Bike Speed Drills

Ride Lots.

Step 1) Mortgage your house for the lightest bike known to mankind
Step 2) Undergo Extreme Plastic Surgery in order to optimise your power to weight ratio
Step 3) Shake your head and go "WTF? I'll just stick to riding lots of hill."

If I have an E3 ride for 1:30, I'll ride up the same hill 3 times - and then have fun on the downhill section. I haven't found a better way to improve my performance on hills other than riding lots of hills.

-Frank

i.e., Ride Lots!

Yep, what bear said

-Frank

of hills... or does that go without saying?

Gee, I wish I'd thought of that....you guys all have a masterful grasp of the obvious (kinda' like me). I was thinking more of things like one-legged drills, repeats, etc. C'mon, Bear, you're a riding coach, aren't you? Or, are you just a sheep in bear's clothing? By the way, I thought bears sat down to pee.

I did purchase a Fluid trainer a few weeks ago and finally got it set up today (still raining here in Atlanta). I tried one of the Spinnerval DVD's (the first one) and boy, oh boy, did it ever kick my sweet li'l a$$.

Edited by Motivated 2004-09-08 3:37 PM

Finally, someone steps forward with some constructive advice...thanks, Dave. I particularly like the over-gear hill repeats, that looks interesting and painful.

Edited by Motivated 2004-09-08 3:27 PM

Interval training is my favourite training. It give you quite a buzz :-)

Just to add to your comments.

Obviously if you want to improve your cycling it helps to cycle but I think for this type of endurance training it doesn’t necessarily have to be done on a bike. Like ride_like_u_stole_it says you should go flat out for the 2min interval. I find this difficult and quite dangerous to do on the roads, unless you are lucky enough to live on a long very quiet road.

Personally I prefer the running track doing 800m intervals. This has the advantage of you don’t need to worry about traffic or watching the time just go for it. Also I find it really motivating to record the time for each interval and see if I’m improving over the weeks.

You should pick a rest period you feel comfortable with. Maybe start out with 2-3 mins and reduce it as you get more practice. The benefit comes from the intensity of the interval. It actually reduces the benefit to run a slower interval because you’re still recovering from the last.

Edited by John_0026 2004-09-09 5:09 AM

Why do you ask for advice if you're going to make light of the advice you receive? You're certainly not going to get a lot of future help questioning the credentials of the people you're asking advice from.

I looked at your logs, you have upped your mileage in recent weeks, but prior to that you were riding 30-50 mpw. If you want to ride faster, to climb with more power, I'm going to stand by my original advice. It's not glamorous, it's not sexy, but you have to first build your base. Put in the miles, ride the hills, RIDE LOTS. There's no magic formula, no special drill that will substitute.

Edited by the bear 2004-09-09 6:02 AM

Hehe you sound like my Dad. He is always telling me you can't get better without putting in the miles :-)

You are right there are no drills to subsitute this but drill can compliment it. Once you have your base you should mix in some drills/intervals with your training.

If you're going to do hill workouts with over-gear repeats, my only suggestion would be to spend the first 20 minutes of your ride spinning at a high cadence to get your legs and lungs ready for a tough workout. When I do hill repeats, I don't care about time or cadence, but just as you heard earlier, stay in a gear that makes you work about as hard as you can. Essentially it's like doing a leg workout with weights with low weight and high reps. Make sure you space out the hill routines. If you don't let your legs rest - at least in the beginning - you'll be fighting fatigue and will learn to hate the workout. Good luck.