Everyone leads busy lives and sometimes cycling can take second preference. But you don’t need to ride for hours on end to make you faster or stronger.
Even if you don’t feel like you are utilising your time properly, check out these helpful tips to get you fighting fit in time for the Bowral Classic.
You don’t need a power meter or heart rate monitor but both will help! Establishing your functional threshold power or threshold heart rate is easy. Once you define those thresholds you’re already on your way.
Anaerobic Intervals
An anaerobic exercise is one that trains your body above 100% of your threshold and is the point where your muscles fatigue rapidly because they cannot rid themselves of lactic acid. Doing short intervals at a high intensity will increase your ability to suffer for longer by building strength and increasing your aerobic capacity.
Keeping these intervals on the bike to less than 5 minutes is the key to maintaining and furthering your repeatability. Aim to build your performance by increasing the duration and intensity of each interval. This will also help you measure progress.
You could have this session wrapped up in 45 minutes if you wanted, remember to allow time for an appropriate warm up and cool down.
Sweet Spot Work
The sweet spot is not your local cafe that sells delicious muffins but the zone just underneath threshold, between 85% and 95%.
This zone is wear you can build stamina and work your entire aerobic system.
Intervals can last between 10 minutes and 1 hour and may vary depending on your strengths and weaknesses.
However, you can increase the interval times as you up your fitness. Try working your way up from 10 minutes in this zone until the sky is the limit.
Hill Training
In the Southern Highlands it’s almost impossible to escape a sharp pinch or a sustained climb and during the Bowral Classic you will surely face plenty of hills.
The only way to get good at climbing is to spend time heading skyward.
Hill repeats can also be used as an anaerobic workout. Climbs under 10 minutes can be done at or above your threshold remembering repeatability is the goal. It is obviously easier to reach your threshold on a steeper gradient so finding a good hill to practice climbing on whilst working on your aerobic capacity kills two birds with one stone.
Targeting hill climbs longer than 10 minutes can be added to your endurance rides, which we will explain more about in part 2. Hitting these longer climbs at your sweet spot will again train two aspects at the same time.
Try to add two hill focus sessions a week and reap the rewards.
Mixing up sessions can also keep the weeks fresh, so keep these tips in mind next time you’re on your bike and when you’re planning next week’s training sessions. Increasing intervals and durations is a great way to measure progress and these workouts can easily be done with your mates during a bunch ride.
Check out part 2 in a fortnight where we look at the endurance sessions and muscle up with some strength workouts that you can do at home.
