How do I Train with my Wife?

For me what has helped immensely is to differentiate between riding and training.
Rides with my wife are bike rides for enjoyment and spending time together. I do not have training goals for these rides nor expect any training benefit from them (but likely do get some.)
Rides by myself or with other faster riders are for training, as are indoor rides.
Sometimes I will do some time on the trainer before or after riding with my wife to get my desired training in.

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Thanks for all the tips guys (and gals).

My wife is a decent cyclist. She averages 18-19mph on most 40-50 mile rides so she isn’t far off my speed but she runs out of steam quicker and then it’s a flog fest for her.

In these times of furlough we can’t afford an e-bike or expensive tech solutions and I can’t do a pre-ride before our joint ride as we ride on weekdays as soon as I get back from work on weekdays and then at 6-6.30am on weekends as I have a client late morning.

But…these look promising:

  • Gatorskins. I have 45mm carbon wheels on my bike but also have some spare Hunt wheels I could put the gatorskins on. I know from experience they are slower and my wife needs new tyres so she could have the GP5000s I have on the Hunt wheels. Double Whammy

  • I can just use my winter bike which is a Specialised Diverge 9 speed heavy as hell bike. It’s just nice having the summer bike as you can only use it for half the year already, (but as some people have said, 'be grateful I have a wife who cycles)

  • Baggy tops - increase drag…easy win!

  • Since all the sportives are gone from this year, (I was meant to be cycling L’Etape in France today :frowning:) maybe I just slow things down and lose a bit of fitness…cycle Z2, get a load of base training in and then try to pick up again over the winter when we are more confined to indoor training. Since the weather is so nice at the moment I only use TR for crap whether days. I could effectively bring my winter training forwards and then start SS earlier than usual in prep for next year
    That way, my wife enjoys her cycling more, I don’t feel so despondent and it’s all ok. It will also teach me that I don’t have to pummel every ride. Like someone said, I do sometimes feel quite selfish when we get back and she’s knackered.

  • Oh, I can also find her some Strava segments :stuck_out_tongue: She does hammer it if we find one she can get a top 10 or KoM on so and then I can hammer it for those sections. Just need to find a few 15 minute ones!

Thanks for all the help. That’s why I love being on TR even when I am not using it so much.

Oh, last follow up question - I know people over gear to try to improve leg strength for hill climbing but does anyone know if I over geared when cycling with my wife would have any benefit to me getting stronger legs and therefore better at ramps and undulations when cycling normally?

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I used to schedule the training with my (now) wife to fall on a day when it suited me to work at recovery efforts. I could focus on things like keeping my wheel firmly on the hard shoulder dividing line and if we wanted to go faster I could still have her draft behind and be comfortable. It was never an issue tbh. The bigger problem these days is with 2 under 2 its pretty much impossible for us both to cycle together without calling in the babysitters!

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Second this. I usually go kill myself first so I’m nice and tired then can ride the MUP with the wife.

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Get her an e bike and you try to hang on. Thats what i did for my wife. She loves it. And i get to try and hold on for once.

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The number of ebike suggestions in this thread makes me wonder how many women who take training seriously actually get ebikes to keep up with faster spouses on joint training rides? Personally I’d (much) rather save rides with my husband for easy days and train on my own (or do something like @splash suggested), and if he asked me to get an ebike to keep up with him we’d probably Have Words.

This is essentially low-cadence training, and it can be great if you’re trying to get better at low-cadence riding. Good starting point for some of the discussions around the forum:

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The e bike doesn’t replace her training. It just off sets it to me. She applies the lowest power assist to match me. She is still getting in hard efforts. Now if she puts it in turbo mode. Then yes is is defeating the training effect.

She really like how we are able to stay together. I like it because i don’t have to worry about her being so far back and have to worry about her safety.

It really comes down to how you use it. When she turns the system off it a normal road bike.

Have not see too many yet. But its a trend and I think it will pick up steam as the e-bike stigma wears off and the practicality takes over. For now, I know of several couples who have done this. All aging and wanting to keep riding together. They didn’t want to go tandem and looked for other solutions. At least one of these couples has double digit national championships between them and the husband is in the USAC HoF. They are back riding together and love it. You do what makes sense for the circumstance.

For couples where both spouses are racing or riding “seriously,” and the gap is not all that large, the old standard solution is best: Some rides together, some rides apart.

FWIW, my wife and I were/are competitive Cat 3 level racers and have been since college (30 years+) We always found a way to make riding together work. About the only thing we couldn’t do together was long structured intervals or really long hammerfest group rides. But we could generally do the same loops and be out there for each other for most training. Not quite together 100%, but warm up and cool down and in roughly the same road space sharing the activity.

For shorter structure, VO2max or sprint stuff, it’s fun to give a head start to the slower rider. The faster rider goes hard to make the catch and the slower rider will often dig harder to minimize the gap once caught. Those types of games can be productive and a lot of fun for competitive types.

My wife stopped racing and riding due to repetitive use injury that we couldn’t solve. I’d love to have her back out there on training rides and both racing again.

-Mark

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22 years on a Tandem has worked pretty well for us (this is our second one).

I will typically either do my TR interval ride before hand if she wants to just go for an endurance ride or use it as a warm-up ride if she wants more of a tempo ride. When she wants to do intervals then that usually is all the TSS I need for the day.

Regarding e-bikes, I just spent 3 days chasing my 78-year old dad who was riding one. He got a good workout and was able to do the 3 hours rides I had planned with me. So win-win.

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A very high level road bike for your wife.
My wife’s new bike is GIANT LIV Langma Adv pro QOM Disc 2019
Although on hills, she is still a little bit slower than me(about 10~20% slower)
, but on flat roads, she is able to keep up with even get ahead of me.

By this new and very high level bike, she gets confidence and becomes
more interested in cycling. So I think it’s worth it. :smiley:

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This sounds amazing :heart_eyes:

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Thanks for the link. Will be my bedtime reading this evening :slight_smile:

The number of bike suggestions makes me think a lot of people on here are a lot wealthier than me lol

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:laughing:

Or they drive really old cars

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I have a friend who spent years on the track as a sprinter, and is a national champion in sprinting (I think in Team Sprint) and has podiumed multiple times (National level, I think also maybe Worlds) in sprinting events. Training as a track sprinter for many, many years has left her with reduced long-term endurance, since that’s not what they train for. However, she’s now transitioning away from that, and has been working on her endurance. In order to enable her to go farther for longer, she bought an ebike. She can control how much power she uses, only turning it on when she absolutely needs it. She’s now at the point where she doesn’t need the boost as much, unless she’s riding with juniors, for example.

Also, for years, my SO and I rode centuries together. He was always stronger than me, and so he’d pull and I would draft. That was enough for us to be able to ride together. Now, he’s been focusing on running and I’ve been getting stronger on the bike and racing, but for the last few weeks he’s started riding again because he’s letting a running injury heal. Since I am not racing, I’ve been riding with him on the weekends, and it’s interesting how I’m now either as strong or slightly stronger than him. (If I’m at the end of a training block, it’s probably more like it used to be.) But I haven’t tried doing any serious structure with him. It’s nice to ride with him again. :slight_smile:

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I have the same issues as the op when riding with my wife. She doesn’t use TR very often so I either TR before we ride together, use our ride as recovery or more often than not I’ll use my single speed. Makes those climbs more of an even challenge.

You could consider inviting her to improve her cardio fitness by other means that don’t involve exertion on your part.

(My lord I hope in this PC world, people can see the good-natured humour in this. Chances are someone will be horribly offended and get the post removed and me banned. Oh well)

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Another suggestion if it hasn’t already been tossed out: pick a handful of challenging sections of the ride or hills you can hammer. Agree on them in advance a.k.a. don’t pick 50% of your route for solo hammer time. If she’s cool with it, when you reach each section or hill, say “see you on the other side, honey. Wish me luck.” then drop the solo hammer. Then circle back after each section or hill, and do it again with her at her pace. Just do it, then loop back. You get double miles, she gets an encouraging ride buddy. I did that with my hubs last week. He was wiped and lagging a bit, so I went ahead on some sections, did 'em at my pace, then looped back to rejoin him and keep riding together. Also? Teach her to draft like a stone cold pro. If, however, even with a draft benefit (which is what…like upwards of 25 to 30% decrease in effort needed?), she still has trouble hanging on, then I like the idea of getting in your speedier work before you ride with her. Then use the ride time with her to work on form, cadence drills, technique, breathwork, other “minutae” and details, the homework stuff that can’t be done (well) if you’re too focused on pace. Also? You get a gold star for giving a shit about this.

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Does your schedule allow you to ride 2x a day? If you normally ride with your wife in the morning, schedule a TR workout for the afternoon. Consider rides with your wife easy/bonus miles that increase your weekly TSS.

Eh, I’ll give ya a slow clap on that one, dude :grin: