Does commuting affect your training?

[Geonz]

It's pretty well-documented that "recovery" rides and "base mileage" are important. The summer I was free-lance writing, I did lots of miles with our slow groups and wondered if that was helping my speed. It did, absolutely. Those 50 mile rides at 13-15 mph (tho' the effort was more like 15-17 'cause I was on a hefty hybrid) really paid off. I'm not tooting my horn - these are objective observations that happen to be about myself... I got on a light bike and did a double metric ... and at mile 75 my riding buddy just got in back and drafted for about 15 miles, 'cause I was just plain stronger (we averaged 16.9 for that). I won the indoor time trial that winter, too. It sort of "blew my cover" - I hadn't been out on *any* of the "fast rider" hammerfests (because I had no idea I was doing this whole ugly-duckling-to-swan thing and was absolutely positive I couldn't keep up, and also had no idea how to do all that stuff they do and didn't know the culture or the code), though I had done a *lot* of interval training on my own because I wanted to get faster. I'm not *that* fast but it's fun :-)

[onimity]

I didn't mean to imply that bike commuting is *just* a warm up, BTW, though if your commute is short and flat, it may be. I mostly meant to say that I am usually excited to keep riding when I get home and I can really go for it out the door. But it's really easy to get a *great* workout on the commute, too. Sometimes I'll try to get home at 2MPH over my usual average. Or I'll take a hilly, longer route using only my largest rings. A few weeks back I had to pick up a bunch of (big!) books from the printer (8 miles Northeast of my house) for work (10 miles Southeast of my house). So I plotted out a route on the map and rode about 20 miles in, books in my panniers and laptop in my messenger bag. I didn't know it had a 12% incline in one part, though that hurt! But compared to that, there isn't much that looks scary on a road bike. It's kind of like running with weights, really.

My coworkers actually ridicule me a bit on the rare occasions that I ride my road bike to work [instead of my usual racked-out MTB]. They call my road bike 'the bike that rides itself.'

Anne

[JmcG]

I use my commute to work as a training ride. It's 19 miles each way, and sometimes I feel like adding on extra mileage on my way home. Yesterday I was able to get in 50 miles between my commute to work and home b/c I had to extend the ride home to stop at the bike shop (past my house) then come home. I also focus on different things each day I commute. Today's commute was a small chain ring, lots of spinning workout. Yesterday was a grinding gears, faster workout. What I also sometimes do to try to get in more miles is to ride at lunchtime also. I can get in a good 15 miles at lunch with people here at work who also ride. I'm not sure if you have that option, but if you do, that's definitely an easy way to get in more mileage. And that lunchtime ride can be a different type of workout than the commuting mileage.

I'm not sure if you said your mileage to and from work, but my DH also commutes to work and his ride is shorter than mine (8 miles each way). He rides a fixie and tries to push hard most days - and that's an excellent workout! Since he started riding the fixie, he's so much stronger of a rider.

[LadyDian]

For me that is my work out. I don't do it everyday, because I have to get up at 0330 to leave by 0400 to get to work at 0600, shower and change. I don't get nearly enough mileage at home between scouts, soccer etc. (for the kids), so I get it to and from work. I generally ride to work once or twice, ride a loong day on my days off, and do short rides (14 miles) in the mountains above my house. If I didn't have a job, kids, husband etc. I could probably bike more, but we all have to squeeze in what we can , when we can. (Besides I love the kids and hubby to much to give them up).

Dian