Do you ride twice a day?

hilljunkie said:

I was just just curious whether many riders break up there training into too rides a day or more. If so then the big question is why do you do it and does it help? currently i'm trying to prepare for a 220k one day riding event and I was wondering if it would help to get some two a day's in. I know that ultra runners claim that breaking up long runs lessons the stress and fatigue onthe bones and joints but still yields fitness gains for endurance events. So does the same principle apply to cycling?

I'd say no; short rides aren't going to build the endurance you'll need to be on the bike for 8-10 hours. Best would to build up endurance with one long ride a week. Work up to 160-200K on this weekly training ride in the weeks before the event. In between these, you could do one short day of hill climbing or LT intervals, and another couple days of easy/moderate 1-2 hr aerobic rides.

Concerning weekly workload, believe a lot depends on where you are with your training base (weekly mileage) now, and how many weeks/months you have to prepare before the big event.

I did a 205 mile bike ride in one day averaging 20.2 m/ph One ride per day is what you should do to toughen up ALL aspects of endurance riding. Here is a suggested milage training program for a shorter ride. I used a similar schedule for the longer ride but have to admit I did a lot more than suggested as I wanted to be really well prepared. Good luck. (sorry, the copy paste seemed to have messed up so here is a link aswell. Hope it helps http://www.cascade.org/EandR/stp/stp_mileage.cfm

WEEK OF: Weekly Goal WED SAT SUN
Feb. 21- 27 53 10 10 *33
March 7 - 13 80 20 30 30
March 14 - 20 100 20 40 40
March 21 - 27 80 20 30 30
March 28 - Apr. 3 100 20 40 40
April 4 - 10 120 20 50 50
April 11 - 17 130 30 50 50
April 18 - 24 120 20 50 50
April 25 - May 1 130 30 50 50
May 2 - 8 140 20 60 60
May 9 - 15 170 30 70 70
May 16 - 22 150 30 60 60
May 23 - 29 170 30 70 70
May 30-June 5 180 20 80 80
June 6 - 12 170 20 70 80
June 13 - 19 180 40 **70 70
June 20 - 26 150 30 60 60
June 27 - July 3 100 20 40 40
July 4 - 10 226 20 103 103

hilljunkie said:

I was just just curious whether many riders break up there training into too rides a day or more. If so then the big question is why do you do it and does it help? currently i'm trying to prepare for a 220k one day riding event and I was wondering if it would help to get some two a day's in. I know that ultra runners claim that breaking up long runs lessons the stress and fatigue onthe bones and joints but still yields fitness gains for endurance events. So does the same principle apply to cycling?

I do 2 sessions a day, but my 2nd session is to recover from the morning intervals. Doing 2 sessions wont help your endurance at all. If you doing a 60min session you only training for 40min and you doing a 10min w/up and a 10min cool down.

The only thing to do is two long rides and all the other fancy intervals during the week.

Thanks for the input everyone. I guess the approach i'm leaning towards will be to do back to back long rides on the weekends and shorter rides during the week with one rest day per week. I feel like I have a solid endurance base so I'm not worried about having endurance for the distance as much as I am worried about doing covering it in a respectable time. I have about five months to prepare and was thinking two a days might help but from the feedback here maybe they are not such a good idea. For the ride I plan on doing the first 60k is rolling hills followed by a brutal 60k or so stretch of relentless climbing and then the last 100k is more or less down hill. I was thinking with five months to prepare and a solid fitness base I could aim for 8-9 hours. Is this realistic?

hilljunkie said:

Thanks for the input everyone. I guess the approach i'm leaning towards will be to do back to back long rides on the weekends and shorter rides during the week with one rest day per week. I feel like I have a solid endurance base so I'm not worried about having endurance for the distance as much as I am worried about doing covering it in a respectable time. I have about five months to prepare and was thinking two a days might help but from the feedback here maybe they are not such a good idea. For the ride I plan on doing the first 60k is rolling hills followed by a brutal 60k or so stretch of relentless climbing and then the last 100k is more or less down hill. I was thinking with five months to prepare and a solid fitness base I could aim for 8-9 hours. Is this realistic?

Yes I think so, depends how your climbing is?

Sounds like there are some serious climbs. Do you have a race profile?

hilljunkie said:

I was just just curious whether many riders break up there training into too rides a day or more. If so then the big question is why do you do it and does it help? currently i'm trying to prepare for a 220k one day riding event and I was wondering if it would help to get some two a day's in. I know that ultra runners claim that breaking up long runs lessons the stress and fatigue onthe bones and joints but still yields fitness gains for endurance events. So does the same principle apply to cycling?

here go some evidences. I read Carl Cantrell, he advocates such principle of riding twice a day. I just put down a quote of him:

"Endurance work is really nothing more than aerobic work. Aerobic work is simply nothing more than riding for 20 minutes or more. The longer you continue your exercise, the more aerobic work or development you are doing. As I said before, there can be some cumulative aerobic conditioning from two rides but (1) the longer the time between the two workouts, the less the cumulative conditioning and (2) if the time between the two rides exceeds 12 hours, there is no cumulative effect. This is why weekly miles mean very little to me and daily miles are much more important."

It's pretty straight comparing to modern training techniques but it works 🙂 Also I know some old school coaches here who force their riders to do their next trainining session no more than in 11 hours. No matter where they are they should perform at least 20 min of work on bike or on rollers, anyhow. It sounds completely similar to Carl Cantrell!

You can read Carl Cantrell here: http://www.coachcarl.com/

Dot interesting perspective. thanks for posting the link. How credible of a source is Cantrell?

hilljunkie said:

Dot interesting perspective. thanks for posting the link. How credible of a source is Cantrell?

I don't know how good his approach to training is but I don't find them confusing. I used to apply them to myself (I did 6 week preparation for MTB marathon).
I think he makes more complicated programs for his paid trainees but basic principles might be the same.
3-4 years ago his articles were free for downloading, now he charges some money to read them. I've got a mirror of his old site and still read it for free 🙂 Good reading to stay motivated.

dot said:

I don't know how good his approach to training is but I don't find them confusing. I used to apply them to myself (I did 6 week preparation for MTB marathon).
I think he makes more complicated programs for his paid trainees but basic principles might be the same.
3-4 years ago his articles were free for downloading, now he charges some money to read them. I've got a mirror of his old site and still read it for free 🙂 Good reading to stay motivated.

Dot in the six week MTB marathon training you did how were the two a day workouts incorporated into the program? I'm interested to know how many two a days and how many rest days he had you doing.

hilljunkie said:

Dot in the six week MTB marathon training you did how were the two a day workouts incorporated into the program? I'm interested to know how many two a days and how many rest days he had you doing.

No, I meant my program was similar to Cantrell's. I did sprints, power work, race simulations and endurance work.

I did two sessions per day only when I was commuting. In the early morning I rode fast with occassional sprints to the office and in the evening I spinned easy back home. But I cannot definitely tell if it helped me in comparison with one session per day training.