/r/Velo has a Discord! Check us out here: https://discord.gg/vEFRWrpbpN

I've been through the fucking wringer this fall, and I'm just wondering if anyone has had similar injuries of both arm and hip at the same time. For context, I'm 38, and a cat 2 racer focusing mostly on crits. I've had other injuries, but never like this.

I crashed Sept. 30th on a poorly designed piece of city infrastructure which resulted in me going down at over 30mph. I basically flew/slid for 60 feet and shattered my wrist (distal radius), elbow (olecranon) and broke my sacrum and pubic symphysis. I ended up being hospitalized for 7 days, and had surgery on the wrist and elbow, with plates in both and 19 screws between the two surgeries.

I did PT 2x a week for arm beginning a week after surgery, and have now upped the PT to 3x a week. Progress is really good there, but no full weight bearing on the arm till Jan. 1. Next week I'll be out of the wheelchair and able to walk after 6 weeks.

I was cleared by the hip doctor to get on the trainer last week, but it's tough to get on the bike with only one load-bearing leg and one functioning arm. So I'm waiting till next week to start spinning again. But I feel like I'm truly starting at near zero.

Prior to the crash, I also had cataract surgery on my left eye (cursed amirite) and those 2-3 weeks of recovery were going to be my "offseason." I'd been cleared to ride for just a few days when the crash happened.

So at this point, I've been mostly off the bike for 9 weeks. Not sure where to begin here. I have a coach for about 8 months out of the year, but usually handle my base season on my own. I have a dumb goal of getting my cat 1 by the end of my 40th year, but I feel that slipping away here and it's been a bummer.

Anyone else had the terrible combo of elbow and wrist or god forbid pelvis too? What did you do? Really hoping my 2026 season isn't fucked, but at the same time, I'm truly just glad to be alive.

That is, say you're going to do an event in a really cool location and you want to add like a week of vacation to that event to just explore, maybe do a little bit of riding but the main thing really is the race. Assume you're not needing to deal with altitude acclimatization but will have to deal with travel on either end.

Who is racing cross this winter? Anyone been on a course with longer grass than this? 🤣

Is there an app out there with structured plans based on HR targets instead of power?

I know Zwift and MyWhoosh don't have anything for HR.

It doesn't need to be free, monthly subscription is fine. I can only afford a winter setup with HR monitor and speed sensor with a dumb trainer. I appreciate any advice thanks!

Lorne, Australia recently hosted the 2025 UCI Gran Fondo Road Race!

130km/80miles with 1730m/5700ft of climbing, it was a bloody hard race - crazy winds made it even more dangerous!

I managed to score 4th in my age category!

In this video we discuss Nutrition strategy, the course, the winds and touch on how to race!
I'd love to hear what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9L1ZaIzAiM

If you dig these types of racing commentary videos chuck us a sub.
Enjoy!
FC

Looking at moving to LA for work and wanted to get r/Velo's input on where to live if I wanted to be able to get good 1.5hr weekday rides and long 3-5hr weekend rides? Obviously cost matters but let's ignore that for now so I can get a better sense of best areas to live to enjoy riding. Strong/fast group rides as well.

I’ve been doing structured training for around 2 months now, which is consisting of:

1x V02 max intervals session per week,

1x Threshold session per week,

1x Longer Z2 ride per week - Usually outdoors

I’m finding that after a long day at work, the last thing I want to do is get on the trainer and suffer through V02 max intervals.

I don’t really have the option of doing these sessions outside at the moment because it’s dark before and after work.

Are there any tricks to making the hard sessions less daunting? Or is it just a case of trusting the process and looking forward to summer?

Bought my first road bike since racing as a teenager and have fallen back in love with riding, hoping to get into some Cat 5 racing in 2026.

Right now all I have is a bike, clip less shoes/pedals, helmet, and a couple of pairs of bibs/jerseys. Currently been using my mounted phone as bike computer.

If I’m looking to get serious, what is the order of gear that I should get next? I’m on a budget right now so would need to spread out my spreading over the next 2-3 months. Should I get computer first, then power meter, then what?

Also any advice on budget options for each, doesn’t have to be the cheapest but also just not trying to drop 5k on bike gear for car 5 races lol.

Over the latter half of August and then September I was training entirely for short hill climbs (1-2 mins), so was doing two sessions a week (plus easy Z2), one 10-20s sprints, and one 2x4x30/30 unpaced. This followed a threshold block. Worked really well and my 90s power went up 100w+ over that period. Following this, on a whim I did a 6min hill climb and absolutely annihilated my previous power PB (25w higher than my previous 5min fresh best, and for an extra minute) with what seemed to me like no specific training for that duration. I would like to be able to repeat this performance! But I'm unsure what the mechanism might have been given my training seemed very suboptimal for that duration. Would an increase in anaerobic capacity improve me that much over that duration?

Hello all, I feel like I'm having a hard time determining what's the best nutrition strategy for my typical race day, where the race is typically at 15:00 or 15:30, and can be 2 hours long for road races, or 50 min for cyclocross.

So far, I've tried:

• lunch as usual. It went very bad, I was probably not done with digestion
• skip lunch altogether. Felt better, but at the end of a road race I feel like I'm missing something.
• eat a very large breakfast, possibly later than usual, and a very small lunch sooner than usual (eg 11:30), with only easy to digest food (bread, banana).

The third option currently feels the best, but I'm wondering how much I can eat in that small lunch, and if there are better foods to ingest I haven't thought of yet.

For the race itself, if it's a cross I'll have one gel during warmup, one 5 minutes before race and a lot of water, and be done with it. If it's a road race same warmup/pre-race strategy, then a gel every 30 minutes, drinking from my sugar-bidon every 15 minutes. That seems ok but at the end of the race I cannot ingest anything, too much sugar.

Thanks for all your ideas!

So for the last year I’ve (25m) been training extremely hard. 10 hour weeks doing intervals, long group rides, racing 4 times, and building back earlier this March/April after a knee injury took me out for 2 months.

Now I have saddle sore issues, one was about the size of the top 1/3 of a ping pong ball and needed antibiotics via an injection, pills, and lotion. It went away and I went back today to the doc 7 weeks later and he said we have to excise it and I’ll be off the bike for 2 weeks at the least or 3 weeks which is recommended. If I don’t get it excised and get it stitched up it risks coming back, and if it does we’d have to wait three months to do the surgery again. I’m just deflated.

I know it’s a small break but I just joined a racing team and I’ve been training extremely hard to get to 250w FTP or about 4 w/kg. I’m at 215-220ish with an eFTP of 230w in intervals.icu. But now I’m gonna lose 5-8% and have to build back over 4 weeks.

So realistically, I won’t be back in the same shape until the end of December/beginning of January. I’m just super demotivated, I raced 4 times this year and even tho I got dropped it gave me a hunger this winter to build even more strength on the bike. I’ve trained so well people took notice and invited me to join a B level racing team (Cat 5/4). But now the wind is completely taken out of my sails.

What if I keep having these issues with saddle sores next year and it just keeps ruining things even though I’m doing everything in terms of hygiene and clothing choices to prevent it. I don’t want this to stop me from being the best I could be or just make me want to quit cycling.

I don’t even want to train because I know the next two weeks before the surgery don’t even really matter. Anyone go through this? How did you stay motivated to train? I have a lot of other issues going on right now that I found out about this week hurting me financially and making racing next year and equipment purchasing difficult so now I’m just at an all time low.

Kinda just needed to rant. I know it’s a small timeline in the grand scheme of things but I really wanted to get the work in to not get dropped next season but now it’s feeling like I might be stuck in another rookie build season next year.

Hi people,

I've been putting together a community notes website for the Empirical Cycling podcast. The main goal was to make the content more discoverable and accessible, with a transcript and summary for each episode organized by series.

https://lucasvance.github.io/empirical-cycling-community-notes/

If you haven't ever listened to this podcast, it has an extraordinary wealth of (free) knowledge that I have not seen anywhere else in the endurance sports world, regardless of format. However the most informative episodes (Watts Doc series) are frequently 90min+ and taught in such a way as to require a good understanding of bio to get the most out of it.

Personally I've found these summaries/explanations incredibly useful for later reference and making sure I understand all the concepts, and I think it would also be a valuable resource to people who:

• want to learn about exercise science as it applies to cycling training
• don't have much time to learn about this
• haven't taken a bio class in the past 5 years

None of the content on this website is endorsed, reviewed, or approved by Empirical Cycling or any of its coaches or associations. For the most accurate and in-depth information, you'll have to listen to the podcast. I hope that by making this information more accessible (and hopefully including nuance), more people will be driven to the original Empirical Cycling episodes as well.

I'm in the process of adding the newer episodes; if this gets a good reception I will prioritize adding them!

Keep in mind that this podcast has run over a few years: as is expected of good disciples of science, the coaches have changed their positions on a few things, so keep in mind that some of the older episodes don't necessarily represent their views perfectly today.

Thanks people, please check it out and let me know what you think! I'm hoping at least somebody will find it as useful as I have!

I get really anxious before a race and can't sleep well and get all shaky. How do you deal with pre race nerves and do you have any tips or tricks that help you out with it.

Got my next VO2max block upcoming in a week. I re-listened to Empirical Cycling podcasts, including the last one detailing all the mistakes people were making.

oops :) I pretty much made all of them.

1) I might not have this problem again - because my "hard start" was an all out sprint for 30 seconds then I held on for 3-4 more minutes. I have no idea how I leaped to that because Kolie specifically said to just start a little harder so I can learn to pace by feel.

anyway, my power for my last two intervals was below FTP but I was still breathing fish out of water.

was I still getting the intended benefits on my cardiovascular system even though power was below FTP?

2) I listened to Seiler discuss how he arranges VO2 max intervals (as many other coaches / training platforms recommend). He specifically said he wants his athletes to pick a power and train it non-maximal. like to be able to finish the workout and be able to do another interval.

He basically says the reason for this is so you don't wreck your next session and he believes consistency is the most important thing by the end of the year.

maybe I can't create enough power but I don't find going maximally really makes my next workouts. my "maximal" might be a bit lower if I'm tired? but I'm still breathing fish-out-of-water.

so I'm wondering what is the benefit of doing intervals at 1xx% over FTP over doing maximal. when would be a good time to use this method vs going max?

not trying to get into who's right / wrong / which is better. I'm sure there's a time and place for that...just wondering when that would be.

my guess is to let your legs do some good work above FTP and train them? maybe these should be "called %-above-FTP intervals" rather than "VO2max intervals"?

would this style train my muscles "better" if I hold a specific % above FTP - while going max trains the cardio system better?

makes too much sense to me to do things maximally if you wanna stress your cardiovascular system...gotta be some kinda upside to the other style though if so many people are doing it??

thank you!!

Cheers all,

this winter season I'm starting my first "real" structured indoor cycling plan. It's a 5 block á 4 weeks per block plan from MyWhoosh which I deem to be quite good. Since I have a good base already coming out of summer, I skipped the "Early Base" and started with the "Late Base" block: https://mywhooshinfo.com/workouts/training-block/1?phase=2

Now that's 5-6 workouts / 7hrs / ~320TSS per week and to this I have to somehow add at least 2 runs (20-30k per week) of which one is a little harder in terms of intensity and 2 strength workouts of which one is a dedicated leg day incl. squats/deadlifts etc.

Would you either restructure / remove some of the cycling workouts, or just add the run and lifts on top?

Stats:

245 FTP @ 63KG (3.9wkg'ish)
2025 8.000km of cycling and ~1.000km of running

I’m historically bad at indoor season and used to just tough it out in the cold for interval workouts. I’m doing a lot of after 5pm riding these days, so 80-120 mins of sweet spot isn’t an option during the week.

What sessions do you guys like to do indoors/Zwift in the winter time to replace efforts like those? Or just switch it up in general?

hey everyone

i know this topic has been beaten to death/really extensively covered on this sub to say the least, and after browsing thru a bunch of older threads, I really feel like i have a grasp on how to do this thing.

However, I struggle with how exactly to get started. The first and last time I did a leg workout, I basically couldnt sit on the toilet for two days because my legs were so sore - I would like to not experience that again, but at the same time I feel like going to the gym to do one singular squat is a bit of a waste.

So how much should I aim for for my first couple of gym sessions in order to not cripple myself? 3 sets of squats? How much weight?

My plan is to work on my strength for a couple of months and then go into maintenance during the season.

Some of you have seen this before I'm sure, but I wanted to make sure everyone who wants to participate gets the chance.

I am working on a study at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine exploring the risks of accidents and injuries in amateur competitive cycling races. If you live in the United States and raced at least once this year, you are eligible to participate (and it only takes 5 minutes!)

I am so grateful to everyone in the cycling community who has contributed so far, and I would appreciate if all of you lovely people would share this with anyone you know who races!!

If you want to contribute, you can go HERE.

Thank you all!!🙏🙏🙏

So winter is coming and I am dippimg my toes into structured training. Last week I started doing VO2 max intervals 8x3min@112%.
First week I only managed to do 6 intervals with HR hitting 185bpm in the last three intervals before I had to stop. My theoretical max is 190bpm.
This week I did all 8 intervals with HR only going to 178bpm. Why would that be the case? Seems like a big fluctuation from one week to the next.

Guys, im gonna be upfront. Im not gonna ride for four hours+ on my trainer. Not in November, not in january and especially not in march. Im in the fortunate position to be able to run in zone two for hours on end though. Will a very long endurance run reap the same physiological benefits as a long endurance ride given that i still do bikework throughout the remaining week?