11 Ways To Improve Your Average Speed On A Road Bike

do you know your average speed when you ride now some of us will know off by heart and be striving to improve it and for good reason because it's a good way to measure your progress and your performance so in this video i'm going to run you through some tips and some tricks so that you can squeeze out a few more kbhs yep a few more kilometers per hour [Music] now before we dive into it we've got to remember there are also nowadays a lot of ways that you can measure your performance and fitness that are more accurate say for example a power meter but speed is still really good too we've got to remember though that there are a lot of variables the weather the traffic the road servers etc you kind of get the idea but you can use these in your favor too yep we can bit a little bit sneaky anyway keep out between us right let's get back to it let's start off with the most important one our fitness now when it comes to average speed a lot of us will tend to do the same loop and repeat the effort and expect to get quicker which for a time this might work but after a while we'll stop improving and our training will come to a plateau now if you're one of these people i'll let you in on a secret variety is not only the spice of life it's also the spice of training at least when we're talking about cycling now this can mean doing longer rides it can mean doing slower rides but it could also mean going much much harder and then in between going a lot easier now let you in just some more secrets now one thing to remember when you're doing your hard intervals is that you can do it in different lengths and your fitness will change on the different length of effort that you do for example if you do a really hard short blast you'll get a different effect on your fitness than if you did some longer harder intervals the thing to remember is not to mix up the times of those intervals in the same ride when it comes to variety you want to mix up the intervals on different days you get my drift nice do them in different places too now if you're doing your intervals on a climb it's going to improve your ability to climb and then do them on the flat and it's going to improve your ability to yes you guessed it right on the flat one thing to remember though is start off slow maybe add one interval session in the week and then build up from there be warned though you can actually do too much intensity training and that becomes bad for you so listen to your body if you're tired take it easy now as well as thinking of training in terms of how hard we're going we can also think about how fast we are pedaling our cadence and improve that and it's actually really going to help our cycling now the good news is when we first get into cycling we actually tend to be quite efficient at pedaling but a lot of us tend to start and get weighed down with a really big and heavy gear now this is not because we want to pedal slow it's because we're not using our gears efficiently now if we don't use our gears efficiently we can wear out our legs increase the fatigue and then when we come to the end of the ride well our speed is going to be hampered yes something we definitely don't want the thing to remember is try to use your gears to help you ride the canes that you feel comfortable with now just confuse you why don't you try intervals that switch up that cadence for example slip it in a really big heavy gear and then pedal at a really slow camera say 50 to 60 rpm then switch it up and try and pedal at a really uncomfortably fast cadence say 120 rpm this will all help your ability to ride faster [Music] now moving on nicely from cadence and pedaling we come to pacing now whatever route or distance you decide to do pace it correctly and you're going to get the best average speed that you can do now a lot of us tend to start out way too fast go out the blocks and use all our energy up at the first hurdle and then when it comes to the end of the ride well we've just got no energy to finish off the rise strongly so what we want to try and do is pace our ride towards a negative split now what i mean by that is that starting off at a comfortable speed that you can maintain for the longevity of the ride and then as you get over the halfway point you can start to increase that speed and then when you finish off the ride you're thinning to off strongly getting all the energy out you possibly can thus having a negative split and a good average speed got it yes however that's not always the fastest way to do your ride if for example you've got a flat root and you've got no wind you can technically ride at the same effort the whole way around but this isn't always the case for every ride and so is a good rule of thumb is to go hard on the harder bits say on the climbs and into a headwind and then it go that little bit easier on the easy bits thus getting some recovery you got that sheep yeah i think i think he's got that [Music] also think about where you can go faster less effort for example if you can go really hard at the top of a climb and then you can use that speed on the descent and same goes for when you hit the bottom of the punchy short climb going hard into it carries the speed into the climb too and you'll find that your speed actually starts to rocket but the thing to remember is be smart with your pedaling and your energy no point smashing it into a junction and then having to stop wasting all that energy so moral of the story ride smart now we've covered some really important aspects at the top of this video but one thing not to overlook and something that will make a drastic difference to your average speed is to be properly fueled fueling now you would expect to drive a car really quickly without putting a lot of fuel in it would you so make sure a couple hours before you set out on your ride you have a good amount of slow releasing carbohydrates say in the morning you're looking for a breakfast i tend to go for something like a porridge or an overnight oats now this gives you slow releasing energy the whole way through your ride all right add some blueberries in as well makes it a lot better if you're doing a ride that is in excess of 90 minutes you need to think about fueling on the bike now sports nutrition products are designed to be eaten on the bike they're easily digested and they give a good release of energy you want to look to have around 60 grams of carbohydrate every hour now you also need to think about the strategy and when you fuel say a bar at the beginning and throughout the middle of your ride and then you can move to gels for that faster release of energy closer to the end of your ride now it doesn't matter how you take those carbohydrates but the more you have the good fueling and the better you fuel you'll be able to go faster and for longer and potentially go even further too so key point keep fuel now top tip when you're going for a fast average speed is choose your route very carefully if you go for a hilly route and one that's covered and littered with junctions and red lights well this is going to eat into your precious average speed so my advice is go for a fast flat room that way you'll smash your average speed now if you're looking for a route and you're wondering about the elevation a top tip is to get on an app like camus that way you can design your route and also find out how much elevation it has within it too oh no that's my route in the dolomites [Music] now if you're an avid cyclist it's highly likely that you would have come across the word aerodynamics to be more aero to cut through the air quicker to fight against the force that is slowing our cyclists down now has to be said the more aero you get the faster you can go for the same effort but aerodynamics actually gets quite a bad rap because a lot of people think it's a byword for really expensive tech but seemingly you can actually make a lot of things more aero for example your socks you wear or rear derailleurs but actually some of the biggest aerodynamic gains can be made for free just changing up our cycling position can dramatically help our aerodynamic efficiency for example lowering our head rolling in our shoulders and flattening our back can really improve our aerodynamics ride like a bullet or with a hunched back you're really gonna find it help now as we said it can be quite hard to ride like this for a longer period of time but with a good amount of practice it really does get easier whoa and you feel the speed now moving on from body position we can also increase our aerodynamic efficiency by the kit we wear now as we said that's why cyclists ride in lycra not only is it good to cycling and it's comfortable but it's also aerodynamic too now we can spend a lot of time a lot of money on kids itself out in the best and most aerodynamic kit possible but to be honest a good set of lycra jersey and well fitted jersey and a well fitted pair of shorts will get you a long way now last bit of tech which will increase your speed and won't break the bank is looking at your rolling resistance which is the next biggest force that our cyclists are fighting against now improving our rolling resistance we'll see our speed get that bit faster now we have a load of different videos on our tech channel that go into depth and shows you what best tyres and inner tube combination are the fastest so make sure you check those out now remember though no matter what bike you get a fast bike is a well maintained bike make sure you lube it correctly make sure you look after it after all that is also going to make a big difference now i hope you enjoyed this video if you have then let us know in the comment section below and why not give it a big thumbs up and let me know if you've improved your average speed by watching this video and i'll see you in the next one right it's about time i say goodbye ciao

Channel: Global Cycling Network

Views: 471,386

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Id: HFYXHN6UiU8

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2022