In my case my internal head unit appears to have been installed with a default setting of “everything’s a race!”. So getting enough intensity has never really been an issue, and doing 10+ hours/week acts as a great self regulator since it’s basically impossible for me to do those hours consistently unless I limit the hard days and get a good amount of recovery and endurance riding in as well as plenty of sleep, nailing my nutrition, etc. It also drives consistency since I have a job and family which means my long weekend ride is normally capped at 3-4 hours, and quite a few midweek days I can only fit 45-60 minute sessions in. So getting to 10 hours usually means riding 6-7 days a week, which in turn means I’m on top of life and in a good routine of training, sleeping and getting everything else done. Hence the 2 metrics. In fact could probably drop it to one, since if I’m hitting 10+ hour weeks consistently that also means I’m getting enough sleep.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent plenty of time over the years tracking calories, macro nutrients, TSS, time in zone, HRV, and a dozen other metrics. But the single best predictor performance for me at least is volume and consistency because I can’t do those without getting pretty much everything else about right.
I have given it some more thought and I’m doubling down on the expression “junk miles.” Saying they can’t be junk because they’re fun conflicts with the whole “junk food” thing.
You and I have the same internal head unit. I started before power meters or portable HR monitors. I just rode flat out every day. All I knew is that my avg speed on the same 40 mile loop improved by a few tenths every day until I got to 21 mph and then I plateaued. I rode between 40 and 60 miles 5-6 days/week and it was always at the same pace. I tried playing around with intervals and endurance rides but it was confusing bc everyone said “endurance is the pace you can do for hours.” Hmmm, I can do my all-out pace for 3 hours. I only dropped under 20mph if I rode 80 or more. When I got my first HR monitor I was excited to verify my zones but my “HR zone” was around 15 mph and was unbelievably easy. Nope, my endurance HR must be 188 bpm bc I just spent 2.5 hours with that avg.
Riding with power has been pretty useful for me. Mainly because I was so wrong about so many things. I know I would have broken through my plateau with a power meter and a knowledgeable coach.
If I ruffled any feathers I apologize. Cartsman, I see what you mean about how you’re external factors guide you enough that by doing 10 hours you have all the data you need. TBH I feel like that’s in line with my original post. Which echoed all those thoughts and just added that it is possible for some hypothetical person to ride 10 hours/week so slowly that he would never improve.
Totally agree. It’s inflammatory language for sure.
Not to mention the fact that it veers off topic (a theme in the forum today, apparently), so it would be great if everyone would return to the topic above.
If you ride 10 hours at active recovery or lower, do you think you’ll get better? I think it’s defined as the intensity where no improvement is made.
If 2 ppl are at the same level and one does zero hours for a year and the other does hours that don’t improve his fitness for the same year, they’ll both be at the same level when the year is up. The one who rides will probably have tougher sit bones but that’s probably it. (Of course all else being equal)
I firmly disagree, and could name a dozen ways the person who rode was better off, but as Chad said, too many silly arguments on the forum today, so I’ll do like JST and just leave it at that.
I fail to see how you could possibly make this correlation…one person sits on a couch while another rides 10 hours / week at a leisurely pace and you think they would be the same after a year?
I ride when I feel like I’ve got the energy.
I run when I feel like I’ve not got the energy for the bike.
I watch Netflix and eat pizza when I’ve not got the energy to run.
I jump on the scales and I race up a HC every so often. That is my judge of fitness and fatigue.
I’ve posted this somewhere else, this Matt Fitzgerald article has some guidelines on how low you can go and still increase aerobic capacity:
The bottom line is that low intensity muscle contractions will increase the aerobic capacity of muscles (increasing metabolic fitness). And low intensity exercise will also increase cardio fitness. At some point the number of hours you can ride is limited, and you’ll plateau, and then the low intensity work is maintenance and gains come from your key interval workouts.
All riding is good, imo. There aren’t really any junk miles, where no riding would have been better. The only exception I can see is when sombody rides too much, and the extra miles drive them over the edge.
The other point of contention is whether or not there is a floor under which you do not get a fitness benefit. I cannot stress this enough… I have never accused anyone on the website that promises to “make you faster” of riding under this lower limit. I only academically stated that the lower limit exists.
@F10naGodless means to say that riding 10 hpw at low effort relative to 10hpw structured is ‘junk’ and will not improve fitness.
I don’t think what they mean is that riding 10hpw easy is the same as less than 10hpw (or even 0 at the extreme).
Something is always better than nothing. If your goal is to improve fitness, training in zones that won’t accomplish that are ‘junk’ (useless to achieving that purpose). Riding easy is sometimes necessary to recover so you can ride hard again. But riding too hard when you should be riding easy for recovery instead is usually what people term junk miles.
Power meters are a good way to quantify that. But staring at the meter/numbers 24-7 sure can take the fun out of it
