I'm trying to increase my average speed. For a couple of years now I've been achieving about 18mph ave speed over say 25 miles on rolling terrain, only for this speed to disappear over the Winter.

However warmer weather is on it's way so I really want to get closer to 20 mph this Summer - but how do I go faster? Every week I do a couple of 40 mile rides and three 25 mile rides over rolling terrain - as fast as I possibly can.

Anyone got a training routine that they would like to share?

Ride faster.

Don't start by trying to ride faster for 25miles. Ride faster for 8 min, rest, ride faster for 8 min. Repeat. You need to start doing intervals. Look in the racing subforum for interval workouts.

Read a training book like Friels's Training and racing bible.

Do you have a trainer? Tabata intervals really help expand muscle power. Since I come from an aerobic background (collegiate runner), I employ lots of Tabata intervals and short intervals in general to my training.

I do 10-15 x 20 seconds all out w/ 10 seconds passive rest or 8 x 1 minute all out w/ 3 minutes recovery spin, I focus on developing my leg muscles to go faster.

Going hard all ride isn't necessarily the best way to going faster overall. Your body needs to be mixed up with various stresses (workouts).

This guy has a great system for improving speed:

Intervals

Ride harder, ride longer, ride more.

The biggest thing is to do faster bits of riding. If you can go 35mph on your own, even for a short time (30 seconds) then going 19 mph won't seem so hard. If you struggle to maintain 25 mph for a minute then 20 mph for an hour will be tough. The best way to improve your speed is to do group rides or races. If you can't do either then you can work on it on your own. It's much better to do it in a group though.

For solo speed work:
https://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.co...sprinting.html
It's sort of like doing intervals without calling them intervals.

Another thing - as you got more cycling fit have you adjusted your position to reflect your stronger gluteus, back, shoulders? Position on the bike is a significant variable in overall drag of the bike/rider unit. Even an experienced racer might find a more aero position on their road bike, like Bernard Hinault towards the end of his career (he fitted a longer stem and promptly soloed to a victory in the Tour of Lombardia). As pros have more time in the wind tunnel they start adopting some interesting things on their bike - narrower bars, very low front ends, etc. Their overall power is not going to change much but their position can make a pretty big difference in sustainable speed.

Finally if you do the same thing over and over you'll just get good at doing exactly that. Doing the same ride all the time won't let you make the step up to the next level. Ride much harder on one day and then go much easier on another. If you want to bench press 150 lbs 10 times but you can only bench press 100 lbs 10 times you don't just bench press 100 lbs all the time. You bench press 120 lbs maybe 6 times or 140 lbs 4 times. Then you recover because you've pushed yourself beyond your normal comfort zone. Soon you'll be doing 180 lbs 4 times or 200 lbs twice. Then you can "move down" to 150 and rip out 10 reps.

Likewise on the bike you need to do much more intense riding sometimes, much less intense other times. Do bursts of 25-30 mph (or higher if possible - it would be great for you to be doing 30-35 mph for 30-60 seconds at a time). Repeat. Use downhills to build speed then maintain it on the following flat roads. Etc. Then on the easy days go 12-14 mph - you should be restraining yourself the whole ride. Save it for the next day when you ride hard.

I may be a long time racer but I almost never train at speeds over 18-19 mph avg. Most of my training, and I mean 95% of it, is at 15-16 mph avg speed. I'll do jumps to 38-40 mph, I'll draft behind a truck at 45-50 mph, but when I'm rolling around I'm doing in the 15-17 mph range. The last time I tried to go hard for an hour was a time trial forever ago and I averaged 23.5 mph, about 5 mph slower than my competitors Still, though, if you're going 18 now then you'll easily go 20 average if you mix it up some for a bit.

Train on an mtb with super aggressive knobby tires through the winter, then when you switch to the road bike in the spring you will be amazed how much easier it is to crank out higher speeds.

I'm glad carpediem mentioned slow days. Some people don't get the best results from pushing their bodies that hard constantly and mixing in a few recovery ride days into your training can help. Check out the other threads on this by people who have had success with it...

"Ride faster."

I definitely agree with riding intervals. From my understanding, going long distance requires you to develop different fibers of muscle to behave in a slower manner, and interval training will allow you to strike that nice balance between stamina, strength, and endurance. Going out and riding as hard as you can is a great way to break down the muscles to build them, but you do need to take the time and test them in different mannerisms for flexibility of routine.

You could get Chris Carmichael's "Time Crunched Cyclist." He describes a routine of concentrated efforts with rest and downtime. Then come back here in 6 weeks and tell us if it worked for you. It worked for me, especially since I have very little time to ride each day.

Or, as my other speed routine - my speed / distance improved by several mph by drafting FlyingBlind9. :-) Just sayin...

Sudafed.
(Endorsed by Pcad.)

Hey guys, thanks for the replies, much appreciated. Effectively, I've been doing 25 or 40 mile time trials five times per week and have plateaued out - I can see what I'm doing wrong now.
I think I'll do intervals for say the first 30 mins three times per week, with perhaps a 45 min ride home at 85%, plus a couple of longer rides on other days at more casual speed. I'll just see how it goes. Think I'll invest in a turbo trainer as well, so I can do short burst of 10 mins in the garage, then recover etc without having to go out for a ride, or for bad weather when I can't get out.

I'll spend April and May training hard (as well as working) and report back. Just one thing though, how should I be eating to avoid feeling absolutely drained when I've just finished a 80min (or 25 miles for me) ride.
Should I eat before I go out, immediately after, during the ride or what?
I've been told to avoid high sugar, easily digestable food (eg chocolate) to avoid a sugar rush followed by a sudden low - and eat slow release food eg dried fruit and oat bars - does this make sense.

that's not enough riding for special nutrition. you just need water

sprints sprints....Do TT mark off 1/2 - 1mile and TT as often and as hard as you can....No otherway .Or take drugs.

The high sugar thing refers to off-the-bike food. I think a lot of riders, myself included, will have simple sugars (soda, gel, etc) during a ride. It's when you're not active that such things become less useful. Remember that sugar is fuel and you burn it when you ride. Consuming a lot of it off the bike may not be great but on the bike is not so bad.

During a ride you should eat, as a basic rule, about 200 cal per hour, of simple stuff. For up to 2.5 hours you should have enough glucose stored in your body - it's when you go longer that you really get into the "wasted" zone. It occurs earlier if you're not eating a lot of carbs, so a protein-focused diet with no carbs will make you feel a lot weaker. Without carbs you have no easily used fuel. It's like making sure your car has oil and grease but to purposely leave the gas tank empty.

On longer rides I try and eat regularly from within the first hour. I'll eat whatever - Pop tarts, peanuts - to try and get some fat and longer term food in me. I usually avoid electrolyte drinks but after 3-4 hours I'll drink Gatorade/etc as it's easier to digest than orange juice and more fulfilling than a Coke.

As far as food before/after rides I'm not well versed. Generally speaking I ride better if I eat more carbs before an event (I feel pretty empty otherwise, even if I have a Coke or something just before/during the ride/race). After rides I crave salt and fluids, probably because I don't drink enough.

Yesterday, before an hour long event, I was up at 4:30 AM. At first opportunity I had an egg sandwich (9 AM?), coffee, pastry, then at about 11 AM another coffee, another pastry. Race was at 1. After the race (2 PM) someone asked me what I wanted as I was looking pretty wasted. I asked for, and got, 2 small Gatorades (they don't sell larger ones there), a Coke (skipped it, still have it, will save for another race), and a cookie. I downed both Gatorades pretty quickly, ate a cookie, and had a pastry. I wasn't hungry until about 8:30 PM (about an hour after I got home) when I was suddenly really hungry.

After the pro-1-2-3 race yesterday, 40 miles of brutal racing, a few of guys (top finishers of the race) finished, came in to get their prize money, saw some pastries I had put out, and wolfed down, between maybe the 6 of them, about two of the three 12x12x3 boxes of various food plus all but two pieces of pizza. They also had a bunch of fluids, water mainly. They all rode 20-30 miles to the race, at least one had done the 25 mile race with me (so the 40 mile race was their second race) and were preparing to ride back home. They're also all super skinny and lean. Ride enough and on ride days you can eat almost anything you want. It's usually better to eat something than to try and ride while you're light headed from lack of carbs.

Ohhhhhh that was difficult. Its been snowing in the UK so this is the first ride I've had for a while. Started doing intervals - 1 minute absolutely flat out, then rested for 2 mins - did this x 10. I was absolutely shattered. (Then carried on and did 25 miles at say 50%).

Ride with a fast friend.

I'm not even joking/exaggerating here - this will absolutely get you faster, at all distances:

https://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/plans

You have no idea what you're missing if you haven't tried this virtualpower (or real power) based workouts, with hard objective numbers to show your improvement. No more guessing at how hard you should go, no more guessing as to how much you're improving. Do the initial FTP test, and your training is laid out for you down to the watt, and it works. It's easily the best $10/month you can spend on your bike if you actually want to get faster, bar none.

Start with Intermediate Base 1 plan and you'll see what I'm talking about firsthand.

That's a major problem. If you only have 100% you can give all week, why divide it up into 5? Why not focus on 1 to 3 days of hard, with a rest in between.

When I get caught up in training, I get caught up in the fast days, but it's the slow days that matter more (to an extent). Without the slow days, your body never fully recovers even with A+ nutrition and modern-day recovery techniques.

Every ride needs a purpose: but that purpose can be to recover or just get in distance for the day.

There's your problem, always riding as fast as you can wont make you faster. Mix it up with intervals, sprints, slow days, fast days and everything in between. Recovery is important.

There aren't too many better ways to spend $10/month in this sport/hobby. I just finished the first 6-week plan. Today was actually my first ride outside since starting TR, and I feel like I've made definite strides.

This season I have been following a plan for the first time and it has made huge improvements for me. Early in the season it was a lot of 2x20' and a long tempo ride on the weekends. Then I transitioned to 5x5' as my main training sessions. As we move into spring, I would still do 2x20's, but replace one or two sessions a week with short but super high intensity intervals. On those days, the meat of the training might only be a few minutes, but they are all out, rip your bike apart.

On recovery days, I go so slow that little kids with training wheels pass me.

To top it off, I just got a powermeter specifically to get better correlation with my outdoor rides and my indoor power efforts.

Turns out that there is NO DIFFERENCE in the quality of my workouts with TR with the powermeter than without it (using virtualpower). Yes, the virtualpower numbers were pretty off compared to the powermeter in absolute values, but the absolute number doesn't really matter - as long as the computed power based on wheelspeed is consistent, your workout quality is the same. My workouts with virtualpower were every bit as good as my workouts with the powermeter.

TR works well enough that I'd say that unless you plan on racing or tracking your outdoor workouts with power, just skip the powermeter altogether and rely on TR's virtualpower, given that a low-end new powermeter will set you back $800 minimum. You won't lose anything in the quality of your workouts on TR.

It's good enough that I feel that it's basically my power-based cycling coach, and a pretty darn good one at that. Also given the choice between having my powertap or TR, I'd take TR in a heartbeat. The powertap is only one part of a total training program, whereas TR is the entire enchilada. No question from me there which would get me better if I were using it for the whole year.