How can I keep improving after my first 30km ride? I'm a 17 year old girl. I started riding in November, and I don't know how to keep improving—I'm a bit lost. So I will describe my journey up until now and maybe you can help me.
One day my friend invited me to ride to a park. It was 10km, and it was awful. After not even 3km, I wanted to throw away the bike and grab an Uber. When I got home, my dad explained me that I had flat tires, so I guess it was a combination of being extremely unfit and that my bike was not in proper condition.
After that, I kept doing 4km (at about 17 km per hour) 5 times a week. Those rides were tiring but not impossible. Eventually they crept up to 8km (by accident: I would ride while shopping). Then I got interested in trying that 10km to the park again. I did it with my dad, and it was surprisingly easy. (We were going about 15km per hour.)
So I started doing 10km, but on a route without cars, so I could see how fast I could go and if I could maintain the speed. I did that during all December (at about 18 km per hour). It felt great. Sometimes I ran out of breath, but I could maintain it. (I also have chronic sinusitis, so I figured that is mainly the problem.) On December 31, I decided to do 20km. I did them in a bit less than an hour. I was tired after, but I did not struggle that much. I was extremely happy after.
Yesterday on January 7th (a week later) my boyfriend asked me to do 30km with him. I agreed because if I could do the 20km going &quot;fast,&quot; then I could do more if I kept my energy and went &quot;slow.&quot;
Here's the problem: he and his friends are VERY fit. I could keep up for the first maybe 14km, but after a 30 meter hill I was kind of exhausted. Then we slowed down and I completed the trip but very slow. The last 16km took us 1 hour (when I had done 20km in less than an hour before). I'm proud that I could do it, but now I'm a bit sore, and won't recover or be able to ride again for about a week at least. So I think that maybe I wasn't ready to ride that much.
What do you think? What should I do now? I don't know how much and how often I should ride between 10km and 30km to reach my goal: riding the 30km faster on a stable speed.
Also, here's a picture of my bike. It's a Halley classic 4x4 and has 18 speeds. It's very cheap, and comparing it to my friend's (that are much more professional mountain bikes) it feels like crap. But I wanted to be more fit before buying one.
You've got off to a great start, well done. Several answers tell you how to improve quickly, and they're not wrong. But you'll see plenty of improvement just by riding often, occasionally pushing yourself, and resting when you feel the need after a hard effort.
Riding daily to work/school/college if reasonable, with something for fun some weekends is hugely beneficial. It's how I got started, and now I do rides of hundreds of km, having never used a training program. Especially if it's winter where you are, don't feel guilty about not riding if the weather is bad. In the long run enjoying the ride is a good thing, while making yourself suffer is likely to put you off - the time for that may come in the future if you start thinking about specific goals of speed, distance, etc.