If you want to go 24 mph for 15k you need to do two things interval-wise.

Ride as hard as you can for 15k
Ride as long as you can for 24 mph.

Repeat.

You can mix this in your gorup ride effort, just be sure everyone knows what you are doing.

With enough work, your speed work (24mph) will intersect your endurance work (15 km) and you'll have your time.

This is a bit oversimplifies, but the basic idea behind TT training.

Good Luck!

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Do some low cadence hard riding. Drop it to about 50 rpm's and push a big gear. Keep HR under control. this is not an all out effort, just good and hard.

Start with about 4x(3-4) minutes with equal rest and work your way to about 4x15min with 2-4min rest.

The other trick is to wrap a thin rubberband around your brake lever to apply just a little bit of pressure. Make sure you are using a training rim and good pads. You can also take turns towing each other. Just have someone grab your jersey and tow them for a few minutes. Then trade off.

Have fun!

Actually SD, it seems we tend to think alike here... I usually take the simplistic approach to my "speed" goals as well, but my background is in running first, triathlon second, and "road" riding third, so my confidence with respect to gaining significant time gains via the bike tends to fall into question from time to time when selecting a TT specific interval program. I'm pleased to read that others [you] follow a similar sort of reasoning when it comes to intervals on the bike.

I consider myself lucky in that I just happen to live very near two venues that will allow such a session to take place [re: your suggested workouts]... I have a relatively flat 14 miles of riding trail [Rails to trails project] that can act as the 15K+ course. I also have access to a "business park" which is loaded with short but steep rollers and can easily pound out a 15K+ series of hilly loops as well. In addition to this, I live about an hours drive from a FLAT 75 mile stretch of bike trail [Rails to Trails again] which allows up to 150 miles of uninterrupted riding. This is a great place for holding max efforts until you start bleeding from various holes in your body.

What I ended up doing yesterday out at the 75 mile trail was a 30 minute warm-up spin, then 2hr7min [47 miles total at speed, 23 out & 24 back] with an average of 22.2 mph for the speed/endurance session, then another 30 minutes cool down. I really worked on pushing a bigger gear than I normally like to, so my cadence was a bit slower than usual, but overall, I'm pleased with the effort considering the previous weeks workouts. I turned around at exactaly the hour mark, so you can see I held 23 mph for the first hour, but on the way back my average dropped .8 mph due to a combination of factors. My left foot's toes went numb [has not happened in a long time] and my left knee was becoming increasingly stiff [it was killing me], plus there was a stiff headwind for the first 12-14 miles after the turn around. So, at 90 minutes, I sat up and decreased my effort enough to eat a powerbar, do an easy spin for 10 minutes, and stretch my hip flexors and back hoping this would help the knee and toes come around. It seemed to help a bit and the last 27 minutes were nice and hard. I returned to a lower gear as well, therefore increasing my cadence... this seemed to relieve the pressure on my left knee.

Anyway, I'll start pounding away at a few key workouts [15K and 24 mph specific] and see what happens... Thanks for your advice and taking the time to share your insight.

Oreo

SuperDave's idea is very good. Just one more thing...make sure you are using your very best form when doing these workouts. I find that I tend to get some gluteal strain/fatigue during a race that is not felt during training. I tend to roll my pelvis further forward during a race, and the discomfort (to the nether-regions) is ignored due to the race effort. That more powerful position is harder for me to tolerate in training due to the discomfort, but I should do it more often to address the apparent gluteal weakness. I've got a couple of TT's coming up, so I'm going to take my own advice here...

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Quid quid latine dictum sit altum videtur
(That which is said in Latin sounds profound)

If I were you I would ride with the group, pull when it's your turn, have nice chats, eat and drink plenty and generally enjoy the day.

Then if you feel full rested get on the windtrainer the next day and do some 6 minute long intervals with 2 minutes rest until you are totally shelled and have to have help unclipping from the pedals. -Make sure to drink a 4:1 mix of gatorade powder and protein afterward, get a good night sleep.

Training is really pretty easy. Not the actual work, but the idea of overload and recover. The duration, intensity, pain tolerance, and nutrition are important but very very personal. I prefer not to take the ,"Do 7 efforts for 95% of max for 3:10 with 90 seconds of recover in between on a 1% grade headed east into a headwind in the morning..."

All this techno-crap is simply too specific to fit everyone. I would also recommend riding the actual 15k course you'd be racing on. In a recent 40k TT I got to use the roads I ususally ride on, the turn around was about 1 mile from my house so I had plenty of opportunity to ride the course. Race day saw lots of wind and because of my familiarity with the venue, I knew where and when I needed to hurt because of the hills/shelter/terrain I'd be seeing in the next km. Do your recon!

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Funny you should mention that Yaquicarbo... My gluts are seriously taxed from yesterdays effort and I was drawing the same conclusions you mentioned. I must have adusted my positon yesterday to maintain my power output while pushing a larger gear than I am used to. This is something I'm looking to to add to the focus of my TT intervals as well.