New to Training and Cycling - Training Schedules

[auswi]

Hello,
I am new to cycle training and I have a few questions about all of this.

This is what i want to achieve.

1 - Help me get aeroebically fitter after smoking for years on end.

2 - Lose weight

3 - Help improve the strengh in my legs.

4 - Do a 100k charity ride here in Brisbane in October this year

5 - Have Fun.

I have been going on a ride most Saturdays for the last 6 weeks. I started off riding 22ks on my 1st ride, 25ks on my 2nd ride, 20ks (Lots of Hills) on my 3rd ride, 50ks on my 4th ride (Wanted to push myself) and 35k and 30ks on my last two rides. These rides are a good mixture of hills and fairly flat roads.

I have been trying to work on my cadence and average speed over a 30k trip. I seem to be around 80RPM cadence and a average speed of 22.5ks per hour.

Is this the best way to achieve these targets. I also do Martial arts twice per week as well.

I am 6ft and about 93kg.

Any advise would be great.

Cheers

Auswi

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Try riding 4+ times per week, gradually increase time spent riding 10-15% per week until you're feeling it, then have a bit of an easier week and go again. Frequency, consistency and a sustainable progressive overload are key to developing fitness.

[PortableDave]

Alex,

How important is the time increase? If you were to keep roughly the same time but increase the intesity (hill repeats, sprint intervals) would that achieve similar results or just make you better at that discipline (climbing, sprinting etc?).

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Alex,

How important is the time increase? If you were to keep roughly the same time but increase the intesity (hill repeats, sprint intervals) would that achieve similar results or just make you better at that discipline (climbing, sprinting etc?).

A progressive increase in workload (up to a point) is needed to elicit positive adaptations. That is usually attained through a combination of increased duration and intensity, so it is both.

For newer riders, it's easier in early days to think of adding a bit more time each week as they will naturally improve if they are consistent and ride frequently enough. As fitness improves, they'll tend to ride a bit faster and probably attack some hills a bit harder (relatively) than they started with.

If time limited, then yes, increasing intensity (both relative and absolute) is an important consideration. Many ways of doing that.

There comes a time however when one simply can't add more intensity as a means by which to increase workload effectively. You can only do so may hard sessions per week and recover sufficiently to back up for another quality session. To do that you also need to have sufficiently high training loads that enable you to manage such training.

Also, you need to vary the stimulus. For newer riders, that fairly easy - just do different training routes and ride with a (good) group every so often.

[Orbea]

everyones giving you really good tips but might I also suggest eating healthy, getting good enough sleep, keeping alcohol an stuff to a min and having atleast 1 rest day per wk off? Sure its common sense but some people never realise how beneficial these things can be to a training program to get the most out of themselves. good luck!