What is LSD?

Where did you get the term from, a training plan of some sort? British Cycling use it in most of their plans:

'RIDE GUIDE
– Try to stay in the lower zones on climbs. Use good gear selection to help.
– Shelter behind other riders to help keep heart rate down.
– Eat and drink at regular intervals to keep energy levels up'

Basically controlled riding, no surging, try to limit time in higher zones.

Some useful insights here, but one point: LSD is long STEADY distance not slow. Basically it means avoiding any Z4 work and sticking in z2-3. No sprinting for village signs or efforts on hills.

If you live in a hilly area, you need to "flattern the road" which means try and keep the same effort up and down the hills - which requires lots of willpower - you will feel like you are crawling up the hills!

For pros, LSD would be a 6hr ride at 20-22mph and they wouldn't go over 140 hr

For a good amateur racer it might be 4 hours at 18-20mph

A good club rider may do 3-5 hrs at 15-18mph

For you? Depends what you want and your fitness.

zone 2 heart rate for 3…7 hours long steady rides

There are simple HR training methods though Jackson, I've only applied the HR Monitor for 3 weeks and as a joe average with a bit of speed uphills and the non scientific HR of 180:

HR 130 = Not working

HR 140 = Cruising, speed around 18-20mph on flat could go all day

HR 150 = Working - can't hit a hill without it going north of this but on a flat at 20ish mph I've a few hours in me

HR 155-60: Probably around FTP and where I seem to go to on hills taking them steady

HR 160-165: 10-20 minutes max

HR 170: Getting bloody dropped

Your lungs and legs will quite quickly give you your own parameters and then you can decide where you want to move them or improve an area and then recover in another.

It's also quite an easy link to Strava which tells me that I got a 216 'extreme' suffer score on Wednesday night spending 42% of my time at 140bpm to 157bpm and 50% at 150-174.

After a couple of hours doing hill reps my mate could drop me from sucking his wheel when I spent anything more than 30 seconds North of 170bpm! 

"Long slow distance" is runner's jargon. The closest thing for cycling would probably be "base training"

The current fashion is that if you're serious about training or being competitive, "LSD" is a pretty bad idea for gains. You'd want to go sweet spot or HIIT instead

Short answer is your average speed is completely meaningless in terms of anyone else knowing if you're doing long slow rides properly. Your speed is a function of how fit you are, how hard you're trying and what kind of terrain you're on.

To know how hard you're trying you need at least a heart rate monitor or even better a power meter. Rather than have 20 people explain it to you in a crap way on a forum, you're better off getting a book (Training and racing with a power meter for power stuff or The cyclist's training bible for HR stuff). 

If you're looking for the training benefit rather than just enjoying getting out for a decent ride, then unless you're training 15 hours a week or more then you're probably wasting your time doing these kind of rides anyway. Most current literature shows you're better off doing shorter harder efforts. Old school "long slow distance" rides are only really necessary for high level racers who need to accumulate massive loads of low intensity aerobic work. 

On a side note, average speed is quite often dictated by terrain, live somewhere hilly and you'll be travelling at a slower average speed than in a flat area, so quite often comparisons with other riders don't work. 

You would have to add ft/m climbed into the speed/distance metric to know where you stand.

Since moving to a hilly area myself, my average speeds are often lower than they used to be but I'm currently a lot fitter than I have been previously.

Its a complicated trainign thing... don't worry about it. 

Oversimplifying things, there are many different ways to get fast at riding bikes. 

Part of the process of becoming quick on a bike is becoming efficient at pedaling. By efficient I am talking about the ability to produce high levels of pedaling force, repetition of application, and efficiency of application.

So fundamentally you have to be able to push a pedal hard, and do it a lot. To do that you need to effectively build muscles relevant to the pedal stroke and engage them throughout the pedal stroke. 

We used to call this building souplesse... 

the more effeciently you pedal, the less energy and muscle force you use to produce a set power. That said, once you get to a basic level of efficiency, energy saving is minimal, its the reduced muscle force and therefore fatigue resistence you are looking for. 

To get to my point... 

One way of building efficiency, and the musculature required is to pedal a lot. LSD enables you to do this. 

Riding harder tires you out. 

Its simple as that... LSD enables you to maximise the number of pedal revolutions you make, making you more efficient. 

Nothing more. 

"Am I riding too slowly? Too fast? Too far? Not far enough?"

Only you know the answer to that.

Why do LSD? What are your goals?

It doesn't matter how far or how fast you ride, all that matters is that you go out there and ride.

I think it's a pointless exercise trying to define what average speed is slow or fast, as it's all relative, same with distance.

Personally, I like to set myself goals. My current goals are to do more longer rides (50 miles+), do more 1-hour max effort rides and to climb Cheddar Gorge in under 12 mins (it'll kill me!).

That's not what I thought LSD was... 

The joy of cycling is that no matter how you ride, why you ride, or where you ride, you're out there riding and enjoying it.

Maybe you want to set yourself a goal to aim for.

I find it cathartic, I ride for fitness and to clear my head. I'm never going to beat Wiggins 25mile record, or Cav in a sprint for the line, but if I can thrash myself and leave it all on the road and keep improving again and again and again I personally will be happy enough with that.

How slow is slow? My mate's currently riding the Trans America Bike Race, it's 4200miles from one side of America to another.. he's going really slowy https://trackleaders.com/transam17i.php?name=John_Cooke  but he'll be going really slowly for a very long time...  I couldn't do it.