Just finished my second tri on Sunday…did an Oly at Rancho Seco Park in Sacra-tomato…
Bike course was relatively flat with a lot of rollers. When we pulled into the race my friend and I thought…coooool…no hills…
But soon learned, that means no recovery periods and a lot of pedaling.
I wasn’t too down on my bike time, but have reached the level where I know I can “complete” and now I want to improve…
Any advice on how to pick up speed on the bike course? Was thinking of trying a spinning class a coupla times a week? Any merit to that increasing my endurance, speed for those long stretches of road where you have to just cycle thru it?
Any advice would be appreciated…
Thanks
nt
The more time you put in the saddle the better you become. Cycling and running have a volume/improvement based component. With swimming it’s more about technique.
Are you aero? My first tri I rode an old 12 sp with clipped pedals and no aero bars. I picked up 9 minutes over 40 kms on the same bike with adding aero bars, clipless pedals, CH Aero disc cover and a used aero front wheel off ebay. Since then I’ve bought more expensive bikes that are faster, but my gains have been less dramatic as those few modifications that cost a few hundred dollars.
Find a good roadie group. First you will improve your bike skills by learning how to ride the pace line. They will really push you and for sure you’ll be dropped regularly at first. Our group does a hard “drop the other guy” ride, hill ride and long slower ride every week.
If you wish to ride solo still do the hard TT style ride, hill/fartlek ride and long slow ride every week as your main workout.
Be patient, you’ll get faster.
i’m in a similar boat as you. i always finish fairly high up in the swim and run splits. but my bike times mostly suck.
the advice i recently got is probably more obvious than what you’re looking for, but i’ll throw it out there anyway. i was out with my (much more experienced) buddy about a month ago. we were about half-way through a ride when he asked me “how come you’ve been on the small ring the whole time?” well i didn’t really have any answer other than, “well, because its easier… i guess”. he replied “no wonder you ride like 10 year old”. he’s a great guy.
but it did make me realize that i just needed to start pushing bigger gears, plain and simple. and in the short time i’ve been doing it its making a big difference. of course this simple advice won’t help if you’re in really hilly areas (i train in very flat areas), or not a least somewhat of a wuss (i’m 47% wuss… on the bike anyway).
Your bike fitness (for the distances/paces involved in triathlon anyway) is almost entirely dependant on your lactate threshold…that is, the work level at which the lacate level in your blood begins to rise. What you want to do is raise your LT.
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Ride more, and once or twice a week do some threshold intervals. They don’t need to be all out…get to the point where your breath starts to get deeper and your legs are JUST starting to feel a little heavy. You will be in the neighborhood of your lactate threshold. do 2 efforts at this level for between 10-20 minutes depending on your current level of fitness. You will be surprised at how much difference this will make.
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Stay out of the weight room, at least in terms of your cycling. The phys literature is skewed around 3-5 to 1 against weights helping your endurance performance. The people it seems to help in experiments are those who are relatively UNTRAINED. If you are doing tri’s and finishing comfortably, you qualify as trained :^)
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Spin classes are too hard to do you a lot of good. Might be better for you if you were a track athlete and were working that hard in a race and wanted something to mix up your training. DOn’t get me wrong, SUPER hard efforts like that will also serve to raise your LT a little, but the above workout I suggested is much more specific. If you want to do them for fun, I would limit them to once every 2 weeks or longer so that you don’t get too wiped out to do the training that is more specific to your needs.
good luck!
Philbert
Hey Philbert:
This comment is not at all sarcastic. But how can spinning be “too hard”? People do them 1-3 times a week. Are they “tougher” than a tri-biker? I can see if it is different type of fitness, but too hard? Elaborate?
Thanks!
Spinning is much harder than riding a bike, because you don’t get to coast, EVER. The harders bike course I’ve done this year was the “5” miles at the AVAC Super Sprint. It was a simulated five miles of about 4% grade on a Spinnaker stationary bike. You just pound the pedals 'til you’re done…
I’ve been “teaching” spin three times a week, and doing so has improved my speed dramatically. a one-hour spin is worth 90 minutes on the road, and if you hammer it, you’ll understand.
B) Hit the weight room, leg presses, squats, lunges, power cleans, to get more max power.
triyoda
triyoda.com
USATF Certified Level I Coach
while this maybe true (weights increases sprint power) what possible use would that have for a triathlon? there’s no evidence that strength training increases sustainable power in trained athletes, and doing weights to improve cycling performance is just a waste of valuable training time.
ric
Minny,
Someone just answered you below, but I will more or less echo their sentiments. While spinning (at least the couple of classes I did…others may be different), you are very often redlining it, i.e. within 10 beats of a max HR. While this is a great way to increase your VO2 max (if you can hang out at that level for 2-6 minutes and repeat), it does not nessecarily increase your SUSTAINABLE power output (i.e. your power at LT), which is what really matters. In other words, harder is not always better because you start preferentially training something besides LT.
Philbert
Hallo…
I don’t wanna be a “smartasscoach” but you wan’t to be good at the Olys right…??
Drop all the weighttraining and spinningclasses, that’s not what you wanna be good at… Ride a 40 k test every 2 weeks, and then a lot of race pace 2x20 min, 4x10 min, 8x5 min and so on. Only my opinion, and don’t forget… My little secret trick:D
Run 10 min. after every bikeride. That’s what make the different:D
Schmidt-DK
hey watch it kid! 
BTW, met Rasmus and Torbjørn last weekend, great guys! :-)))
You met them in Font Romeu or what? They’re great and fast… 
A good tip:
Go down to your local bookmaker and bet all your money on Rasmus in Athen…
You’ll be a rich guy, after the race:D
Schmidt-DK
As Eddy Merckx used to say…a water bottle, a banana, and 6 hours day in the saddle…and lose 5 kilos. Guaranteed to make you a faster cyclist. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have 6 hours a day to ride :-(, but if you can get 2-3 in every day for several months, you’ll get faster 
ride hard, and lots
I think I like this advice the best, but alas, have a feeling it’s a tad more involved than that…
I appreciate the advice posted here and see some things I’m going to try…always applied interval training to runs and big fat duh as I see could apply to the bike.
Have an informal gaggle of friends who I do 40+ rides with every Saturday so may be time to quit smack talking with each other and push each other a tad more.
As I’m not a fan of the gym I’ll try to keep the rides outside as much as possible…if only that damn thing called “work” didn’t get in the way…
Thanks all…
nt