Everyday commuting? How?

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Stretch after your ride. Takes away some of the soreness later. I was a 3-4 days a week commuter 15-20 miles round trip. Then I just couldn’t stand Metro anymore. Going to 5 days a week gave me some muscle fatigue, but stretching helped my muscles get used to the extra work.

[vvill]

I’m fortunate that I can work from home some days – so I take at least one rest day a week (your body can’t adapt if it doesn’t have time to rest/rebuild). Before I had that option it took me a long time to build up to riding 8-11 miles each way, five days a week. I don’t think I would want to do that again, actually.

But regardless, I’ll take mixed mode transportation if I’m just feeling too tired. It’s also quite fun having different bikes – it’s easier for me to resist the urge to go fast if you don’t ride your road bike/etc all the time. Some days I enjoy riding my beater MTB with flat pedals for a few miles instead of getting in the drops.

My main motivator is also the coffee clubs. I never really bought coffee/pastries on a regular basis until Friday Coffee Club, then it became a weekly treat. Now it’s a twice/week treat. And if I’m late, I’ll miss it, so it’s good motivation to wake up on time too.

On eating, hydration, etc. I almost always have a water bottle. Not really anything else though. Often I’m lazy/running late and don’t eat breakfast if I’m riding to work. For >2 hr rides or anything like HP intervals I would definitely try to eat though.

[Tania]

So I do competitive weightlifting and bike commute really as a means to avoid metro AND help me stay within my weight class. Plus, coffee clubs like everyone else said. Because, PIE.

Anyway, I train 5 days a week, two hours a day. And I’m not farting around at Planet Fitness – it’s a lot of volume and total load. The two biggest things that let me maintain this type of schedule are sleep and food. It’s a struggle foodwise – like I said I have to stay pretty close to my weight class since I’ve qualified for national/international comps at this class. On days you’re feeling extra slow/heavy/spent, eat more. Specifically carbs (carbs are your friend! I hate this low carb nonsense).

This past week I started a new and intense training program and it’s kicking my ass. I haven’t ridden at all because I know I won’t be able to maintain both. Maybe next week or week after when I acclimate to the program a little more. Maybe not.

I drink a lot of water (also helps me maintain weight a little better). I don’t really worry about electrolytes. I’ve experimented with it too – tried Nuun (tastes nice, but no difference in training output), Osmo (WAY too much salt, I drink 4L a day on average and even then I was so thirsty after this!), and coconut water. I kinda like the coconut water for the 2 hour training sessions. I use a powdered form and it’s got enough sugar to fuel me plus a ton of potassium. I think it’s hard to get enough daily potassium. For biking it’s just straight water although for Sunday’s Kill Bill Social (all day in the sun), I may use Nuun. Can’t hurt.

And then sleep. You mentioned you’ve got a young child so that’s going to be hard for you. I need 9 hours to recover from lifting, if I don’t get it I’m really slow the next training day. I sacrifice pretty much my entire social life for sleep. I think I mentioned this previously, but I take magnesium before I go to bed. Most people are mag deficient and I swear by this. If I’m feeling extra beat up (pretty much the norm this week), I take a little extra. Not too much, or it can have a…uh…cleansing effect.

There are many, many times where I’m just feeling too beat up to ride or to lift. I’ve learned to obey my body: when I’m feeling like that, I rest. And I do mean rest – no “active recovery” or anything like that. 100% chill out couch time.

When I do commute, I may push it a little riding in (downhill) but when I actually do ride home (rare, because of training schedule), I absolutely do NOT hammer it. I want to be able to ride/lift the next day. There’s no point going hard if it means you can’t complete your next endeavor (ride the next day, lift the next day, get out of bed, whatever).

Sleep and food. These are you two most important recovery tools.

Now, having said all that – you may want to get some blood work done just to be sure nothing else is going on. You said you were ok during FS but are having trouble with the same mileage now. It’s likely the heat and new baby/lack of sleep but it can’t hurt to get it checked out.

[ian74]

@TwoWheelsDC 119949 wrote:

I’ll offer an (semi well-informed) alternate view…unless you’re doing some pretty serious endurance training, or simply aren’t eating well enough, you should be getting all the electrolytes you need through your normal diet. And normal exercise will cause your electrolytes to concentrate, since you sweat out more water than salt. So on a commute or fun weekend ride, your main priority is fluid replenishment, not electrolytes. You may need to replenish electrolytes after a few hours of hard riding in the heat, but again, you’ll generally get these through your food if you stop and snack. For most people, anything other than water is just empty calories.

I was going under the same assumption, that my normal eating would have me covered for electrolytes. I’ll try the gatorade, the reason it might be an issue is because I sweat A LOT. I mean, I leave white salt crust on my backpack straps and jerseys. I drink a lot of water during the day and sometimes I find myself a bit headachey late in the day before I leave work.

Yes, the amount of sleep I’ve gotten has greatly decreased too. The child really has not been sleeping for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time, coupled with added stress of some health conditions he has, my wife post-partum I can’t say I’ve had much luck “relaxing” in the past 3 months.

What else, my shape isn’t the greatest. Got some extra weight, take meds for BP and cholesterol, maybe I just can’t push myself like I used too.

Also, will look into faster tires hozn, I do stand by my gatorskins though. Me and changing flats don’t get along.

[Dickie]

@KLizotte 119938 wrote:

A note to Ian, if you just had a baby I’m presuming you aren’t sleeping through the night? Plus, a new kid is a lot of stress no matter how much joy they bring.

THIS! I am preparing for a massive change in my commuting life come Dec 1st. Sleep is everything, stress is a close second when it comes to how your body recovers and responds. I typically commute 7 days a week, usually about 25 miles total per day and it takes it’s toll. Some weeks are great, but the ones that hurt the most are when I’m stressed and tired before I even get on the bike. You’re probably worn out and using all your reserves for other purposes, plus freezing saddles is just a plain idiotic way to start your cycling year. Don’t compare yourself to others.. EVER… it’s a terrible idea. I have punished myself too many times for being slow during my commute, but forget that I’m on my feet building all day long while others are sitting at a desk just chomping at the bit to get some physical activity in at the ned of the day. We’re all different… don’t add more stress by worrying about it.

[Mikey]

@Dickie 119961 wrote:

Don’t compare yourself to others.. EVER…

Ride your own ride. Period.

[hozn]

Yeah, the new babies made it really difficult to ride hard. Don’t beat yourself up; the sleep will get easier and the rides will too. As will finding the time to ride.

[Supermau]

I only do it two days a week (29 mile round trip), but then I only work two days a week. I get shorter rides in between work days. Having only been back on a bike for a little over a year myself, I think it would be pretty hard doing it every day. It’s not the mileage so much as its all the hours in between rides. A work day is a long break between rides and going home is always harder for me, particularly since I’ve got a bunch of steep hills in the last two miles. It wipes me out every time. I’m much better at it now but it’s not really any easier. Doing 29 miles without the workday to split it up is amazingly easier.

I think you just build up to what you can reasonably do without killing yourself. It should be fun above all! Days off can make days on even more special.

[KLizotte]

@rcannon100 119945 wrote:

I think there in might be the rub. Gatorade might be more transportable. OJ will ruin the inside of a plastic bottle, I believe (assuming that most of us clean their bottles about as much as I do). That said, OJ is as available at quickie marts as gatorade is.

I have recently found that soaking my bottles and caps in water with an Efferedent tablet to be a great way to sanitize and clean them. Yes, denture cleaning tablets. They do a good job at getting sports drinks residue out as well. I just let the bottles soak overnight and rinse out. Easy peasy. 😮

[GovernorSilver]

Speaking of Strava, it cracks me up when it describes one segment (“Pendleton St Climb”) of my morning route up Union St. (Old Town Alexandria) as a Category 4 Climb.

I actually use Cyclemeter GPS to record my rides – mainly to see how many calories I burned. I opened a Strava account just to export the Cyclemeter data to it, so I can look at stats like elevation gain and where I hit my top speeds. I may consider other websites for uploading Cyclemeter data. Strava has its own bugs, just like MapMyRide – eg. marking that King St. to Queen St. segment – which is pretty flat – as a Cat 4 Climb and not showing the calories burned, which is more irritating.

[PotomacCyclist]

If you are sore for days, that’s a sign that you have done too much. There’s nothing wrong with taking a rest day from cycling. Most of the time, you should feel comfortable with the bike workload you are taking on. It shouldn’t feel like a constant death march. If it does, you are on the fast track to burn-out or injury.

There is also mental fatigue. In the past, I’ve found that when I try to ride every day (even when that includes shorter rides), I get burned out. I used to try to ride every day for the National Bike Challenge. I wouldn’t put in big miles every day but I still got mentally fatigued by it.

Now I don’t worry about having any kind of consecutive-days streaks at all. If I don’t want to ride, then I don’t ride. Beyond that, I make an effort to include rest days every so often. I don’t follow a strict schedule, but if I feel off, then I take a rest day from cycling. (Same with other activities like running or swimming.)

I also schedule longer breaks during the year. Usually an early winter break where I don’t do much at all for a couple weeks (or longer, if I’m dealing with an injury or recovering from a longer race). If I’m training for something, I try to take an easier week every 3rd or 4th week. I also like to take a midsummer break with a really easy week.

I don’t want cycling to turn into a job or a mental grind. It’s supposed to be enjoyable, not consistent punishment.

[Bruno Moore]

I just recently started commuting into DC from College Park (yup, have the longest commute at the bike shop at 25 miles round trip) and what got me was my feet. Pinched nerves, pulled ligaments, and what I really hope wasn’t/isn’t a stress fracture.* I mean, standing for nine or ten hours a day on a tile floor probably didn’t help matters either, but that’s just Life.

What’s helped the most is new shoes (dangit, meant to get new fluorescent orange laces today!) and clips—mashing on my trusty MKS Sylvan touring pedals in Keen boots was murdering my forefoot. They’re not quite my Keens when it comes to all-day work shoes, but they do the job…and my feet aren’t hurting quite as much as they used to.

I should probably consider this whole “rest day” thing y’alls keep talking about, but it’s NBC season and there’s no rest for an All-Star.

[trailrunner]

@KLizotte 119968 wrote:

I have recently found that soaking my bottles and caps in water with an Efferedent tablet to be a great way to sanitize and clean them. Yes, denture cleaning tablets. They do a good job at getting sports drinks residue out as well. I just let the bottles soak overnight and rinse out. Easy peasy. 😮

That’s how we used to clean our Camelbacks, back in the day before they sold their own cleaning tablets and cleaning kits.

[Vicegrip]

From what I have read being on BP and other long term meds is something to carefully consider with your Dr but unless otherwise directed not reason not to ride. Some folks sweat out more or higher concentrations of electrolytes which might explain the salty crusts you see on your clothing. (Fitness and other variables can change that as well) I found that hydration is not a ride day thing but an everyday thing. I don’t walk around with a sippy cup like bottle of brand name water but since I have taken up year round riding I have learned to drink more water overall. I also load up a bit prior to a known hot or long ride. I find I can stay ahead of water without feeling waterlogged or looking for a tree every 20 min.
Sucrose and sodium both help you uptake water. You can sweat out water faster than you can absorb it from your gut. If you get “behind” on water you can become dehydrated with a belly full of water. Too much salt and sugar in the drink increases the osmotic deferential pressure and slows uptake

My experience is now to start out with a good fluid balance (clear pee) and drink a low concentration sugar and salt mix when riding to better maintain my fluid balance.

[dasgeh]

You’ve gotten a lot of good advice, but one question: why are you doing this?

Depending on your answer, one solution may be an ebike. Some here call those of us who use ebikes “cheaters”, but we’re still out there in the fresh air, not in a car/on the Metro, with the vast majority of the benefits that everyone without a motor has. It’s just a bit easier.

[Author]

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