I’d really appreciate some advice from any of you who mix up cycling, running and weight training and are in their mid forties or older.
After 8 years of intermittent cycling because of parent duties, I am finally able to fit in two cycle rides per week - however, when my sons’ football season recommences it may put pay to that. I’m not very fit at the moment but hope to get fitter and drop about 8kgs. I have a new Garmin watch that tells me when to rest and at the moment my weekend ride and midweek evening ride have recovery times of 70 hours. Basically, between rides, I should be recovering according to my watch.
However, I am doing a push, leg, pull weight training routine and twenty minutes of burpees every other day, having got sucked in to a burpee influencer on Youtube. On top of that, I am trying to fit in one or two 5km runs.
My question is, could I fit this all in without feeling exhausted? Once I get fitter at cycling and running, will my recovery periods get shorter. I know the body takes a while to adapt. It might be an age thing, but I have felt too wiped out to do the burpees on some days. Is it a case of slowly introducing new exercises? When my watch tells me to rest, does that mean rest from just cardio or weight lifting too? I’m not really after maximising speed on a bike but achieving a good level of all round fitness.
Sure, you’ll adapt a little bit, but going hard (weights, cardio, life) every day is a recipe for injury and burnout. Figure out which exercise type is most important to your life goals and do those hard 2-3 times per week. Everything else should be taken down a few notches on the effort scale.
Edit: Personally, I do weights and mobility work as my focus for five months and cycling as my focus for seven months. Leaves me feeling less than “optimized” at both, but like a healthy individual who can keep going for a few more decades.
FYI - Those Garmin “Recovery” times mean “before you do another intense workout”, not “don’t do anything”.
As someone 40+, you definitely need to keep the intense workouts down to 2-3 times per week. The rest of your workouts should be less intense. It’s also generally recommended that if you want to ride hard and lift heavy that you do both on the same day, rather than doing a hard bike, hard lift, hard run on separate days.
As someone who’s main focus is on cycling, I tend to do 2 intense cycling workouts (Wednesday and Saturday) and then make my runs easy and strength work I only take a few sets to failure. I am currently following a 5 day a week TR plan, and adjust it to replace rides with runs. So, for example, if TR recommends an easy ride but I feel like running, I do an easy run. If I want a hard run, I replace a hard ride. This helps me keep the intensity to twice a week.
In your 40’s you will adapt to the increased workload. It will take time. Listen to your body. After a month you should feel less exhausted. The initial shock to the system should wear off. If not, you are moving too fast. I’m in my 70’s. I found moving too fast will cause my body to break. Mind says go, body says hey not so fast.
As far as wearables. They can be a good indicator of stress. But a recent study of Garmin devices showed they have a hard time separating physical and mental stress. It could interpret cheering at your son’s football game as physical stress.
Let me add that at 41 you will still feel the increase. By 45 your body will not even know you made it work harder.
There’s two things here, one what your watch tells you,and one what your body feels. I’d worry less about what thewatch says - because you have it new, it doesn’t know about the training you have already been doing, and assumes you are less fit than you are, which makes it give you very lomg recoveries. To help it learn, make sure you track all your training with Garmin, including runing and weights/burpees.
I’d trust how you feel more at least currently - if you feel to wiped out to complete some of your sessions, you’ll need to dial something back. At the moment, you seem to be doing a lot of strength work, so I would reduce that, and include cycling instead - if you are keen on building cycling fitness.
Well, I’m almost in my 40s, and I can’t speak for others, but in my own case, I’ve been doing some form of exercise almost all my life. As for cycling, I’ve been steadily increasing my yearly hours on the bike since I started around age 30 – from about 200 hours a year back then to almost 500 hours this year.
Alongside cycling, I’ve also added running and strength training, with no negative side effects – only benefits. I recover well (at least according to my Oura Ring data) and have gone from an FTP of 220 W to 345 W. In fact, at 39 years old, I’ve had my biggest year-to-year FTP gain ever, going from 318 W to 345 W.
I also just started running a bit again and recently ran a 5 K in 20 minutes – almost a new personal best, even compared to my teenage years when I played football and basketball at a high level.
So, the 40s? You still have every opportunity to get better, and quickly. Just be patient and listen to your body.
I’m turning 42 shortly, I ride 6-10 hours a week (commute 4 days and extend my rides home then longer Saturday rides), lift 5 days a week for about an hour each session (2 push/pull and 1 legs day), and then I run about 6 miles a week and play club soccer on Sundays. I’ve been doing this for quite a few years now so my body is pretty adapted, Mondays I only do a pull workout and it’s full rest for the legs. My intensity days are Tues/Thurs on the bike and Sunday soccer is pretty much vo2 max. I don’t have kids and I’m fortunate to have a wife that supports my extended commute time home a few days a week and long Saturday rides. I feel like at this point my body is pretty adapted to my training, I also use Garmin ecosystem everything (scale, blood pressure monitor, watch, heart rate, cycling computer, etc.) and my HRV stays balanced, sleep scores are good, and training readiness are usually solid until Mondays which is my recovery day. Some other factors though, I don’t drink often, usually not more than 1 or 2 alcoholic drinks per week, I sleep at least 7.5-8 hours a night, and I eat a healthy diet and monitor electrolytes and fluids using hdrop for rides. We do travel quite a bit so when I’m home for a few weeks I’m averaging 500-650 TSS per week and when we’re traveling a lot it’s more like 350-500TSS.
Thanks so much for the replies. It’s really helpful stuff. It sounds like I can fit in weight training and running along with cycling, but limit the hard days to two and build up slowly. I think starting the burpee challenge at the same time as starting to introduce running was a bad idea.
I think I will, as I get fitter and used to running, keep the two 5k runs to a slow recovery pace. I find any run difficult at the moment as I’m not used to it. I’d much rather prioritise cycling performance.
I will do one hard cycle ride - my Saturday weekend warrior ride, blitzing hills etc. Then my mid week evening ride will be a zone 2 ride for about 4 hours. I have an electric cargo bike to take the kids to school and commute my work, so that’s another hour a day easy cycling. I used to cycle about 15 hours a week before kids and I might be able to get close to that, if I can get myself out the house and on my bike at 6am before my son’s football training starts back up again.
Also, I will make sure leg day is on the same day as my hard cycle - apparently, it’s best to wait a couple of hours after a ride to lift weights. I guess the other two sessions will have to be done during a recovery period, but I’m hoping Garmin will adjust the 70 hour recovery time as I cycle more consistently.
I think I might stop the twenty minutes of burpees every other day business. I took it up as I was on holiday and had no weights with me. You’re supposed to increase the number each time and it’s a bit full on.
Also, I will try and up my protein and definitely drink more water, as I’m terrible at drinking anything other than coffee and tea. I gave up alcohol in my late twenties and it was joining my first cycle club back then that finally made sobriety stick.
Thanks for all the guidance and here’s to getting fit.
Hi, i am in the same bout as you…father of 1 yo and i get better sleep than months ago. Recovery is still tricky and same as you i am getting back my past form / i scaled back cycling and lost fitness+baby duty + working on shifts./ Best i found is to do 10 days block instead of week. For 10 days i aim to do 2 ride, 2 runs and two strength trainings which is about 18 workouts a month /pretty solid if you ask me/. Its a bit hard to arrange TR plans to 10 day week, but not impossible. You can try triathlon master plans, but do gym instead of swimming. With 10 days block i have sufficient time to recover in most cases.
That’s a great idea about a triathlon training with weights instead of swimming. I’ll look into that. I might stick to the same workouts each week to be sure I can slot it into family and work commitments.
I’ve been only using TR intermittently recently as a replacement for outdoor rides if the weather isn’t great. I hadn’t used the suggested workout feature before as I’d always done low volume plans in the past, but it works well.
There’s a sports performance centre near me that does VO2 max and lactate testing.. I’ve suggested it might be a good Christmas present to my wife. It’d be good to know if any zone 2 rides I plan to do are at the right heart rate zone. I know that runners zone 2 is higher as it’s are more involved sport, so I’m not sure if that will be another set of tests or if there’s a calculation I can do.
IMO this probably would be more for fun that legitimately useful. I’d guess that you could tell me your Z2 HR for both running and biking right now if you’re honest with yourself. It should be a pace that you can go out and do while it feels ‘suspiciously easy’.
But as for the other points, pretty much everyone else hit on all the answers. Biking + running + weights + burpees is probably too much. Especially as you’re trying to get back into it.
The focus should at first be getting back into the habit and building a sustainable schedule before you really start to push the limits. I’ve found that for most people you should take the time you say you’re going to commit to working out and then drop that by like 20%. That buffer makes things so much more sustainable, both from a scheduling perspective but also a physical recovery perspective.
Yes, the lactate and Vo2 max testing would be for fun and I have already suggested it to my wife as a possible Christmas present, but I think that might be pushing it cost wise. I do wonder about Z2 though as there’s so many different calculations online to work out the zones. I’ve just got back from a two and a half hour ride and used Garmin’s zones, which was between 110 and 129bpm. It was more towards the higher end on the return leg home. My power was 50% in Z1 and 50% in Z2. I suppose power and heart rate zones will match better as I get fitter. I noted that Strava has Zone 2 as 104 to 143, so it’s a wider band and I kept my heart rate pretty much in the middle of those parameters. I probably could save my money and not do the test, but I want to be sure I’m burning fat and improving my fitness and not just wasting an evening - although I enjoyed being out.. I might email the testing place again to see if they’re suggested zones change as one gets fitter, because it won’t be a regular thing.
Good advice about the easing off 20%. That Z2 ride just now has a recovery time of 20 hours and I’ll try and make sure the midweek runs are of a similar low intensity and then space out the hard intensity workouts.
I honestly wouldn’t worry too much about the exact limits of z2, whether it’s by power or by HR. If it feels like a pace you can do for hours/all day, it’s good enough imo.
(From Traininpeaks blog post about carb/fat burning).
You can see how it’s mostly fat burning at lower intensities, with an sort-of linear increase in carb burning. For higher intensities, most energy comes from carbs, and fat usage drops, but this isn’t a narrow zone - you’re burning fat well up to FTP, and even some after.
I’d say it sounds like you were in Z2. You can go pretty easy on Z2 and still get the benefits. For example, I have a ~335-340W FTP and do most of my Z2 rides around 195-210W. So like 58%-62% and I feel like I’m getting all the Z2 benefits while keeping my fatigue low for my higher intensity workouts. Though I’m riding like 13-15hrs a weeks so y
you can probably bump that up closer to 70% if you’re riding much less.
Using fat as a fuel during exercise is not the same as burning fat for fat loss. Fat loss will be driven by being in a calorie deficit and then your body mostly decides on it’s own what to refuel with the fuel you give it.
I’d say unless you have goals of being a professional cyclist, there’s very little you can do on a ride to ‘waste an evening’ if you enjoyed yourself. And as long as you’re following a rough structure of ‘mostly easy, some hard, some long’ then you’re going to improve your fitness pretty far and the specifics within that are less important.
Unless you’re pushing the limits of your performance, you can get as close as you need to be with regards to locating Z2 based on RPE, breathing, hr, and power. I don’t want this to come off as damping your enthusiasm or anything but I don’t think lactate testing will benefit almost anyone outside of the highest of levels and if cost is even remotely a thought then I’d skip it.
I think I was overthinking it a little. It’s interesting about the fat loss. After a zone two ride on Wednesday I decided to go much deeper on the climbs in my weekend ride and felt good. I think with all the Youtube videos I’ve been watching on Zone 2, I hadn’t been pushing hard enough at the weekend, just sort of riding at threshold. I think my fitness is much better than it has been for a while. Annoyingly my son’s football season starts up again, so I might be cycling in the dark before his training or using the turbo trainer over winter. Anyway, I will make sure I get the hours in, and I have the school commute starting up again, so I can do the cargo bike ride at Zone 2 each day.
I’ll tack on some hill climbs to the end of my zone 2 midweek ride. It’s basically a two and a half hour loop on a flat straight (rather too busy) road, which has the benefit of being street lit, followed by 5 short climbs when I return to my home town. I live in the flood plain so there’s a few street lit hills to choose from.
The two runs a week at recovery pace hasn’t seemed to have affected my cycling, but I think I won’t really improve unless I do some speedwork, but don’t want to sacrifice my hard days on the bike. I might mix things up a bit in the future.
Finally, I did my leg day workout in the evening after my hard ride on Sunday and I’ll see how that goes. I took yesterday completely off. Anyway, I am positive I will be able to return to near where I was fitness wise before kids - especially now I have a better understanding of recovery times etc.
Sounds like you’re on the right track but just keep in mind that ‘improvement’ isn’t always the goal. Especially when you’re doing a bunch of things. Entrenching the habit should be the first goal. Then after that you’re doing weights, running, cycling, and weight loss. You can only really choose 1 or 2 of those to try to improve in and the rest will be maintenance.
It helps (both fitness and mentally) to have some seasonality to your efforts. So like weight loss and cycling are the focus for the next 6 months while you try to hold the running and weights steady. Then maybe you up the running a bit and the cycling takes a back seat for the next 3-5 months. Then you want to get stronger while running more and the weight and cycling go into maintenance mode.
Good advice. I’ve decided, as I have to be home by 9.30am to get my eldest ready for football training, that I might have running as my focus until May. I can do a long run before practice. I’ll have the cycle commutes and midweek z2 ride to keep my cycling fitness ticking over. I’m quite excited about it. Might need some orthotics but can run off-road without knee pain and that’s an option living on the edge of town.
