# Best way to add miles with limited time



## clengman (Jun 14, 2013)

I just started cycling in earnest this past spring. I've been commuting to work 2 or 3 times a week. I have about 2000 ft of gain on my roundtrip. The most direct route is just under 10 miles each way right through downtown Pittsburgh. 

I'm working on increasing my fitness base with a goal of doing at least one century or 200km next year. I'd love to do this ride: Pgh-Weirton-Mon 200K - West Homestead, PA next fall.

My problem is limited time. (I'm sure it's an issue for just about everyone.) I have a two-year old daughter and my wife and I work opposite schedules rather than paying for daycare. So, it's very rare that I can set aside time for road riding apart from my ~2 hr of commuting. A couple options I have for extending my saddle time a little are 1) Add some miles to my commute. It's pretty easy to tack on a ~5 mile loop on bike paths on my way to and from work. It's not terribly burdensome to add another 45-60 min or so to my roundtrip commute. 2) I can wait til my daughter is in bed and put in some miles on my exercise bike in my living room. So far, I've used the exercise bike mostly for 45-60 minute interval workouts to try to increase my output. It's not a particularly comfortable machine for longer workouts, but if it was going to be particularly beneficial, I could probably make myself pedal it for 2 hours or so at an "endurance pace" while I watch a movie once a week after my daughter is in bed. 3) I hope to be able to get a babysitter once a month so I can do an uninterrupted 4hr-plus ride on rural roads. This will really be my only opportunity for real saddle time.

So I realize the ideal would be to do a weekly endurance ride with gradually increasing distance, but since this is simply not an option for me I wonder what is the best use of my time. Should I lean towards option 1: Adding a little to my commute mileage; 30 min extra in the morning and 30 min extra in the evening, or option 2: Don't waste time getting to and from work. Ride my commute hard and fast, then make time for a 2 hr session at a steady endurance pace on my exercise bike at night at least once a week.

Of course I will try to fit in at least one longer distance ride each month, unfortunately, I just can't do more than that on a regular basis.

What do you think?


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## Social Climber (Jan 16, 2013)

clengman said:


> I just started cycling in earnest this past spring. I've been commuting to work 2 or 3 times a week. I have about 2000 ft of gain on my roundtrip. The most direct route is just under 10 miles each way right through downtown Pittsburgh.
> 
> I'm working on increasing my fitness base with a goal of doing at least one century or 200km next year. I'd love to do this ride: Pgh-Weirton-Mon 200K - West Homestead, PA next fall.
> 
> ...


I would say all of the above, meaning a little of everything. Your biggest challenge is going to be finding the time for longer rides as you approach the event date. While the midweek endurance and pace training is beneficial, and necessary, there is no substitute for time in the saddle. It's not just a matter of your legs and cardio capacity. You need to get your body used to being on the bike for the hours that the century + ride is likely to take (6-7 hours at my speed , maybe less at yours). Once a month is not likely to be sufficient. While 2 hour rides will get you through a good portion of the training, you should be planning on at least one long ride each week, building to the point where you do 65 miles or so, or 4-4.5 hours in the saddle, at least twice in the month before the event. I'm not saying it can't be done with less training than that. It probably can (if you are not going to be riding through mountainous terrain), but the question is how hard will it be for you and how are you are going to feel afterwards? 

My kids are older, and I have an understanding wife, but I do have a very demanding job with long hours. I have virtually no time for outdoor riding during the week, so when I was training for my first century I would get up before the crack of dawn each morning and work out on the trainer for my interval work (I highly recommend the Sufferfest videos), and then use the weekends for the longer rides. Maybe you can barter with your wife for some weekend time. Start early enough and you can be done with a 4 hour ride by late morning. Just a thought.


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## Alfonsina (Aug 26, 2012)

Define exercise bike? Unless it is a spin bike, I would consider getting a proper trainer to address your positional issues. Also consider a kiddie trailer, I see some game blokes here going up some cracking hills with the kiddie trailer. You could integrate nap time with a ride and a little kiddie outing all in one. I live in Utah and while I am not of the local flavor, the fit mums here all integrate children into exercise somehow or other. On the weekends dads are part of that too. Frankly adding to the commute it just time away from your family anyway, I would use that time for a long ride rather than extending the commute and gof or the early morning ride option. I am sure your wife wants to exercise too?


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## Peter P. (Dec 30, 2006)

Your marriage is already suffering if you work opposite schedules, which means you hardly see each other as is. If you add more miles to your training you'll eventually be a bachelor and have more time to train, which will make your goal easier to attain.

That's a joke.

Skip the idea completely. You need to focus on the wife and kid. Keep the bike commute.


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## clengman (Jun 14, 2013)

I don't want to get too far into details, but the biggest dilemma is that I have zero time on the weekend unless I hire a babysitter. My wife works 24-30 hours every weekend. I work through the week. Family time is 5PM to bedtime on weekday evenings so a 4 hr ride on a weekday cuts into that pretty heavily. So I can negotiate for 1 or maybe 2 longer rides on my own each month,but even 1 long ride every other week is pushing it.

My exercise bike is a regular old upright stationary bike I bought on craigslist for $75. (Bought it long before I had any notion to ride in any endurance events) It definitely won't do anything for my road posture. I'd like to get a training stand but it's not in the budget.

The kiddie trailer is a good idea. It would give me another option, but once again, just not in the budget right now.

I can get up an hour or two earlier and add that time to my commute in the morning. It sounds like that's probably my best option. That would give me 30-40 miles per day three days a week (20-25 miles in the morning and 10-15 miles in the evening), plus intervals on the stationary bike, plus one (or two if I push it) 4-5 hour rides each month. 

I think I just have to hope that'll be enough. Thanks for the ideas.


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## clengman (Jun 14, 2013)

Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but probably wise advice. 



Peter P. said:


> Your marriage is already suffering if you work opposite schedules, which means you hardly see each other as is. If you add more miles to your training you'll eventually be a bachelor and have more time to train, which will make your goal easier to attain.
> 
> That's a joke.
> 
> Skip the idea completely. You need to focus on the wife and kid. Keep the bike commute.


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## pmf (Feb 23, 2004)

Before I got married and had kids, I rode 100 miles commuting a week, and at least 100 miles every weekend. Weeks with less than 200 miles were considered wimpy. I'd shoot for 1000 miles evewry August. Starting in mid to late August, through early October, I'd ride a century every weekend (there's tons of organized rides around here in the fall). I'd even do a back to back century weekend once in the year. My wife and I would often do bike vacations (Pedal PA, Bike VA, Ride the Rockies, CAM, etc.). On our honeymoon, we did a bike tour in Tuscany with Andy Hampsten's group. 

A little over 10 years ago we had our first kid. The second one followed 2 years later. My bike riding dropped off to next to nothing. Even the commuting suffered when I got an interesting, but stressful job. I'm slowely getting back into it. I dumped the stressful job 4 years ago, and now am commuting 4000 miles a year to work. I still very rarely get out on the weekends. I have managed all these years to do at least one century -- the Sea Gull century. It's the first one I ever did. This year will be 21 times in a row. 

I spend a lot of time doing stuff with the kids. I figure it won't be too much longer when they'll want nothing to do with me and I'll have all the time I want on the weekends. If you can bike commute on a regular basis, that's more cycling than your average weekend warrior puts in. Most weeks, I do 130-155 miles. Keep up the commuting, and do the family thing. Little kids can be exhausting. After a couple years of trying to do it all, I concluded that you just have to slow down and not try to do everything. Frankly, I'd put the century aspirations on hold for the time being.


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## crossracer (Jun 21, 2004)

Have you thought about a trailer that the 2 year old can ride in? If nothing else you could go ride the GAP trail out for a hour, stop have time with your daughter, and then ride back. Everybody wins.
bill


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## clengman (Jun 14, 2013)

I think getting a trailer is a priority for next summer. (A trailer or a maybe a kiddie tandem? Sheldon Brown said it's safe for a toddler?)

Right now I'm extending my commute when possible. I wake up early and add a 5-10 mile loop on the GAP and the Eliza furnace trails on my way to work. That gives me somewhere around 20 miles in the morning, then 10-15 miles on the way home depending on the route I take. 

I'm trying to stay up around 100 mile/week and I make up what I don't do outside on my stationary bike at night. It's going fine so far.

I've got my next long ride coming up this weekend. My sister-in-law is watching the kids while I do a 60-mile Bike MS event with her husband. I'm really looking forward to it.


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## Social Climber (Jan 16, 2013)

clengman said:


> I think getting a trailer is a priority for next summer. (A trailer or a maybe a kiddie tandem? Sheldon Brown said it's safe for a toddler?)
> 
> Right now I'm extending my commute when possible. I wake up early and add a 5-10 mile loop on the GAP and the Eliza furnace trails on my way to work. That gives me somewhere around 20 miles in the morning, then 10-15 miles on the way home depending on the route I take.
> 
> ...


 That's great. Best of luck. My experience has been that if you can do a metric century comfortably a full century is not that much more of a stretch. 

Make sure you get some interval training mixed in if you aren't climbing a lot of hills on your regular rides. I highly recommend Sufferfest videos.


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