Starting to take road cycling a bit more seriously - Training advice please

Clint_001

Clint_001

Clint_001

Associate
Joined
1 Jul 2013
Posts
37
Hi Chaps,

This year I've been upping my weekly mileage and have got to the point where I've seen some good improvement in my average speed and endurance. I'm managing ~100 miles a week and feeling good for it. Usually around half of that is a long ride at the weekend. However I've been lucky in that up to this point my weekends haven't been too busy, that's about to change with lots of wedding etc coming up.

I can see my weekend cycling window being cut from half a day to a few hours so I'm hoping for some tips for getting the most out of shorter rides (basically how to knacker myself in the most efficient/beneficial way). At the moment I'm thinking.....

1) Multiple reps of a local hills over an hour of so
OR
2) Going to the local cycling track, picking an ambitious average speed and trying to maintain it for a set time
OR
3) Going to the same local track and alternating balls out and slower laps for an hour (interval training I guess)

My target would be to increase my watts/kg in the most time efficient way (have also been trying to improve my eating habits and monitoring my %fat to aid this).

Any tips/suggestions would be appreciated.
 
Depends how big the hill as, as if it's only short then it's going to give you the same work out as 3. Training isn't generally about speed, but about power and so climbing a steep hill and intervals on the flat both constitute interval training.

For out and out power increases then you can't really beat interval training. It's not bad for endurance either.
 
The biggest improvement to my cycling was joining a club.
See if there is a local club that does a chaingang or other fast ride mid-week as well as the usual weekend club runs. These are great for improving your speed.

For training on your own, if you dont have the time for long rides, you'll need to do shorter, higher intensity rides.
Is there anything specific that you're training for? Different goals will have different training needs. For example, if you want to do time-trials, the workout where you keep a good average speed for a while would be most helpful but for bunch racing the hill reps or intervals (which, as Asprilla said, are similar things) would be better.
Whatever your goals are, you'll do a mixture of the 2 (and preferably a longer, steadier ride as well if you have the time) but the mix depends on what you want.
 
Thank you for the quick replies. Sounds like intervals might be the way forward + doing the longer rides when I can.

At the moment I'm training for a 21 laps of Goodwood circuit ride in May and the London to Brighton night ride in July. I've been on longer rides than both of these recently so I know I'll get there, just want to get the best time I can.

I'm also looking at a 100 mile sportive in September, I'm reasonably confident I could do 100 miles now (if I made sure to eat and hydrate properly), but would probably drop a lot of speed towards the end.
 
Echo touch joining a club will make the biggest difference overall. It's around this time of year clubs start doing weekly TT's as well and most are open to all riders for a small entry fee (£3-£5). Recording your times and benchmarking yourself is a good way to see how you're improving, you also learn the technical side of how to breathe, pace yourself and when to go balls deep etc.

Also suggest a couple of books:
The Cyclist Training Bible
Racing Weight
 
Yep, for these sportives you're doing, you can easily add 2-3mph onto your average speed by just learning how to properly work in a group and shelter efficiently behind other people.

(obviously i'm assuming you're not in a club and therefore dont do a lot of group riding - if you know all this you can ignore me :p)
 
I'm not in a club but ride a couple of times a week in a group of three (similar standard but I'm not the quickest so I do get stretched). I have also ridden in a large group of ~20 a few times which was awesome. That was a group of Texans so I made sure to make EPO jokes at any given opportunity :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom