I’m doing my club rides, but I just don’t seem to be getting any better, why not?! This was a recent question.
Club riding is great for our riding: we get camaraderie, motivation and kudos. Best of all they are a ton of fun! Unfortunately that doesn’t mean they are so great for becoming a better rider.
A typical line might be: but I did four group rides a week all summer and I didn’t get faster. Why didn’t it work?
Our bodies respond to changes in training stimulus, adapting to training overload when we rest. If you are doing essentially the same four rides week-over-week all summer your training stimulus is stagnant and won’t lead to improvement;
Other than going hard on the hills do the club rides try and apply any sort of training philosophy to how the group rides? Lots of club rides look like mini races where it is hard, then easy, then hard again. Is this HiiT training, threshold, what about endurance? Typically club rides don’t hit any sort of training philosophy target;
“But when I do the rides each week they’re hard!” If you are doing three or four club rides a week “hard” then they aren’t really hard. They feel hard, but the effort of those rides is tending towards the murky middle. They are in the realm of “it feels like I did some work so I should be getting better”. A workout that is truly hard requires 24-48 hours of recovery. We can’t be doing that several times a week on our club rides.
Club riding has a place in your training mix. However, if being good for a goal event is your plan use the club riding judiciously. [pull] You can use the rides for some motivation - go and out do a properly hard session, almost a mini-race. You can use them for some speed work. Or you can just use them for fun and motivation.
Enjoy your riding with others, just know that it takes more than club riding to get better and be your best.
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