Ok so ill stick my hand up and say im not a fit person. I try and get out a couple of times a week and I can see a massive benefit in doing so over the single ride. Things get easier (but never easy) if I can get 2 rides a week in and I feel much better for it. However if I try and get 3 rides in (not massive ones all between 10-15 miles) then after a couple of weeks I get ill. Not just tired but properly ill. Ive had a chest infection type cough for the last 3 weeks now that has basically kept me off the bike and now im starting from scratch. This isn’t a new thing and ive been to the docs, had x rays (for the cough) before. Its really bothering me though that I feel as though I cant get fit. I tried cross fit a few years ago and got the same thing.

What can I do to stop me getting ill and actually get fit.

Are you eating/fuelling enough for the increased riding?

I’d pop a heart rate monitor on and have a look at how hard you are working.

Have a read about polarized traning. I’d make two of your rides nice and easy and then one of them hard.

You are probably trying to do 3 x threshold efforts a week with virtually no base. And then you get ill and have to start over.

I’ve had the same thing in the past.

softly, softly, catchee monkey my friend!

Sounds like you’re pretty much lacking in base fitness, those long slow(er) days in the saddle are important. I’d wait till you were well again then carry on with your usual 2 rides a week and just try and get in a few more ‘easy’ miles. Ride in to town and back, take the longer way home and just get some more miles in your legs without really pushing yourself.

I manage to rack up an extra 40-50k over a weekend by riding everywhere, even when the wife and kids are meeting me there in the car 🙂

The other option of course is Zwift 😉

I’d agree with all of the above.

Eat the right stuff; Carbs and Protein. Most people eat too many Carb’s (especially sugar) and not enough Protein. Loads of info’ on the internet.

Ride more but at a lower intensity; build your base fitness and then go harder but gradually. Maybe in an on-off pattern to reduce the overall intensity. Loads of info’ on the internet.

The other option of course is running

FTFY.

Yep.  Read up on the concept of base training.

interestingly ive recently got one of these hrm things. it basically says (how i feel) that im giving it 80-100% every ride.

If i dont though i cant keep up with anyone?!

The other option of course is running

I asked about this on the runnin<span style=”font-size: 12.8px;”>g</span><span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”> thread. I’ve started running more since the start of this year and I’ve found that on my normal rides, my HR is down 4-5 bpm on sustained climbs and I feel fresher afterwards. Downside is my ‘top end’ climbing power is probably down a little but I can pace climbs a lot better now. </span>

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>I’d also concur with recovery/Zone 2 rides as being just as important for building fitness.  </span>

Then ride on your own!

Seriously. If you are going to do HR or power based training then you need to do it on your own and be firm about not chasing other riders, etc.

I was absolutely knackered earlier this year. To the point that I couldn’t sleep properly. I was treating every ride, including commutes, as a race and riding them as hard as I could. I hadn’t used my HRM for a couple of years so started wearing that and doing all my commutes in HR zone 1 and weekend rides in HR zone 2. It felt really slow to begin with. Getting off on hills when the unit beeped because my HR was too high was odd. Within a month or so I was back on an even keel and my commute times “pootling along” are very close to my tired, over stressed “race mode” times.

I wouldn’t have gotten off on hills, maybe paused…

Have a really good hard look at your diet OP.  Real fundamentals.  Do you have cereals in the house? – chuck ’em, they’re all junk food. Bread that isn’t dissapear up your own arse wholegrain artisan? Chuck it – it’s all nutritionally defunct.  Your fridge should be indistinguishable from a rainforest in colour and chaos. Meats and fish.

Basically, if it’s not freshly cooked, all from ingredients you can pick off a vine, dig from the ground or kill with an axe then it’s junk. Period.

No ready meals. No jars of anything (want mayo? *make it* fresh). Go easy on potatoes too – they convert to sugar pretty quickly. Takeaways once a month *at most*.

A mate of mine used to be sickly a bit like you. His missus dumped him ages ago and I took the opportunity to bully him into a proper, real, whole-foods only diet as he was in his transitional period.  He’s not been ill for four years (and is slimmer and stronger all round).

@andybrad Cycling is a very efficient mode of travel. Getting fit from it takes a lot of intensity in the training. You can easily cycle a fair few miles casually and not really gain much in the fitness. Or conversly if you are new it’s fairly easy to overtrain on distance/duration because you feel you can go further than you should.

Also, you cannot out train a bad diet or lifestyle.

Clean up the diet and lifestyle in parallel and this may be the key.

For cycling 5-10mins daily cycling flat out over 1-2 miles may work better. It sounds like your 10-15 miles are too much and your muscle recovery needs 3+ days.

Don’t rely on cycling alone to get you fit or change your lifestyle. Unless you are training seriously then it needs to be part of a wider fitness regime such as gym classes or P90/30X Beach Body type DvDs will also help motivate.

Brisk walking daily for 20-30mins will also help.

Base miles at low intensity. Mountain biking can be hard interval training by comparison. When do you ride gently? If the answer is never. Go longer at much lower intensity to build fitness. The hard intervals you get climbing will build on that.

And be sure to eat enough!

Spend less time at the pub after rides? 😉

When I did some proper training it was all at zone 2 (slow and steady)  I thought it was too slow.  But a few months later I was way fitter and healthier.  So it does work.

Getting fitter isn’t about riding hard lots.  Its about riding easy lots.

interestingly ive recently got one of these hrm things. it basically says (how i feel) that im giving it 80-100% every ride.

If i dont though i cant keep up with anyone?!

is that 80-100% of your max HR? Have you done test to check your resting and max heart rates?

6 months ago I was struggling to do a 10 mile ride round a trail centre, I now commute 4 miles per day and have done a few base mile (zone 2) rides of 2-3 hours plus normal mtb rides of anything from 1-3 hours my fitness level has improved massively. I’m smashing my PR’s on strava and I managed a 52 mile ride a couple of weeks back, which I’d never have been able to do 3 months ago.

Don’t try and keep up with your fit friends, if you’re really at 80-100% HR for the whole of a ride then it’s no wonder you’re getting ill, you can do that for a ride or 2 but if you try constantly with no base fitness you’ll struggle, your body will be worn out, and your immune system will be shot, which will lead to infections/coughs etc, as you’ve already seen. Don’t overtrain!

I,ve had that chest infection Andy,It wasn’t pleasant.After a spring and summer of training it feels like I,m back to square one.Just got to man up and start again.I agree with the comments about a good diet.Easier said than done however.

interestingly ive recently got one of these hrm things. it basically says (how i feel) that im giving it 80-100% every ride.

That simply isn’t good for you, you need to have easy rides along with hard ones.

I tend to mix my training / riding up a bit, in the run up to the Euro Champs I didn’t ride for more than 4 hours in one go, with plenty of shorter 1-2 hour rides and some pretty intense 30-40 minute rides

Longer rides were generally easier with the odd big effort thrown in, shorter rides were hard and as I said the really short ones were proper lung busting, christ that hurt kind of efforts including track and turbo work.

Lots of nice steady (long distance 110km round trip) commuting too, my route had hardly any elevation which is great for maintaining an even heart rate, I had the option of chucking a couple of hills in when I felt like it or the more intense rides would be limited that week.

You’ve already got a HRM so look up the Karvonen Formula and work out your HR zones. Now so long as you aren’t somewhere too hilly you should be able to complete a ride in Zone 1/the recovery zone.

Do all your rides at this intensity. After three to four weeks you should notice that despite maintaining a low HR you are actually getting quicker. Now let one of the rides be in Zone 2, the endurance zone. Again don’t overdo it and you should notice an improvement. Hopefully you aren’t getting ill. If that’s not the case then with your stated number of rides I’d do one session of hard intervals once a month increasing to once a fortnight as you get stronger. These rides should be a warm up, the intervals and then a warm down. If your ride is 10 miles then the first 5 or so will be a slowly increasing effort to get the legs going. Two miles of short, very intense intervals, then three miles of warm down. Doesn’t sound a lot but in a relatively short space of time you will get stronger. If you do do intervals then the ride before and after should be back in zone 1.

A link for you -> http://www.bikepartsreview.com/CyclingSlowToRaceFast.html

I’ve gone from struggling to keep any sort of speed to tapping along at a pretty swift pace at 100-105 BPM. It’s taken a couple of months and it was frustrating doing it in the middle of summer but I really needed that reset.

Running, I was/am a cyclist who could do 100 miles on the road with little or no prep. I was also fat and got out of breath going up the stairs. Started running and the weight dropped off and fitness went up and up.

this is an example of two rides ive had recently

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ePEKmBLTemRXpj699

with regards to HRM. so turn it down a bit?

Firstly, what’s your max HR? Your zone 5 which is normally 95% of max HR is at 184 which makes your max HR 194bpm. Have you just guessed that or let strava decide it based on the 220- age calculation? If that;s out (which I’m betting it is) then all your zones will be out.

My max HR (at 37 and moderately fit) was 178 and has recently gone up to 183.

I’d echo most of the advice above. Don’t get too hung up on perfection with regard to your diet (assuming there’s actually any issue there), just cut out most of the bad stuff (if it’s beige, that’s usually a good indicator) and aim to increase your intake of nutritious foods. If you don’t do so already, try to eat a lot of anything green (especially, watercress, rocket, kale, broccoli, etc.), oily fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines) two or three times a week, and snack on raw nuts and seeds. A bit of red meat now and then doesn’t hurt either.

Also, are you getting enough sleep? If you’re regularly getting less than you should, it can totally banjax your immune system.

There’s a few versions of HR zones but on a 1(easiest) to 5 (hardest) with a resting HR of 48 and a maximum (best guess) of 185 mine are:

Zone 1: < 120
Zone 2: 121 – 138
Zone 3: 139 – 151
Zone 4: 152 – 164
Zone 5: > 164

Those zones in your screenshot look weird, zone 2 going from 112 to 148? That’s twice the range of the other zones.

Aside from that you are spending a huge amount of time in Z4, more so if those are just “rides out”. Even on a short intense ride I wouldn’t expect to spend more than 10% of it in Z4.

cheers folks

max hr is based on strava, it all is tbh. resting hr is around 58 ish. my max hr from my activities is 189 so ill change that.

Actually strava has it at 190 so not that far out

Aside from that you are spending a huge amount of time in Z4, more so if those are just “rides out”. Even on a short intense ride I wouldn’t expect to spend more than 10% of it in Z4.

thats my worry / issue i think?

Can you not commute on the bike? I find this is quite a difference maker – even a rel short one (mine is a flat 6). That’s too short to build a base, but it keeps you in touch with the bike and has a maintaining effect on fitness so you never totally fall off the wagon. You can also go hard or easy as you feel, lengthen it etc.

So the question is … why are you spending so long in Z4? Are you trying to keep up with mates or are you genuinely struggling at that point?

If the former then just ease off. As I’ve said in a previous post limit your HR to something sensible, if you can’t get up a hill without going over that “limit” then have a break or get off and walk. Since the data comes from Strava then presumably your GPS is logging it so you should be able to display it on screen. If you are using one of the Garmin Edge series then set up an activity with HR limits – the unit will beep at you when you go outside them. (Dunno about Wahoo devices, etc.)

Edit: When I get home I’ll take a screenshot of one of my rides so you can see what a steady ride should look like.

Seeing your HR that does look ridiculous for just a regular weekday ride – shouldn’t be anywhere near that much threshold work. So completely agree with Whitestone and others saying you should significantly dial it back.

How-ever, I took a big step up in fitness a few years back when I started going out with a faster group, and my first rides with them felt a bit like yours do now. Riding with faster people is timeless advice for improving fitness, as mentioned it’s OK to go really hard a minority of time but you have to recognise it for what it is, not treat it as the normal benchmark for a ride to be burying yourself like that.

I tend to get ill also if I push to hard too many times.

I’d suggest you aren’t supplying you body what it needs.

I’ve found the following almost eliminates the issue for me

Eat lots protein before i go and when I get back.

Use hydration tabs whilst riding and even when I get home

dont let myself get hungry whilst riding. I don’t however hammer stimulants I.e sugars and caffeine whilst out. I have nut bars and sorreine etc sometime protein bars on long rides. My friends have gels but they make me work harder then I get ill

with the above I can ignore my HR and just enjoy the ride

How-ever, I took a big step up in fitness a few years back when I started going out with a faster group, and my first rides with them felt a bit like yours do now. Riding with faster people is timeless advice for improving fitness, as mentioned it’s OK to go really hard a minority of time but you have to recognise it for what it is, not treat it as the normal benchmark for a ride to be burying yourself like that.

This ^^

Been plodding on my bike for years with moderate fitness and moderate speed. Started to road ride and realised that it was a different game. Then started to ride with a group of friends that had been riding for years…and it nearly killed me. The first ride with them involved a lot of them looking over their shoulder before slowing down to wait for the puffing, fat lad trying to keep up. But I stuck with it and, bless ’em, they were kind enough not to drop me. Much like OP, I would be riding flat out for the whole ride and feel pretty bloody awful at the end.

So I started to make the best of my solo rides. Not just doing a gentle plod on my occasional 3 hour commute home from work, but instead riding it as though it was a series of competitive segments, with longer measured sections in between. Strava was a great help here, giving me some targets to hit and measurable improvements to keep my morale up. And suddenly, the commute time started to fall and, most astonishingly, I found myself really looking forward to the ride home. Before I knew it, a 3 hour commute became 2.5 hours and then 2 hours and now closer to 1.5 hours…

And now, when I ride with my friends…well, frankly, I’m still puffing at the back! But I can keep up and hold their pace. I can take my turns at the front and actually have some breath spare to talk occasionally. And I feel better than ever on the bike.

To give some advice to OP, I would follow some of the advice given by others above, but for me, I would be trying some longer, gentler riding on your own and, as you have a HRM, do some zone training where you keep your heart rate right down (Z2) for a longer period of riding. When you first start, you’ll be riding infuriatingly slow, but over a bit of time you should find that your pace increases without raising your heart rate and, I suspect, this will start to reflect in your normal rides where you can travel further and faster with less effort. Be prepared to invest some time in this, however, and also to have to turn your mates down when they ask to go for a ride, as you want to do some slower, structured riding instead.

To give an example of my own improvement, here are two rides 6 months apart with the same group of friends. Both were about 100km, 4,000ft climb and about 75% ridden in a group. The big difference here is that the first was 15mph average and the second was 17mph, despite substantially less effort. And I could feel this afterwards too – the first ride left me wrecked for 3 days afterwards, but I didn’t need any substantial recovery after the second one.

(these rides are road rather than MTB, but I’ve found that the road fitness has translated really well to the MTB for me. The big difference is that I find it really hard to get fit on the MTB, but when I do get fit, the MTB is a load more fun!)

Andy,

I’m beginning to suspect I need to follow a similar regime. I’m quite happy with big rides in the Lakes but on the occasions that I have worn a HRM with Strava it was typically reading 155bpm average over say 6 hours moving time. I’m 51, so that sounds like I’m falling into the same trap of always going too hard.

It’s weird, feels as though systems are out of balance somehow as I’ll get to the top of a mountain dripping in sweat but not remotely out of breath. Might also explain why I run out of steam on steep climbs and end up pushing/carrying more than my riding buddies do.

Think I need to dig out the HRM watch and keep an eye on zones

Ummm….perhaps we all just need a lighter bike rather than better fitness.

Get an eBike…

Seems like it’s been covered pretty well above – but the recent Downtime podcast with Alan Milway (coach to many top DH/enduro riders) is well worth a listen.

He talks about the benefit of low intensity, steady riding and gives an example of a rider who (off the top of my head) increased his power at 140bpm from 220 watts to 280 watts. In laymans terms, increased the power he can hold for a long ride by 27%

It’s all been said above, but I’ll reiterate based on my personal experience from increasing from a bit of exercise to about 100-150 miles a week (mostly on road, admittedly):

You need to eat enough, and not just sugary crap. Don’t try to go round feeling hungry, try to eat stuff that’ll keep you going and eat when you do next feel hungry.

You really need to eat when you feel like it.

You can’t go hard every day. 1-2 rides a week you can go hard, more you’re going to need to start taking it easy, particularly at first.

You need enough sleep, particularly when you’re just starting out on it.

Don’t overcomplicate things, you don’t need a HRM or anything if you’re just honest with yourself about how hard you’re working.

Use the free Stravistix plugin for Google Chrome along with a heart rate monitor linked to your Strava rides, to use the “Fitness Trend” and get an idea of when you can train hard and when to ride easy (along with a load of other data that makes paying for Premium Strava rather pointless IMO).

https://cricklesorg.wordpress.com/ will give you an alternative look at your fitness, it supplements Stravistix for me.

Heart rate monitoring can help improve fitness, but I’ve made big improvements training by power since Xmas, initially indoor and outdoor since spring eventually came .

Great thread, most of my “issues” are poor diet…. too many post ride ciders and ice cream…. and lack of knowledge in training.

My HR is all over the shop, Zone 2 while stretching my legs on a flattish run, but as soon as I hit a decent hill, one I can’t power up keeping moment  Zone4/5 is reached.

15-20 mile ride is normally averaged around zone 3/4, mix of poor fitness and Cornwall hills….

So just an update on this ive been using the fit freshness thing and its really helped. the thing is now ive cut down a bit ive noticed 2 things.

knees hurt a lot more.

feel better and less tired but i cant seem to get my fitness up on the graph without increasing fatugue (so i feel rubbish)

i need to increase my fitness so how?