No matter what your performance goals are just about everyone can benefit from shorter hard workouts. You don’t need to ride 2 hours every day to get faster but you do need to ride fast during training to be faster for racing. With that in mind here are a few workouts that should be added to your weekly riding that will make you a faster rider. Two to three shorter faster rides per week added to a longer ride will help everyone.
Below is a sample of workouts that you can do on the trainer or on the road. If you have any questions about the workouts listed, or ideas for additional ones, please contact bike@swimfasttrifast.com.
Workout 1 - Testing
Workout 2
Workout 3
Workout 4
Workout 5
Long Course Testing
Workout 1 – Testing ~ 1 Hour
Find a place that you can ride uninterrupted for about 40 minutes straight. Island Lake State park would be a great place but be careful to adhere to the traffic laws. There are a few stop signs that should not be ignored. Other suggestions would include Willow Metro park located Downriver and Stony Creek in Shelby where you can ride loops. You should be looking for something relatively flat.
- Warm Up
- 10 minutes of riding easy to moderate to get legs moving
- 5 minutes of brisk riding to get heart rate up.
- Main Set
- 20 minutes as hard as you can go finishing as strong as you started.
- 2 minutes easy to moderate pace, then 20 minutes as hard as you can go again.
- Cool Down
- 15 to 20 minutes of easy riding
- Warm Up
- 10 minutes of riding easy to moderate to get legs moving
- 5 minutes of brisk riding to get heart rate up.
- Main Set
- 3X8 minutes at 95 to 100% of your testing speed with 3
minutes easy rest between the intervals. - Cool Down
- 15 to 20 minutes of easy riding
- Warm Up
- 10 minutes of riding easy to moderate to get legs moving
- 5 minutes of brisk riding to get heart rate up.
- Main Set
- 2X15 minutes at 95 to 100% of your testing speed with 5 minutes easy rest between the intervals.
- Cool Down
- 15 to 20 minutes of easy riding
- Warm Up
- 10 minutes of riding easy to moderate to get legs moving
- 5 minutes of brisk riding to get heart rate up.
- Main Set
- 2X20 minutes at 95 to 100% of your testing speed with 5 minutes easy rest between the intervals.
- Cool Down
- 15 to 20 minutes of easy riding
- Warm Up
- 10 minutes of riding easy to moderate to get legs moving
- 5 minutes of brisk riding to get heart rate up.
- Main Set
- 20 minutes at 95 to 100% of your testing speed, 2X20 minutes at 90% of your testing speed.
- If you would like to incorporate this into your long ride then finish out the ride at 80 to 85% of your testing speed.
- Cool Down
- 15 to 20 minutes of easy riding
Take the average speed and Heart rate at the 42 minute mark (yes, average in the easy 2 minutes) If you have a power meter then take the average power at the 42 minute mark. This will set up the speed of your training zones for the following workouts. Use Heart Rate as a reference and adjust speed when going up/down hills or into/with wind.
These workouts should be done on a fairly uninterrupted road. If you have to stop for lights just continue with the interval from where you left off.
Workout 2 ~ 1 Hour
Workout 3 ~ 1 Hour
Workout 4 ~ 1.25 Hour
Workout 5 – A little longer workout ~ 1.5 Hour
Long Course Testing ~ 4 hours
If you want to know how hard to ride for a long course triathlon (Half Ironman), this is how I do it. Using the testing speed from your previous workouts to perform the following test:
45 minute run at your long run pace.
Transition to bike no longer than 5 minutes.
2:30:00 bike at 85 to 90% of your bike testing speed.
Transition back to run no longer than 5 minutes.
45 minute run at your long run pace – 15 seconds/per mile
faster and/or 10 bpm higher heart rate.
If you can’t make your second run faster than the first, one of
several things could be the issue.
You are biking too aggressive for your current ability.
You are not taking in adequate nutrition.
Your run pacing is too aggressive.
You are having a bad day.
If you are able to run faster on the second run with no issues then you may be strong enough to race at that effort. Test again 2 or 3 weeks later and try a little harder and see what happens. Don’t worry about blowing up at while practicing pacing, that’s how we learn.