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Tricks for keeping cadence?



 
 
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  #71  
Old November 2nd 04, 04:35 AM
Blair P. Houghton
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Badger_South wrote:
On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:21:38 GMT, Blair P. Houghton wrote:

Badger_South wrote:
So Terry, do you strive to ride -both- mountains and fast flats so that you
keep up both types of riding? I'm experiencing this need to go ride the
flats after about 4-5 days riding hills, and when I get to the flats, my
speed has dropped way off, and I take a full day, sometimes two, to get
back up to former spin speed?


You should probably only train in the hills 1 day, with
1-2 days of aerobic (flats) work in between, if you ride
at all off the hills.


Hmmm. Hard to do b/c of my terrain here. Generally what happens is that
'rolling hills' become the 'flats'. IME, most bikers who have no hills
(Fla) wish they lived in the foothills, as I do.


Yep. I live in the perfect spot (and kick myself every
time I ride for not noticing it for 12 ****ing years)
with hills and flats in any direction.

If you do the hills in lower gears you should be able to
avoid too much "heavy" work on your legs. Training at
higher gears on "hill" days will act like high-intensity
gym training to build the muscles up for strength.

You're tearing down your muscles in the hills so they
can grow stronger, and your muscles need about 48 hours
of rest after a high-intensity workout.


Well that's generally true, but it takes a -lot- to tear down my quads and
I'm probably not able to tax them harder than my lungs at this point.


Lungs? You should be doing some anaerobic activity in
those hills; that is the sort that causes strength gain
in your type IIb (aka "fast twitch") fibers.

If your lungs are involved, it's aerobic, and you're talking
type-I ("slow twitch") fibers.

And then there are type-IIa fibers, which are in between.

IOW,
my quads can -easily- handle the ride I'm doing now. But I get your drift.

If you hit them with high-intensity effort every day,
you'll overtrain them, give them no chance to rebuild
properly, and you'll get poor results.


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.

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".

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.

--Blair
"I know. I'll put a magnet on a stick
and hold it out front of me and it'll
suck my fat ass around the loop..."
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  #72  
Old November 2nd 04, 03:34 PM
Badger_South
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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


  #73  
Old November 2nd 04, 09:46 PM
Michael
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Badger_South wrote:
(snip)

So you're a fan of the side-to-side full on body english method?


LOL. I lived on a bike when I was a kid (45 years ago), and *loved* to
do the body english thing, especially on hills, while standing ... see
how far I could throw that bike side-to-side without losing it. 44
years later (last year ... heh!) I began riding again, and on the very
first hill I encountered I became aware that, without thinking about it
and not having done it for ages, I was encouraging the bike to snap from
side to side.
 




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