Centrum Performance?

ytc100

New Member
Well I wouldn't really call it training. I ride for the sheer enjoyment. But basically I usually ride the tourne from my house 3-5 times a week. About 5 miles on the road and 9-12 miles in the park each ride - lately these have been on my ss. The weekends tend to be more intense technical group rides of 10-15 (and hopefully more) miles. Not really sure what I want to accomplish other than not cramping on the faster/more technical rides.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
ytc100 said:
Well I wouldn't really call it training. I ride for the sheer enjoyment. But basically I usually ride the tourne from my house 3-5 times a week. About 5 miles on the road and 9-12 miles in the park each ride - lately these have been on my ss. The weekends tend to be more intense technical group rides of 10-15 (and hopefully more) miles. Not really sure what I want to accomplish other than not cramping on the faster/more technical rides.

Enjoyment is good!

OTOH, how enjoyable are the cramps? I understand there's a decent hill in the Tourne you could use for hill repeats? Sounds boring, I know. But if you want to make the most gains with the least amount of structure, do repeats on that hill. If you really want to maximize your efforts I would do something like 4-5 reps of 6+ minutes each. Your rest is the coasting back down. Do it on back-to-back days (say T/W) for maximum results. Do it 3 weeks in a row. On the 4th week, take a break, or ride easy that week. You'll probably be surprised at how much you progress after that rest week.

If it all sounds too much like work & structure, bag it. No need to force the "training" aspect of it if it's not really something that appeals to you.
 

ytc100

New Member
Hmmm. Not sure if I have the mental stamina for this. Dont know what trying to ride my ss up that hill 5 times will do to me either.
This sounds too much like something heythorp would do. :)
I may try it just to see though. Thanks for the input.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
ytc100 said:
This sounds too much like something heythorp would do. :)

Yeah, heythorp and I are both roadies originally. So we obsess about bike nutrition, hill repeats, LT push workouts...stuff like that.

Incidentally I live right behind the Great Swamp, which is flat flat flat. I do many of my training rides there which consist of hairball things that are supposed to resemble training. On any given summer night, the place is overrun by roadies doing silly things like that. It's rather entertaining seeing people sprinting at 30+ mph randomly.
 
D

doublenines

Guest
I wanted to add something to the cramping issue (not sure if it was mentioned earlier, because I briefly skimmed the thread, but I originally wanted to post it and got delayed in confirming it; btw, this blew up into a huge, informative thread, you guys are very well rounded) - the definition of a cramp is "A sudden, involuntary, spasmodic muscular contraction causing severe pain, often occurring in the leg or shoulder as the result of strain;" scientists are not 100% sure of why it occurs but there's 3 areas of thought on the cause: 1) nutrition; 2) hydration; 3) conditioning. you guys have touched on all 3 but I don't think anyone mentioned proper stretching and warm-up (and this has to do with conditioning). a substantial percentage of injuries are caused because of a lack of this. as lame as it sounds, take 10-15 minutes before a hard ride and stretch (both static and dynamic; if you're going to ride hard or race, spend more of your time doing dynamic stretching, this "wakes up" your muscles and should be specific to the muscle groups being used). also, an often overlooked part of conditioning, gradually decrease your workout as you near the end (in other words, at the end of a hard ride, take an easy 10-15 minute ride to gradually decrease your heart & respiratory rate; pedaling at 30-40% of your maximum effort for the first few minutes and gradually decrease from there).

Now as to what normZurawski was saying about the hill repeats. he's 100% correct and he's referring to "interval training" which has been shown to be very effective (there was just a pretty good article on it in either this month's or last month's Mountainbike Action) for improving stamina, speed, and conditioning. it's actually the fastest way to increase your speed and stamina in the shortest amount of time, and it's also a way to get in a tremendous workout in a short period of time (in other words, doing 6 hill repeats will consume say 20 minutes and covers X miles, this is will be the equivalent of riding 60 minutes and doing X times 3 miles - these figures are just for illustration, I'm not sure of the actual conversion but it is documented that interval training condenses a longer workout).
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
No studies support stretching. In fact, some studies show stretching actually lowers your muscle strength! More injuries are the result of cold stretching than not stretching, especially ballistic stretching.

Warming up and cooling down are good ideas, even though they do cost time many of us don't have.
 

anrothar

entirely thrilled
norm, i've seen an article about that before. i can see the benefits of flexibility though. i remember in high school cross country the coach always had us run a mile(sometimes even more) before stretching. stretching on cold muscles is just bad news.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
anrothar said:
norm, i've seen an article about that before. i can see the benefits of flexibility though. i remember in high school cross country the coach always had us run a mile(sometimes even more) before stretching. stretching on cold muscles is just bad news.

A lot of literature I see claims neither stretching nor weight training helps cycling at all. I'm a believer in science, to be sure. But I can't totally buy that neither help at all. I stretch occasionally because it feels good. I stopped the full post-ride routine after I read a lot of debunking type articles. But I think if something helps you feel better, it's worth something.

Weights are another issue - there appears to be nothing to support weight training for cycling. This is a bit of a hot button topic, with the big names of cycling (Friel, Stern, Coggan, Morris) not seeing eye-to-eye on the issue. I am forced to agree that improving your strength actually isn't the issue with being a better cyclist.
 
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