80% max heart rate - how long can one hold this?

J-MAT

2LAP:

The 100 mile rides should have sprints, VO2 max and lots of LT efforts over the course of the ride, which will help improve overall performance greatly. That's why I say to find a training partner and beat each other up, or beat other riders up. Generally speaking, you can ride long and slow, or short and fast to improve fitness. When you do lots of fast efforts over a long ride, you get even more benefit.

When you get tired ride slowly and recover. It becomes an unstructured interval day where whatever challenge (other riders) you meet along the way must be dealt with and successfully eliminated no matter how many miles you have ridden or how tired you are. Mentally, riding hard like this is very easy, you don't have to get your head into the efforts like you would have to do by yourself.

Sometimes I would go out at a steady pace for the duration, but most of the time had hard efforts mixed with long recovery periods, cruising easy when tired. My favorite way to end a big ride is 20-30-40 minutes of TT effort before cooling down, as long as I'm not too smoked.

By far the biggest benefit of hammering a long ride is the long-term stamina. Stamina you will never get from doing intervals or 60-90 minute rides.

A great example is time trialers. Lots can do 28-30 mph for 10 miles, but many of these same riders would not be able to finish a 100+ mile road race due to the lack of endurance.

The point about riding 100 miles easy making you tired is that it will and you won't get any real benefit from it once you can already do 100 miles.

Be glad you have a girlfriend that can ride 60 miles. My old girlfriend hated everything about cycling, thought it was the dumbest sport on earth, and complained about riding 10 miles!!!

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