Luckily, our good friends over at MEC host all kinds of events; trail running, triathlons, stand up paddling, and yes, you guess it, cycling
events! These low-key, inexpensive events are ideal for athletes at any level looking to have a fun time stretching their fitness and meeting new faces.
Whether
you opt to ride the 50km or go whole hog and ride the full 100km
course, one thing’s for sure – you need to train, and train in the
right way. What are a few standout essentials for a successful ride?
Glad you asked!
GOAL SETTING
First,
choose your distance. Be realistic; if you bought a shiny new road bike
last week, don’t enter the 100km ride unless you have plenty
of previous aerobic conditioning. From here, consider
your goals. Are you completing, competing or conquering? Be reasonable.
Once you’ve identified your objective, write it down, and work backwards
from your there.
What do you need to be successful in your journey?
LONG RIDES
Long rides are at the heart of a cyclist’s aerobic conditioning.
They are the foundation to your tower. A cyclist with a weak aerobic base soon develops limiters in further fitness building.
Get out there, and start cracking off long, controlled rides.
Using a heart rate monitor? Keep a narrow operating window: 65 – 72%MHR for these rides.
Try to keep constant pressure on the pedals and try to minimize stops.
Aim for an extended duration of activity, fueling and hydrating as you go.
As you develop fitness, start to stretch the duration of your rides out, from an initial 90 minutes, try for 2 hours.
Once you feel comfortable rolling for 2 hours, push your limits, can you finish 3 or even 4 hours of cycling without stopping?
I bet you can!
INTERVALS
Becoming a good cyclist is much like baking a cake; it’s easy if you have the right recipe!
As you’ve learned, long rides are essential, they are the flour
and the eggs in your cake. From there, we need to add the special ‘go
fast’ ingredients.
Think of intervals as the chocolate and jam between the layers.
LONG SETS
Find a long, constant grade hill; a favorite is the road up to the First Lookout on Cypress.
From the 2km marker, just passed the Works Yard, settle into a
reasonably hard rhythm, perhaps an 8 on a scale of 10; hard but
repeatable. Time yourself to the first lookout.
Ride back and….yep, you guessed it, ride back up again! Your time should be consistent, aim for a variance of less than 2minutes.
Once you’ve crushed two repeats, add an additional climb, until you can do 4 climbs back to back to back.
SHORT SETS
Your recipe is growing!
Aerobic foundation, check! Long, threshold sets, check!
Next up, short, high intensity sets – OUCH! Find a
quiet, flat piece of road, Iona Island is great for this workout. From a
pre-selected landmark, ride as hard as you can for 90 seconds.
Now, you might be thinking, “C’maaan, 90s? That’s so short!”
Trust me on this one, if you go as hard as you can for 90 seconds, your eyeballs will be screaming mercy.
Because these efforts are so hard, you’ll need a longer recovery.
Triple your ‘work’ time (3 x 90s = 4minutes, 30s) for your recovery. Now, blast these 90s maximal efforts and call it a night! Initially, aim for 3 sets – yep, that’s all!
Grow your numbers from there, until you can comfortably complete 3 sets of 3! You'll be screaming for mercy.
RECOVERY
You don’t get fitter when you are riding, you get fitter when you sleep and recover!
Gone are the days when cyclists needed to ride six days a week.
With the advent of power meters and heart rate monitors, quantifiable
benefits can be had with a fraction of training time of years past.
Rest up!
PACING
Pacing
is crucial in training and on the big day. The trick is to ride at an
intensity that won’t shatter your legs and leave you gasping
for air. This comes with experience, but if you’ve trained using heart
rate or power, you will have a good idea of what output you can sustain.
If you don’t know how hard you should be working, don’t exceed 85% of
your max heart rate.
If you’re oldschool and ride by feel – keep a cap of 8/10 on any
hard efforts, reducing intensity to a 6/5 or 7 (out of 10) for the
duration of the ride.
Pace yourself, feed regularly and enjoy the ride!
(Proviso: Allan is not a cake baker, but a certified road coach.)
