I’m 30[F], have been riding a steel frame retrospec single speed/fixie a few years- commuting, for fun, a 100 mile ride etc. Usually doing 150-200miles/week.

Hoping to train and do some racing/crits next spring. Any recs on a good bike or bike set up? Looking at getting a power meter and such as well. Would like to be under $3k all in if possible.

I’ve recorded some personal best power numbers a couple of minutes after crashing in a race due to a pedal strike with my gravel bike.

Although I did gave it my all, I’m using a pedal based power meter (Garmin Rally XC), and am thus skeptical about these numbers.

Upon calibration afterwards, the Garmin app showed the message ‘calibration successful’ and a torque value of 12.36 (see attached picture from Garmin manual as a reference).

Given this value is usually way closer to zero, it makes me doubt the power numbers even more.

Can anyone explain

• what this torque value after calibration means, both when positive and when negative?
• if based on this value I should be happy with the personal best or remove the values all together :)

Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

starting off with context: I am training road cycling since a year, average about 12-14 hrs/week - quite rigorously since half a year maybe. Never had any more serious injury - trying to work both on bike as well as on the gym, include rolling and stretching post-workout etc... Basically trying to keep the routine clean and listen to my body.

Maybe two months ago I had a little accident where I tripped while walking and have hit with my right knee against something, the pain was there for another two weeks causing me to stop trainings for a while, but somehow I feel the pain never went away. I did another two weeks of workouts when I felt mostly okay but could feel annoying pinch in the kneecap every time I pushed (or walking down the stairs or being in middle of squat position for example). It didn't really get worse, nor had any impact on power outputs - didn't feel weaker but still had issue. Last month I have spent on holiday hoping maybe easing out for a bit will do better but always felt the pinch in the knee while walking in some places.

The reason why I'm asking would be to get some response from maybe someone who had similar issues with knee or injury in general where to start looking for solution? Reading about this I realised there might be a need for some extra stretching of the muscle connected to the knee in pain, the problem might be in bikefit or shoefit and eventually I will probably need to go to some doctor and proceed.

So would first re-visiting my bike fit be a good step or should I directly contact some sports doctor? Asking mainly because I had a bike fit done, so that would theoretically cross out this from a list, but not sure. Since the injury isn't so annoying I thought I can give it a proper time to think about before I do anything.

Would appreciate any help or advice :)

For those that singlespeed (ideally with power) either XCSS or CXSS, do you have any training advice? I always did intervals on my geared bikes and gathered data when XCSS'ing. The other day I found a steady fire road to do sweet spot intervals; and keep the power steady while varying the cadence felt different. Additionally, I climbed on my geared bike yesterday and was totally out of gear (running a 1x) and RPE & HR were very high for the power (21min at 45rpm and 250w [road bike], vs the 3x17min at 300w were ~65rpm [single speed MTB]). Long way for me to say that I'm realizing that expanding my cadence bandwidth is critical and being able to stay there. 30s at 30rpm or 130rpm is one thing, doing 5+min at those end seem very challenging. Targeting 2 long and a short CXSS race, power profile of diesel city buse.

Thanks for any input, posting here as any singlespeed group is very uncompetitive (and the few fast folks mostly go off bro-science of pushing hard)

So I am embarrassed to ask this question, but I have never done longer efforts on hard days outside. How do you deal with this if you have no flat loops long enough? We have mainly rolling routes with some climbs. I have probably developed a OCD about how the graph should look afterwards from years of Zwifting, and am thus asking for any tips how to do for example sweet spot outside. I find it a little silly to do them inside now that the outdoor season is on.

Hey there. I’ve been using Skratch Super High Carb for my Rides so far because the taste is amazing and I stomach it pretty well during long rides and races. The only downside is the Price. Anyone know of something similar? Looking for Cluster Dextrin based preferably with just a hint of taste. Most other Drinks I have tried so far were way too sweet for my taste (Beta Fuel, 4endurance, High5)

This question is a bit ambiguous or arbitrary, but essentially I’m asking to see what workouts on Zwift people here actually use/find valuable in terms of generating an intended effect.

Most complaints around Zwift workouts revolve around them being for the lowest common denominator, spin class oriented, or a rainbow of intervals in different zones that aren’t long enough to generate meaningful stress in that zone. Not saying they don’t do anything or you can’t get fitter with them, but more so that you could do something better with your time.

But Zwift does have some bread and butter workouts, like 2/3x15/20/30 @ FTP, 3x20 SST, SST long, or The Gorby which is essentially just 5x5 @ VO2 (not getting into whether or not erg is good for VO2 intervals). u/pgpcx also has a base block plan which has included Zwift files that you can use here (though the site looks to be down atm), but I’m really just talking about what’s included with Zwift itself.

With that being said, are there any Zwift workouts you guys go to or enjoy, depending on what you’re focusing on in that block?

I believe this isn’t hydration related but actually overloaded muscles etc not used to additional stress during long events. I’ve done the math and have had supported rides and still suffered this.

Typically I’m putting in 8-10hrs week where one session is 6 x 4’ VO2, and later in the week threshold work with the rest being z2 and a long ride of 3-4hrs which I change to a long Tempo ride as my event approaches.

My target events are 4-5hrs. My average HR for these is usually Tempo after reviewing the data. However I’m always suffering from severe leg Cramps where I can’t continue at about the 3.5-4H mark.

How can a time crunched cyclist adapt? Are my long rides during training not matching the demands? How do you prepare?

Been cycling (unstructured) for 6 years. Started incorporating a bit of structure this past 10 months. I average about 8-10hrs a week. I want to incorporate some strength training to see if it can help me become a stronger rider. Do any of you have advice as to how to effectively add it in to my 8-10 hour weeks? What kind of exercises do you suggest? How often should I strength train per weeks? Should I do it on the same days as my Z2 days? On an off bike day? Should I lessen some hours on the bike? Should I start with the body weight / calisthenics exercises to minimize soreness and recovery time? My goal is to try and raise my FTP and w/kg so I’d like to also try and keep my weight as it is or maybe even drop a few lbs. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I have a background in strength training and calisthenics before cycling, but I haven’t done any of that for the past 6 years. So I went from weighing 220lbs to 165lbs.

43M / 5’9” / 165 lbs (75kg) FTP 280 I have 2 hours to ride on M/W/F Have about 3-6 hours on a Saturday or Sunday.
I believe I can fit in strength training days Tuesday and Thursday.

TLDR: L5-S1 disc bulge, need some encouragement.

How did you injure your back, and how did you get back on the bike?

My story:

How it went: I went from cycling as a means of transportation to cycling as a sport in 2021. After a broken collarbone in 2023 I introduced strength training in august last year.

I introduced hex-bar deadlifts in November and progressed to regular deadlift in January with the help of a personal trainer. In late February , after deadlifts, my back and right glute felt weird. The next day, the pain was still there but manageable, when I started riding my bike. after the could barely straighten my back, when I got off the bike. This left me with back pain and difficulty walking for two weeks.

My orthopedic told me, my SI joint was blocked and sent me to a chiropractor. The treatment there immediately helped with pain. In addition, I was told, that my deadlift technique was looking fine and I should just lighten the load.

Four weeks later, deadlifting only 3x10x50kg/110lbs brought the pain back, cycling a few days later had my back lock up again, but not as badly as before. So I figured, I should just stop that specific exercise.

Another 3 weeks later, pain had almost subsided and I went back to the gym. Skipping the deadlifts and not wanting to put high stress on my spine, I went for high-rep squats as a compound lift (5x10x40kg/90lbs) - I had been doing split squats using 3x10x55kg/120lbs before, so this seemed like light load to me. The next day, I had, what felt like severe DOMS. This got worse and worse over the next days and a relatively normal indoor session. Ending up in weakness and severe pain in my lower back and right leg.

MRT showed a protruded L5-S1 disc, impinging on the nerve and protruded L4-L5 disc.

How it's going:

I've been off the back and hardly able to sit for longer for the last 8 weeks now. I tried riding my bike, but anything above 20mins I door or 10mins outdoors triggers my sciatica. Main symptoms are pain on random sites on the outside of my right leg and a numb pinky toe.

Just this week my physio told me, to get back to the gym to strengthen my back muscles. I've been doing stuff like the McGill Big 3 since the whole things started and tried to get about 10k steps in every day. This seems to help, but progress is extremely slow.

What happened to you guys? What did you do to get back on the bike? And how long did it take?

Edit: added imperial units

I am currently at around 3 ride days and average 6h/week and want to increase this to around 10h/week. My plan is to just make these rides longer, for the reasons listed below. Is there a training downside to this, compared to adding more ride days? I noticed that most structured plans have lots of short rides with something scheduled for almost every day.

I hate riding indoors and I have a flexible work schedule, so my approach thus far has been to wait for good weather and do a morning ride on two weekdays. I think a totally structured plan would take all the fun out of it for me. I seem to waste immense amounts of time on ride prep -- choosing correct clothing, ride fuel prep, breakfast vs no breakfast, pooping, showering, laundry overhead etc. and it seems more time-efficient to just make my three rides longer.

On the weekend I go on a long epic explore-the-mountains / slay-ebikers ride. It usually has a total of about 30-40 min of Zone 5+ in it. My training goal is to improve my endurance, so that I can do longer weekend rides (6h) without being totally exhausted. Heat-tolerance is also important. My weekday rides include one similar high intensity but shorter ride, and a long Zone 2 ride. I currently use Golden Cheetah to track progress and have topped out at around Cp=3.8W/kg and W'bal=420J/kg over the past several years.

Hey everyone! I’m currently using a Wahoo trainer and have an extra bike mounted on it year-round. I've been a Zwift user, but with their recent price hike and my decreased usage during the summer, I'm searching for a more budget-friendly option. Does anyone have suggestions for good, affordable alternatives to Zwift that work well with a Wahoo trainer? I'm mainly looking to maintain my routine without the higher cost, especially when I'm not using it as intensively in the summer months. Thanks in advance for your help!

Hi!

Was looking for some fun and challenging anaerobic workouts, aim to improve XC racing.

Found some three nice examples on trainerroad --> https://www.trainerroad.com/blog/anaerobic-intervals-for-cyclists-how-they-make-you-faster/

The 'Cypress' looks straight forward, but how is that warming up looks like? And how much of recovery time in between the sets?

As well for the 'Junction -2', how does the warming-up look like, and how are the details of the workout in between sets?

Thanks a lot!

I am currently 44 years old, I previously raced from 2011 to 2015 and I was a mid-pack Cat-3 when moved, started a new job etc… I was in a situation where I knew I wasn’t able or willing to devote the time I would need to be competitive…. This isn’t to say I haven’t been riding and keeping up with my fitness.   I have averaged about 5 hours a week in the saddle during my time off from racing and haven’t gained a significant amount of weight. My job situation has changed recently where my workload is a lot lower and I’m in a work-from-home hybrid situation and I have a lot more time to ride.  I’m thinking about getting back into racing.  I am trying to figure out if Cat-3, Masters 40+ or a downgrade to Cat-4 is the best option. 

I never really got too familiar with the exact requirements for upgrades.  I raced in cat 4/5 my first year, and then got big into racing my second year. I was doing all the Tuesday night races and traveling around the region to race most weekends. I did 40+ races that year.  For a while I was consistently getting top-5 finishes and won a few races.  The guys on my race team were eager to have another body in the cat-3 pack so they urged me to apply for an upgrade, and I did. I was never particularly good as a Cat-3 and it wasn’t as much fun entering races without much realistic hope that I might actually win and my only purpose was to block wind for the other people on my team.

I plan to race unattached to a team. I was looking at the USAC standards for upgrade to CAT-3 and it seems like now it only requires a pack finish in 20 mass start races…. If that were the standard before, I would have upgraded after my first season, before I had even started finishing races toward the front of the Cat-4 pack.  What I am wondering is if the Cat-3 packs have gotten slower now with the different upgrade requirements, therefore meaning that I might still be competitive as a CAT-3?

Essentially, we know the body recovers and gets stronger and adapts from the work you do during the day while sleeping.

What I’m asking is, let’s say you do a hard day of VO2 intervals, or work at FTP, or whatever. You’ve generated signals to your body that it needs to adapt, it does, watts go up, you’re happy. This happens mainly when you sleep.

How does a bad night of sleep affect this equation? Like, does this essentially get postponed till the next night, and then if you get a good nights rest you still go through supercompensation just the same as you would’ve the night prior? Do the signals that tell your body to adapt and get stronger attenuate with time, so that if you get a good night’s sleep the second night but not the first, you are getting less out of the workout than you would have? Or do these signals stay the same strength, but build up due to lack of sleep, and this creates fatigue, and you’re essentially giving your body a backlog to work its way though and this is how you can end up in a hole if you don’t sleep and recover well?

Or is just understanding as a whole just completely off?

Hi!

I'm pretty new to this bikes/racing thing, and want to explore gravel-races. I'll be doing my first races this summer. It's just a self realization project in the form of "can I qualify for the world championships in gravel with only one year of training/experience", lol.

On an impulsive evening I emailed this bike brand if I could be an ambassador for them on a bikepacking-trip i did some weeks ago, which to my surprise they said yes to. So I got a bike for the event and had it for about two weeks.

When I delivered the bike they seemed happy with what they had gotten from me and wanted to do more things together in the future, and I've also pitched to do (women)-gravel group rides for them in the coming months which they seemed to want (should I expect to be payed for that or??), other than that we didn't discuss further.

I'm trying to get to my point; what would be reasonable things to pitch further? Use their bike for some of the races + race entry fees covered? Those of you thats not on a team but have support in one way or another, what kind of deals do you have? I feel like it's stupid to ask for something before I've even started the races haha but it worked last time, I'm trying to keep to my mindset that it doesn't hurt to ask, at the same time I don't want to seem silly...

Or should I just race through the summer and see how things unfold?

Does anyone know how the power vs. hear rate chart works? I see that they added the information about time for a given data point. How to interpret it? I would assume if I do 180w at 150bpm for 20min last year and this year I do the same for 40 min, it would hint at better endurance.

Any opinions?

Yesterday I did my first race ever. It was just a crit (training) race for 40minutes. I was the only girl and couldn’t keep up with the boys so it was more a tough battle against myself.

After about 35min I get cramping in both of my calves. I keep pushing as much as I can but it’s not much. At some point I can’t even pedal because it’s so painful. I even stop my garmin because I was ready to give up and even asked one of the guards for permission (lol). I pedal easy for a bit but tried to finish on some stronger legs as the cramps tone down.

Was it harmful for me to continue cycling with the cramps? Should I have just quitted? It was just a training race so I’m wondering if I pushed myself more than I should lol

(The legs are ok, a little sore in the calves but that’s expected)

Anyone have a good recipe or tips for making gel in bulk?

Edit: WOW. Thanks for all of the advice and recipes. I have some experimenting to do!

First of all I'm from Philippines and there is an upcoming fixedgear races, That i really wanna join and I wan't to train can you give me guys some tips on how to train like intervals and tips on how to get stronger, That's my bike btw on the picture I'm planning to build my rimset with an budget meal, i don't have money to afford an Carbon Wheelset so, I'm planning to build an 30mm rims with 20/24 holes hubs.

Hope you guy's give me a training.

Hi everyone. I'll be in Italy around June and July, landing and taking off from Rome. I'm planning to travel around on train and I hope to see the TDF start in Florence and Turin (stages 1 and 3). Then I'd also like to travel to Austria since I have some relatives there.
I have planned my season for an A race on 09/06 (June 9th for the americans) and then some rest, to keep racing and maybe gain some more fitness after my trip. I'm from Paraguay so this trip is going to be rather costly and I'm trying to save as much as possible on food and hotels/bnb.
First, I would like some tips for watching the tour, as I've never experienced a big race live.
Second, I'd also like to train at least a little, even would like to rent a bike or something like that. I've seen sites like veloguide where you can find bike rentals practically anywhere in Europe, but any other tip is welcome, route recommendations as well.
I'm not foreign to running but I don't do it as often as I did a couple years ago due to knee problems (hence becoming a cyclist lol), but I'm also willing to do some just to mantain some fitness.
Even more info about me, if it matters at all: 25yo, FTP 245w, 64kg.

I'm doing the VT Grand Fondo at the end of June and should be around 3.6 w/kg by then. Short of getting subcompact chainrings and a gigantic cassette, I suspect I'm in for some long sweetspot climbs at low cadence (maybe 50-60 RPM depending on on calculators I've checked).

How would you recommend incorporating low cadence training to get ready for this? I don't have any really long climbs without first riding 25-30 miles from home. I could do low cadence sweetspot on the trainer, or make an effort to incorporate those climbs in my longer rides (but realistically I can only get 1x 4-6 hr ride per week but can do 12-15 hours generally per week).

How much/how often would you recommend focusing on low cadence? If my normal cadence is ~85 RPM I assume I should progressively go lower, or FAFO and just try 50 RPM right off the bat?

Thanks!

Edit: Just ran some numbers at www.bikecalculator.com and most of the climbs by themselves look manageable with my 50/34 crank and I can squeeze an XT 11-40 on my Ultegra RX rear derailleur. Lincoln Gap would likely have me at ~65 RPM for 20 mins at a solid sweetspot pace. The routes in RidewithGPS always look smoother than they seem in real life and I have to factor in fatigue, so that's why I'm trying to get a sense of what benefit some low cadence training beforehand could have. Thanks!

Coming Sunday there will be a Gran Fondo UCI Qualifier in Aachen to qualify for the WC in Denmark. The top 25% of each age category will be qualified. I will take part in the 19-35 age group. How hard is it to qualify for the WC?

Is it me or is this unnecessarily hard? I would have thought 5x4 vo2 would be hard enough without the 5 mins of threshold before each one? I'm training for a road race a week Sunday so this is my last weekend before taper, but I've not seen a workout like this... Is this hard or do I just need to toughen up?

So far this season I've done a few races, a Gravel, 2 crits, an XC MTB, and an unsanctioned road race. In all three of these races I exceeded my expectations. I didn't have any breathing and chest tightness issues that were plaguing me last year. In each of these races I went in fresh. I wasn't able to ride much the week before, sometimes by choice, and sometimes not.

After each of these events the next day I struggled to even ride at light Z2 pace. After the Saturday road race we all got together and did a Sunday Crit in the afternoon. The other guys all complained about tired legs and then rode about like normal. I stopped after getting dropped on the first lap. I told them afterwards it felt like I was drowning.

This sure doesn't seem like regular fatigue to me

Got into cycling as an ex-collegiate runner who had to hang up the spikes after a surgery on my Achilles tendon. I was enjoying it immensely until I started having pain in my knees after about a month, causing me to have to take a few days off, which I’ve been quite disappointed about. I started out with week 1 at 150 miles, week 2 at 180 and week 3 on track for 200 before I took a couple days off to try to resolve the knee issue. Have been in a cycle of ride a few days/few days off since then, and am just committing myself to taking time off until it is entirely better. My questions are: 1. I’m a little surprised such low volume caused me such problems so quickly, I feel like 150mpw riding is only equivalent to like 40ish mpw running, which is less than half of my training volume when I was running healthy. Is the problem my training volume or is it more likely to be something else (bike fit, improper form, etc). 2. If my problem is volume, what is the reccomendation for building up volume with the goal of eventually being a competitive racer? Do I really need to start at a level where im not able to ride every day? Any insight is appreciated, thank you!

What’s everyone’s top tips for better sleep after a hard session aside from 14 large San Miguel beers?… Tuesday night APR training finishes 8:30/9:00PM and that’s just not enough time to get back to a non jacked state for decent sleep.

So come on what’s the secret to sleeping well after training hard late in the day?

I live and do most of my cycling and training in England / Scotland / Ireland. I’ve gotten into xc mountain biking recently and have booked a race in France towards the end of the summer. I’ll probably do a training plan on trainer road to help get up to speed. But how do I acclimatise myself to cycling in the heat? Is it as simple as hop on the turbo with the heating on?

I been training for about 3 ich years. Last year I changed my main focus from running to cycling. I do around 12-15 h/week often 1 or 2 hard sessions and the rest around z2/3. I usually take 2 rest days /w typically Sunday and Fridays. Ppl w simular h/w do you rest more or less? My legs feel kinda dead my heart usually feels well rested but my legs are kinda dead before a rest day

This year because of injuries i´ve only been doing cycling, in the past Hockey or triathlon. Since october i´ve focused on the bike, getting fitter, stronger, faster. And i accomplish mostly everything i challenged myself. I change my training method every now and then, but im really curious and listen read to coaches advices. What i see is now is harder and harder to progress, I know is normal u cant keep increasing FTP everyday but i think im starting to reach a plateu. Coaching is expensive so i want to know if maybe with a coach over a year i cant those 13watts to have an FTP or 400w :) TY