- Okay, let's be honest.
Most of use ride out bikes because we like to ride them fast
whether it's motivated by results, trying to beat your mates
on a Sunday club ride, or simply because you like to gloat
when you post it online.
We all want to go fast, but how do we make ourselves faster?
Here are my top five tips on how to improve your average
speed on the bike.
(chill instrumental music)
If you've watched any of my previous videos to date
then you probably already guessed my first tip today.
That's right, it is aerodynamics, one of my favourite topics.
It's not a total surprise either, because aerodynamics play
such a big part in maintaining our speed and reducing our
drag on the bike.
Some bikes and some wheels obviously have different
aerodynamic properties, and you're probably hoping that
I'm about to justify the need for you to buy a new bike.
But I'm afraid there are actually other ways of improving
our aerodynamics before we actually go as far as
changing our bike.
For starters, our body, us as riders, we take up a much
bigger proportion of that drag than the bike itself.
It's around 4/5, so what we wanna do
is look at our position on the bike.
If you're doing track on them, you're probably already using
aerobars, so when we're on our aerobars we want to reduce
our frontal area, and that means bringing our shoulders in,
tucking our elbows in, and also trying to look at dropping
our head down so we're nice and aero.
Then we have our clothing.
On one end of the scale, a baggy rain jacket is certainly
gonna cause more drag than a well-fitted top,
but equally, an aerodynamic helmet is gonna still have some
aero savings in comparison to a standard road helmet.
It's not to say you need to go and wear an aero helmet
on all of your club rides with your mates,
but if you really wanna make KOM it might be worth a shot.
My next tip is to fuel on the go.
This may sound quite obvious to some of you, but you'd be
surprised how many people like to stop, have a three-course
meal mid-ride.
If you are one of those people, it's probably time to
re-think your fueling strategy.
Every time you stop to take fuel on, you're losing momentum,
you're allowing your muscles to cool and stiffen up.
You'll be surprised just how much time you are losing
each time you stop.
Instead, you want to keep the ride moving, keep that
momentum going, and if you do need to ease up, then just
do that rolling along.
Instead of those hard to eat, tricky snacks, you want to opt
for something a little more basic and simple,
some energy bars or some energy gels.
These can slip in and out of your jersey and trisuit pockets
nice and easily.
On a race day, a really good option for when you're pushing
the pace, because they can be digested really easily.
Another nice thing about these new, modern triathlon bikes
is a lot of them have this integrated storage,
so you have those gels, those bars on hand, nice and easily
accessible right in front of you on the top tube here,
or you can of course just add your own little bento box.
But one of the biggest area savings when it comes to
fueling and hydration is an aero drink spotter between
the aerobars.
Ideally, with a straw, so what that allows is that you can
stay in your aerobars, reach for the straw, take hydration
on without ever breaking from your aero position.
(upbeat music)
Pacing is another really important factor when we want to
try and improve our average speed on the bike.
You almost want to think of your body like an engine.
You've got a certain amount of fuel in that engine, and if
you keep revving that engine you're just gonna burn
through that fuel quickly.
In triathlon we want to limit how many times we sprint and
surge, particularly on the climbs.
Yet, so often, I do see a lot of triathletes sprinting up
every hill, and they get to the top having to sit up
and recover.
Instead we wanna try and cap how hard we go on those climbs.
I normally suggest something around 5-10% above your
target race power.
That way you should get to the top of the climbs feeling
strong and like you can get straight back into the aerobars
and start laying the power down.
Another way to improve our pacing and improve our average
speed on the bike is to try a bit harder in the second half
of the ride.
This is what we call negative splitting.
Even if it doesn't actually happen, at least try to do it.
The idea here is that we try and build into the ride so
the second half is a lot faster.
This is important because in a race we tend to feel quite
fresh, and it feels quite easy at the start of the ride,
and we tend to go a little bit too hard.
This is where heart rate and power becomes a really
valuable tool.
Warm into your power and then build it through to the second
half of the ride, which is obviously very important for us
triathletes, given that we have to run off the bike.
My next tip is also an opportunity to nag, because it's
important to keep our bikes clean and in good working order.
If you're bike is filthy and poorly working, then it's not
going to be fast, or at least as fast as it could be,
and that is my excuse today.
If your chain and cassette are all clogged up with dirt
then it's not only going to affect your shifting, it's also
going to affect that transmission of power.
You need to make sure you keep on top of cleaning it and
keeping it well-lubricated.
When you are maintaining that, it's also a really good
opportunity to check over your tyres, because these are
very important for a couple of reasons.
One, it prevents us from getting punctures.
If they are looking worn out or past their best, then it's
possibly worth replacing them, because if you do get a
puncture, that is going to dramatically decrease your
average speed when you're out on a ride.
They also play a very big part, and that is, our
rolling resistance.
There's a lot of new science and studies going into our
tyres and rolling resistance, but the current train of
thought is that having more supple tyres that deform and
flex with the road are slightly better, have a lower
rolling resistance.
With that, that has brought about this slightly wider,
lower pressure.
The most popular tyres these day are around 25mm, and
rather than pumping them right up to 100 to 110 psi, we're
now looking at around a 90 psi region.
Finally, if you really want to make yourself faster and
improve your average speed on the bike, then I'm afraid
to say, you're gonna have to invest some energy to make
yourself faster.
That's not to say all the previous points won't help,
they certainly will, but you need to train that engine
to make yourself faster.
This doesn't necessarily require a huge investment of time
though, because you can actually do some short, high
intensity intervals, some FTP intervals to really boost
that performance rather than just aimlessly heading out
and riding your bike.
A good sessioning example is 5x4 minutes at FTP
with 6 minutes recovery between each of the reps.
That will really help to improve your threshold power
and your overall pace on a ride.
I didn't say it was going to be easy, but at the end of
the day, part of the fun of riding our bikes is to
ride it fast.
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training and how to do it, just click down here.