Sunday, February 11, 2024, 5:27:43PM EST
Intensity over endurance, for anyone over 50 that’s the key to longevity without sacrificing too much fun. By capping my break-through training sessions to four hours I force myself to focus on intensity instead of ultra-endurance, eventually. Further investigation into the health needs of older cyclists confirms that the best focus for my health is on intensity and building muscle over ultra-endurance, being faster over short, tough distances. Being able to average 40 kph for three hours on rolling hills is a far better health goal than 22 kph for seven hours. Here’s my old-fast-geezer strategy.
After yesterday’s long indoor ride that started out as an attempt to ride for seven hours straight (about a century in miles) and bonking after four hours I discovered that I need to adjust my carb intake but, more importantly, I realized I never really want or need to ride longer than four hours—especially indoors on my favorite torture device.
However, shorter distance high-intensity racing and sprinting is absolutely ideal indoors. I can hone race-craft for Zwift in a way that is really fun, like using my weight to super-tuck yesterday to catch the light guys on the descent and draft off of them until 300 meters and beat them in the sprint, just so exhilarating! Zwift if way more fun when the focus is on intensity.
Another thing about Zwift is the ridiculously high number of old geezers like me in there. The number of over 50 riders is insane, even when racing.
My new preferred A race outside on the road for the year will be the Lake Norman Gran Fondo sponsored by The Spirited Cyclist, a club I have been following for a while and want to connect with more going forward. It’s the perfect “race” for me, at 75 miles with first place going to a 52-year-old coming in just under three hours it is a very attainable goal. I could easily win it if my current training progress continues. In fact, several three-hour finishers were in their 60s. Mid-pack finishers took four hours.
I’m sure I’ll hear all about it once the group bike rides start back up again. I’m going to commit to riding with my club at least once a week from now on, mostly on their Wednesday night ride since longer group riding is notoriously bad on training plans.
I will still attempt to complete Assault on Mt. Mitchell this year. My training indicators seem to show I’m almost ready to attempt it even now. (And I did pay 250 dollars or more to even do it.) But I’m not as focused on preparing for Mitchell as much as I the LNGF in August. In other words, I’m not going to care how long Mt. Mitchell takes, or even if I finish in any decent time because that is no longer my high-performance goal. Instead, I want to be on the podium in August with other old guys.
That decision took some thought. I was considering lengthening my training rides to best prepare me for the long-haul that is Mt. Mitchell, but training for a seven hour slog versus a three-hour tempo race is radically different. Plus, I just enjoy training for the shorter tempo length more because it is so much more fun on group rides both indoor and out.
I still have a lot of weight to lose so I will just do nothing but base through May and nothing but endurance and longer tempo rides combined with two days of weights and strength training. Then I’ll do build cycles in June and July peaking for the event in August.
This also gives me back a bunch of time. I no longer need to plan long-slow, 7-hour centuries on the weekends. Instead, I can just really up the pace and intensity on the metric century rides (about three hours at tempo). Having that time back is good because there are other goals unrelated to training that I want to start addressing. It also means I can add more strength training and yoga for better longevity versus speed.
Let’s be honest, “ultra” is synonymous with “tolerance for suffering” more than actual endurance ability. Anything over three hours becomes more about one’s ability to live with saddle-sores, blisters, sunburn, neck pain, and extreme discomfort, to override and ignore the natural signal to your brain that you are hurting yourself. All that ultra stuff has very real risk of damaging a person’s body beyond repair and has been proven (citing Atia) to reduce overall longevity. No thank you. If I want to “see what’s over that next hill” I’ll take a break, sleep, eat, and then ride over it to see.