Completed my first HIM.. poor bike performance

Congrats on finishing your first tri! And a HIM, to boot!

Ride lots and ride hard. As often as possible. Start now. There is no magic to endurance training. Work works.

I agree with JohnnyKay. Bike hard and bike often and be consistent. Try to ride 4+ times a week for at least an hr. Don't just doodle around on the bike....try to keep HR in Zone 2 or higher.

Thank you guys for your input. I will definitely try to bike more and harder.. what's the average speed I should able to maintain on my road bike ? In HIM I had an avg of 26 km/h in a relatively flat section and 15 km/h in the climb..

There are too many variables to give you an average speed target. Use things like effort, HR or power (if you have the latter two available to you). Beyond that, work on riding in a more aerodynamic position. If using a road bike, consider some 'shorty' aerobars and maybe a forward seat post. Or get used to riding for long times in the drops. That will help you go faster without gaining additional bike endurance. But from where you are today, it's mostly building that endurance. Just ride. Maybe find a group to ride with that has riders who will push you to hang onto the group.

Check out trainerroad.com

I have a pretty good endurance background but usually slack in the winter. I have been using their plan and have seen huge gains. If you have a bike trainer I would definitely look into it.

**I am not a paid spokesman for trainerroad. I just like their product.

I agree and disagree. I agree bike hard and bike often and be consistent. However, I don't consider Zone 2 biking hard. Generally you only get faster on the bike by doing consistent work above Zone 2. Now that said, when one first starts cycling, any consistent work will improve your speed; however, once you can ride 56 miles at 25km/hr, it is time to change your riding if your goal is to get faster at that distance. To get faster on the bike you have to raise your power output (commonly referenced as functional threshold power or FTP). The only real practical way to raise your FTP is efforts above your FTP usually done with intervals. Generally this is not done with zone 2 work on the bike. You should not apply the same training principals for run training for bike training. To boil it down into nontechnical terms you should have rides during your week that contain efforts that are so hard you could only maintain the effort for a few minutes....ride easy then ride extremely hard again. Hills are natural examples of this if you put some effort into getting up them quickly. There are some great post on BT, Slowtwitch and cycling sites like WeightWeenies that have some really detailed discussions about increasing your speed on the bike. Also some sites like Triathlete have 6-8 week bike focused plans for increasing speed. You will see these training plans don't contain a lot of zone 2 riding.

Good suggestions...the Sufferfest video's can (which can be used with trainer road) are also very good.