I was broken last year, couldn’t walk at all well, but could sit on a bike and did up to 6 days a week on the Wattbike, using mid volume plans, with no outside rides until 10 days before a 100ml. Freshest I’ve felt
I would get outside, but probably only for a fasted morning spin, to catch the fresh air and the birdsong, but I would definitely suggest doing a speciality phase Fondo or Rolling Road Race at high level. 6 sessions up to 2 hours, with lots of variety. It’s not the length, as Chad insists, it’s the quality.
Just make sure it isn’t onerous, and that it hurts in that pleasant way that good training hurts.
Current guidance is “exercise as long as you normally do” but as @splash notes he, Michael Gove, probably hasn’t considered the average club cyclist or distance runner. The government have also issued guidance to the police in that driving a short distance to exercise is permitted and shouldn’t be restricted. Quite hard to avoid people if you live in a big city, hence Richmond Park being shut. Personally I’d say stray as far from home/your car as you are prepared to walk if you had a mechanical.
I’ve ridden outside once since the UK lockdown started but any ride I do, regardless of length, will be local to home.
In the uk too. i have a baby and 3 yr old at home, so feel uncomfortable riding outside at the moment as i have no rescue option.
I have been opting for longer z2 weekend rides and managed upto 3hrs. this is usually the only time of day I have to myself, so quite enjoying getting through a few films. after a few long trainer rides, the mid-week 1hr rides feel so short!
Ah thank you!
I was also training for both Devil Ride and L’Etape UK as well as some other events, but just received the email from Devil Ride, so that is now a next year event!
Going to give a long turbo session a go I think. Maybe even give Zwift a trial!
If you ride an approximate circle 10 km from your home, that’s more than 60 km. If you do that twice, you’ve got an endurance ride that’s local enough to walk home if needs must.
Yep I live in the UK as well…there is no limit (Joe Sipper did 320K plus last week) - you just have to be solo - not sure how being local reduces your chance of being hit by a car…I’m following the idea to exercise as normal… I do have a local loop I use but I can’t see it makes much difference if you go a bit further provided you know the route. A lot of this advice about distance is just social media gossip. My standard weekend ride would be 60-80 miles zone 2 both days unless racing…and Michael Gove said do your normal exercise You won’t need to walk home - if you get a mechanical (puncture etc) - fix it - if you can’t you have no business being out on the road anyway!
We are permitted to go out and exercise provided we ride solo, there is no exercise time limited stipulated by the government of the UK and any that are floating around are as I pointed out merely opinion. I was stating the facts as they are at present.
wife’s a vascular surgeon in a hospital. Yes, ICU is filling up steadily with Corona cases. However, they also have 3 times more cases of folks with impaired circulation in the legs compared to before-stay-at-home-decree. She’s at work right now trying to rescue a leg of a 65yr old.
Stay active, get out there if you’re still allowed … but in a responsible way.
And that’s with normal traffic loads on the road, commuters, group rides, and racing events. Take all those items away and it’s probably a tenth of that or less. If you’re truly riding solo in low density areas, I don’t see the problem. I have stopped riding multi use trails for now though… Too many people too close and roads feel safer.
Only if you have an accident; like a number of people have said, if you head out in z2 on roads you know are a safe riding surface the statistics are more in your favour than staying home trying to do some DIY. I actually ended up heading down my local dual carriageway yesterday (the A303) because the surface is far better than the country lanes and there is so little traffic I felt safer out there (the section I rode is also a local TT course so it isn’t unusual to see bikes out there).
If you trust yourself to be safe, are confident you can get yourself home even if you have a mechanical, and your local government hasn’t said you can’t, go and get some exercise!
That reminds me of a conversation I had one Easter some years ago with one of our neighbours who at the time was head of the local medical practice.
“We’ll be getting lots of middle aged men in the surgery next week.”
“eh?”
“It’s Easter and they’ll all go down to the local gardening and hardware store and start doing jobs around the house and garden and sprain their backs!”
“Are we that predictable?”
“Oh, yes. September we’ll get a rush of teenage girls who’ve got pregnant on some foreign holiday and February’s usually taken up with women who’ve got pregnant after the office Xmas party! There’s a few others as well.”
Since the UK’s partial lockdown I’ve done just two outdoor rides, both less than 25km and stayed within 6km of home. If the restrictions stay as they are I doubt I’ll go much further than that and all rides will be a steady “potter”, well apart from the hill climbs.
I think 2 a day is a great idea. I have been intending to do that, but as usual, I’m not following through. I don’t have the discipline to ride structured workouts for 2 hours. I really need to ride some 100km rides to get ready for any summer brevets. As far as staying relatively close to home, I went out and rode my gravel bike and happened to check flybys on strava. Someone had done every loop in the state forest and gotten in 110km. Considering almost all of that is climbing mountains, that’s pretty good.
Which is not the case here, at this time, nor is it in many parts of the country that are proactively engaging in social distancing. General accident rates are way down due to so few cars on the road that many hospitals are well under normal loads. Social distancing, the bigger factor, is working, and solo cycling self supported is consistent with that.
In this environment, the person who goes to the grocery store an extra trip per week is a far bigger menace to public health than a solo cyclist on a country lane encountering literally zero people or touching a single foreign surface.
If I lived in NYC, it would be a very different story.
Not an answer to your question as such but I ride quite a few audax events every year in Wales and Audax Cymru is a great club. I am just over the bridge and I belong to Audax Club Bristol.
There are great 600km and 400km Classics, The Bryan Chapman Memorial and Brevet Cymru (Which I was due to ride) which cover Wales. But there are loads of others. Check out the AUK website. I’m not sure where you are based but there is a new batch of rides called The Severn Bridge Series. Recently I did The Efengyl 200, which was one of the last events to run before events were cancelled. Audax is of a very high standard in Wales and South West England.
Female participation is quite high in Audax. Women have what it takes for endurance cycling. Audax is friendly and inclusive which is what makes it great. See you out on a ride one day
You won’t need to walk home - if you get a mechanical (puncture etc) - fix it - if you can’t you have no business being out on the road anyway!