Soooooooo I’ve been in training for the 10 Under the Ben race. I’ve been commuting every day since October on a 6.5 mile route. I’m doing this at a fairly high intensity, I’ve been doing intervals etc and I can cover the distance in 30 minutes. It’s mainly flat with a couple of steep climbs and some longer uphill drags that aren’t too steep. I’ve been doing off road rides at the weekend of around 3 hours too.

Now on the flat (and downhills) I’m fine but on uphills I’m finding I’m the lactic acid build up is happening really quickly and I’m feeling the “burn” on even the smallest climbs. I’ve tried spinning my way up, blasting my way up or somewhere in between but nothing seems to be reducing the lactic acid build up.

I would have thought that after 4 months of cycling 6 days a week, I’d be seeing an improvement, but I’m not.

Any suggestions for ways to combat or reduce this?

Do you use a heart rate monitor, I would suggest doing interval/pyramid training where you do

15 secs on/30 secs off
30 on/30 off
45 on/30 off

up to 2 mins and then back again and also do 5 mins time trial

You could also test your aerobic threshold by do the talk test , ride at a set speed or heart rate on a turbo trainer and then say a sentence (example the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy stream and see if you can say it comfortably.

Basically you need to push yourself to improve. You could also time yourself up the climb and see which is quicker spinning/grinding standing sitting.

Bob, I am surprised you haven’t notiched a change by now.
I know of endurance racers who suck Rennies (antacid tablet) to prevent acid build-up.
They claim it helps but as far as I know it is for your stomach acids!
I did a 78mile mtb race(took me 10hrs 4min) in South Africa and tried the Rennies.
I did not cramp at all.
Sounds like you need to find your comfort zone on an uphill.Not too spinny is what I do but, too fast.Steady with purpose.
Get out of the saddle every other minute for about 30 seconds on the uphills.

Not too spinny is what I do but NOT too fast (is what i meant)

And I agree with hockropper that you need to push yourself to inprove. This is where getting out of the saddle will help.
Getting your saddle height right also may make a little difference (perhaps a bit higher).

Two ways to limit lactic acid build up. You can train your body’s ability to tolerate it and remove it, by doing intervals like hockropper says, or there’s another option – reduce how much of it gets created.

If you plot a graph of power exerted against blood lactate, your lactate levels should stay flat up to a certain power then they start to go up.

In the flat part of the graph you are burning fat and producing no lactate. At a certain threshold (sometimes called lactate threshold, sometimes lower lactate threshold) you start to produce lactic acid. You won’t notice this, but it’s about the point where your breathing starts to increase a touch over normal and would slightly impede trying to have a conversation. As you exert more power still, your blood lactate levels increase to the point where you’re producing as much as your blood can remove – this is your upper threshold or anaerobic threshold. It’s usually defined as what you can tolerate for half an hour, but no more. Your legs will be screaming at this point. Anything over that threshold is basically a sprint, and you won’t be able to hold it for long.

Having lactate in your muscles is what makes them sore and tired – if you exercise producing lactate then eventually your legs will knacker, depending on where on the second part of the graph you are. So for 24 hour racing, you want to produce as little lactate as possible. How is this done? Well, if you train at your lower lactate threshold you’ll improve your power at this point. So if you ride at a given speed you’ll produce less lactate, or you can ride faster for the same amount. It’s called base training, and is widely accepted as what you need to do for endurance.

When I had my first blood lactate test, there was no flat section on my graph. Blood lacate went up all the time. This meant I really had no base fitness DESPITE me thinking I did. I could and did go on 5 hour rides all the time, but I was always producing lactate and moving it. When I did a 24 hour pair ride, my heart rate was always quite high (around 180) despite me trying to slacken off. I was producing lactate all the time despite feeling comfortable with the pace; consequently about 5 laps in or around say 2am I really began to hurt. By the end I was in tears, it was the hardest thing I have ever done by a long way.

So I did lots of base training – long slow rides, slower than I’d ever done before – and then I was riding around with a HR of 150 on mtb rides, which I’d never experienced before, and the result was absolutely dramatic. I could seriously ride all day like that – I did a 24 hour solo and when I finished I didn’t feel tired in the slightest.

Your base fitness is crucial to your ability to do 24 hour racing.

Basically you need to push yourself to improve.

No – at least, don’t push yourself faster. You need to push yourself longer. You need to do rides at that slow pace for 2-3 hours at least. 6.5 miles won’t do it, for endurance racing at least, so you need to make your commute longer or do some long road rides at the weekend. Road, because it’s nearly impossible to keep a steady base pace up on off-road – climbs are too steep, rocky, muddy, technical and the downs you don’t pedal.

Training for speed is a different ballgame tho – intervals and the like are where it’s at, and the above does not apply so much. You do need base and speed training for whatever you are doing, but in different proportions.

For all those who will say ‘oh he’s not a pro, he doesn’t need to take it that seriously’, base training is MORE important for beginners than seasoned cyclists.

Mods, can we make this a sticky, cos I don’t feel like typing that lot in over and over again?

Molgrips, cheers. Lot’s of useful info.

Good advice Molgrips, its spot on you need to build your engine first , you have to think of fitness as a pyramid the wider the base the higher the peak, so you have to do lots of slow stedy miles and then do the interval training.

You can improce very quickly by doing high and hard rides but you tend to get more injureis /overtraining that way and then have to take time/slack off to recover

So rather than doing my commute at a high speed in 30 minutes, scale it down a bit and take 40 minutes?

You can improce very quickly by doing high and hard rides but you tend to get more injureis /overtraining that way and then have to take time/slack off to recover

Yep, although you can only improve your SPEED that way, not endurance. Endurance is hard graft unfortunately.

It’s also worth noting that base fitness lasts longer than speed fitness. So cyclists do a lot of base training in the winter when there aren’t races and you don’t need speed; when the races approach you can build speed and you still have the base from the winter. So what that means is long road rides in the cold/rain/wind/darkness. Bloody marvellous. But it REALLY does work if you want to train for stuff.

A good way is to test yourself on a course every weeks trying to replicate the same conditions this will show you how your improving and give you an incentive. When starting from scratch you will always see a massive leap in fitness , then your body adapts and you have to shock it with different types of exercise.

It might be worth doing cross training like circuits or running, which I have done over the winter and I’ve been spending a lot less time in the high heart rates and feel much better for it

So rather than doing my commute at a high speed in 30 minutes, scale it down a bit and take 40 minutes?

Yes, kind of. But 40 minutes of base riding isn’t much. You need to take a longer route home – significantly. On the plus side, it’s physically much easier to ride at the slower pace. For the first three or four hours 😉

I’m keeping a log in Excel of times, average speeds, max speeds, distance covered to track performance over time.

Have you thought of keeping a training diary, I know it sounds a bit serious but it allows you to see when you were riding or feeling well to find out what you’d been doing up to that point to feel like that, drinking more water, getting more sleep, types of training, etc

some decent advice above but one more thing – make sure you’re not over training or all your effort will be completely wasted – you get fitter when you recover from training. If you don’t recover, you don’t get fitter…

hello mrs legspin here, I would say you are not over loading the body any more and are on a bit of a plateau, even though you are putting a lot of work in. You seem to be training your slow twitch fibres, so your aerobic capacity will be fine, try doing more interval training working at 80% 90% MRH.

In the flat part of the graph you are burning fat and producing no lactate

that’s not strictly true, is it? At just below LT you’re working aerobically, so probably burning carbohydrates mainly. Above LT you’re anaerobic and lactate starts to build quickly. At a really low intensity you’ll be burning fat mainly, but that intensity is not just below LT (which is nearly 1 hr time trial effort). If you were burning fat at LT, your 1 hour average power would be pretty much equal to your 6 hour power, which just isn’t the case.

Not to say that training your fat burning metabolism isn’t a good idea, the more fat your burning at a given intensity, the better, and base training is the way to build this system.

Actually, you may be right – some people do use the term LT in the way you do… but still, that point you’ve marked on the curve is the anaerobic threshold, (or LT2), and just before that I think your burning mainly carbs not fat.

…which isn’t to argue with your main point that low intensity fat burning training is a good thing, by the way!

The term LT is often used to refer to different things unfortunately. That’s why I usually just say lower threshold or upper threshold. I define the lower threshold as the change point in that graph. So below it, by definition, you are getting all your energy from a chemical reaction that produces no lactate. Above that, when you can’t get enough oxygen you start burning more carbs in a different reaction that produces lactate.

Ianpv – I’ve had the blood lactate test several times, and produced a graph like that. At the point that THEY mark LT, what I call the lower threshold, I am barely breathing hard and totally relaxed – no lactate. The upper threshold is way off the scale of that graph, and my coach doesn’t measure that in the lab, preferring a maximal effort in the shape of a rather savage hill climb against the clock. The LT point on that graph is for me about 210-220 watts, not 1 hour TT pace, I can keep that up for a good 4-5 hours or more if I’ve trained for it. I was doing 6 hour rides at that pace when training for solo 24 hour. I use a powertap for measuring power btw.

I should probably plug Torq Fitness at this point since that’s where I get all this info from 🙂

I’m in pretty much exactly the same boat. I’ve just started commuting this week rather than 4 months ago though. My legs are feeling the burn very quickly on the uphills. It doesn’t help that I’m dragging 14.5 stone of lard and a mid 90s bottom end steel hardtail up the climbs with me!

There is scope for elongating my route to a rolling 10 mile ride which will probably take me a little over an hour at my current pace. Would this be enough to improve things?

Yes it will but you need to keep it at a slow steady pace probably no more than 75% of your maximum heart rate , maybe doing some short 30 second sprints or intervals and then recovering for 2-3 mins or until your heart rate is down to 60% and then go again , try to do this 3 times during the ride and then just ride at your normal pace

It will a bit, but you need to elongate it more a couple of times a week, or get out for a long steady ride at weekends.

Remember, if you ride hard you are training a DIFFERENT part of your metabolism than if you ride slowly. And it’s the slower riding part you need for endurance – even, paradoxically, for endurance at higher speeds. But you need to ride longer at those lower speeds to get the benefit.

I should’ve said that my commute is on a singlespeed HT with a 36/16 setup which probably increased the strain on my legs but I had a decent run at Glentress on Saturday and did the red trail in 1hr45 which is a fair improvement on previous times and my legs were fine so I do think I’m seeing the benefit of my daily commute now.

What sort of length rides would be required for the longer ones? 2 hours+ ?

What sort of length rides would be required for the longer ones? 2 hours+ ?

At least. Think more like 3, 4, 5 hour road rides. Steady, and no stopping.

i ahve no base fitness after a shocking year riding last year and a lingering chest infection over winter. As a result, any fast stuff I do sees me lasting moments rather than longer as the others I ride with do.

OMITN has it right.

You need to ride at least 3 hours for a decent base training ride I’d say. If you can get hold of a HRM this is a good tool as well, as you don’t realise how much you unconsciously slacken off on the descents and try hard on the climbs. You need to be as steady as possible, and the pace must be pretty gentle. So that you could hold a conversation easily, EVEN on the climbs. And no coasting on the descents, make sure you pedal those at the same effort. This means crawling up climbs and hammering descents, which feels weird, but it will help you get the most out of the rides.