I always forget to cycle during 5 hour eating-sessions.

For me it's being a cycling snob. I realised this year I was following all the "rules" and looking down on beginners on cheap or "crappy" bikes and not giving them the time of day. I've stopped caring if my sunglasses are under or over my helmet straps or my bottles are too big. And I've started to enjoy cycling more and have had some great chats with people I wouldn't have otherwise.

Shorter, more frequent rides is a lot more motivating than a 5 hour slog on a Sunday. Especially during Winter.

Thank you I’m 61 and in good shape , I ride five 20 mile rides a week, and once a month a long one

I'm occasionally guilty of waving on a car that's been behind me for ages. I only do this on straight roads where I can see there's no oncoming traffic, but some drivers get so nervous about overtaking (even with enough space) that they just sit behind you for miles. I'd rather know when they're going to overtake me than have them sitting 2m off my wheel for 10 minutes.

Always ask before sitting on a stranger's wheels. It's just rude to ride off of on someone else's hard work and effort. Say hello and ask before doing so. COmmon courtesy

Every Ken I've ever met has been knowledgeable, trustable, and likeable. This was a great interview with an incredible coach, way to go!

Some good tips. As a driver I hate cyclists waving me through if I can't see it's safe, "he told me to go" doesn't stand up in court if you've missed something, you may be dead and I'll be behind bars. I'd rather wait until I can see, even though I know it's to try and help.

“easier to hold 300w" meanwhile me doing 230w yet struggling. sad

Great advice about driving defensively with cars. I never thought about how being courteous is actually detrimental because you’re giving permission to cars to speed by you and possibly encroach on your already narrow space. Definitely working on this myself.

THANK YOU so much for the consistency point. My schedule allows for multiple shorter rides and now I have the confirmation that this is good for my training.

One thing I think you may have forgot, a warm down after your ride. Never just jump off your bike in a rush to put it away. Have 10 mins just cycling very slowly watching your heart rate come down. Oh, and a few stretches after a ride always helps. Great video and very good advice that should make your cycling more enjoyable.

Consistency thing is spot on: Year 1 of becoming a cyclist, I was training to push longer and hit big miles and did it, but it was a real mental and physical beasting. Year 2, my job had changed and I’d started commuting every day, doing a 20mile round trip sometimes 6 days in a row and then on days off during lockdown doing 20 or 30 mile loops, max. Conditioning, and endurance so enhanced in Year 2 that when I went to do a charity thing aiming for 250miles in 36hrs, it was easier in many ways than my first attempt at 100-miles the year before.

Yes! Ride defensively, 1/3 way across the lane where car riders (aka "drivers") can see you -- and forcing them to take you into account -- is spot on. This is maybe just under 1meter from the kerb, depending on the road. Best bit of advice here.

Ok, you've just mentioned (i think) all the reasons because i've left groups and went solo ever since, and no, i am absolutelly not interested in trying new groups after 20+ years of bad experiences with them

I'm happy nowadays going out for the odd hour during the week and the weekend mixed in with longer rides as and when. For me it's more about the fresh air, having a chat and a bit of cake and coffee. Cycling can easily become an obsession and that's when it stops being fun. As the Dutch say 'Da's pas fietsen' It's only cycling!

Human, non-toxic, honest and wholesome ; love it !

“Riding more frequently at even short distances is telling your body to get into shape” was brilliant😁

Excellent talk overall and especially riding in the gutter. I found that the more into the gutter you ride the more drivers attempt to pass you with oncoming traffic and also tend to be closer to you.

Great vid, thanks! One thing I would challenge - there is more to long rides than checking your setup is correct, checking you've got your fueling dialled etc. As with long runs, you're training a different energy system, and its essential for building endurance, in my own experience. Particularly if you're considering a gran fondo or other longer distance challenge.

So much real talk in this episode Francis! Ken seems like a real is GC.

Bingo - doing longer rides is only really useful for sorting out comfort and fuelling and not training performance.

I booked once on a ride in Greece. Lots of factors as to why I'd not eaten enough. I felt shocking 🤢 I was shaking, dizzy, felt sick 🤮 my husband ordered me some chips in a restaurant and forced them down me. I eventually came back round but I will never do that again! Lesson learnt.

That's a super solid set of tips. Great to hear from Coach Ken after long time 👍

Love Coach Ken! Great post Francis. Communication with drivers is pretty key for everyone. We should be neither intimidated nor bolshie. I don't mind waving someone through on my country lanes provided that I am comfortable that the road is clear ahead and that generally means riding close to the centre on the approach to blind bends. A thumbs up for anyone who waits on the bends or who shows a bit of consideration in town just reinforces their habits.

I was riding on the gutter. Crashed and had the worst road rash of my life. Stopped riding for years from the PTSD. That was a great tip!

Great advice. I've been doing 30km 5-6 days a week every morning for the last 3 months. I notice that I can last longer than my friends (they only ride once a week with on longer distances and rest for days) when we're out for 100km ride. A significant part of it are rough roads and uphill. It's also under the heat of the afternoon sun here in the Philippines. I tell you, it's really hot here this dry season. Daily short rides help :)

There is a benefit though to long endurance sessions. I was reading about a coach that used to prescribe high instensity short frequent sessions and found his subjects were making little improvement year on year. Switch to a mix of long low instensity and small amount of short high intensity and his subjects made more gain. According to their vo2 max tests it stimulated a higher vo2 max. Theres a danger that from this video people may think they can sack off the long rides and the training volume, there’s absolutely a benefit to doing both.

think i have the opposite problem, eating constantly from 30 min in

Excellent video! I am going to take the "avoid the gutter" advice very seriously. My skin if finally returning from a recent incident from trying to be a "respectful" bike rider.

Solid tips, I'll add my 2 pence worth. Dont take it too seriously remember to have fun. Be friendly to none serious cyclists, I'm a fairly fit cyclist but dont always want to ride hard etc and often get cut up by groups of riders who ride past me when its not safe putting us both in danger which is kind of hypocritical when we complain about car drivers doing it to us.

Great content. Thanks. Would love to hear more from Ken, he speaks a lot of sense!

Thank you for beating boredom during quarantine. Ride safe and take care always!

Just discovered this channel yesterday. Imho it is the best YT bicycle channel i have seen and i've been binge watching since. Regards, Lifelong motorcyclist who has just got back into cycling since i was a kid aged 60. Bought the wrong bike, a hardtail mtb, when i should have bought a hybrid or flat bar road bike. Started at 3 x 15kms pw Upped it to 24 x3, then 30 x 3, currently at 32-35 kms x 3, mon-wed-fri, ie 100 kms per week. Loving it, and lost 7 kgs since Xmas. Great fun too, regards from NE Thailand.

Just stumbled across this, what a brilliant video! Have been riding for years but amazingly hadn't thought about several of these. The point about consistency was a real wake up given exactly how I plan my rides. Think it stems from marathon training habits, obsessing over the long run being the thing that gets you through. Never comment on these things but this deserved it. Well done mate, really nicely made vid.

No thrills video with good information, if only we had more of this on KZfaq!

A good and simple no bullshit vid. Thanks dude.

Excellent vid, so glad I signed up with coach Ken/Dan. Since May to now I managed to go from 11 miles in an hour to 20 on the trainer. Not bad for an old bloke... Lol. Completely agree on the 5x1 hour rides rather than 1 long one. Kind regards Shin

As a seasonad rider, all these habits are well known and understood, even well practiced, but we are bad at following our own advise. Thanks gents for the reminder. Absolutely spot on. Need to eat more on my rides. KCCO in covid times all.

Great chat - always like the training style tips\discussions. Also talking of free wheeling and upping the pace unnecessarily, one useful warning sign of riding too hard on the front out on a group ride, assuming you've all agreed to ride at a reasonable pace rather than a chain gang, is if the people behind you have all stopped talking then your going too fast. No need to look round, just listen.

Number one hits home. Two weeks ago I tried to do my long ride without consuming calories. It was 2 1/2 hours of occasionally hard riding. First I thought that it went surprisingly well. A hour later, after showering, I started feeling freezing cold and sick to my stomach, just terrible. Luckily it went away after a few hours but it teached me that it‘s not a good idea to empty the tank this hard. I always try to take sugar water and muesli bars with me for rides longer than 90 minutes. The ride a week later took three hours and with proper fueling I felt really good and could push until the very end.

There is one long ride I look forward to every year (210 Km), and almost all my training year round consists of MTB rides in hilly terrain of about an hour each usually four or five times a week. This works better for me than long road bike rides, although I do a few just to keep the bum in tune with the road bike saddle. Every so often I do a fairly punishing series of hills (MTB), taking close to three hours, and if I didn't eat and hydrate on these rides, finishing would be out of the question. With this regime I find I can slot in a five or six hour ride with no trouble when the opportunity arises. So what you're saying makes perfect sense. This kind of riding keeps me fit and well in my mid seventies, and I look forward to keeping at it for a while yet.

Five 1-hour rides > One 5-hour ride. This is quite obvious and also easy to say, but much harder to do, because each ride has a big overhead (even bigger in cycling compared to other sports): you need to find a 1-hour break from your work or your day routine, possibly syncronize with friends 5 times, get dressed, shower when you come back, clean the bike, etc...

More often, before longer, before quicker.... it’s been my recipe for improving my running. And I stick with it on the bike.

as everybody says: eat enough while riding. for my experience this will also make you recover much faster (in my case up to 300% plus)

nah not half wheeling is so hard, the anxiety of being on the front with everyone behind thinking you're slow is the WORST

Good point on waving drivers through. I do that sometimes, but only when the road ahead is clear for a safe pass but the driver behind me is hesitating. Otherwise I let the driver decide when or whether to pass. Usually works out okay. Sometimes the driver behind seems to want to play the role of running interference for me, which seems like a nice gesture but can annoy other following drivers.

Im always guilty of riding in the gutter. I know it’s actually more dangerous because now the cars can almost pass without moving over. So more often than than not they do pass without giving a proper amount of space. This then subconsciously makes me ride closer to the edge sometimes actually coming off the pavement and onto the soft shoulder which can be very dangerous depending on how loose the gravel is and how deep the drop is when trying to get back onto the road. Really need to break that habit before it breaks me

thanks for #3 consistent riding! Great advice, really helpful.

Great video Francis, thanks! The half wheeling made me laugh, we're all guilty.

This was an enjoyable discussion... especially No. 5... sooooo damn true... including the "slow down"... 😆🍻

more of these type of videos would be much appreciated Francis. Keep up the good work!

Gutter riding is not safe for road bikes specially in the city streets for several reasons - sometimes there are wide cracks between the gutter and asphalt where your slim tire gets stuck and you lose control, sometime the inlet grates are too wide to catch your slim tires, gutter usually have steeper slopes and may make you lose control when wet, there might be trashes and sharp items that may puncture your tires. Only time I wave a car to go before me when I'm on a Stop controlled intersection.

I never thought half wheeling is a bad habit, thanks for the information.

Inconsistent riding that definitely makes sense, before doing a long ride I always make sure I’ve done at least 3 short rides.

Old video - but if there are any new DD riders. Drafting other riders is one of the most essential things to do next to eating/drinking if youre not an experienced long distance or particularly strong rider. Start the ride early, find riders that match your pace and basically have them pull you as long as they can/are willing to. Drafting stronger riders. Just be polite and dont sit too tight on their wheel and be aware of people around you as accidents can and do happen. I say start the ride early because the moment you run out of people to draft and youre on your own in the middle of nowhere will make the ride 1000000% harder as by that time youre in the dead of night, in the middle of nowhere on some country road somewhere, completely exhausted and fighting to stay awake and motivated.

My mates are all smaller than me, so when I'm sitting on the wheel I'm still in the wind 🤣

Loving coach Ken! Nice clear and friendly, as well as useful, advice.

This is why I view this channel frequently. Eating is by far my worst habit, because once I established that I could ride certain distances without eating I did just what Ken said: "I think I can make it". I take food and a full water bottle, but would eat very little during the ride. I'm glad he shared this and I'm going to commit to eating thru out my ride from now on.

Point 1, just because you can doesn't mean you should! I found that on endurance rides.

This was good advice. Thanks 😊

Enlightening as ever. Thanks Francis

I finished my ride two days ago, I have eaten the day before and nothing since. You do you of course.

"You don't binge the rest of the day" . . . SOLD! This is my struggle lately, I don't balance my calories throughout the day and then I just try to cram them all in at the end, which makes sleeping so much tougher.

I usually ride a bit too close to the gutter when was a newbie on bicycle and one time a car doing 80kph almost swipe me for overtaking too close to me. Lesson learned.

Nice to see Ken again. Great video

Great advice, I'm new to cycling and now subscribe to your channel.....great vids.

never had a big 5 hour ride yet. came close at 7hours out but only 4 hours on the bike. but I ride 10+ times a week most weeks :D 5 30minutes rides at high effort cause of needing to rush to work, 5+rides over 1hour as I can detour and be a bit more casual on the way home. always ride alone so no risk of half wheeling. I do forget to bring snacks with me because my destination will always have something I can eat and it isn't far away enough to take 1.5hours riding on empty.

Thanks for the cycling education. I didn't know about #4, I'm 100% guilty of this. Thank you for the safety tips!!

Best place on the road to ride is where the cars curb side wheel is, smoothest part of the road (especially on UK roads), and least debris as car tyres have removed thorns etc

More Coach Ken! This was great

I hate it when people say eating is cheating and say the cafe stop will cool them down.

Well might have to change my training strategy since I only 120 - 180KM rides but don’t see any progression anymore 😅 Great video again! Keep it up!

All good points. My addition of bad habits would be: neglecting the physics of turning the bike. Learn what counter-steering is, how it works, and how it applies to every aspect of direction change.

Not sure that if I ever managed to ride for several minutes at 400Watts I'd think it was a bad habit, half wheel or not...

We all did it! I still take 4-6 hour rides (100-180 km long) with just a single bottle of water or whatever to drink. But make at least a single stop for food/drink. It's good to have some snacks with you. In the past, after reaching home, first thing I did was simply walking for like 10-15 minutes, then sit and eat like a pig. Even though I'm skinny thin, appetite was enormous! Bananas, some bread, cheese, bits of sweet, cold beer or coke. Whatever to pack myself with sugar and calories fast!

Just found your channel, I’m a Brit living in America love all your knowledge thanks for sharing its very useful.

Half wheeling has to be one of the most annoying things ever...but i’ve always acted like it’s no big deal whenever someone is trying to do it to me hahaha.

great points about eating while riding

Waving thru is absolutely ok but obviously only if it's 100% safe to wave them thru. As the cyclist in front you have better vision, better hearing and in many ways control. It also is a courtesy thing, it keeps traffic flowing and I'd sooner they overtook me at a point i'm happy with. I will put my had up and stop people overtaking me because I can hear/see a car coming, we have to work together, all road users in all forms. The worst thing is when a car comes up behind a cyclist/s and they just keep looking back and mumbling as if to say why isn't this idiot overtaking me. Well guess what, they don't have the vision and the hearing of you, you're on a bendy road and it's not easy to see ahead from that low down car. Work together, be courteous, don't alienate drivers by not being cooperative

A few zwift training sessions in the week followed by long ride at the weekends on the road in the summer suits me just fine. December - February just isn't appealing.

It’s so easy to CASTELLI aside good advice, I’ve got so much ENVE about how much he knows, I really like the way you set up your CAMS Francis. Good advice here got to take it all in in STAGES, he’s like the NUNN of cycling. Lockdown 2.0 comment.

Really good vid Francis .... thanks Coach Ken speaks the truth

Really helpful. I wish I had a training coach!

I ride in the gutter to stick it to people in crosswinds.... I ride with people that are always pushing the pace on half wheeling so I now just drop out the back to annoy them.... Soon stops it

Great informative video as always thanks guys 🏃‍♂️🚴‍♂️👍

I like this guy! 👍

This is one of those videos when I realise they're not meant for me 😂

Thanks Ken, I ride 5x1hour rides a week and I have been worried that I was doing it wrong!

Just found this channel. Man I love these cycling vlogs.

Very True, Eat, Finish the ride and recover faster and Then bike Strong again.

Even though I'm from Bristol, and live in Poland, it didn't escape my notice you were above Barnstable gliding club, I was hoping for some glider action, never mind!

The difficulty for me is that I actually enjoy riding for the longer rides... I want to do the longer rides, those are the ones I enjoy. The shorter ones feel like so much effort, getting into all that kit and check all my equipment just to ride for 1 hour and 15 miles or so... when I could get all checked out and ride for the whole day.

I am driver and I am cyclist. Totally agreed with "defensive cycling" style. Don't forget that you haven't got seatbelts on your bike.

Good topic ! This is what most people dont talk about. Glad u bring this up

Not eating enough while riding is a often accuring thing i see on group rides. How about fueling before a ride? A nice point to hear from Ken👍

I find riding a full meter from the curb to be a little much ...but I get it ....I try to stay within a meter, unless I need to round a deep-set drain cover.

Toe warmers with 3/4 is a bad habit. Nice video :)

I've definitely waved people through and I'll be more cautious of that going forward.

Never get hungry during an interview ! Eat small but often :)