How to get Quicker on the Bike

Half Way - Ironman Hamburg 2019

I was asked a question at the weekend about how best to improve cycling performance. Books have been written on the subject, so it’s a lengthy topic to try and address in a short blog post, but I can offer the following to give you some food for thought based on my own experience.

Where will improvements come from?

Improvements will potentially come from 4 main areas:

The equipment: get a bike and clothing/helmet that are optimised for performance.

Body mass, composition and strength: carrying too much extra weight as fat is not helpful!

Cardiovascular fitness: clearly, the better one's CV fitness, the better one's performance will be.

Fuelling: correct eating and fasting protocols before, during and after training and racing really help.

The Equipment and Riding Position

If you are riding around on a heavy bike with a basket on the front, then any lighter, more aerodynamic choice of ride will instantly improve performance. For most athletes, however, we are talking about marginal gains because they will already own a racing bike of some sort. The longer the target race, the more the benefit from having less aerodynamic drag and tyre friction. Linked to these gains are the position on the bike and clothing/helmet worn; in an aero position and wearing aerodynamic kit, there are huge gains to be had over a more upright position and baggy clothing, but holding an aero position for long periods of time and generating the watts from the legs in this rather unnatural position has to be practised: it is not as easy as the pros make it look! The cost of marginal gains from equipment can also be prohibitive.

Body Mass and Strength

If funds are a limiting factor, often the simplest way to go faster at the same watts is to lose some weight. Carrying an extra 5kg of fat over, say, the 180km of an Ironman bike section, is a huge penalty on performance. I used to train purposely a few kgs over race weight and then get rid of them in the few weeks leading up to my target race. Typically, I was training around 12 stone (76kg) and would race about half a stone lighter (73kg). It’s not easy to find the optimum weight/strength balance, but for long distance events, if one looks at the build of the average Tour de France rider who is not a specialist sprinter, one gets an idea of the what generally works best in terms of body shape. Of course, most of us are not professional cyclists, so there has to be a compromise because we may need to be bigger and stronger to do other important things in our lives. As a triathlete, in the gym, I aim for light weight, high reps when doing my strength work rather than the heavy weight, low rep work that would build too bulky muscles for my sport. The flexibility that comes with less bulky muscles is also important for endurance events. Things such as yoga can help with mobility in the hip joints and also with strength of the structures that support the back, hips, and legs. Strength here helps stave off fatigue and also protects the integrity of the joints, thus reducing the chances of serious injury.

Cardiovascular Health

Regarding CV fitness, my general routine was to train ‘fasted’ when possible and practical, mostly in Zone 2, just under my first lactate threshold. Note the ‘Zones’ are slightly different for running and cycling. The benefit of doing plenty of miles like this is that it helps build a very robust aerobic base. The better and more efficiently the body is able to recruit and oxidise fat, the better the foundation to build performance. Mixed in to the training would be interval sessions that moved my anaerobic lactate threshold up a bit. Combined, this mix of training results in being able to ride longer and faster at given heart rate compared to before. If strength is also improved, and average watts are increased, one ends up with a more efficient and more powerful ‘engine’ that will provide the performance improvements being sought.

Why It's Not Easy

The stumbling blocks for most people are time, consistency, and ignorance. Life gets in the way of training and doing the research required to understand the physiology and other bits of relevant ‘science’. Most people also don’t understand nutrition or fasting protocols: how to get the body to its optimum weight for the task in hand and how to ‘fuel’ before, during, and after a race or, indeed, during the various training phases. My approach is to use a ketogenic regime and generally I will race as a ‘fat burning’ athlete rather than depending on carbohydrates for fuel. Obviouly this applies to longer, mainly aerobic events, such as a half or full Ironman. If I am doing a Sprint triathlon, the regime is completely different because my body is working at or above the second lactate threshold for the entire race, which brings unique challenges.

That's it for now: a very brief note on a complex topic, but I hope a helpful one!

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