Improve My Bike!

without knowing anything else about you, my advice would be in short: ride more, and ride harder.

you need to be getting in more time, with the pseeds you are going, simply riding more will help.

3x a week min, and 5 or 6 would be even better.

one ride should include some intervals that are harder than race pace, 3-10 min faster than race pace done multiple times (try to get this in the range of 20 min spent at this level now, 2x10 min, 4x5, 10x2 etc, and work this up to 40 min spent there as your training progresses.

have one day with tempo work. after you warm up, ride in a hard but not killer zone (google tempo for more info), do blocks of 20-40 min here, it shuld be steady, and a bit hard but not leaving you dead.

if you have the time ad in a longer ride, do some of this ride harder.

any more riding outside of these you can do will help a ton.

its not an overnight process but the more harder riding you can start doing the faste things will come along. if you ad volume on top of the intensity you will start to see some great things happen.

for wht its worth, when i start 3 years ago i help 17.3 for my first sprint, i can now sit over 25 on flater courses.

Thanks for the help..you said you can sit on 25 mph, what type of bike do you ride? Can you do that on any bike or does your bike really help you out with staying that speed?

i'm on a low end tri frame and race wheels.

but as long as i the bike fits it should not be a huge issue (so long as aerobars are being used).

i've had two of my bettter bike splits on a road bike with clip ons.

that said, race splits can jump all over the place depending on weather, where the timing mats were placed, how accurate the courses are, etc.




from a training standpoint, the more and the harder you ride the better off you will be to an extent. listen to your body, and push it as much as it will allow without effecting the next workout, and you will get faster.

having it be your weak link should be the motivation on its own to get better and do more training in that sport.

Ride more, ride more and make sure your bike fits. The people on here who have these incredible speeds is because they ride and they ride a lot. The bike helps, but not as much as you are hoping. If your bike fits, which you really need to ensure, because a bad fit can cause other issues, then ride as much as you can.

A small tip, Ride with someone who is better than you. It mentally helps you to push harder and gives you more motivation. So when you are dying out and think you dont have it left in you, they can push you.

That hurts! I saw a guy on a fixie at the sprint I did last weekend. I think the engine has more to do with performance than the wheels =p

Just wanted to add that you may want to make use of a trainer even if the weather is good, depending on the area where you live.
If you are constantly stopping for traffic lights, stop signs or other people, you will get more out of a good trainer ride, because you aren't going to be resting every few minutes.
I was stuck at a very slow speed for a long time because I used to live in the Chicago area, and it was impossible to actually get going and keep going, so I was (not consciously) training my legs to rest every few minutes. In a race, you are pedaling the entire time. So in that sense, it might be better to do a couple outdoor rides per week, and a couple trainer rides, just to practice pedaling constantly for a certain amount of time. You could do 5 minutes hard, one minute easy and then keep working your way up until you can do an hour straight without resting.

to quote Lance: It's not about the bike

You are way overthinking things. Just go ride as much as you can, then ride some more. If you are worrying about what you lose at stop lights, you aren't riding far enough. Buy a road bike and start riding with a group. Don't be afraid to easy pedal and socialize with the pack and don't be afraid to try to chase down a break (or even start one yourself). Don't worry about speed right now, it will come with time.

What you need to do right now is fall in love with cycling....and nobody falls in love with the trainer. If you can ride outside, ride outside. If you can't, but you NEED to ride, hit the trainer

Edited by VO2Matt 2009-06-22 9:09 AM

X2 on pretty much what everyone said already.  If you want to get better, based on where you are right now, I think riding about 100 miles a week split into a 3 20 milers and a 40 mile longer ride once a week would probably work, but it's hard to tell anything based on the little bit of information you've provided.

If you want to get better, find something (anything) that motivates you to work at it.  Otherwsie, you won't (get better, that is).
 



Ride more.  Ride harder.  Recover when necessary.  Repeat ad nauseum.




No.  Relatively little has to do with the bike you ride.




Ride as much as possible, regardless.  If the trainer allows you to ride more, use it no matter what the weather.  I use mine year-round.

Thanks for all the hep! I'm ready and motivated!

Volume 1st, then add sprinkling of HARD speedwork on hills/trainer. But volume is the single most important thing for tri-distance cycling for most, especially if you're not FOP.

How long are your long rides? Most front-MOP cyclists round here in SoCal are doing 2-3 hr long rides routinely on the weekend in serious mountain territory. FOPers will be well over 3hrs, if not 4-6 every week. You can build to this volume very quickly on the bike since there's no pounding. If you're not doing this yet, don't even bother with speedwork.

If you do have this sort of volume, add at least one hard sprint session per week. Almost doesn't matter what they are , but shoot for 30-45 mins of HARD effort. A 90% effort on a big hill is great for this. Remember though, this is secondary to volume - you need to long rides and total miles first before this speedy stuff will make a significant difference.

-1

You can add hard work on the bike much earlier than you can on the run.  Long before you are 'routinely' riding 4-6 hour long rides every week.

"You can add hard work on the bike much earlier than you can on the run. Long before you are 'routinely' riding 4-6 hour long rides every week."

agreed.
i see people riding in zn2 ALL the time. sure you will get faster slowly. but unlike running, you have no impact to worry about. if you are on a bit more restricted schedule, riding harder is by FAR the best bang for your buck.

if you have a set amount of hours to ride a week, (lets say 5-8 hours total), and you tool around in zn2, vs pushing a big part of that, you tell me who is going to get faster quicker.

my single largest jump in bike speed came about after i backed off the just riding more, and added in more and more harder work, lots of tempo, one solid threshold workout, and a lot more hills. it took a week or two to totally get used to riding harder almost all the time, but i saw HUGE gains in both bike speed and my ability to run off the bike.

To a point. I agree that riding more will be the most beneficial thing BY FAR, but even Lance spent more time in the wind tunnel in search of "the s**t that kills" to make him go fast.

The good news is that if you're hanging out at 16-17mph small changes in your training will pay off big. If you're a strong swimmer and/or runner, you clearly have the heart/lungs/legs to ride, but what a lot of people lack is efficiency and the ability to hold a tempo. How's your cadence when you feel your legs tire out? I'm guessing it's way too low. Try to keep the pedals turning at 90-100 RPM and I bet you'll be faster AND have fresher legs come run time.

If you really want to get analytical about it, get a power meter and learn how to build your bike training around it. There's probably no single purchase that will help you work on the engine more than a power meter. Back when I raced road it was the best bike-related purchase I ever made, and now that I'm fully addicted to tri I'll be buying a Quarq for my tri bike soon. The one gigantic caveat to this is that you NEED to learn how to use the data it gives you, or have a personal coach. If you don't really know what the numbers are telling you, then it's just a really, really expensive speedometer.

As for the fancy bikes, 90+ % of the speed improvement I got with my P2C wasn't from the fancy aero tubing--it was from a tri-specific geometry that fit me well so I could get into a good aero position. Do this right and you'll add 2-4mph, no kidding. The problem is, though, that you have to be smart about it and not put yourself into a position that's way aero but excruciatingly painful for you--you'll be aero but your power output will drop, negating all the fancy bike savings.

The aero helmets and race wheels do make you faster. Period. Do they make you anywhere near as fast as good training? NOOOO. Do they give the same speed improvement as a good aero position? Absolutely not. But if you're going to upgrade stuff, go for the helmet as it's the best aerodynamic bang for the buck, then save for some race day wheels. Because while wheels and helmets and things offer much less benefit than lots of training, it can be a fun reward to yourself--or just plain fun--to go and buy a pair of Zipps or a nice aero helmet. Personally I'm annoyed by people who think you need to reach a certain level to buy nice equipment--all you really need is the money. What is important, though, is the perspective, and understanding that there's really no "magic bullet" piece of equipment you can buy that will take your speed on the bike split from 17mph to 24. The fancy gear will shave seconds or a minute here and there, though.

This is where a power meter comes in very handy IMHO. I remember rides where I was doing 1-minute intervals and gasping profanities at my powertap because it kept telling me I wasn't at my target power for the interval. It definitely keeps you working when you need to work, and resting when you need to rest.

I think all the folks who say to just "go fast from the get-go" have the right idea, but probably are fairly strong riders already.

Without a decent base mileage, you simply won't be able to push hard for long at all on your bike intervals, making them much lower yield.  When you have a good solid base, you'll be able to go HARD for 20-40 minutes at a time, broken up in intervals. If you're only riding 1-1.5 hours for your longest ride per week at an easy pace, there's no way you'd be able to do that. The base enables the hard efforts.

Interestingly, riding hard all the time is not the solution as well. Riding hard definitely has it's place in improving your fast twitch and lactate tolerance, but far more important for most amateur riders and especially low-volume triathletes is your muscular aerobic efficiency which is far better trained by long-distance riding at a lower intensity.

I saw this phenomena in practice in the past 3 months, where a guy slower than me on the bike went out and did much longer rides than me on the weekends. (Pushing 100 uber-hilly miles). We did similar weekday bike intervals, and I go HARD on my intervals, but my weekend long rides were only 50-60ish on average. That guy is crushing me on the bike now, and it's definitely NOT because he did many more or faster sprints than I did. 

For sure, there are some cyclists who don't ever push it hard enough, and they need to HTFU, but I'd bet for most triathletes, even AG placers, volume on the bike is still far more important than overall speed/intensity. 

Methinks that your training should include some time with Coach Troy.

Man I love to hate that guy.  He has made a *lot* of difference in my fitness, though.