I know! I know! I`m slow. Do you guys { and gals} know of a hard bike workout that will increase speed for a sprint distance bike leg? and hopefully help me break 20 mph. I was looking at the improvements from last year thread and GuruBoy went from 19mph to 22mph in a year. Am i missing something?
Oh, boy. Sure. Ride faster more often. Seriously…it’s as simple as that.
To get more Scientific, warm up, ride a bit longer to make sure you are warmed up and do a few accelerations up to the low 20’s and hold it for a minute. After these few accelerations, pick your speed up to whatever level you can hold for 8 minutes. Repeat as many times as you can while holding your speed above your target speed. After a few times, you’ll notice you can’t hold your speed the entire 8 minutes…at this point, cool down and go home. Repeat this a couple of times a week. If you find you are getting tired and not improving, cut it down to once a week.
Variations of this are good, don’t be too locked in to specifics. Oh, and lose your HR monitor if you have one…you don’t need something telling you to slow down because you’ve reached some artificially-derived number.
Good luck, and report back on your progress! This isn’t the last lesson, it’s just the first.
Try looking up some steady state interval workouts and power interval workouts. Last year was my first year on the bike and went from averaging 17-18 over a 15k TT last Nov. to averaging 27.4 on that same course in august. Lots of hours on the bike every week, and did lots of intervals in training throughout the race seaons.