njee20

Tell me more. I’m interested.

You probably ride too hard whenever you try it, I find it hard not to do the same when I commute. It’s very easy to just ride at a pace which doesn’t really offer any training benefit, but tires you out.

Oh, that reminds me of something else.

To the OP: have different approaches to the ride, sometimes you’ll feel fresh and have nothing on and you can go hard and fast, other times go slowly and take in your surroundings or just pootle on your way.

Have some different routes too – that when one way is getting stale you can mix it up a bit, even if it’s just a few hundred metres on a different route it changes the feel of the ride.

As Njee says, The key with commuting is to avoid falling into a damaging middle ground of tiring but not challenging pace.

As a general rule to stick to might be something like 80% easy/ 20% hard with the key being to avoid being too tired to go hard for the 20% on the time that you want to.

For the OP, you could go towards Shoreham, then climb up. Bit longer and still a climb but it is nicer route and you wouldn’t be exposed so much to the elements. Pollhill is not that hard but the bits afterwards is very exposed and not fun at all.
And there is a station at Shoreham.

i do 23 miles to work, however I’m only there 3 times a week, but do 14 hours days 7am-9pm and found there and back was making my days too long, plus the mrs is heavily pregnant so need a car at work to get home double quick,

so now, if i have back to back days on, and the weather report looks good, i do the car there, with all the gear and clothing, leave the car over night and ride back in in the morning, do not need to carry anything this way as well, as carry a rucksack makes a lot of difference

can you do something like that?

I am reeasonably fit at present but just cannot whatsoever build up a level of fitness beyond what I currently have.

if you cannot up the volume, then you need to up the intensity

this is a good article

http://www.hunterallenpowerblog.com/2014/04/what-to-do-next-v02max-intensive-plan.html

interesting post by OP for me as will be starting a 23mile commute next week…

Food has been mentioned a few times, can people add sensible eating schedules and what to eat to get in the needed energy.

thanks

I don’t eat anything differently if I’m doing my 21 mile London commute, generally have some fruit when I arrive, normal lunch, something to nibble in the afternoon. YMMV

I don’t eat anything differently if I’m doing my 21 mile London commute, generally have some fruit when I arrive, normal lunch, something to nibble in the afternoon. YMMV

Same here, 20 miles each way and probably eat less than most people in the office, but thats because they have a huge lunch in the canteen, I take my own.

Don’t use commuting as an excuse to be greedy, its not necessary.

alzore:

My commute is 14 miles each way. I don’t race it, avg speed is probably 15mph but depends on wind direction.

I either eat a good breakfast before setting off then I don’t need anything once I’m at work other than a cup of coffee, or I have a light breakfast then have a quick bite once I’m at work. It just depends how I feel as to which regime I use on any given day.

I tend to have a decent though not huge lunch.

For the ride home I tend to grab something when I get home rather than have something in the afternoon and risk falling in to the habit of unnecessary snacking. Sometimes I’m definitely feeling hungry on the way home, not approaching the bonking state but just a feeling.

Take a bit of time to find out what works for you.

I did a similar commute for about 12 months as the OP. My observations are that by the time the weekend came round I didn’t want to look at the bike!

Also whilst I did loads of miles and got really thin, my performance in races did not improve because I wasn’t doing the intensity.

A couple of times a week was the best for me, and not when it rained!

I recently started commuting, I don’t have to travel nearly as far as you, and I don’t think the climbs are as steep either. But to begin with I did non consecutive days for the first 2 weeks. This week was my 3rd and I planned to do the whole week. However had a bike malfunction and haven’t been on my bike since Tuesday…I’m hating it

I’ve done quite long periods of a 50 mile round trip commute and more recently a 28 mile round commute. I found with both that I couldn’t manage it at first – I was just feeling broken after a few consecutive days.

What made the difference for me was a couple of things:

1. Eating a bit before riding to get my blood sugar levels up
2. Riding at a slower pace until I was really fit – so around 60-70% of max heart rate
3. Having more to eat on arrival to stop the blood sugar levels dropping
4. Small snack mid morning
5. Proper lunch with right ratio of carbs and protein
6. Snack in the afternoon

I’d also only ride 9 days out of 10, and alternating the “off” working day with a weekend off the bike.