sugar). They
work too but as I'm hyper to begin with the results were that it
kicked in too hard and left me exhausted afterwards. My co-riders will
not allow me to have any more Jolt! :-)

On the subject of drinking, on long rides I start out with Lemon-Lime
Gatorade powder mixed at 50% of strength. As the ride progresses I
tend to let it go to full strength (gradually). I've found I can not
drink the Orange and Fruit Punch flavors. They give me stomach
problems (more on that subject later) and that will spell disaster on
a long ride! You want to drink often to stay hydrated, this is very
important!!! I like my Camel Back, I tend to carry too much (2 l) but
I'm very used to it and I have never run out. :-)

The 'Longest Day' double century is a self sag'd ride (each team
provides a support vehicle for themselves). So we planned out our rest
stops. We ride the first 40 with no stop, then every 20 we stop to
refill, eat, use the facilities etc. This works out very well for
us. Work out your own plan.

Here are some additional points to know:

1) 1 month before your big ride make no changes to anything!. No diet
changes, clothing changes, bike changes (except emergency repairs).
Take care of experiementing, tune ups and other repairs before
then. Here is an example: on my first double century one of our
team changed his diet. He added some kind of diet suppliment a week
before the big ride. The day of the big ride he got the runs at
mile 90 (144 km). We tried to talk him out of the ride (to take the
sag wagon). He refused and rode the entire ride (we finished in 16
hours total, including all stops). I'm told he was sick for 3 weeks
with kidney problems. At one point I thought he might be delirious.
I asked if he wanted the sag wagon and got a 'look' back that
saind, to put it politely, was no way.

2) Drink before you're thirsty and drink often! If you have a
hydration pack take sips every N minutes (you'll need to figure
that out). If you use bottles keep them full. Try to use cold
drinks on hot days (you said July). It will help keep you a bit
cooler. Drink what ever you like but try to avoid soda (I know
someone who did a double on Pepsi, ick!). Your body is pretty busy
trying to keep up.

3) Eat before you are hungery, eat often and eat small amounts. Avoid
the 'bonk' (no not that! ;-), it's the sick feeling you get when
you haven't eaten in a while. It is possible to recover from this
on the ride but your over all performance will drop and you will be
miserable, cranky and nasty unitl you recover.

4) Drink often!

5) Don't skip rest stops and use the facilities! NJ's southern half is
covered by the pine barrens. It has poisonous snakes, lots of
ticks, pine flys and mosquitoes (our state bird :-). Also a tree
won't provide toilet paper (pine bark anyone :-). Oh make sure you
bring a roll of toilet paper you never know when you may have to
go.

6) Drink often!

7) If you are in a group, ride as a group. Work together and finish as
a team. Psychologically it a big pick me up. Also a nice pace line
can get you up to unbeleivable speeds! Just don't try to ride
faster than your body can handle. You'll know the feeling, try it
at least once in training. It's usually a mistake you make then.

8) Drink often! I know I've said it 3 times but it is important. You
won't recover on your ride if you become dehydrated. And if you
continue the ride will be a death ride. It happened to me once
(Orange Gatorade) and at the half way point (35 miles to go) and I
suffered for the next 3 days

9) Stick to the plan and don't try to go faster or go harder. But at
the same time be flexible to a point. Things happen deal with them
accordingly.

Enjoy the ride, if you've trained properly the ride will be actually
easier than the training. Besides a double century is major bragging
rights. Also it's great when you tell non-cyclist that you ride
distances and then tell them you've done a double century (triple
metric) in 1 day. I love when their eyes pop out of their heads. Also
it lets you know that you are alive and that anything is possible with
hard work.

--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry
http://home.comcast.net/~ncherry/ (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)

Neil Cherry wrote:

...
Here are some things that you will find out the hard way. You are
going to get certain sores. This may be certain muscles such as your
neck, your arms, your wrists, or some thing else (definitely your
butt). There are exercises you can do to minimize these problems. Push
ups work well for your shoulders, crunches (not sit ups) for your
back, something called bridges for your neck. Some of the other pains
are in the hands. They can go numb so you need to take advantage of
the entire handle bar (I hope it's a road bike). Move your handles
around and wear good gloves....

I am going to be really obnoxious and point out that I rode a century
after being off the bike for 8 weeks and had no discomfort other than
tired leg muscles at the end of the ride.

--
Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)

Jacques Moser wrote:

I am very tempted to try one of these long rides (310 km in early July), but
still hesitating. I am commuting daily on short distances (13 km round
trip). I normally have no problems completing a 100 km ride with up to
1000 m climb. My longest distance ever is 190 km, mostly flat, but I would
have been unable to go any further. I know training will help, but 300 km
seems so far beyond everything I have done that I wonder whether it is at
all within my reach. Is there a way to "know" - or guess - whether this
would be realistic ?

Go to www.ultracycling.com and look through their articles. Lots of
tips on long distance cycling--they think centuries are short training
rides!


-=Dave=-

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 22:44:42 -0600, Tom Sherman wrote:
Neil Cherry wrote:

...
Here are some things that you will find out the hard way. You are
going to get certain sores. This may be certain muscles such as your
neck, your arms, your wrists, or some thing else (definitely your
butt). There are exercises you can do to minimize these problems. Push
ups work well for your shoulders, crunches (not sit ups) for your
back, something called bridges for your neck. Some of the other pains
are in the hands. They can go numb so you need to take advantage of
the entire handle bar (I hope it's a road bike). Move your handles
around and wear good gloves....

I am going to be really obnoxious and point out that I rode a century
after being off the bike for 8 weeks and had no discomfort other than
tired leg muscles at the end of the ride.

I usually end up with a saddle sore and sore muscles. The thing is I
don't believe that you could get away with that on a double century.
Also, the OP had stated that he was riding around 35 km (I'm doing it
from memory) and needed to do a 314 km ride (double century/triple
metric). I'm willing to bet that you have a few years experience and a
lot of miles behind you. Or that you are crazy in which case welcome
to long distance cycling. How about RAMM next year? :-)


--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry
http://home.comcast.net/~ncherry/ (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 00:44:50 -0500, Dave wrote:
Jacques Moser wrote:

I am very tempted to try one of these long rides (310 km in early July), but
still hesitating. I am commuting daily on short distances (13 km round
trip). I normally have no problems completing a 100 km ride with up to
1000 m climb. My longest distance ever is 190 km, mostly flat, but I would
have been unable to go any further. I know training will help, but 300 km
seems so far beyond everything I have done that I wonder whether it is at
all within my reach. Is there a way to "know" - or guess - whether this
would be realistic ?

Go to www.ultracycling.com and look through their articles. Lots of
tips on long distance cycling--they think centuries are short training
rides!

Good site! I'm wondering if I can keep using 'long distance cyclist'
after reading their page. ;-)

--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry
http://home.comcast.net/~ncherry/ (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)

Neil,

Thanks for all this precious advice. It is really good to benefit from
real experience like yours. As things go, I'll probably be doing it alone.
The few times when I did cycle with others, I tended to be left behind and
this was depressing. I might, however, if I find the time, try to join a club
to get used (to some degree) to pacelining. I guess once on the spot it
would be stupid to refuse to combine efforts with other participants.
The ride I am considering is more hilly than yours although not a mountain
tour: remaining all the time between 300 and 800 m elevation, but
nonetheless totalling 2600 m climb, which is again 50% more than what I've
done in a day ! (As you would guess, living in Switzerland makes you - to
some extent - rather used to hills, but far less accustomed to wind,
against which I lose my temper and patience). The max time allowed is 17
hours, which I will probably use in full or almost.
Beyond pure training, the most critical thing I must learn is probably to
keep eating and drinking. I can discipline myself during the first 3-4 hours,
but then I lose track and too often end up with the famous bonk...
OK, you helped me get closer to filling the registration form.

Jacques

Neil Cherry wrote:

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 22:44:42 -0600, Tom Sherman wrote:

Neil Cherry wrote:


...
Here are some things that you will find out the hard way. You are
going to get certain sores. This may be certain muscles such as your
neck, your arms, your wrists, or some thing else (definitely your
butt). There are exercises you can do to minimize these problems. Push
ups work well for your shoulders, crunches (not sit ups) for your
back, something called bridges for your neck. Some of the other pains
are in the hands. They can go numb so you need to take advantage of
the entire handle bar (I hope it's a road bike). Move your handles
around and wear good gloves....

I am going to be really obnoxious and point out that I rode a century
after being off the bike for 8 weeks and had no discomfort other than
tired leg muscles at the end of the ride.


I usually end up with a saddle sore and sore muscles. The thing is I
don't believe that you could get away with that on a double century.
Also, the OP had stated that he was riding around 35 km (I'm doing it
from memory) and needed to do a 314 km ride (double century/triple
metric). I'm willing to bet that you have a few years experience and a
lot of miles behind you. Or that you are crazy in which case welcome
to long distance cycling. How about RAMM next year? :-)

Picture of my bike. [1] Sitting on it is about as comfortable as sitting
on the seat in my Honda Civic. There is no stress on my hands, wrists,
elbows, shoulders, neck, or back and no pressure points or chafing to
cause saddle sores. My legs still get tired, unfortunately.

The reason I said obnoxious it that it is considered bad form to mention
the "R word" when the subject of bicycle comfort comes up.

[1] http://www.ihpva.org/incoming/2002/sunset/Sunset001.jpg.

--
Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:16:18 +0100, Jacques Moser wrote:
Neil,


Thanks for all this precious advice. It is really good to benefit
from real experience like yours. As things go, I'll probably be
doing it alone.

Please don't consider me an expert just someone with experience. The
link the other poster supplied has lots of good info, I'll be
rereading the information there a few times. I don't think I would be
able to ride that far alone, it would just bore me to tears.

The few times when I did cycle with others, I tended to be left
behind and this was depressing. I might, however, if I find the
time, try to join a club to get used (to some degree) to pacelining.

This is a very good idea, riding in a pace line takes skill. One very
important thing to do is to not look at the rear wheel of the rider in
front of you. Instead look ahead of him to see what others are doing
in front of him. Also _NEVER_ overlap the wheel of the rider in front
of you. You'll probably want to keep at least 1 m behind the rider you
are following. And be careful of being tired, you can make mistakes
very quickly in a pace line. But once you've got it the effort is well
worth it.

The ride I am considering is more hilly than yours although not a
mountain tour: remaining all the time between 300 and 800 m
elevation, but nonetheless totalling 2600 m climb, which is again
50% more than what I've done in a day ! (As you would guess, living
in Switzerland makes you - to some extent - rather used to hills,
but far less accustomed to wind, against which I lose my temper and
patience). The max time allowed is 17 hours, which I will probably
use in full or almost.

Ouch we still call those mountains, I tried to ride a 100km ride with
about 640m of climb. I had to abandon the 100k and go with the 50k. I
ran out of lungs long before I ran out of legs (asthma).

Actually I find wind annoying but I know how to survive it (I think).
What I do is to spin into the wind instead of pushing a big gear. I
fancy myself as a spinner (regularly spinning at 95 - 100 rpm). I also
change my bike computer from mph to rpm. That way I don't know how
fast I'm going and I feel like I'm doing work and getting somewhere.

Beyond pure training, the most critical thing I must learn is
probably to keep eating and drinking. I can discipline myself during
the first 3-4 hours, but then I lose track and too often end up with
the famous bonk... OK, you helped me get closer to filling the
registration form.

Try out some of the gel products, they are good for quick sugar. Carry
a candy bar for when you really get in trouble. Try to carry bite size
food as this makes it easy to eat often with out filling up all at
once. I hate the bonk, my most famous bonk (with in my clubs Wednesday
night rides) was when I decided to push it up a 30m climb. A couple of
racers decided to join us and they went up the hill fast. So I took
the challenge and went after them. I caught and passed them half way
up the hill. I felt great! Once I got to the top of the hill I felt
like getting sick (the bonk). So I pulled over and laid down on the
grass until I recovered. I was mindful not to get nasty with the
others when they asked what was wrong (you can get real nasty with the
bonk). Instead I just said 'the bonk' and waited it out. A minute or 2
later a passing motorist asked if I was ok. As I lay on the grass I
said I was fine (I could see them) and said thank you. The club ride
still laughs about that one.

Good luck with your ride, if you train well you will do well. If only
for the fact that you've spent all this time train and your not about
to waste all that time and money. :-)

--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry
http://home.comcast.net/~ncherry/ (Text only)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II)