Seem to be stuck doing 40-50km rides

[luckyboy]

For the past two months I seem to be just able to ride about 40-50kms generally at around 30km/h before heading home.

Having some trouble figuring out what could be the reason, and all I can think is that I'm not eating enough I take 3 or 4 150cal raisin+chocolate bars out with me each ride and have a meal beforehand.

Maybe I need to find something with higher calories to take out with me?

 

[GreasyMonkey]

Not food....

... it may be lack of fluids, but you would be hard-pressed to bonk in 1:30 of riding, with a meal beforehand and the 450-600 kCal of snacks.

I don't mean to sound flippant, but maybe you just need to bite the bullet and go for a long, hard ride.
For me, I find each season I usually have one "death or glory" ride, usually blowing up big-time and limping home to get me over some physiological/psychological barrier. For me it is normally a distance of 80km, once I am over that with a tough 95-100km ride, then I can keep building toward 200km or more.

 

[LugHugger]

For the past two months I seem to be just able to ride about 40-50kms generally at around 30km/h before heading home.

Having some trouble figuring out what could be the reason, and all I can think is that I'm not eating enough I take 3 or 4 150cal raisin+chocolate bars out with me each ride and have a meal beforehand.

Maybe I need to find something with higher calories to take out with me?

You might be being too hard on yourself. If you're riding Llanberis and surrounds at steady 30kph you're doing a decent turn on tough terrain.

Have you been varying your sessions, mixing intervals and tempo sessions? If you let things get too samey, you'll plateau and struggle to push on.

 

[Martin318is]

For the past two months I seem to be just able to ride about 40-50kms generally at around 30km/h before heading home.

Having some trouble figuring out what could be the reason, and all I can think is that I'm not eating enough I take 3 or 4 150cal raisin+chocolate bars out with me each ride and have a meal beforehand.

Maybe I need to find something with higher calories to take out with me?

Try a ride at about 25kph and see how far you go then. If you still don't do much more than 60 then its possibly just a psychological barrier at 50. If you do more than about 80 then it probably indicates you are not resting enough between your rides and you are fatiguing.

 

[daveinzambia]

Apologies if saying something obvious but is this not a case of needing to build up your base endurance.

obviously this depends on you circumstances but i would say if you have come into riding, seen increases then hit this limit then you should try to back off the intensity and increase the time.

if you are doing 50 at 30 now, try doing 75 at 25 (requires a much greater time commitment which you may not have and also requires self control to hold yourself at 25 when you want to go harder)

try sticking to that for a couple of weeks (even if it feels ok or easy) then gradually start to increase the distance you are doing in that time or decrease your time for the 75.

it is hard to make yourself back off on rides but think you need to build up that base first before building the intensity. I found limiting myself to the small chain ring and then doing my normal training loop twice has really helped.

 

[luckyboy]

Thanks guys.
Most I've done is 170km in a group ride before, but just seemed to be stuck in a rut recently.
Been cycling just over a year btw.

 

[daveinzambia]

Can still be an intensity thing. read this recently which found interesting

http://www.cyclingtipsblog.com/2011/08/the-intensity-trap/

but guess than depends on how hard 50 at 30 is for you and how often you are doing it

although have to say when I feel like i am 'stuck in a rut' it is nearly always motivational (although my ruts involve me not touching the bike). do you race? if you have been riding for more than a year then maybe you need to change things round a bit. Book in to do some events and then start tailoring your training specifically for those events to add meaning to rides and give you that extra meaning to complete x km's on this day.

If you feel like you are not eating enough, implies you are just feeling run down at the end of your rides. while that could be over training may be worth getting some blood tests done just to make sure there is not something hanging about and keeping your levels low.

think i am just guessing now, as frankly you have been riding for longer than me and if i was doing 50km's at 30 i would be pretty proud of myself

 

[JayKosta]

How do your legs feel after a ride? Are they 'whobbly'?
That would indicate that you've had an intense workout and need extended rest/recovery time.

Also, if you are drinking plain water on the ride, try a carb replacement drink like Gatorade.
I think the carbs in liquid drinks are available as 'fuel' sooner than when food is eaten for fuel.

Jay Kosta
Endwell NY USA

 

[biker77]

Could also be a fit problem. Are you tired the day after?

 

[luckyboy]

Nah it's not just plain water, I have SIS electrolyte powder in water to drink. And it's not my fit, my knee used to hurt because the saddle was too low, but that's ok now.


Worked out a pretty basic training plan based on bits I've picked up from around the net. Should be decent enough, right? Maybe change Tuesday to all Z3.

 

[GreasyMonkey]

Worked out a pretty basic training plan based on bits I've picked up from around the net. Should be decent enough, right? Maybe change Tuesday to all Z3.

A lot depends on your age, i.e. how quickly you can recover from a ride.

For myself (51 y-o), I am currently starting off serious riding again and losing weight after a 2 year lay-off.
My program which so far (touch wood) has not driven me too far down (cold/flu, etc) has 2 weeks (Mon-Fri only) with hard efforts, usually with only the Tuesday & Thursday hard (80-120km road-ride, all big-ring including climbs), the other days are 45-60km recovery rides (Z1 by your scaling)

Have just introduced 2 x 20min intervals and shortened the hard rides to 45km this fortnight, and will continue with these for another 3 blocks (of 3 weeks), then to 5 x 10min, 6 x 5min, etc, etc (increased intensity, shorten the duration), as I approach my race targets.

I then have a week of ONLY recovery rides, without riding on weekends due to family pressures.

Without the 2-day break on the weekend for short-term recovery, and then the longer 1-in-3 week break from hard efforts, I just get ground down long-term, with a cold/flu episode around the corner in a few months.

I would be wary of putting the Z6 efforts in with the Z2 on Mondays. The best rule is do your easy days EASY and the hard days SUPER-HARD.
It is said that the only difference between pro's and weekend warriors is that the latter do the easy days too hard, and the hard days too easy......

 

[luckyboy]

Ah ok. I can't remember what I read that said to do that. Will move the Z6 intervals to Tuesday instead, and swap Thursday and Friday.

I'm 20 btw. Haven't had any problems recovering so far.

 

[GreasyMonkey]

I'm 20 btw. Haven't had any problems recovering so far.

Half your luck!! Recovery should be a snap then. Do a hard ride and then be fully recovered in 12 hours, not 42-48hrs like an old fool (me).

As you get older, you can still ride as hard, just takes longer to recover - until you do NOT....

 

[TourLeTour]

That looks like a fairly detailed training plan to me... Also I would expect that I am the last person you should be taking advice from, given how long it is since I have won anything, but I am going to chip in my two cents anyway... Your weeks all look pretty close to the same. During my most successfull seasons my training plan was calculated in weeks (so then I could ride to fit around my pretty busy and changing work schedule) and went on a four week cycle, known by the highly technical descriptions of "small, medium, big, Very Big". Small tended to stay the same through the season and was always done at a comfortable intensity, while Very Big grew in length and intensity. The kms always got done, but if I was feeling tired I backed the intensity off, if I was feeling good I turned it up. By listening to my body I always enjoyed my rides and got some pretty fair results.

I found it helped quite a lot, and if I could spend half the time in a week that you currently spend on the bike then I would go straight back to this schedule.

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

If nothing else seems to work out for you, have you considered mild allergies or asthma? I swear I did not know I was suffereing from mild exercise induced asthma. The doc prescribed an inhaler, but I took it rarely. Came home from work oneday, I could breath easily but just felt very lethargic. So I decided to take 2 puffs of the inhaler. In 5 minutes I was bouncing around.