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Every commute is a race

May 2, 2013
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Well, I've been winning my daily commute to and from work pretty consistently now. It's a about 17k each way, and so not an insignificant effort. All the guys in the office think I'm super cool, even if they don't say so--and especially when I make the trip in the cold &/or rain (up here in Canada, we tend to get a lot of that at this time of year, eh).

But, on a more serious note, it occurred to me that I may not be making the best use of this time on the bike. These days, I have time for about 1 weekday ride, in addition to my daily commute + weekend rides. My route has a few stop lights, but is mainly open road (office is out of town). This means, it's actually one of my few opportunities for some fitness.

My question is, to make best use of this time, what should my training strategy be? I don't know that 2x/day short rides are all that helpful for longer (real) rides.

Anybody else have a long bike commute? How do you pace it?
 
Jun 4, 2010
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I would say that if you are getting three quality rides a week (two on the weekend and one weekday) then you don't need anything else too spectacular.

Having said that, depending on the time of year and my level of fitness, if I was in a similar situation and wanted to find something extra I'd extend on of the commutes enough to do 20-30mins threshold plus warm up cool down. any other sort of interval i'd find a bit of a faff on a commute... but as i say, if you're getting three other good rides i'm not even sure the threshold ride is necessary.
 
GoodTimes said:
Well, I've been winning my daily commute to and from work pretty consistently now. It's a about 17k each way, and so not an insignificant effort. All the guys in the office think I'm super cool, even if they don't say so--and especially when I make the trip in the cold &/or rain (up here in Canada, we tend to get a lot of that at this time of year, eh).

But, on a more serious note, it occurred to me that I may not be making the best use of this time on the bike. These days, I have time for about 1 weekday ride, in addition to my daily commute + weekend rides. My route has a few stop lights, but is mainly open road (office is out of town). This means, it's actually one of my few opportunities for some fitness.

My question is, to make best use of this time, what should my training strategy be? I don't know that 2x/day short rides are all that helpful for longer (real) rides.

Anybody else have a long bike commute? How do you pace it?

I have a similar situation in that everyone in the office secretly thinks I'm very cool indeed. I too, commute (about 22km each way) through the Canadian winter in Vancouver. I have no specific tips for how it should fit your training plans. But because the effort is shortish, spicing it up with some moderate intervals or a threshold portion in the middle seems to make sense. I have a few hills each way which I use to get some efforts in. Once or twice a week I add a little to the commute via some serious Northshore hills. In the summer, it might also be a trip up Cypress.
 
Mar 18, 2009
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winkybiker said:
I have a similar situation in that everyone in the office secretly thinks I'm very cool indeed. I too, commute (about 22km each way) through the Canadian winter in Vancouver. I have no specific tips for how it should fit your training plans. But because the effort is shortish, spicing it up with some moderate intervals or a threshold portion in the middle seems to make sense. I have a few hills each way which I use to get some efforts in. Once or twice a week I add a little to the commute via some serious Northshore hills. In the summer, it might also be a trip up Cypress.

+1. If possible, I would add 30 or so minutes to at least two of your commute and get a decent training ride (intervals) out of your commuting.
 
May 2, 2013
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elapid said:
+1. If possible, I would add 30 or so minutes to at least two of your commute and get a decent training ride (intervals) out of your commuting.

Some good replies in this thread :)

I usually ride a moderate pace into the office, and then (as winky said) work the hills on the way home.

This week, I rode home, hard, every day. 20 minute threshold effort, followed by a short cooldown. By Saturday, I was actually pretty exhausted.

Moving forward, I think it may be most productive to just spin most of the time, and then 2x / week, add on some distance for one leg to have time to get a warmup, do some intervals, and then cooldown, with longer rides on weekends.

WE're getting to the end of the season where I probably won't bother with interval training. Unlike Winky, I actually have a real winter to contend with ;), and will probably have to put the bike away by December. But, looking towards next spring, I think the above would give me quite a leg up on the others I ride with.
 
GoodTimes said:
Some good replies in this thread :)

I usually ride a moderate pace into the office, and then (as winky said) work the hills on the way home.

This week, I rode home, hard, every day. 20 minute threshold effort, followed by a short cooldown. By Saturday, I was actually pretty exhausted.

Moving forward, I think it may be most productive to just spin most of the time, and then 2x / week, add on some distance for one leg to have time to get a warmup, do some intervals, and then cooldown, with longer rides on weekends.

WE're getting to the end of the season where I probably won't bother with interval training. Unlike Winky, I actually have a real winter to contend with ;), and will probably have to put the bike away by December. But, looking towards next spring, I think the above would give me quite a leg up on the others I ride with.

I actually think 10 short rides per week can be a very effective platform to tune your fitness for the harder efforts. Add in a few extra km a a few times a week, then a long ride on the weekend, and you're 90% there.
 

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