Set me a challenge for 2015
Discussion
bulldog5046 said:
On an old mountain bike? wow. Great effort!
Thanks - a 20 year old mountain bike at that. 
bulldog5046 said:
You sound a bit like me. I tend to just wake up and decide I'm going out on the bike.
Bingo! You've understood exactly what makes it work for me: I can choose to go out at any time when it suits me.OK, what about this approach;
Step 1; buy yourself a road bike - MTB's are fine for MTB-ing but are soul destroying and hard work on the road. Plus, to get the best out of them you need to go somewhere off-road - which means traveling to be able ride. Road bike means you can be dressed, out of the door and on your bike in a matter of 15 mins. Plus, you can go significantly further in any given time on a road bike than you can on an MTB.
Step 2; identify a number of events or challenges per month or quarter that ramp up through the year. Maybe look for a local sportive or charity event to begin with that is say 35-40 miles, next one being 50-60 miles, right up to 100+ miles. Be realistic, don't sign up for anything that is so easy you can do it without prep, but equally don't go signing up for something so challenging you have little/no chance of completing it without giving up your entire life to train for it! Ultimately riding 100 miles at an average of 18 mph average speed by the end of the year could be your target.
Step 3; join a local club or group, it is amazing how motivating riding with others can be, and how it will push you to ride further/harder. Safe group riding could be your new skill, don't underestimate how much concentration and discipline is required to ride in close formation at speed!
Step 4; set yourself a few personal challenges that you know will motivate you to do the extra ride - might be an iconic roue like London to Bath, or a local route that you ride on a regular basis but you want to get quicker at, or maybe a local hill that you want to climb 10 times in an hour - you get the idea. Try to think of things you can do with little/no notice if you have a bit of spare time on your hands and the sun is out (or not).
Step 5; throw your book of excuses in the bin! It is so easy to find an excuse not to ride from the 'feeling tired' to the 'it's raining' to the 'X-Factor the final is on TV' - unless it is so windy it's too dangerous to ride, or if you are ill and need time for your body to fight a cold/virus then excuses are just that!
Step 6; ride and enjoy it; enjoy the sunny days, enjoy the rain, enjoy fighting with the headwind, enjoy the new handling skills you acquire riding on frosty roads, enjoy the odd coffee stop, enjoy the bruised leg muscles, enjoy the ridicule you will get from your friends and loved ones, enjoy feeling fit, enjoy feeling fatigued - there really is quite a lot to enjoy about cycling!
As you can probably tell I quite enjoy the odd spin, I could not get out tonight as I have come down with 'Man-flu' and have a sore throat and generally feel poo so sat in front of the telly watching the usual drivel, what a waste of a few hours!!!!
Step 1; buy yourself a road bike - MTB's are fine for MTB-ing but are soul destroying and hard work on the road. Plus, to get the best out of them you need to go somewhere off-road - which means traveling to be able ride. Road bike means you can be dressed, out of the door and on your bike in a matter of 15 mins. Plus, you can go significantly further in any given time on a road bike than you can on an MTB.
Step 2; identify a number of events or challenges per month or quarter that ramp up through the year. Maybe look for a local sportive or charity event to begin with that is say 35-40 miles, next one being 50-60 miles, right up to 100+ miles. Be realistic, don't sign up for anything that is so easy you can do it without prep, but equally don't go signing up for something so challenging you have little/no chance of completing it without giving up your entire life to train for it! Ultimately riding 100 miles at an average of 18 mph average speed by the end of the year could be your target.
Step 3; join a local club or group, it is amazing how motivating riding with others can be, and how it will push you to ride further/harder. Safe group riding could be your new skill, don't underestimate how much concentration and discipline is required to ride in close formation at speed!
Step 4; set yourself a few personal challenges that you know will motivate you to do the extra ride - might be an iconic roue like London to Bath, or a local route that you ride on a regular basis but you want to get quicker at, or maybe a local hill that you want to climb 10 times in an hour - you get the idea. Try to think of things you can do with little/no notice if you have a bit of spare time on your hands and the sun is out (or not).
Step 5; throw your book of excuses in the bin! It is so easy to find an excuse not to ride from the 'feeling tired' to the 'it's raining' to the 'X-Factor the final is on TV' - unless it is so windy it's too dangerous to ride, or if you are ill and need time for your body to fight a cold/virus then excuses are just that!
Step 6; ride and enjoy it; enjoy the sunny days, enjoy the rain, enjoy fighting with the headwind, enjoy the new handling skills you acquire riding on frosty roads, enjoy the odd coffee stop, enjoy the bruised leg muscles, enjoy the ridicule you will get from your friends and loved ones, enjoy feeling fit, enjoy feeling fatigued - there really is quite a lot to enjoy about cycling!
As you can probably tell I quite enjoy the odd spin, I could not get out tonight as I have come down with 'Man-flu' and have a sore throat and generally feel poo so sat in front of the telly watching the usual drivel, what a waste of a few hours!!!!
Morning Jeremy, long time!
I'm coming to the end of the year, like everyone, and just about on course to become a cycling spaceman. That's riding into space in a year, or 100 km of vertical gain.
By the way, pleae feel free to pop down to Devon for a ride any time, I enjoyed our last one!
I'm coming to the end of the year, like everyone, and just about on course to become a cycling spaceman. That's riding into space in a year, or 100 km of vertical gain.
By the way, pleae feel free to pop down to Devon for a ride any time, I enjoyed our last one!
louiebaby said:
Morning Jeremy, long time!
I'm coming to the end of the year, like everyone, and just about on course to become a cycling spaceman. That's riding into space in a year, or 100 km of vertical gain.
By the way, pleae feel free to pop down to Devon for a ride any time, I enjoyed our last one!
I'm coming to the end of the year, like everyone, and just about on course to become a cycling spaceman. That's riding into space in a year, or 100 km of vertical gain.
By the way, pleae feel free to pop down to Devon for a ride any time, I enjoyed our last one!
You might have recognised where I took my inspiration for the target setting from. Albeit it turned out to be about half as difficult as I needed. 
Good work on the spaceman effort - I'm nowhere near that for the year (my back-of-fag-packet calculations say I've probably ascended 40Km or so).
Love to visit at some stage for a ride - somehow we need to stop deepening that mountain bike wide rut that has been worn around the perimeter of Richmond Park.
With a road bike you can cover some big distances per ride. I've enjoyed heading out in a random direction for as far as I have time for and then jumping on a train back. That's a bit easier when 'back' is Central London though. I'll assume you'll want to stick to out-and-back.
Distance
'The Hour'
Over the course of month 1 head out (and back) in the direction of 1 o'clock and see how far you can get. Month 2 is in the direction of 2 o'clock and so on. Come back to PH and deliver your review of the best cake shop you've found in that 'hour', but it has to be a minimum of 60km from base, as the crow flies.
'The Alphabet'
26 letters in the alphabet, so one letter a week takes you through the alphabet twice. Week 1, all your rides must take you to a place/thing/person beginning with A, and so on. A place/thing/person can only be used once so you'll always be riding somewhere different.
Climbing
2,015m of climbing per week, every week. If you fall short for any reason then you have to pay double the difference (in metres climbed) to catch up but you only have two weeks to repay the debt for any week. Metres missed through illness or injury can be repaid at face value (within four weeks) but you still have to catch up.
And/or 201.5km of climbing for the year.
Distance
'The Hour'
Over the course of month 1 head out (and back) in the direction of 1 o'clock and see how far you can get. Month 2 is in the direction of 2 o'clock and so on. Come back to PH and deliver your review of the best cake shop you've found in that 'hour', but it has to be a minimum of 60km from base, as the crow flies.
'The Alphabet'
26 letters in the alphabet, so one letter a week takes you through the alphabet twice. Week 1, all your rides must take you to a place/thing/person beginning with A, and so on. A place/thing/person can only be used once so you'll always be riding somewhere different.
Climbing
2,015m of climbing per week, every week. If you fall short for any reason then you have to pay double the difference (in metres climbed) to catch up but you only have two weeks to repay the debt for any week. Metres missed through illness or injury can be repaid at face value (within four weeks) but you still have to catch up.
And/or 201.5km of climbing for the year.
Edited by Gruffy on Saturday 22 November 13:37
You could enter the SPOCO series - sporting course time trials (i.e. avoiding the recent craze for dual-carriageway 'ski-slope' courses).
http://www.spoco-se.org.uk/index.php?p=about
This year the SE region had about 30 events over the year and you can pick ones to suit your diary.
The photos all have TT bikes in full kit in sunny weather. It's not always like that (we had one a few years back where it was snowing) and the road surfaces are usually too bad for skinny tyres. A colleague rode one season on his MTB with 1.25" cut-slicks and finished well up the field (and well ahead of me).
http://www.spoco-se.org.uk/index.php?p=about
This year the SE region had about 30 events over the year and you can pick ones to suit your diary.
The photos all have TT bikes in full kit in sunny weather. It's not always like that (we had one a few years back where it was snowing) and the road surfaces are usually too bad for skinny tyres. A colleague rode one season on his MTB with 1.25" cut-slicks and finished well up the field (and well ahead of me).
jeremyc said:
louiebaby said:
Morning Jeremy, long time!
I'm coming to the end of the year, like everyone, and just about on course to become a cycling spaceman. That's riding into space in a year, or 100 km of vertical gain.
By the way, pleae feel free to pop down to Devon for a ride any time, I enjoyed our last one!
I'm coming to the end of the year, like everyone, and just about on course to become a cycling spaceman. That's riding into space in a year, or 100 km of vertical gain.
By the way, pleae feel free to pop down to Devon for a ride any time, I enjoyed our last one!
You might have recognised where I took my inspiration for the target setting from. Albeit it turned out to be about half as difficult as I needed. Good work on the spaceman effort - I'm nowhere near that for the year (my back-of-fag-packet calculations say I've probably ascended 40Km or so).
Love to visit at some stage for a ride - somehow we need to stop deepening that mountain bike wide rut that has been worn around the perimeter of Richmond Park.
Craikeybaby said:
50Km ascent would be a good challenge for 2015 then.
The only reason I'm anywhere near 100 is the lumpy commute i have. I'd like to see Jeremy get a new cyclocross bike the amount of power he puts out that is absorbed by his rickety old MTB is quite impressive for his age!louiebaby said:
I'd like to see Jeremy get a new cyclocross bike the amount of power he puts out that is absorbed by his rickety old MTB is quite impressive for his age!
Oi! I Resemble that remark. And leave my lovely bike out of this - it's a classic dontchaknow.
Besides, surely the less efficient my bike is the fitter I'll get in the shortest distance ridden, right? And that, after all, is my goal (not distance nor speed).
Daveyraveygravey said:
Maddad, loved your ideas! And Gruffy - though your distance challenge reads like 60k in an hour...which would be a challenge (!)
I didn't explain it well. The idea was to treat the clock face as a compass and head in the direction of 1 o'clock during January, in the direction of 2 o'clock during February and so on.jeremyc said:
Besides, surely the less efficient my bike is the fitter I'll get in the shortest distance ridden, right? And that, after all, is my goal (not distance nor speed).
Rule #10 // It never gets easier, you just go faster.You'll cover more ground in an hour but an hour's exercise is an hour's exercise. Unless you are riding a fixed distance (rather than a fixed time) the fitness benefits will be much the same but you'll have more options for routes and destinations.
Mr Will said:
jeremyc said:
Besides, surely the less efficient my bike is the fitter I'll get in the shortest distance ridden, right? And that, after all, is my goal (not distance nor speed).
Rule #10 // It never gets easier, you just go faster.You'll cover more ground in an hour but an hour's exercise is an hour's exercise. Unless you are riding a fixed distance (rather than a fixed time) the fitness benefits will be much the same but you'll have more options for routes and destinations.
I discovered that it's a risky business chasing quicker times once you reach a reasonable level of fitness: it became apparent that environmental factors were having a greater impact on my time than my fitness (amount of traffic, number of red lights, degree of idiocy of people/dogs/mothers with prams in the park etc.) so I started to take more and more risks to improve - overtakes, jumping into gaps in traffic, crossing roads and so on. This is A Bad Thing.
Hence my decision to set targets on distance alone once this level was reached. I still monitor times, but I'm not chasing PBs as an indicator of my fitness.
jeremyc said:
'see this year I have been riding fixed distances. As I've plateaued in the time taken to ride them so I've upped my 'benchmark' ride distance.
I discovered that it's a risky business chasing quicker times once you reach a reasonable level of fitness: it became apparent that environmental factors were having a greater impact on my time than my fitness (amount of traffic, number of red lights, degree of idiocy of people/dogs/mothers with prams in the park etc.) so I started to take more and more risks to improve - overtakes, jumping into gaps in traffic, crossing roads and so on. This is A Bad Thing.
Hence my decision to set targets on distance alone once this level was reached. I still monitor times, but I'm not chasing PBs as an indicator of my fitness.
I'm still surprised that folk go out week after week and delude themselves riding the same gears over the same flat courses, awaiting the 'float day'I discovered that it's a risky business chasing quicker times once you reach a reasonable level of fitness: it became apparent that environmental factors were having a greater impact on my time than my fitness (amount of traffic, number of red lights, degree of idiocy of people/dogs/mothers with prams in the park etc.) so I started to take more and more risks to improve - overtakes, jumping into gaps in traffic, crossing roads and so on. This is A Bad Thing.
Hence my decision to set targets on distance alone once this level was reached. I still monitor times, but I'm not chasing PBs as an indicator of my fitness.
That's one of the reasons that I used to enjoy many years ago riding the SPOCO time trial competition - which I see has been suggested already.
jeremyc said:
'see this year I have been riding fixed distances. As I've plateaued in the time taken to ride them so I've upped my 'benchmark' ride distance.
I discovered that it's a risky business chasing quicker times once you reach a reasonable level of fitness: it became apparent that environmental factors were having a greater impact on my time than my fitness (amount of traffic, number of red lights, degree of idiocy of people/dogs/mothers with prams in the park etc.) so I started to take more and more risks to improve - overtakes, jumping into gaps in traffic, crossing roads and so on. This is A Bad Thing.
Hence my decision to set targets on distance alone once this level was reached. I still monitor times, but I'm not chasing PBs as an indicator of my fitness.
Fixing the distance means that the time changes - it runs the risk of becoming "how fast can I do my x mile loop". Fixing the time changes that to "I'm going out for a ride for a couple of hours". Whether you end up doing 20 miles or 40 becomes immaterial.I discovered that it's a risky business chasing quicker times once you reach a reasonable level of fitness: it became apparent that environmental factors were having a greater impact on my time than my fitness (amount of traffic, number of red lights, degree of idiocy of people/dogs/mothers with prams in the park etc.) so I started to take more and more risks to improve - overtakes, jumping into gaps in traffic, crossing roads and so on. This is A Bad Thing.
Hence my decision to set targets on distance alone once this level was reached. I still monitor times, but I'm not chasing PBs as an indicator of my fitness.
That's how I find it anyway!
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