Which is better - 100 miles or 5x20 mile round commutes?

[Andrew_P]

From a health and fitness level as long as there is effort then the commutes would be better, due to lack rest days, if I were you I would mix it up a bit, 10 milers won't build that much distance stamina, well other than for doing 10-20 miles quicker.

 

[Crankarm]

Depends how you ride your commute. Do you plod or grind away, or do you treat it like a spinning session or a 10mile TT? I would try and make it 15 miles each way 5 days a week riding it at 75-80% of your capacity. If you are late then the challenge is to make up time. Then you'll easily do a 70-80 mile ride on saturday/sunday.

 

[Bill Gates]

So 10 x 10 mile training is better for general fitness than 10 x 3 mile + 1 x70 mile training ride eh.

The 70 mile ride is going to take 4 hours or so and during that ride the body will undergo fat oxidisation and overtime will become efficient. The body needs carbohydrate at some stage and having an efficient fat burning system will defer that time before carbs are required. You won't get that by constantly riding for no longer than 10 miles.

My experience is from racing and there is no way I could expect to win if I only rode 10 miles in training.

 

[lukesdad]

How do you work out that the commutes would be better due to lack of rest days ? 10 miles would take under 30 mins 10 of them a week .......same route

 

[jimboalee]

There was a graph somewhere ( which I can't be bothered to display ) which showed Average Wattage output vs ride duration.

IF you can get the 10 miles completed in 35 minutes, you must be outputting 150W ish avg. Tracing the chart down to the duration of a seventy miler of five and a half hours for someone who's not done that distance before, the average power output is approx 75 Watts, or 12.75 mph ish.

Armed with this information, to get the 70 miles finished without trouble, set off steady to get the first 18 miles done at avg 13.5 mph. Then you can stop for a drink or slow down a bit to finish the ride at the 12.75 mph target.


My experience is from Audaxing, and I'm sure a 70 mile ride for general fitness is totally possible after 20 x 10 mile commutes.

 

[Sheffield_Tiger]

Oh you sadistic barstewards telling me to ride further...wish I'd never started this topic now

Figured I'd mix it up a little bit with a 15 miler in and a 26 miler home last night and, being knackered, went to bed early so was wide awake at 6 this morning so rode in on a 25 out to Bamford/Ladybower

I think I am now going to have to aim for that 70 for a weekend day ride, after all my previous best (in this incarnation, disregarding distant past as a teenager) day ride was a 45, and I covered 41 commuting yesterday so it'll never quite feel the same to do "only" 40-something.

Funny to think that less than a year ago I tentatively rode my bike to work one evening as a test just to see if I could manage the whole 3 miles without being a gibbering wreck...which I did but doing the 6 mile round trip left me in need of rest and a soft chair!

 

[Fiona N]

So 10 x 10 mile training is better for general fitness than 10 x 3 mile + 1 x70 mile training ride eh.

The 70 mile ride is going to take 4 hours or so and during that ride the body will undergo fat oxidisation and overtime will become efficient. The body needs carbohydrate at some stage and having an efficient fat burning system will defer that time before carbs are required. You won't get that by constantly riding for no longer than 10 miles.

My experience is from racing and there is no way I could expect to win if I only rode 10 miles in training.

Well, we weren't talking about racing were we - only about completing a longer ride based on 'training' comprising 10 miles commutes twice a day, 5 days a weeks. Racing is a whole different kettle of fish. And of course, racing in flattish/lumpy fast races (good anaerobic threshold training) in the UK is a whole different ball game from racing in the Alps (Switzerland and Italy), which is what I used to do, for what's it's worth.
Completing a 70 miles ride can be done on low level aerobic performance quite comfortably if you're not in a hurry. And 100 miles in a week broken into 10 bits done regularly is more than enough to train the aerobic system since the aerobic training adaptation from one ride will be built on by the next. This is why riding 100 miles once a week isn't good training as the training adaptation is lost before you ride the next week - so you never get any better. You see plenty of middling amateur racers like that who don't get out regularly enough and use the once a week race as training and wonder why they're never any faster.


But the bottom line is the more miles you ride regularly, the quicker you get better - whether you define better as faster or further or some combination

 

[Bill Gates]

Well, we weren't talking about racing were we - only about completing a longer ride based on 'training' comprising 10 miles commutes twice a day, 5 days a weeks. Racing is a whole different kettle of fish. And of course, racing in flattish/lumpy fast races (good anaerobic threshold training) in the UK is a whole different ball game from racing in the Alps (Switzerland and Italy), which is what I used to do, for what's it's worth.
Completing a 70 miles ride can be done on low level aerobic performance quite comfortably if you're not in a hurry. And 100 miles in a week broken into 10 bits done regularly is more than enough to train the aerobic system since the aerobic training adaptation from one ride will be built on by the next. This is why riding 100 miles once a week isn't good training as the training adaptation is lost before you ride the next week - so you never get any better. You see plenty of middling amateur racers like that who don't get out regularly enough and use the once a week race as training and wonder why they're never any faster.


But the bottom line is the more miles you ride regularly, the quicker you get better - whether you define better as faster or further or some combination

Riding for longer than 2-3 hours will cause a physical adapation that will not occur on rides of 5000 x 10 mile stints viz a vie fat oxidisation and IMO will be better for all round general fitness. I actually said that my experience was from racing not that it was training for racing.

Once a week 70 miles plus 10 x 3 mile rides will also IMO see much more improvement than 10 x 10 mile rides in a week overtime as you won't lose it in a week if you are still riding albeit shorter distances. Moot point because unlikely to be a choice of options for a rider anyway.

Agree to disagree here I'm afraid.

 

[Crankarm]

Well, we weren't talking about racing were we - only about completing a longer ride based on 'training' comprising 10 miles commutes twice a day, 5 days a weeks. Racing is a whole different kettle of fish. And of course, racing in flattish/lumpy fast races (good anaerobic threshold training) in the UK is a whole different ball game from racing in the Alps (Switzerland and Italy), which is what I used to do, for what's it's worth.
Completing a 70 miles ride can be done on low level aerobic performance quite comfortably if you're not in a hurry. And 100 miles in a week broken into 10 bits done regularly is more than enough to train the aerobic system since the aerobic training adaptation from one ride will be built on by the next. This is why riding 100 miles once a week isn't good training as the training adaptation is lost before you ride the next week - so you never get any better. You see plenty of middling amateur racers like that who don't get out regularly enough and use the once a week race as training and wonder why they're never any faster.


But the bottom line is the more miles you ride regularly, the quicker you get better - whether you define better as faster or further or some combination

+1.