Speed Workouts

[sassyc]

Hi!!

So I am new to cycling (started riding in June for knee rehab), but I am ADDICTED. I've really gotten into doing long rides, three centuries and an MS 150 in the last two months....

But I am really slow and I want to get faster! I am going back to school next fall and want to join either their cycling or tri team. I have a trainer, but also live in an area w/relative year round cycling.

What kinds of workouts should I do to increase my speed?

(FYI, I'm also doing WW and still have 30lbs to lose. I know that will also make me a great deal faster )

[indigoiis]

I don't know about getting into racing, so I can't help you there.

but.

I do know that the more you ride, the faster you get.

Also, ride with someone fast, once a week. Make it fairly short (15-25 miles) and chase them. That really helped me up my speed.

I also highly, highlyhighly recommend not dieting and training at the same time. When you are training, you are burning a bogus amount of calories, which is great for weight loss, right? Well, not exactly. Because you need to fuel the training, otherwise, if you just took the loss, you won't have any energy to ride. Kind of a vicious circle.

If you go into caloric deficit (from WW or any other diet plan) you should be careful to scale back your riding or running or other aerobic exercize to burn no more than around 200-300 calories a day. There's no real magic number there... it's just that you don't want to overburn and then go into starvation mode.

I don't know the science of this but you can get more info here.

You basically want to eat in a deficit of / exercize to only 10-15% of your maintenance - do slow weight loss (1-2 lbs a week.) To get your maintenance you can take your present weight and multiply by 15. That is about the amount of calories you need in order to maintain your current weight. Now take 15% off of that. That's how much you should reduce (either through exercize or eating less or a combination of both) in order to lose about a pound or two a week (which is the way to maintain weight loss - if you lose it slowly your body has more time to adjust.)

I lost 15 lbs this year in this way, before I started training. When I started cycling hard, I was eating about almost double my maintenance, just to maintain my present weight. If I had more to lose (I don't) I would scale back on the training and reduce my caloric intake.

Hope that is somewhat helpful... I'll be interested to read the answers about getting into racing as I too would like to race next season.

[sassyc]

If you go into caloric deficit (from WW or any other diet plan) you should be careful to scale back your riding or running or other aerobic exercise to burn no more than around 200-300 calories a day.

The nice thing about WW is that you do factor exercise into how much you eat, but I agree that it makes things harder. The days I don't do long workouts I want the same amount of food that I do on long ride days I've lost 25# so far, but I'm getting to the point where I need to switch stuff up.

That's good advice about riding with faster people, all my friends are faster than I am.... but always 'go easy on me' when I'm riding with them. I'll politely ask them to 'kick my you know what' and see how that goes.

Thanks indigoiis!

[ChickWithBrains]

Intervals! Intervals! Intervals!

There are a lot of ways out there to do them, and some excellent online resources about training (especially for race events) that incorporate them. Basically, they are periods of intensity -- higher speed, higher cadence, higher watt ouput -- interspersed with short periods of recovery. They might not feel so good at the time, and the rest never quite feels long enough, but after a few weeks of them you will notice your baseline speed has increased a fair bit. With continued work, you build a base of fitness and speed that's much more structured and noticeable than if you simply ride for long stretches without increasing your aerobic and mitochondial capacity. When I began doing intervals, my coach had me doing 2 10-minute intervals with a 5 minute rest during a 1 hour workout; now I'm doing 2 20-minute tempo intervals (even higher on the exertion scale) with a 5 minute rest during a 90 minute workout and some fast-cadence exercises afterwards. The rest is for endurance and putting the miles in.

Can't endorse intervals highly enough.

[nomummytummy]

[QUOTE=sassyc;256522

What kinds of workouts should I do to increase my speed?
)[/QUOTE]


Spin classes- can't recommend them highly enough!

[Beane]

So i keep hearing about intervals too. But usually it's in a magazine and they say things like 20 mins at 80% LT... and there's all these mysterious acronyms. Or they say to check your power meter, etc. How do I find out all these various stats about my biking? Is there some simple method for those of us without power meters or workout expertise?

thanks!

[BarbaraAlys]

I did a program called Body for Life, on and off for the last few years (more off than on, I'm afraid...still carrying around a ton of extra fat!) and that program includes a form of interval training. Rather than looking for numbers to hit, however, it rated intervals on your perceived effort.

The way it was explained, think of energy expenditure on a scale of 1 to 10, where one is the effort used to sit on the couch doing nothing, five is the effort it takes for you to carry a bag of groceries into the house and 10 is the point where you absolutely know that if you continue for one second more you are going to puke up all your internal organs (okay, that is an exaggeration, but you get the idea). So, the goal of this particular HIIT was to spend 20 minutes cycling through those intensity levels. First a warm up of 2 minutes at a 5, then one minute at a 6, one minute at a 7, one minute at an 8 and one minute at a 9, then drop down to the 6 and repeat that pattern four times, this gets you to 18 minutes of work out. Minute 19 you are shooting for a 10....all out heart stomping lung exploding gut wrenching 10 (YOUR 10...not anyone elses. Maybe on a tread mill that happens for you at 10mph, maybe at 4mph....what ever as long as you are reallly putting out the effort.) After the 19th minute go back down to a 5 or 4 and cool down.

Now, I've been contemplating how to translate this into a cycling work out, actually out on the road, and the best i can think of is to find a route that gives you variety so you can shoot for these kinds of cycles. It really isn't about actual power expended, but about using the up and down in intensities to slowly increase your strength.

I'm sure I've just muddled that up a bit...but I hope it helps some.

BarbaraAlys

[Beane]

yeah, it does help. that's what I thought-- that it was just perceived effort. but i mean, it seems kind of weird to think about it. I'm pretty sure that I naturally do intervals when riding. E.g. ride hard until tired, rest a little, then ride hard some more, etc. But I suppose that's not exactly intervals... ah well, something to plan on learning and working on next year.

[aicabsolut]

Yeah, diet in the offseason when you are still working on building basic endurance and strength. Also, eat plenty of food on the bike, pay attention to carbs pre-ride and carbs/protein post-ride, and then for everything else you can watch your calories. When I'm doing these long training rides, I have a hard time not dropping too much weight and losing strength/power. Just keep riding the bike, and you'll be fine.

When the spring rolls around and you want to really kick up your speed, ride with people faster than you (but not THAT much faster). Be prepared to get back by yourself potentially (depending on your group) and to swallow your pride. Really, you'll push yourself well beyond your comfort level. I rode with some new groups this summer that cruised at speeds that used to be my "sprints"! I had to learn to sit in and keep up. It was so hard, but I learned a lot and improved more than I had in months of riding with people of the same fitness and experience levels.

Racing is fun, and really collegiate teams are full of people of all sorts of skill levels. There are a bunch of categories for collegiate racing, though only 2 for women. Still, the women's Bs are a great place to start (better than the regular Cat4 IMO). When you join the team, talk to your teammates and pick their brains about racing and training. Don't worry so much about turning yourself into a "racer" before you join the team. Just keep plugging away at your fitness goals, find some nice people to ride with who will challenge you, and have fun!