hobkirk, Congrats on your recovery and commitment to getting fit and strong. There have been many good suggestions on how to raise your average speed. I also think some are a little misdirected in that the recommendation is not necessarily focused on your goal but rather on what worked for others.

I believe your question is how “you” can raise your average speed for a 1 hr ride over your current rate. To raise your average speed in the context of your question I believe you will need to accomplish several things to maximize the result. First and foremost you need to raise your work threshold to be able to sustain the necessary watts for 1 hr or longer to average 20 mph. In order to do that your training needs to address endurance and strength improvements. You can also realize improvements by being more aero and efficient in your riding.

Using an online calculator riding a road bike with 23 mm tires, with a rider at 225lbs, and average speed on flat land at 17.0mph it takes 158 watts to ride:
17.0 mph with hands on “tops”
17.7 mph with hands on hoods
19.0 mph with hands in drops
20.5 mph riding in aero bars

Riding the same bike at 225lbs and at 241 watts will result in:
20.0 mph with hands on tops
20.9 mph with hands on hoods
22.6 mph with hands in drops
24.3 mph riding in aero bars

As you can see position on the bike is very important. Guys who do TT’s are very concerned about position. Do you wear loose fitting clothes? Anything flapping steals watts due to increased drag. Tire pressure can also take watts from your effort.

In order to increase your 1 hr watt average you need to build endurance and strength. I don’t believe doing short maximum effort intervals will bring easy results, rather you should do “over/under” intervals that will raise your lactate threshold which is the ability of the body to do sustained hard work. Those intervals could be 5 minutes at 22 mph then 5 minutes at 17 mph times several sets. It might be hard at first to do 5 minutes at 22+ mph, so do 3 minute intervals and increase the interval time when able. Doing those style intervals would require a recovery at 1 to 1. The idea is to be able to go longer and longer while putting out more power than the goal effort. The other component to increase the average speed is to do Z3 HR rides at a constant pace for longer intervals up to 1.5 hrs. During those intervals it is a good opportunity to work on being in the drops for longer and longer amounts of time. When you hit a hill and the speed drops is the time you can get out of the drops to relax and rest the arms and hands. The longer Z3 interval will build up your system to process fat, food calories and energy stored in your blood and organs to supply a consistent energy source. Over time as you do the over/under intervals your Z3 speed will increase. Riding @ Z3 is work and at first there will be muscles crying for a break, keep in mind this is work and they need to obey. Your ability to ride @ Z3 HR will increase and you will be able to creep the HR up to upper Z3 low/ Z4 at times. When you can ride 1hr at that rate you will see big improvements in average speed.

Keep in mind this is a TT type effort to get the average speed up and not a road race where you need to be prepared to go way deep in the pain cave then recover only to do it again and again. TT’ers work steady and even during their efforts/races. They do not attack hills then coast down the back side to recover from the hard effort.

Allegheny Jet,

Excellent post!! I've learned a lot reading your thorough and well thought out replies.

I plan to implement the over/under and Z3 HR training into my rides. Personally speaking, I've been riding to easy lately, content on sustained Z2 efforts. Pushing harder and over longer distances is painful, it's not easy work where I often look for excuses to avoid it.

Thanks again for your post!!

Hi,

You can always train hard or you can take it easier and
put the miles in, the latter will take longer in the saddle,
and more hours per week, but either way you will get
there eventually if the speed you want to go at is
reasonably within your compass.

Personally I go for the mileage option and never try
very hard, I learned that from my running, just rack
up the weekly mileage to be overall fitter / faster.

The take it easy relatively high mileage option also
means you will end up burning more calories then
shorter, high intensity, bursty interval type training.

I personally think the latter style of training is OK for
running for short sessions for older duffers, but the
magic of a bike for the older is you can do it for
hours each day, you can't running or swimming.

rgds, sreten.

It's true that the old pros used to say "distance builds speed". But those guys spent at least 20 hours per week on the bike, racking up 2000 miles per month in training. And in season, they raced three or four times a week, going very hard. I have seen my fitness and speed increase significantly when doing lots of long, steady distance, on tours for example. But that involves five or six hour days, five or six days a week. Most people don't have the time.

Electric motor. If you hide the wires and are discreet about where you put the battery, you may get away with it for a long time

Congrats on your recovery and kudos for getting right back out to ride!

Hi,

I don't disagree. I used to do a lot of running, always pushing hard.
A younger chap joined the company and wanted to get into running.
He was keen enough to want to run every other day, or thereabouts.

So I went out with him on the next seven or so runs, showing him
my routes and necessarily I hardly broke sweat figuratively speaking
doing the mileage with a new runner, younger but still somewhat slow.

Thing is, afterwards, the first time I went out on my own, pushing
hard on one of of my routes, I relatively slaughtered my best time,
I've changed my attitude ever since.

Just doing the mileage is IMO more important than how fast
you do it. Mess around with cadence, spin and mash up hills,
hammer it occasionally, but generally IMO for a lot of the
time just make comfortable good progress, and do as
many miles as you can fit into your timetable.

rgds, sreten.

OP here - Responding to "build your base" suggestions -

I feel like I've done the big miles with little results.

• Big Miles
  • 4,700 miles in my first year (I started in June, so that's 7 months)
  • I did almost 6,ooo miles the next year (prostate cancer cut me down at the end of the year)
  • I might have logged 6,000 miles last year if it hadn't been for breast cancer.
  • This year I am varying the length of my rides but including long rides (64 ten days ago at 14 MPH, 63 in 3 days, numerous 40-45 mile rides at about 15 MPH). And I am trying to alternate ride days with rest days.
• Little Results
  • I did two centuries in month 4 of my first year - 2 different routes, 2 different bikes, 8 days apart - both were 15.3 MPH average - both were hard efforts!
  • Today I anticipate I may (!) be able to duplicate one of those centuries at the same speed (after a LOT of additional miles)

In other words, I don't think more miles is a likely solution.

When I was running, I did hard miles (only runs over 12 miles would average 8 minutes a mile). Most miles were between 6:30 and 7:30 which felt good to me. I only did about 30-35 miles a week except when I was ramping up for a marathon (I think I hit 70 miles once).

Cadence

I just disagree with you cadence aficionados. I don't have any problem whatsoever because my W-I-D-E gearing causes a 10% change in cadence when I shift. Maybe I will change my opinion some day, but I just have not observed it causing me any problem whatsoever. And I've ridden 11-27 and 12-28 cassettes, I've ridden compact cranks, and my original triple was 50/39/30.

Mileage isn't you problem with those numbers. I think that some intervals and what I call hill attacks would be the best bet, I am no one to act like an expert. Allegheny Jet's reply has some good thoughts, try his advice and maybe look into using the 50+ Racing Forum for training tips that will allow you to increase your pace and speed. Not as a racing program but they helped me when I asked about just establishing a base to return to cycling. Hope you get things up to your standards, you are to be admired after two cancer battles. Respect!

Bill

OP - just curious, let's say you are getting dropped by a faster group, what part of you is breaking down when that happens? Is it your heart (chest pounding, HR at redline, world compressing into a tunnel), your lungs (gasping for breath, tongue hanging off your chin, blowing like a narwhal), your legs (muscles burning, legs locking up, limbs won't respond to the go command - and which muscles?), or your will (which is unlikely, for you)? That might also be a useful clue.

Hi,

It does beg the question can you go faster by radically
changing the way you ride your bike ? I don't think so.

Whilst some waffle on about circles and the like, your nervous
system is a lot more adaptive and subtle than you might think.

For regular riding it will adapt to use your muscles in the most
efficient way possible, and a sure sign of the process is the side
effect where you gain conscious control of muscles you could not
control before, but that conscious control has no useful benefit
AFAICT, except perhaps for stretching / relaxing type stuff.

The only way of going faster on a bike overall is a lower,
more stretched, more aerodynamic, riding position.

Or :

Upgrading the engine is the obvious path for speed,
but unfortunately that takes the most hard work.

rgds, sreten.

What a depressing (and EXCELLENT) question. Now I am forced to think about the answer.

Yesterday there was a specific example where I tried but failed to catch the leader on a flat stretch about 2-3 miles after a group rest stop. I reeled in a dozen riders but I simply could not match the first three. FWIW, this was a group ride, nobody was racing (although at this time I was pushing hard), and the riders I couldn't catch are always faster than me. And hills kill me, of course - on any ascent even children on tricycles pass me!

It's my legs. Over about a mile, my HR bumped 5-6 beats, I raised my cadence about 5 RPM, and increased my speed from around 17 MPH to 22 MPH (I examined the data on Ride with GPS). No gasping. But my legs simply could not continue to exert sufficient power.

Which reminds me that last year I did a racing clinic to improve my bike skills. As an aside, I was the only fat person and I was the only one over about 40 years old. In the "start" exercise, I was the fastest accelerating and clipping in, but a good chunk of that was my working harder. In the sprint exercise (approx. .5 mile, flat, little headwind), my best lead out was 25 MPH! My breathing was hurting but me legs were screaming. Only 25 MPH - and I was working very, very hard. I think my "sprint" was 27 or 28. Each of us did about 4-5 lead outs and sprints. My legs were jelly afterwards. The most painful parts were the tops of my thighs.

If your legs are giving out before your heart/lungs, pedal a lower gear at a higher cadence. If your heart/lungs are giving out before your legs, pedal a higher gear at a lower cadence. That's sort of an expedient thing to try in the short term, like while on the ride.

But it sounds like the real thing to do is to build up your legs.

I would do the intervals mentioned above, alternating hammering and recovery.

Also I would go into the weight room and work on the muscles that jellify first, with heavy weights (meaning you can only do 8 or 10 reps). Leg extensions might be a good start. The idea is that if at 30 mph on the bike that muscle has to exert X force repeatedly, if X is 80% of the max the muscle can do, then its going to give out sooner, but if X is only 40% of the max, then the muscle can keep it up for longer. I'm sure there is a scientific explanation for this, which I'd be interested to know someday . . .

The other thing you might try, and don't laugh at this, is going to a spin class at the gym. There is a whole thread here on spinning, I think stapfam started it. Various pros and cons. For me, because the spin bike can be set to as much resistance as desired; because there are no stop signs, traffic, or road hazards to distract you or interrupt your hammering; and because there is an instructor and other people driving you to pedal harder - I can get a hell of a workout in just 45 min on the spin bike. The trick for me is that when the class is out of the saddle "running" and "bouncing" (ugh) I am usually in the saddle, with high resistance, pushing as hard as I can sustain. It is, come to think of it, sort of like circular weight training.

The last thing I can think of is, are you using the whole stroke? I assume you are using clipless pedals. Are you simply pushing down on the pedal? Or do you also pull back, pull up, push forward? When you are riding, try not pushing down - only pull up - you'll see that gives you some power. Not as much as pushing down, maybe only 20% as much. But now suppose you learn to pull up with one leg while pushing down with the other. You've just increased your power by +20%. Which is a lot! Especially on a hill. Your "pulling up" muscles will get exhausted very quickly at first, maybe in just four or five revolutions. So keep using them on rides, and in the weight room, and on the spin bike, and they will get stronger. On long rides sometimes I do four strokes concentrating on pushing down, four pull back, four pulling up, four pushing forward, etc. People also do single-leg pedaling drills for this purpose too. Then, when I am trying to ride fast and the legs are starting to hurt and can't push down hard enough, I remember (sometimes) to switch on the rest of the stroke and it feels like a turbocharger. Okay, a little turbocharger.

I'm sure there are more specific ways to train for speed depending on the particular kind of speed you are trying to produce. A 200 meter anaerobic sprint will need different training than a one hour time trial, and a ten minute burst of hammering will need different training too. I'm not knowledgeable about exactly what training is ideal for which of those - the road racers and track riders here will know.

Oh, I should point out that riding a mile at 22 mph is not exactly easy, that's about 300 watts (if in the drops) for 3-4 minutes, I daresay many 50+ riders can't do that (and especially not after a session of radiation, fer chrissakes). So it's not like you're starting from square one. But anyway, since your cardio seems capable of more, I'd say build up those legs. 17 mph is around 170 watts, so it makes sense to me that legs that are used to working at that pace would quail when suddenly told to work at 2X that pace, they're not used to it - but you can make them get used to it.

Your response to jyl indicates that you are mistaken about this. If it is your legs, rather than your cardiovascular system, that are limiting your speed then you have noticed it causing you a problem. Higher cadences, as he has pointed out, spare the legs at the expense of a higher HR. So you probably would see some benefit from training yourself to pedal a bit faster in a lower gear.

Wow! To respond to your interesting points:

1. I get the relationship between higher RPM and speed. I have not worked on it enough, but I start to float around 110 unless there's a lot of resistance (e.g., pushing on a descent to get over 40 MPH). On my last top speed effort I was able to reach 116 RPM. Last year at the end of the season I managed to reach 120. But that's demanding on my body and mind.
2. My speed intervals (I've done maybe 6 sets over the past two years) have been disappointing. 3 minutes "go" (21-23 MPH average) with 3 minute recovery. 4 or 5 repeats on a pretty flat course. I didn't notice any lasting effect. (I did, however, feel my hill intervals seemed to help.) The low speed at max effort was depressing.
3. I think my legs have a lot of power. I belonged to a gym for my first year. To get in good-enough shape to cycle. My leg strength was very good (I'd set the pins at around 80-90% of the machine limit). Also I was very good cranking from the start in the racing clinic.
4. I did do several spin classes when I belonged to the gym. It seemed like it might have helped some. I would have won every class if they measured success by the quantity of sweat produced. But alas, no gym now.
5. Pedal stroke - No, I don't pull up (in the racing clinic I asked and everybody else said they did). It doesn't seem to help me much. I have never read/heard about breaking the stroke into back and forward. And I have rarely done single pedaling. There are too many riders promoting this idea. I think I should listen.

And, per your subsequent response, I did not mean to imply that cranking it up to 22 (my peak in that mile) was easy. You say roughly double the watts? That sounds about right to me!

So, I will work on my pedal stroke, give intervals a serious try, and consider re-joining the gym. Losing weight is the most important issue, but that falls into a different category in my head. My focus in this thread was what to do beyond losing weight.

Thank you all for your responses.

Cadence

You are correct. My comment above was somewhat cavalier. The problem is I haven't worked on cadence enough and I usually get awkward over 102-104 on level ground, although I can sometimes reach 110-112 if I concentrate.

I have observed the direct relationship between RPM and HR - I simply cannot do high cadence on recovery rides since I equate "recovery" with Zone 1-2 HR.

The point I was trying to make is I personally do not find any problem when shifting causes my cadence to change by 10% (e.g., drop from 100 to 91) as opposed to a 5% drop (from 100 to 95). My average cadence on rides (checking my records for the last 20 assorted rides) varies from 81 to 91. I know some of you really like to keep your RPM as constant as you can (a consistent 83-87 range, or 95-100, or whatever), presumably because it works for you, it helps you stay in your "cooking" zone or it improves your mindset. But I've experimented (I have ridden with much tighter ratios) and I don't find it helps me in any way.

That said, I am perpetually experimenting and changing. (And asking questions.) Maybe in a year I will be extolling the virtues of 11-23 gear clusters.

Keep us informed! I'd like to hear how it goes, what works for you and what doesn't.

Ask, and you may receive more than you wanted.

So I listened. So I did some intervals. Painful. SLOW. So little difference between when I was busting my butt and when I was recovering. Perceived effort level was very high - gasping, can't wait for the 3 minutes to end. My main points observed are that I just don't go fast even when I am trying, I go almost as fast when cruising, and my cadence is about where I wanted it.

Original Thumbnail


Full-sized display (per Bikey Mikey below)


Note: My heart rate was elevated at least 10% (10 MG of Adderall 7 hours earlier). I usually don't take it on days I ride.

PS - I wish I knew how to make the graphic insert full sized.

Just click on the graph and - poof - it enlarges. Otherwise post it on a web site and link to it.

Note that the max HR recorded was 16bpm higher than your original post stated was the highest you had seen while riding.

You've tested for your LTHR. I'd be inclined to use that as a guide, and do some criss-cross intervals - those described by Allegheny Jet as "over/unders" but using your LTHR rather than speed as the reference point. So, three minutes at 90% of LTHR followed by two minutes at above LTHR - not as hard as you can go, but nearly - repeated twice for a ten minute interval. Then go very easy for six minutes to recover, and repeat. This will, over time, bump up the power you can produce at threshold. As you get fitter you can increase the severity of the interval by altering the proprtions of time you spend above and below LTHR.

But give yourself time to recover. A couple of interval sessions like this per week is going to be enough. The rest of the time, ride normally. This is supposed to be fun, after all.

...or, use image tags for the pic's address. In the example below, I put in an extra space between the open bracket and the code to disable said code.

[ IMG]https://www.bikeforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=317435&d=1368845723[ /IMG]

You don't build speed over night. It's a process. Your diet and recovery are also important so your body can build muscle properly. Training is reasonably complex so read up on all aspects of training. Realize that if you go from being able to ride at 15mph to 16mph that is a 6% (roughly) improvement. That's a pretty good improvement in itself and even that small improvement may take time and still be subtle enough to hardly know it has happened. Doing the kind of interval training that chasm54 and others have outlined here is not fun. It is seriously difficult and exhausting so it has to be interspersed with actually having fun or you'll burn out. Old geezers like myself don't have a lot of testosterone coursing through our bodies so building muscle is double slow. I'll never be objectively fast....but I train as hard as I can and still enjoy the experience simply because I like challenging myself. Best of luck on your quest.

This. And realise also that the 6% increase in speed requires a (roughly) 20% increase in power becasue of wind resistance. This is why building speed takes time, the amount of extra power high speeds require is disproportionate.

You are totally right. It was a shame that these intervals occurred on a day when I had speed coursing through my blood.

• My default is for my Garmin to automatically register a new "lap" every two miles, and I note my HR.
• When I am not on speed, I seldomly reach an average HR for a two mile "lap" over 135 and my max rarely reaches 150.
• So these results are definitely skewed by the drugs and not very useful for analysis.
• But I think the relative heart rates are right. My recovery rate is exaggerated since it takes at least a minute (my guess) to come down from the end of the interval.

But your major point, if I understand it, is a different type of interval. I have not tested my LTHR this year, but last year it was 145.

1. 3 minutes with an average HR of 130
2. 2 minutes with an average HR above 145
3. 3 minutes with an average HR of 130
4. 2 minutes with an average HR above 145

Questions:

1. Am I correct thinking that "average" HR is the correct term? Slight rises or descents make it hard for me (everyone?) to dial-in my HR at a consistent number
2. I should preceed these legs with a warm-up cruise and I should ramp it up toward the end. I.e., if my HR is 120 it will take a while to get it cranked up to 130.

And, FWIW, I won't be doing "intervals" more than once a week. My legs are still sore from yesterday! Hopefully they will be good for a Metric century tomorrow.

Thank you

Yes, it is not possible to hit a specific Hr and maintain it precisely. But in the suggested interval, regard the LTHR as the minimum for the "hard" part of the interval. In other words, do the three minutes at around 130 or slightly above, then do the two minutes without allowing your HR to drop below 145. Be prepared for the fact that there is a lag between making an effort and your HR catching up, so time the interval from when you start going at the right intensity, don't wait until your HR has climbed to start timing. You'll find with experience that you can judge the effort required, and become used to feeling "at this level of effort, I know my HR will come up above 145 within 30-45 seconds".

I hear what you say about the drugs. But drugs or not, we now know that your heart can physically beat more than 170 times per minute without you dropping dead.