I’ve realised that i need to get faster/train differently to increase the time i can stick with a bunch and to improve my finishing position.

What is the best way to get faster? Shorter but faster rides? Intervals? I have decent winter base miles in my legs, a 87m hilly sportive and some crit races planned for April (and I also plan to start riding in a group more). I’d like to see decent improvements by May.

Also, how can i go downhill faster? I don’t seem to be able to freewheel fast downhill so end up working hard on the drops in my hardest gear which then means i don’t get any rest/recovery time.

Intervals, lots of intervals. Learn to conserve energy riding in the pack too, this means you have plenty of energy left to chase down any breaks that you think have a chance of getting away, or to organise a chase.

Are the downhills a confidence issue? Its just the same as on the mtb, weight the front and tip it in. You should not be getting shelled out of the back on a descent?

Serious Business… Awesome!

HIIT I reckon!

Downhill… without the mass for gravity to help you I can only think of how aerodynamic your tuck is on the bike?

Intervals and lose weight. Not that I’m calling you fat, you understand, but I doubt you’re at elite athlete levels of body fat, which means you’ve probably got scope to lose some.

New wheels for the bike.

I’d suggest hard (e.g. lactate threshold) intervals of about 6-10 mins with 1-2 mins recovery in order to increase your ability to ride faster for longer. They’ll hurt, but do the job.

Descending faster – brake less & carry more speed through the corners by moving around on the bike as you would on an mtb. Weighting the outside pedal & getting over the front is even more important for grip given the smaller contact area.

New wheels for the bike.

She’s got some shiny new wheels. The bike looked very fast once they were on!
Unfortunately it’s one less thing to blame… 😉

Ride with people faster than you.

short sharp intervals for crits, 2-3 sets of 5x 15sec, on 45sec off with 5 mins in between. If you don’t think you’re going to puke, you’re doing it wrong!

She’s got some shiny new wheels. The bike looked very fast once they were on!
Unfortunately it’s one less thing to blame…

Ride with people faster than you.

Get shinier ones 🙂

+1 on the riding with faster people.

There’s a difference between riding in a group on a club run between cake stops and riding hard in a chaingang. My lot work on the principle that you should work harder in a chaingang than you should in a road race.

Oh, and intervals for sure. Seeing stars and wanting to throw up are the right level.

Also, make sure your solo rides are done at a decent lick. No dawdling at 15mph on the flat!

As for descending – you’re a girl. You’ll never descend faster than a fat lad like me 😉

Do you know your HR zones?

Once I worked out my zones i was able to train better. (saying that i haven’t even raced yet)

This session was much much pain but is supposed to increase/improve your threshold and recovery

Turbo 10 mins warm up then 5 x 1 mins L4 with 2 mins L2 between them, then hold L3 for 30 mins and during this 30 mins every 2 mins do a 10 sec sprint hard as poss, but keep the L3 throughout so in other words no real recovery, should be hardest session yet. 10 mins c.down to finish L1

Downhills not a confidence issue, i just get dropped easily. New wheels roll much faster than old, i guess diff tyres will help too. I use the drops but even working flat out – high hr, hardest gear, high cadence, i still can’t keep up. Maybe its the peak on my helmet 😉

I could lose weight, and i’m not at my race weight but i’m re-thinking that weight as its very skinny and i don’t really like it.

I know my hr zones but don’t train to set zones – my running usually covers the high / lactic stuff and riding the lower zones (and yes i realise this isn’t the most effective way but i have a very high max hr and its easier to get it higher when running…for example, my first race yesterday, my hr averaged 191 for 1hr 41, i can average this for a 1 hour run, but an interval session on the bike/hill reps would only give me around 170s).

I’ve only done one race and am pretty fit, its just i don’t have the speed to be able to stay with the group for long enough to conserve energy.

Why would you want to see your max hr?

Max hr is sport specific

simple You need to join your club’s chain gang rides.

Squats, squat jumps, step ups with weights as fast as you can (while keeping good form) until you can’t do them fast anymore (which might happen quickly).

Than again

On January 1st, the majority of competitive cyclists in the U.K. begin’training’ for the new racing season and most of them get it hopelessly wrong every time. ‘Training’, to the average clubman, invariably means riding the bike on a Sunday (club run maybe?), and possibly a couple of nights during the week. The intensity generally depends on who else is out on the ride, or how the cyclist in question feels on the day.

There is often no structure and as the winter progresses and the nights become lighter the evening rides develop, (more often than not), into a ‘chain gang’. This then means that regardless of ability, everyone on the chain gang attempts to do exactly the same type of training only at varying intensities! Eventually the numbers dwindle as the strong become stronger and the weak become disillusioned by
the constant battering they receive, and also by eventually getting shot off the back every week.

This happens because contrary to popular belief, chain gang type training only suits a small minority of racing cyclists and is actually counter productive to the rest.

Then again. i don’t know anything! i’m a copy and paste king 🙂

trickydisco – where did you copy that from? I read it recently but cant find it again.

trickydisco: that’s right to a degree but it depends on the sessions. Easiest on a closed road circuit or outdoor track (ideally with a coach present), they can be very useful.

If it’s just a “last man standing” road ride then invariably you get the club wannabes trying to prove something by upping the pace, sprinting for signs etc and generally blowing it to pieces.

I used to do “chaingang” sessions on the floodlit outdoor track in Cardiff. Run through winter with qualified coaches it’d start out in November time at a gentle 17-18mph average for 2hrs with a variety of different workouts. By February we’d be averaging 24-25mph over 2hrs, doing exercises like gaining a lap in 4’s, 3’s and 2’s, riding in a loose bunch, riding in pairs etc.

Very useful exercises.

trickydisco – where did you copy that from? I read it recently but cant find it again.

it’s from peter reads black book

I used to do “chaingang” sessions on the floodlit outdoor track in Cardiff

Do they still do this?

i’ve heard there are some sessions at castle comb ni the summer where you can pay a £1 and go along. Lots of the clubs turn up and train

Tyre wise I would say michelin pro race 3 might help…from seeing your name on other treads, I am guessing your Edinburgh based, Edinburgh road club chain gang rides are pretty good for speed- group riding- training, if you haven’t already been on these.

Riding with people faster or around your pace and with similar goals to you helps as well, no idea what your regular rides are like, but I find most group rides fairly useless for training (albeit mostly MTB ones…sorry not meaning to be rude) but cafe rides are so different to training rides. Was thinking of trying to get a bit of a training/fast paced mtb thing going around here, more aimed at working towards 10 under, but still looking to go ok in local time trails and crit racing, so a fair bit of road work too, it will no doubt go down like lead balloon! But still if your interested…

Placing yourself in the group can help to, realise this might be a bit bleeding obvious but just encase, mid pack is a lot easier place to be than the tail end.

Squats, squat jumps, step ups with weights as fast as you can (while keeping good form) until you can’t do them fast anymore (which might happen quickly).

+1 on this too, weight training can really help you push a higher gear than you would otherwise.

‘ve heard there are some sessions at castle comb ni the summer

Indeed there are, from april to september, tuesday evenings. Turn up after 5:30 chuck your £1 in the bucket and away you go.
DBMax hold timetrials up there during the summer as well if your interested.

(cheers for reminding me it was Peter Read)

As mentioned above – HR is sport specific. If you want to ride your bike faster then riding your bike faster is a better way to achieve this than running faster. Especially if you’re already fit & just looking for an extra 10%.

One of the benefits of now being a far heavier racer is that I fall down hills compared to my race weight companions.

Jumping the gaps was my first ever noticeable weakness. As those gaps are just a few seconds I used rollers to develop that extra bit of speed required.

I’ve only done one race and am pretty fit, its just i don’t have the speed to be able to stay with the group for long enough to conserve energy.

This could be just a lack of tactical knowledge, but do you mean you got dropped? You can if youre clever enough have a relatively easy race, though if you need to ride like this you’ll never be up there.
So just do what I did/do being a total luddite I just raced to fitness.

Simple, ride off-road …

what gearing you running if your spinning out try changing gearing

Might be easier trying to be more efficient than to get fitter. Your positioning in the group and your distance from the wheel in front might be making you do more work than you need to. Being closer to the front of the bunch is much easier than yo yoing on and off the back. The closer you are to the wheel in front the better the draft is. The exit of corners is quite a common place for riders to slingshot out the back, be in the right gear before entry so you are ready to sprint. Have a look at your pedaling technique, are you chopping at the pedals or are you spinning smooth circles at a nice high cadence. Something like a watt bike can give you a graph of the force input from your pedal stroke and you can try to get it even all the way round instead of spiking on the down stroke. Is your position on the bike good? If you are struggling to freewheel downhill you might be quite upright, see if you can get lower without loosing power.

Just some ideas to think about before you start devoting all your waking hours to being in the gym!

Iain

Intervals & speed work FTW.

mogrim – Member
Squats, squat jumps, step ups with weights as fast as you can (while keeping good form) until you can’t do them fast anymore (which might happen quickly).
+1 on this too, weight training can really help you push a higher gear than you would otherwise.

That’s strength, not speed.

I have decent winter base miles in my legs,

What do you call decent? If you can’t cruise with a bunch maybe you haven’t put enough miles in to develop the efficiency needed- or it could be you’re racing in too high a category. Trouble with road racing is its so competitive with so many aerobic freaks that you have to be really good in order to be crap.

I know my hr zones but don’t train to set zones – my running usually covers the high / lactic stuff and riding the lower zones (and yes i realise this isn’t the most effective way but i have a very high max hr and its easier to get it higher when running…for example, my first race yesterday, my hr averaged 191 for 1hr 41, i can average this for a 1 hour run, but an interval session on the bike/hill reps would only give me around 170s).

Your HR zones will be lower for bike riding as you are not supporting your weight.

For short intervals you can be in extreme suffering but still nowhere near your max HR. HR is a lagging indicator and is useless for short intervals- if you can see the HR monitor your intervals aren’t hard enough!

Running is not substitute training for intense cycling.

Your training seems totally unstructured. I suggest instead of investing in shiny bike stuff get a coach and try some properly structured training. Unless you do that you’ll never know how good you can be. 6 months of a coach’s time will cost about the same as a good set of wheels

That’s strength, not speed.

No, it is power.

We try and structure our chaingangs so that people are grouped so it works. If you are strong you attack off the front for a lap rather than pick up the pace for the group. Most of the emphasis though is riding safetly at speed in a group.

HEre chaingangs might be your friend as I’ve noticed vast improvements in my bunch skills through doing these. It’s one thing sitting there at 17mph on the saturday cafe run but when your going at 25mph and small gaps opening up mean lots of extra work then it really focusses you on holding the right wheel.

I find solo riding is better training than group riding. The hard part is motivating yourself. Even in the faster training groups an 80 mile ride can be easy if you only spend 20% of the time at the front compared to 100% solo on the same route.

+ another one for chain gangs and group rides. The ERC morning rides were awful last time I went out regularly, constant constant pile ups due to some shocking dodderers and poor bike handling, I got sick of yelling at folk for being on their tri-bars in the bunch etc, but they may have improved by now that was a few years ago. They were however excellent training if you made it back without a layer of tarmac over your skin.

Go out with a fast bunch I think those guys still do wednesday nights from Joppa in summer, the Wednesday Night Road Warriors, thats a safer bunch.

I used to pedal out too on descents following a roadie bunch, weighed about 52kg at the time and bike brought that up to 60kg so not a hope in hell really its just plain physics.

Ideally you should do a mix of all that above, Arthurs Seat a perfect roadie interval. Just be careful not to overtrain ! If you are really serious pay somebody to make training plans for you to follow.

As Ed201 says, local chaingang will bring on your speed. Will also help with positioning in a group. Its early in the season yet, so give it a couple of weeks of once or twice weekly CG. See how you go.

contact british cycling and find a level3 coach in your area. listen to what they have to say.

DGOAB – see this thread.

Before considering a chaingang read trickdisco’s post again. Chances are a chaingang will leave you too fatigued to train properly for the rest of the week.

hels – Member
Just be careful not to overtrain !

I’ve only done one race and am pretty fit, its just i don’t have the speed to be able to stay with the group

1. you’ll get better the more races you do – tactics and all.
2. don’t expect results quickly – can take seasons.
3. don’t overtrain. £50 says you do!