Best ways to increase biking speed (Page 6)

Strength training will improve your 15 second and 1 minute sprints significantly, plus it will have an impact on your 5 minute effort, because the shorter the effort, the more dependent it is on anaerobic energy pathways.  Efforts under 2 minutes are almost completely anaerobic.  Even at 5 minutes, anaerobic fitness has a large impact on performance capabilities.  The longer the effort, the less anaerobic fitness is a factor, and the more aerobic energy pathways are relied upon.  Strength training primarily utilizes anaerobic energy pathways.

Stop thinking in terms of training muscles, and instead understand that focusing on energy systems and specificity of training are what is important.

And I'm being persistent because people are really confusing the physics on the low end - anytime you have a mathematical accelerator like a polynomial formula it is important to understand scale.  

Wow, look at the can of worms that I opened up...   I feel like forest gump now... "I'm not a smart man, but...." or Erkle, "did I do that?"

You guys are operating at several pay grades above me... LOL.

My anedotal evidence of the influence of gym work is this:

After my HIM race in late Oct. my season was done, I cut back on volume and intensity... then I had to do the El Tour de Tucson... my longest ride ever for the year was about 80 miles done once back in Aug., I did one long ride about 70 miles about 2 weeks before the El Tour.  Had a good race... then off season and in late Nov. I went to the gym and worked on leg strength and muscular weeknesses.  I cut back on biking by 50%, and upped my running a little bit in Dec.... absolutely no swimming.  I did the gym about 3 x a week.... Then in Jan, I started with an online coach and brand new plan... during the first couple weeks, I had to do the FTP tests and run tests...

Well the evidence was this... my 15 second sprint (and I don't practice sprinting hardly ever) went from 800w to 1250w, my 1 minute went from 350w to 500w and my 5 minute went up to about 360w, my 20' and 60' as well... how am I not supposed to think that the weight training had nothing to do with this?  Am I making the wrong conclusion?

But I'll also say this, I cut back on the gym stuff in late Jan. and a new plan from a coach had me do more lsd at 70% than I've done before and then when retested before Leadman, my 60' FTP went up from 295/300 to the new 325.  So I'll give credit to that... lsd sucks, it's boring and like chinese water torture, but it also seems to have worked.

I'd also give credit to riding more on my road bike, that has definately made me better too, all of the lsd were on the road bike.

My running hasn't changed that much either... the only thing that I'm able to do better at running is stay a threshold a little bit longer, but my pace hasn't improved dramatically.

Yes, greatly appreciated Fred.  I meant to thank you from your previous post also!  They say that the helmet wud get more bang for the buck compared to some of the pricey stuff like a real disc, but the disc cover is much more in my budget right now.  At what speeds do you think i would "feel" the benefit of the disc cover.  I avg mid 18 at B2B half last year and was hoping to get both before going back again this year to attempt a PR.

So what about bang for buck of disc cover vs. aero helmet (usually around $250-300?).  If I could only get one now...

You can find an aero helmet for $100 if you check out the BT classifieds and/or bargain hunt! I got my Rudy Project Wingspan for $155.

this is not entirely correct, yes those are anaerobic exercises that ustilize the phospagen system and anaerobic glycolysis but to say strength training/fast explosive exercises cannot help endurance athletes is just plain wrong and ignores a lot of good research out there

As I said in an earlier post there is a ton of research promoting the postitive effects of strength training on endurance performance , I am just linking one of many that i found in a 5 second search..feel free to search yourself....I have an ex. phys background and I wish I had some of my old articles handy, but as I said you can search for yourself........granted there is some that goes against it, but an overwhelming majority support it...again this all falls into the endurance strength continuum

http://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/abstract/2005/11000/combining_explosive_and_high_resistance_training.17.aspx

As I said in an earlier post there is a ton of research promoting the postitive effects of strength training on endurance performance , I am just linking one of many that i found in a 5 second search..feel free to search yourself....I have an ex. phys background and I wish I had some of my old articles handy, but as I said you can search for yourself........granted there is some that goes against it, but an overwhelming majority support it...again this all falls into the endurance strength continuum

agreed on the tubes/tires, you never know what has happened to them before you got them.

agreed on the tubes/tires, you never know what has happened to them before you got them. I just got a pair of GP4000S tires for like $40 each on one of the sales that someone posted here.

My last year of purchases.

Rudy Project Wingspan-$155
GP 4000S Tires - $80
Aerojacket - $100
Latex Tubes - $25
HED3 Front Wheel-$300

Thats about $630 to get just about as aero as you can be. Didn't break the bank (for me at least) and I hope to really see it in this year's times.

That's about what I did, but over time.  had the HED 3 since 2008.  Last year bought an aero helmet for $150-ish, 'net closeout.  This year bought a wheel cover (granted, on top of a DT swiss PT wheel) and GP4000 for 50% off.   Bought the latex tubes last sesaon as well but destroyed one putting it on and haven't gone back to try it again yet.

Add to this some hard work and coaching. 

well i've been putting in the hard work, but coaching is $$$ and I haven't decided that it is worth it to me yet.