Just wondering if I am getting enough miles on the bike in each week/month. I am trying to get out and do at least 15 miles mixed on and off road, various terrain and incline/decline every week day and then about 30 to 40 at the the weekend. So all in about 105 – 115 miles per week.

Is that good? average? pretty poor? how many do you do?

I commute 3-4days a week and try and get out once or twice at the weekend. With the crap winter virtually all rides have been on the road and to be fare I don’t really miss riding off road unless the weather is hot and sunny.

All up I am currently averaging c200miles a week. Last year was a bit over 9000 miles for the year.

http://www.strava.com/clubs/singletrackworld-com-forumites

might give an idea

edit, in light of njee’s comment, I ride because I enjoy riding, fitness is a side effect. If I cared about getting fit I would ride less.

Quality not quantity. You can do thousands of junk miles, or you can get fit on a relatively small amount of targeted training.

Don’t get bogged down in comparisons. Physiology plays a part too, some people need to do more riding to maintain a fitness level.

I have a small mental target of 100 miles a week. But I’m not particularly fast anymore!

I haven’t ridden a huge amount this winter, but I’m fitter than I’ve been in years!
You don’t have to ride to get & stay fit.
I’ve been using a combination of turbo sessions, circuit training, gym sessions & a few rides.

Ok, yes I will start riding more soon, but being employed as well as self employed & looking after my two year old son doesn’t leave much spare time for big miles.
to answer your question, I train for around 6 hours a week at the moment, but that’ll ramp up now to as much as I can cram in-probably about 12 hours per week.

Pretty sure it differs from person to person. My riding buddy commutes into London most days and averages anything from 100-150K a week and I manage about 50K a week if Im lucky, usually only at the weekends but in races and rides we couldnt be closer in terms of fitness/endurance.

My week normally goes like this

Monday – Cardio gym Class
Tuesday- Spin
Wednesday – Weights/strength work
Thursday – Spin
Friday – rest
Saturday – 75km Mountain bike
Sunday rest

As gets lighter some of those spin sessions will become evening rides

Quality not quantity. You can do thousands of junk miles, or you can get fit on a relatively small amount of targeted training.

This ^^. And hours is probably a more meaningful measure than miles as that can vary a lot based on what sort of training you’re doing.

Not much for me at the moment with a toddler and new baby, so really try and make the most out of what little time I have. And that usually means turbo (with a little outdoors mixed in to keep me sane.)

Is that good? average?

This depends on what your goals are I guess.

Fitness is a by-product of riding for me. I tend to ride road mid-week of around three 35-50s, plus three commutes of 15 per day, and then mtb on the weekend. I guess they’re around 20-30 per ride. Around 200 per week I suppose. Having no kids helps!

How many days are there in your week? 😕

3 days commuting
3 days road riding
2 MTB rides

Errr…?

Quality as well as quantity.

@njee, can’t say in that case, but, I have done 10commutes, ie 5 days, then 2 proper road rides and 2 mtb rides in a week before, felt like crap at the end though!

I still ride my MTB on days where I commute 🙂

@njee – I work from home a lot so it tends to vary across the month. Sometimes more commuting sometimes less.

Averaging about 400 miles a month at the moment. Made up of a 50 miler each week and the remainder is commuting.

commuting is my training.
8-10 miles in, 12-15 miles home each day.
I just ride as hard as I can on the straight bits and up the hills and vary the route – and no excuses for taking the short way home.

I’m about to join a club too which should focus my riding a bit more.

Strava profile gives me an average of 93 miles a week over last four weeks, but that’s atypical, I’ll surprise myself if I keep that up. Lots of junk commute miles, but that’s as much to save money on fuel and get a bit of fresh air as anything – I’m long since over my dreams of being competitive… 🙂

How do people fit commuting miles into their training plans? Suspect if I commuted it’s just be a bunch of junk miles and mean less time and energy for training (and less decent recovery.)

Minimum of 2 rides a week, each ride is usually a minimum of 25 miles, sometimes up to 35 if we get enough time. It’s not really comparable though as we have several tough routes which have lots of hills and other routes which are a bit flatter.
As long as you’re getting out there on 2 wheels, why worry?
It’s all good.

Try and ride 10 miles each way to/from work (i live 3 miles from work) this is mainly all cycle track out of Bristol so I can nail it somewhat if I want.

Last year i was averaging 400 miles a month. THis year has been a bit crap but i’m back on it now

Did 16 miles into work this morning

How do people fit commuting miles into their training plans? Suspect if I commuted it’s just be a bunch of junk miles and mean less time and energy for training (and less decent recovery.)

Couple of elite riders in Bristol told me to extend my commute (i was complaning i had no time to train/get miles in). One of them does 60 miles a day commuting and then intervals a lunch (he is a machine on the bike!)

Commute 80-100 miles a week, some of which could be classed as training.
Med/Fast club ride of 20-30 miles, which is definitely training.
1hr Turbo session (when I can be bothered/not late home).
Social club ride of 100km, or a race at weekends.

I’m fit enough for the mtb riding I do, but need to train more to be competitive in road racing at the next level.

I struggle with six hours of “training”, but need to ride to commute anyway. Being on a bike is not a hardship, however.

How do people fit commuting miles into their training plans? Suspect if I commuted it’s just be a bunch of junk miles and mean less time and energy for training (and less decent recovery.)

I don’t, it’s just a bunch of junk miles 🙂

Really notice it too, a couple of commutes into London really kills my legs, rural commutes not so bad, as there aren’t as much forking traffic lights.

I think you can overthink training – unless your a honed athlete, all miles are good miles aren’t they?
For me they all contribute to keeping the weight off which is part of training.

Not sure, as above, I really feel it if I do a week of commuting and then expect to have a good race at the weekend.

100 – 200 miles a week for me, about half to two thirds of that is commuting though.

I live about 3 miles from the office so I tend to just roll in in the morning and then take a 10 – 30 mile route home depending on mood.

Also try to get an MTB ride in on a week night as well but this often only happens regularly in summer.

MTB ride on Saturday and then a Sunday club run is the norm but gets mixed about based on schedules and when races are on.

My aim is always fun with fitness as a side effect, I don’t do any structured ‘training’ as it were…

Interesting thread. I don’t commute on my bike and I’m not training to race so I have an allotted number of hours I can get off family stuff to ride each week. Riding to stay fit and because riding bikes is great.

Pre-strava I used to go and ride but I started to get fixated this time last year on miles in the bank. Basically stopped mtbing and just rode the CX on road to get the stats up.

All that changed when I my road bike was trashed and I was waiting for new wheels for 2 weeks recently. I went out on the mtb and really enjoyed it! So I’d say quantity and quality are both important. And I suppose I think miles isn’t a benchmark against other people, only for you week to week, month to month. My miles a week may be nothing to some people and loads to someone else, but it’s just right for me! (My goal this year is a weekly target of 60 to include one MTB outing!)

I started to get fixated this time last year on miles in the bank.

On getting into road riding I got into miles/timing and enjoyed it less, so pretty quickly gave it up. I don’t race or anything like that, but use road cycling as a means of switching-off and getting away from computer/email. Also, as an academic, I tend to have some of my best ideas while out and about.

100 mile/week commute, offroad and canal path – in summer often extended on way home
1 50 mile “hard” road ride midweek
As much riding as I can fit in at weekends, road in bad weather mtb when finer
Gym twice a week
the injury gods have been kind to me so far (Doh! Why did I say that) so I feel pretty much “bike fit” all year round, but by no means “race fit”

I tend to think in terms of hours instead of miles when it comes to training. Or rather did, the question always was during pre-seaspn was how many hours could I dedicate towards training. After that my coach took charge of everything & I just did what I was told (FYI I was riding in a peak load week nearly 30hrs)

Well according to the dreaded strava the last 28 days I’ve been averaging 196miles/12:30hrs per week, a mixture of mtbing, commuting and road work. Mainly road because I’m working up for the Fred Whitton in May. (Although I’m going to have to increase the mtbing, I’ve got the first round of the PMBA gravity enduro at Gisburn at the end of April ) Tend to use my commuting as recovery rides atm, as in generally flat work for anywhere between 3-10 miles with a high cadence

Miles are a red herring. Worry about time and your chosen method of measuring intensity (be that power/rpe/HR).

I typically do 9-12 hours at about 80% of FTP per week.

I tend to think in terms of hours instead of miles when it comes to training. Or rather did, the question always was during pre-seaspn was how many hours could I dedicate towards training. After that my coach took charge of everything & I just did what I was told (FYI I was riding in a peak load week nearly 30hrs)

out of interest, who is your coach, I don’t know of any who would have an amateur do 30 hours?

100 miles per week at this time of year is pretty good in my book.

Between 12 and 18 hours a week (so 15 then).

Currently 350-420 miles a week. All for my yearly Flanders ride. Its my main thing for the year
and I want to enjoy it and not suffer. After that it’ll be racing twice a week with a couple of cafe stop rides in between.

out of interest, who is your coach, I don’t know of any who would have an amateur do 30 hours?

Andy Patterson used to prescribe that sort of mileage for most of his cliets. Made them good 24 hour soloists, less so XC racers I’d say…

2-3 hundred miles a week. Quality before quantity. Some rides hard. Some slow for technique.

It’s simpler to use time in the saddle over distance.

When training properly:

– 2 long zone 3 rides a week. At least a couple of hours each ride, as much as 5-6 hours each ride sometimes.
– 1 Zone 4 ride. Minimum one hour, never more than 2.
– 1 or 2 interval sessions. MTB rides are perfect for this.
– Commutes I treat as Zone 1-2 mini recovery sessions. I know they’re supposed to be longer if possible, but it never really works out that way with life and all.

I try and back off in the week, or two before a race, or an important event. These can be races, to a ride with a mate where I don’t want to get shown up.

13 hours a week road and 2 hours on the track.
Purpose = to start racing on the road and track again and loose weight – lost nearly 3 stone since last July.

varies between nothing and a few.

If you want a pissing contest quote miles/km
If you want some answers give people an idea of what your trying to achieve.

On the Quality vs Quantity scale my last race just happened to match the sparse training I was managing with most of the stages being 1hr -1hr30 which was very similar to the training rides I fitted in, exceeded most peoples expectations in that one. Came unstuck on the longest 2 stages though.

out of interest, who is your coach, I don’t know of any who would have an amateur do 30 hours?

Torq.

edit: past tense, was my coach. I don’t race anymore.