improving average speed
 

average or not, do i have to train to get faster or does it just naturally come the more im out riding?

tina

"It doesn't get any easier, you just get faster."

Or you could try aerobars. :innocent:

just ride, you figure out your body in time. It does get slightly easier. 3 years ago I could barely do a stretch that today I ride as just a warmup.

Yes.

No.

You can ride a hundred miles a week and not get any faster.

Get a book from the bookstore or library on bicycle training.

I personally like Chris Carmichael's, but any one will do.

The short answer is that if you just keep riding you will get a little bit faster and be able to ride a lot longer.

In other words, improved endurance is easy, but improved speed is not so easy.

If your goal is to get faster, you will have to train more seriously, that includes intervals/speedwork etc.

okay i think im in this boat.

goal is to get faster, but im not a serious rider. and i live in the flats.

ride harder

i like to dig my legs aka out of the saddle and put body weight on the pedals on the trails about every other mile of so. is that good?

The more you ride, the better you get. Not just from riding though. You start to pay more attention to things like peddling, cadence, fit, etc.. and make tweaks over time. I started doing this just to keep things interesting.

No.

Yes. As long as you're putting out the effort.

It depends on your starting point, and I'm assuming you're just starting out because of the nature of the question. After you reach a certain level, or you want faster improvement, you'll need some sort of training regimen. I'm still improving speed from just riding hard (I started about 4 years ago) so I haven't reached that level yet.

work on technique, ^^^what you're doing there isn't it. Realize where you are as far as your fitness goes, take a normal route you generally do and start setting goals. hammering doesn't do anything other than burn you out, especially if you're by yourself. Conditions also make a difference as well as your preparation. If you ride ride ride, remember to rest, I tend to be fastest after a full day of rest and preparing, and that is usually the day I use to judge where I am ability wise, but being slow and steady and finishing with a decent average is always good. Theres nothing wrong with being consistent. I tend to see improvements when riding with another solid rider, it pushes me to push harder. Sometimes riding alone can leave you unmotivated to really push you to your limit.

edit: you might just be slow for life....sucks

i mean i am setting myself up for making me work harder (maybe?)....like i have a route that i go out and ride which i think is pretty intense due to a few large hills out here in fair oaks, sac ...but i would set a time like maybe this time i can do it under two hours and maybe do it a few mins faster each time im out. but should i be concerned with lower back pains and recovering my legs?

Nothing wrong with standing up once in a while. It lets you use some different muscles and feels good. Generally lighter riders can ride more standing up. Whatever gets you up the hill fastest.

How many hours can you ride per-week?

My 2 or 3 75 minute rides during the week are very hard efforts that include 2 or 3 15-minute long intervals at max effort (~100% FTP). Sometimes it's referred to as 2x20's. I'm pretty torn up from those efforts and the intervals are quite unpleasant. I try to have a rest day between the workouts. On the weekend I try to do a 3-4 hour ride at 70-80% FTP and try to include climbing...might be a hard effort here or there up a climb, fartlek style.

If you can ride more than 6-7 hours a week, then you probably won't want to be doing such hard efforts every workout. For me, I found that doing what I just described gave me power gains faster than what I was using from "the time crunched cyclist" book.

I make sure to get enough sleep, and rest days to me are ultra important. I'm at peak form after about 5-7 days of little to no riding, so I just do a couple easy 20 milers the week of a big event or race.

If you join a bike club you end up riding faster. Many clubs seem to have rides for several types of cyclists from very fast, middling fast and casual. Many clubs also provide cycling advocacy at town/city and state level. My opinion is a club is worth supporting for that activity alone.

+1, good post.

Just got back from a ride, and I have a Firestone Double Jack in the system, so fair warning.

I have been biking a long time, and the speed thing has a lot to do with acceleration.

Maintaining speed is the product of getting to speed. I swear the biggest obstacle is getting the desired speed initially. I will try to explain.

You are cruising at 16. You want to bang 19 and hold it.

You increase the effort until you are hitting 19, but you took a while to do it. 19 is kicking your ass, and you start to drop back down.

You jam the pedals, get rockin' on 19 quick and hold on to that ***** for dear life. Maintaining it doesn't seem so bad.

I think the issue is not taking the step to jam the speed and hold. How many times have you rolled down some chimpy hill at 24, and held it for a long time on the flat afterward?

Anyway, this is half the battle IMO. Exponential is a word we love to hear when it comes to investing, but it is every cyclists worst nightmare when it comes to speed. I am not a wordy guy, but you got to bang the speed before you can maintain, and this is the hardest part.

That's pretty simple. You get faster by riding faster and stressing the systems which are slowing you down. 2x10-20 minute intervals at a threshold pace once then twice a week will do wonders with the other side of the equation being rest days (at least one a week) and weeks (one out of 4) so your body is fresh enough for you to ride hard. Do your hard days when you're freshest (if you took the weekend off, Monday is great). Use a comfortable non-fatiguing cadence that's likely to be somewhere between 80 and 100 RPM. Your problems are not being able to get enough oxygen to your muscles and process lactate fast enough, not strength of which little is required on a bike and trying to push a bigger gear is only going to limit how much you can do.

You don't need to be religious about it. If 2x10-20 minutes is too structured hard efforts on 3-7 mile stretches of road between convenient landmarks will do fine. If you miss a day it's not going to be the end of the world.

That's fine. You'll just be going faster than you would be when working just as hard up-hill which means the cooling breeze will be more refreshing.

Aerobars, Zipp Carbon wheels and lighter bottle cages is all it takes, ideally on a very expensive carbon frame. Now you'll be so embarrassed if you are not the fastest of the pack, so you will pedal like crazy to match your pace to the looks of your bike. Easy.

Like this? ;)
http://jmx.ls1howto.com/pics/cycling...2012_800px.jpg

My bottle cages are the feather in my cap.

pretty much the only reason I push myself harder. Can't have a nice bike and ride slow....not in these parts anyways.

You will progress for a while with just riding and then you'll hit a plateau.

Whaa???? Come on man, if you avoid hammering because it'll "burn you out", you've just doomed yourself to mediocrity or worse. Let's be real now - unless you've got godlike genetics, you've gotta hammer, and pretty damn hard and often, over a long period of time, to get better. That includes a fair amount of riding on fatigued legs. If you wait until you're "fresh" to hammer, you'll never improve as much as you could.

Cycling is a lot different from running where you can easily get an overuse injury from the pounding. You can ride a lot of hours, and get really fatigued, but bounce right back without getting injured.

I personally havn't ridden for the majority of this year because of work. I started riding consistently about 4 weeks ago, I can easily say that I am gaining on them and I'm able to hang on their rides, something I couldn't do 4 weeks ago. How did I get there? I rode with them and hung on till I got dropped, I didn't hammer to stick with them, not until recently when I started joining the hammerfest on Tuesdays. I think perfect cadence, building up your endurance and learning how to ride smarter makes a huge difference. I'm not saying you shouldn't ride hard, but hammering isn't something this guy needs to be doing unless he's doing intervals. he will get stronger, but if his endurance isn't up to par, you can guarantee that bonking 10 miles after pulling a 19avg is going to bring him down in a heart beat. I tend to make the first half of the ride the tempo setter, see where I'm at and figure what I need to do to improve my avg. I save my hammering for the end of the ride, when bonking and finishing coincide.