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Training Ms Daisy

armmewitharmony

Maximum Pace
Mar 10, 2014
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I heard somewhere it was better to ride really hard then rest and rinse and repeat than to ride kind of hard the whole time.

Is this true?

Is that what "intervals" is?
 
What does "better" mean to you? It means different things to different people.
 
I heard somewhere it was better to ride really hard then rest and rinse and repeat than to ride kind of hard the whole time.

Is this true?

Is that what "intervals" is?
I think you have the idea of intervals right.
What are you training for? A race? Endurance?
Each kind of training depends on the desired outcome.
What equipment do you have?
 
I think you have the idea of intervals right.
What are you training for? A race? Endurance?
Each kind of training depends on the desired outcome.
What equipment do you have?

"What are you training for?" "What do you mean by better?" Interesting questions.

What am I training for? It's odd, this situation now. Been involved in sports all my life, and done lots of "training" (gym, running) but at the urges of coaches etc not of my own volition, and only for the purpose of raising my performance in some other activity (sport)

With cycling, it's really the first time I've been focused on improving at the type of thing that up to now I'd considered a peripheral training activity itself. I guess like going from lifting weights to ski faster vs lifting weights for bodybuilding.

That's part of the reason why smoking has not been a huge detriment in the past. It certainly is now!

So, my answer is, I'm training to get better at training? And why? Dunno I just do. Like I said, never really been in this situation before, since I was swimming as a kid but that ended in junior high. (Hated swim training, by the way)

Better? I guess it's those things. Ride stronger, climb faster, beat previous marks set by myself. I love competing, but against myself not other people for the most part. So racing will never be a big thing, pretty sure about that.
 
Ride stronger, climb faster, beat previous marks set by myself. I love competing, but against myself not other people for the most part.

Sounds like Strava segments would be a great tool to help you do those things. If you live anywhere to the west of Tokyo, there are lots of small hill segments that make great targets for beating your previous times, and seeing how high up you can get a leaderboard.
 
Do you have a favorite ride? If so what is your best time thus far? That is your benchmark..Then get on the internet and grab any training program you like. Basically if you want to ride faster, short and very intense rides will help the most. If you want to ride farther, longer rides will help the most. Chart our progress over a few months and see the results. If you want to get as fast as you can, start racing.

you should get a heart rate monitor if you want to get "serious" about it.

Re the smoking: Kill it. It will eventually catch up with you. Someone close to me is currently undergoing radiation treatment for cancerous shit on their throat and they only smoked occasionally, two or three smokes a week or less, often months without even one cigarette and occasional hard sessions when out with other smokers.
 
Well, strava says I average 316 kms a week, last time I checked and I've got a couple KOM's on segments up hills and on flats.

That's off the iPhone app, up to now. Will be recording off Garmin from here on in.

That said, not so excited about strava, I've used it to record activities mostly, I don't go chasing KOM's in particular. There are a few that by chance fall on one of my regular training routes so I know where they are, and I've had a bit of a go at those but I don't super go out of my way.

I'd like better results on big climbs, I'm top 3 on little dinky sprint climbs in Chiba which are meaningless, imho.

Anyways, it's not all times and speed for me, but the more intangible "how it felt this time" type thing.
 
No point in any training at all if you are smoking. If you want to ride with faster people you MUST stop. No choice. You can not get fast and be a smoker, plus faster people did not get where they were by smoking and will not put up with it.

Not speaking for anyone else (but let's be honest, I am), but I absolutely refuse to ride with a smoker. No way are you going to pollute my day with your own pathetic cancerous third world addiction.
 
No point in any training at all if you are smoking. If you want to ride with faster people you MUST stop. No choice. You can not get fast and be a smoker, plus faster people did not get where they were by smoking and will not put up with it.

Not speaking for anyone else (but let's be honest, I am), but I absolutely refuse to ride with a smoker. No way are you going to pollute my day with your own pathetic cancerous third world addiction.

First of all, thanks this actually is the other half of my answer to the question "Why do you train?"

I failed to recognize before that another reason I want to get faster is to ride with faster people, cause it's way cooler.

You can't tell me Daniel San was content getting sand kicked in his face by the rock and roll dirt bike karate dudes.

Don't worry, I'll cower in the shadows for as long as I must smoke.
 
Yeah, the faster you get,the more doors it opens. You meet hardcore riders you never realised existed.

About smoking; everyone is telling you to quit, and this is your only option. Speaking as someone who has beaten addiction, I feel I am exactly qualified to say the following;

The only way to quit, and stay quit, is to do it now, immediately, and go through the horror of initial withdrawals. It will be hard, and you will be tearing your hair out, getting agro, feeling depressed, manic, and feel like there is no end in sight, but it will soon start getting better and there will come a point when you wake up one day completely free.

Your words here are telling of your addiction, "as long as I must smoke". No, you do not 'have' to smoke. This is your addiction convincing you of the fact, and leads me to the second point; you will not quit and stay quit by tapering off. That simply does not work, and you will end up smoking just as much as you were before.

Smoking is similar to alcoholism, in that it is actively encouraged by a large part of society and culture, due to vested interests and the fact that there are so many addicts who enable eachothers behaviours by fetishising the procedure of drug taking by dressing it up in an identity; 'cool smoking', fancy boxes, 'lifestyle choice', etc. Similar to alcoholism too, it is utterly insane when looked at objectively, and holds absolutely no benefits at all. The fact that it is legal and there are 'smoking areas' everywhere might make it seem OK in your mind, but this is just because a large part of humanity is stuck in the past and is enabling their addiction that they refuse to put the effort in to get rid of.

Stop now. Today, right now. Every single fibre of your being is currently being influenced by the addiction that tells you it is OK to say you will quit tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. I know it is scary to contemplate never smoking again, and he addiction creates in you a feeling of loss / separation anxiety whenever you consider such a thing, but you must do it now. NOW.

If you don't, you will be forever just another sad prick who rides an expensive bike and smokes. You will never progress past that.

If you need any advice or want to talk about it, PM me for sure and i will happily tell you all about how I managed to get clean. It is very simple though; I just stopped, then rode the brutal roller coaster of agony for 6 months until I was clear of it all.

Consider this an integral part of your training.

Watching this might help too;

 
Yeah, the faster you get,the more doors it opens. You meet hardcore riders you never realised existed.

About smoking; everyone is telling you to quit, and this is your only option. Speaking as someone who has beaten addiction, I feel I am exactly qualified to say the following;

The only way to quit, and stay quit, is to do it now, immediately, and go through the horror of initial withdrawals. It will be hard, and you will be tearing your hair out, getting agro, feeling depressed, manic, and feel like there is no end in sight, but it will soon start getting better and there will come a point when you wake up one day completely free.

Your words here are telling of your addiction, "as long as I must smoke". No, you do not 'have' to smoke. This is your addiction convincing you of the fact, and leads me to the second point; you will not quit and stay quit by tapering off. That simply does not work, and you will end up smoking just as much as you were before.

Smoking is similar to alcoholism, in that it is actively encouraged by a large part of society and culture, due to vested interests and the fact that there are so many addicts who enable eachothers behaviours by fetishising the procedure of drug taking by dressing it up in an identity; 'cool smoking', fancy boxes, 'lifestyle choice', etc. Similar to alcoholism too, it is utterly insane when looked at objectively, and holds absolutely no benefits at all. The fact that it is legal and there are 'smoking areas' everywhere might make it seem OK in your mind, but this is just because a large part of humanity is stuck in the past and is enabling their addiction that they refuse to put the effort in to get rid of.

Stop now. Today, right now. Every single fibre of your being is currently being influenced by the addiction that tells you it is OK to say you will quit tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. I know it is scary to contemplate never smoking again, and he addiction creates in you a feeling of loss / separation anxiety whenever you consider such a thing, but you must do it now. NOW.

If you don't, you will be forever just another sad prick who rides an expensive bike and smokes. You will never progress past that.

If you need any advice or want to talk about it, PM me for sure and i will happily tell you all about how I managed to get clean. It is very simple though; I just stopped, then rode the brutal roller coaster of agony for 6 months until I was clear of it all.

Consider this an integral part of your training.

Watching this might help too;



Hard to argue with that. Nobody's ever encouraged me to smoke, it's all me. Don't know why I like it so much.

Why is it even still legal! Well, we all know the answer to that.

I wonder, would we be willing to accept a further sweeping tax hike to cover the revenue lost from cigarette sales to get rid of it altogether? I like it but I don't think I'd break the law to do it.

I know what it's like to quit, done it a few times and stopped for over a year more than once, but have always gone back.

I was saying just recently, it's like that sexy, but toxic girlfriend that you know you've got to cut loose sooner or later but later always seems better than sooner.

What can I say? An addict's got an excuse for everything.

Back to conventional training, does anyone believe in training for out of the saddle beasting like Alberto?
 
I was saying just recently, it's like that sexy, but toxic girlfriend that you know you've got to cut loose sooner or later but later always seems better than sooner.
What if she had contagious genital cancer? I think you could give her up. Smokes are worse cause you likely still get cancer and likely never actually orgasm. Not worth it.
 
I trained to get better at training and to ride with the fast kids and I did alright out of it. We've talked about bits of this and we can talk about it more, if you want to. Quit smoking, too, which you also already know. You're fairly close to me, we just have to coordinate a bit more and we could get you faster, fitter, and less of a chimbly.

When we rode all the way back from The Boob ride to Chiba and you were right on my wheel over those bridges I was impressed. I did not expect that of you, nor did I expect you to be so adamant about riding all the home otherwise I'd have slunk off on a train with Ben that day.

I don't think it would take a heap to get improvements out of you but there are certainly some choices you have to make.
 
I trained to get better at training and to ride with the fast kids and I did alright out of it. We've talked about bits of this and we can talk about it more, if you want to. Quit smoking, too, which you also already know. You're fairly close to me, we just have to coordinate a bit more and we could get you faster, fitter, and less of a chimbly.

When we rode all the way back from The Boob ride to Chiba and you were right on my wheel over those bridges I was impressed. I did not expect that of you, nor did I expect you to be so adamant about riding all the home otherwise I'd have slunk off on a train with Ben that day.

I don't think it would take a heap to get improvements out of you but there are certainly some choices you have to make.

Yes you've been a wealth of information and a great mentor really. Very tolerant of the dirty habit we shall not mention and my other faults as well.

You and I both know the sad truth behind the maniacal push for Chiba was not a gung Ho we can do it lets challenge!!! sort of thing but rather my acute distaste for public transport, Japanese trains in particular.

Doing my best to make progress - I'll coordinate with you to expedite this anytime.
 
Judging if you are getting better by how you feel is a nice way to do things if you want to enjoy the process and be willing to live with a lot of uncertainty about actual performance improvements. It is a good way for people who have a lot of room for improvement in their fitness levels because they can perceive the bigger differences.

If you are already performing at a relatively high percentage of your max natural ability, I think the best way to know if you are getting stronger is to buy a power meter and do some performance testing once a month (probably after a rest week, preceded by 3 weeks of increasing intensity/volume, assuming you have a good aerobic base.) Having worked with many types of powermeters, I suggest hub based for the most consistent measurements.

If you focus your training on the type of riding you will be basing your improvements on, you will see better results. i.e. if you will base your improvement in fitness on a 3 minute climb, do more targeted training with short climbs.

If you want to measure performance on a climb/segment based only on time, you will get higher accuracy with longer segments.(but also consider the previous point) Strava is good, but if you do not have a power meter, I recommend just using the lap function on your garmin, as that will be more accurate than relying on the gps (especially on short segments).

A HR monitor is a good training tool, but not so good for measuring performance improvements (especially if already having good base fitness).
 
Judging if you are getting better by how you feel is a nice way to do things if you want to enjoy the process and be willing to live with a lot of uncertainty about actual performance improvements. It is a good way for people who have a lot of room for improvement in their fitness levels because they can perceive the bigger differences.

If you are already performing at a relatively high percentage of your max natural ability, I think the best way to know if you are getting stronger is to buy a power meter and do some performance testing once a month (probably after a rest week, preceded by 3 weeks of increasing intensity/volume, assuming you have a good aerobic base.) Having worked with many types of powermeters, I suggest hub based for the most consistent measurements.

If you focus your training on the type of riding you will be basing your improvements on, you will see better results. i.e. if you will base your improvement in fitness on a 3 minute climb, do more targeted training with short climbs.

If you want to measure performance on a climb/segment based only on time, you will get higher accuracy with longer segments.(but also consider the previous point) Strava is good, but if you do not have a power meter, I recommend just using the lap function on your garmin, as that will be more accurate than relying on the gps (especially on short segments).

A HR monitor is a good training tool, but not so good for measuring performance improvements (especially if already having good base fitness).

Thank you, this is helpful.

I've had some time to play with the Garmin and I have a better understanding about how I could use it and what it can do.

For now I'll see how I can benefit from my current equipment, and consider a power meter in the future.
 
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