Winter and spring, before it gets ungodly hot out, is a great time to get in the Long Steady Distance Rides - Base Miles. This high-volume, low-intensity endurance training increases your aerobic capacity and trains your body to burn fat. The benefits include:
Improving the fuel supply, by increasing your ability to burn fat during long events and increasing the potential to store carbohydrates within the muscle and liver.
Elevating oxygen delivery to the working muscles, both by improving your respiratory system, bringing more oxygen to the circulatory system, and by increasing the efficiency of the heart, so you can pump more blood per minute.
Raising blood flow to the skin , as a result of improved cardiovascular function, thus helping cooling.
Improving the endurance of cycling muscles by increasing the number of mitochondria, the subcellular structures in your muscles that produce aerobic energy.
Improving neuromuscular efficiency in your pedaling technique. Increased power and endurance is partly the result of increased muscle strength, and partly the result of improved coordination in muscle firing patterns.
Toning core and upper body muscles, to improve comfort on the bike.
Endurance Pace uses the techniques of Constant Effort riding. The object is to maintain 65-75% of your max heartrate for a long period of time. This means when you encounter hills, you do not increase effort, but shift to lower gears and slow down in order to maintain the same effort/heartrate while climbing as you had on the flats. Likewise, when descending, it is important to shift to higher gears and increase speed to maintain the effort. On a typical rolling course, a 17-19mph endurance pace may translate to speeds of 10-12mph climbing and 28-30mph descending. For cyclists who are accustomed to charging up hills, this takes quite a bit of discipline and a different mindset.
