[Closed] Feasibility of Road Riding

There are hills in some part of the country. I dont ride on the flat to get fit. I ride up horrible climbs.

I can easily cycle for 25km without going through a traffic light - and I'm on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

How does anyone manage to get fit using a road bike in this country, when serious opportunities to maintain a sustained cadence over a long distance are so rare?

Depends on where you are. I live on the western edge of Edinburgh and if I head west it's 19 miles to the next traffic lights and probably the same again after that (plus I could easily avoid the lights by using back roads instead).

The only problem I have is that when I do head west it's mostly uphill for quite a few miles and usually into the wind. Coming back home is fast though (hit 38mph on the flat at one point - with a pretty strong following wind!).

Fitness comes in a variety of flavours. Some are acheived by long steady rides, others come through high intensity bursts.

can easily cycle for 25km without going through a traffic light - and I'm on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

I just worked out that it's 19 miles on the A70 from Balerno to the lights in Carnwath (assuming you take one of the backroads out of Balerno of course)!

I can easily cycle for 25km without going through a traffic light

And me, could probably ride for twice that, i pick routes for this reason.

I also pick routes where i do far more ascent than descent as i feel going down is pointless.

epicsteve - Member

I just worked out that it's 19 miles on the A70 from Balerno to the lights in Carnwath (assuming you take one of the backroads out of Balerno of course)!

And you're assuming a right turn at Carnwath. Turn left and head towards Dolphinton......

flip - Member
I also pick routes where i do far more ascent than descent as i feel going down is pointless.

I tend to end up back where I started, so ascent and descent are equal

So do i, but i do circular routes that end up with one way being more uphill than the other.

flip - Member
So do i, but i do circular routes that end up with one way being more uphill than the other.

You [b]are[/b] MC Escher and ICMFP

And you're assuming a right turn at Carnwath. Turn left and head towards Dolphinton......

Turn left at Carnwath, head to Newbigging, backroad from there to Biggar (avoiding the lights in Carnwath), then onto Broughton (slight danger in Biggar as I think there might be a pedestrian crossing with lights there - but very little chance of getting stopped), A701 to Tweedsmuir, over the Talla/Megget reservoir road, B709 to Langholm. Got to be the best part of 100 miles!

i have had a road bike for about 10 years and dont think I ve ever been through a traffic light 😯

and yes i do go out on it most weeks

On none of my routes do I ever enounter trafficlights or much else road furniture for that matter. I have several 100k route and only two have one set of lights each, both to go under old railway bridges.
I think I'm quite lucky where I am, I have the Chilterns and Cotswolds nearby for undulating rural rides. Or Bedfordshire and Essex the other way for long flat blats.

I would undertake long distance rides from my house in a Western Canadian city, and be able to ride 25 kms out and the same back

You call 50kms a long distance ride? 😕

Why do you think it's impossible to get training benefits without holding a fixed cadence for 25km continuously?

And anyway, I could go out from home and ride round the back roads on the Somerset levels at a rock steady pace all day, if I could just handle the boredom...

I guess it's the notion of high traffic density and the fact that I haven't seen too many areas where one would be able to ride without having to start/stop/slow down [i]alot[/i] that makes it appear not well-suited to these lands, I guess.

It must be just what one gets used to.

Certainly in France and Germany there seems to be a much more conducive environment for cycling after a fashion I was accustomed to.

You are forgeting that traffic lights do not apply to cyclists.

where do you live saxton rider?? I see what you're saying if you only stick to urban areas, but that's not very interesting, and it's usually pretty easy to put loops together which get you out and about.

SaxonRider - Member
I guess it's the notion of high traffic density and the fact that I haven't seen too many areas where one would be able to ride without having to start/stop/slow down alot that makes it appear not well-suited to these lands, I guess.

It must be just what one gets used to.

Certainly in France and Germany there seems to be a much more conducive environment for cycling after a fashion I was accustomed to.

Yep - you wouldn't want to be riding here...

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I think you need to get out more.....

Surely this is trolling - within 20 minutes of home I am on into rolling countryside and I can find a route as long/winding/hilly as I want, and unless you live in the middle of a city - which is your own fault - most people can do the same.

I am thinking of the fact that when, inspired by Greg Lemond, I would undertake long distance rides from my house in a Western Canadian city, and be able to ride 25 kms out and the same back without encountering a traffic light. Here, there just wouldn't be the same unhindered chance to do anything similar.

That being the case, how is it that people find it a helpful means to fitness?

So, if you are right, Canadians should rule the cycling world.

Yet they don't. 🙁

I would undertake long distance rides from my house in a Western Canadian city, and be able to ride 25 kms out and the same back without encountering a traffic light.

1) 25km is not a long distance ride. Neither is 50km. 100km starts to get into the realms of "might need an energy bar for that"
2) I can ride for 25km without encountering more than a couple of sets of lights at the start of the ride and I live on the outskirts of Manchester.

Turbo trainer?

This began as a sensible thread until swadey's suggestion of trolling. No I'm not flipping trolling. I just wondered. I have heard people talk about road riding, yet when I tried it living up North in Manchester, I found it extremely difficult to find the sorts of stretches that allowed me to ride freely and unconcerned by fairly dense traffic and traffic controls. Even where my parents live (in the Lancashire countryside), I have found it a bit intimidating.

As for the distance I used to ride, I am talking about a regular ride I used to make with my friends when we were training. Our turn-around point was exactly 25kms from my house. We could have ridden 500kms without stopping. And no, I'm not saying that Canada is the ideal place to ride and so Canadians should all be champion cyclists. Indeed, I can't think of a single winning road rider; the team I used to ride with was essentially a summer training team of speed skaters.

My question was simply as to how feasible road riding is here, and it seems that it clearly is. I must obviously give it another try.

ride 25 kms out and the same back without encountering a traffic light.

i can do that but it took me several months of planning, reviewing and editing routes to get several local routes that have both a lack of traffic and a lack of lights etc.

i certainly wouldn't be able to drop in a new town with only a road atlas and sort a perfect route - i doubt most people could.

I can ride 15kms on my route home in London without stopping once for a traffic light and a pretty constant speed too, oops 😆

When I was living in zone 3 s.e London I could be out in Kent in about 30 - 40 min and ride as far I want without any traffic lights. I round from London to The New Forest and once out of London encountered two sets of traffic lights on a 200 km route. I think you must be very lazy with your routes.

I've only been through 4-5 sets of traffic lights on my road bike and that was only because I decided to try biking to work through town once.

I can leave my house in a Town and be in the countryside within 5 minutes and from there I could easily do 100 miles without ever going on a main road let alone encounter any traffic lights.
A typical weekend ride for me would be usually 50 to 75 miles with a minimum of 3500ft of climbing.
Mountain biking isn't the best hence why I tend to ride on the road more which has increased my fitness massively.

SaxonRider - move to Scotland. Nice quiet roads outside the central belt and even around the central belt druid (!) and others have shown how easy it is to get a good, steady, uninterrupted ride in.

There's a 5 hour section on one of my favourite road rides where I rarely have to put a foot down 🙂

It's got lots of hills, barely any traffic and most of the turns are left - so you're not trying to get 'across' any traffic on the busier bits.

You won't have a sustained cadence, but you will develop awesomeness due to all the ups...and skills due to all the downs 😀

I live in the South East, and can easily do 50kms avoiding traffic lights.

Begs the question though... what's the issue with the odd set of traffic lights!? Plenty of people get very fit whilst having to stop occasionally for lights. Austin, Texas is hardly a mecca of cycling, and yet it spawned a fairly handy rider in recent decades.

I appreciate what you're saying njee20, but I think too much has been made about my traffic lights comment. What I was trying to get at was the general sense I had that road riding here necessarily a lot of concessions to traffic - in terms of traffic controls, traffic density, etc. - and so that it would be hard to find 'flow' here.

But Austin, Texas is a good example. It [i]is[/i] a cycling mecca insofar as it is flat, and surrounded by uncountable miles of wide, unfettered highway (with extremely wide hard-shoulders to boot), permitting virtual days of riding without interruption. And that's the sort of thing that I would have been used to growing up.

Well I live in the most heavily populated part of the country, along with some very good riders, and it just isn't an issue. Most people don't ride for days at a time, so stopping every now and again isn't really an issue!

I concede that there can be busy roads here, more so than Canada, but you can avoid traffic and stick to back roads easily enough!

You don't have to worry about bears here.

I live in the South East and could probably put together 1000's of Km of trafic light free riding! What are you on about!

SaxonRider - Member

How does anyone manage to get fit using a road bike in this country, when serious opportunities to maintain a sustained cadence over a long distance are so rare?

depends how you do your training innit.

i can think of several dozen local 20minute brutal climbs that will have me red-lining all the way up,

string a few of those together in a 2hour ride and i can feel it for days.

i reckon... (stand by chaps - idiot at work)

i reckon that if you want to get 'fit' you're better off hurting yourself hard for an hour, than just riding for hours and hours - achieving little more than extreme fatigue and a numb penis.

I can ride for an eternity, all I need to do is ride to the roundabout at the bottom of my road.

i reckon that if you want to get 'fit' you're better off hurting yourself hard for an hour, than just riding for hours and hours - achieving little more than extreme fatigue and a numb penis.

that's goes against just about every training program used by successful national coaches (for all cycling disciplines)

I live on the edge of town, i do a 20 mile commute on the bike and don't get to my first set of lights till the 12 mile mark.

I can also leave the house and after a couple of minutes I'm out in the countryside where I could go out and ride 30 odd miles without going through lights. If I lived in the middle of the town then it would be different.

I live on near the edge of Exmoor, I can easily ride 50 miles (note the use of miles, I know some of you may think that k's makes it sound further, but roads are marked in miles in the UK), on very quiet roads and not see a traffic light. You don't have to go to Scotchland 🙄

that's goes against just about every training program used by successful national coaches (for all cycling disciplines)

Maybe at an international / pro level, but not at an amateur level - for most of us who post on here short, sharp intervals would be better than slow rides.

my flatmate is a BC level3 track/time-trial/road coach.
he laughed at both your statements.

methods of training* are applicable to all levels of cyclist, if anything the gains at a lower level are often more significant.

*training is not the same as caning it for 7 miles on your commute.