This week I talk about how to start building speed on the strength you have just built. If you haven’t read my previous articles please visit this web page for all our Peaks Challenge Falls Creek Training resources.

But first there a few things to cover about this week’s training:

If your training load is correct you should now be noticing a big improvement in your cycling fitness. This week we step back onto another four week block of training and add some important VO2MAX efforts. These will help turbo charge your training to the next level and build on the strength training that you have done in the previous four weeks. We also increase the Matt Brindle Strength Program from Beginner Program One to Beginner Program Two.  These help you improve your climbing strength and makes your ride faster up hills.

We start to introduce the 003 – Fruit Bowl VO2MAX Ergo – This is a specific indoor time trial training session that you can also do out on the road. It will help you develop all aspects of your cycling and is a foundation indoor cycling training workout for many of our training programs. These intervals get shorter as you progress through this workout and again work on converting your muscle fibres from type IIb muscle to type IIa so that you can ride faster.

One of the things that I find when people that come onto our coaching programs is that they train around what they like. Endurance cyclists will prefer to go out for a three hour ride than do a one hour interval session on a trainer while the sprinter cyclist would much rather do a few sprint efforts than go for a long ride. The result is that both wonder why they are not good at the other disciplines. The human body is great at adapting, so by just training outside your comfort zone you can considerably improve other areas of your cycling.

Ok, so you want to ride faster….
By going out and doing a heap of base kilometres you’ll develop a great aerobic base. This is good. I’m a strong believer of a good base, especially as cycling is primarily an endurance based sport. But, this is where people go wrong. As much as base training is good for you, you primarily use Type I fibres and while these can go all day they arent able to get you there very fast. I call it training to ride slow. To ride faster you’ll need to engage your Type IIa fibres and to do this youll need to train in your E3 and VO2MAX zones. These engage and develop the Type IIa fibre and this enables you to cut a huge amount of time off your rides and makes you climb hills faster. Remember, this fibre produces power and endurance. This is why we developed the 003 – Fruit Bowl VO2MAX Ergo specifically to help train the IIa fibres.

Power to Weight Ratio.
In my tips, I talk briefly about power to weight. And while cyclists get fanatical about getting the lightest wheel and bike the real savings can be made much cheaper and result in a far greater gain in performance if they focused on losing a few of those extra kilograms of body weight that you are caring around.

“Its all about the power to weight ratio. So we work on roughly 3 to 5 Watts per kilogram when you’re going uphill. If you weigh 10 kilograms more than somebody else, then you need to put between 30 to 50 more Watts into the bike just to stay with them, all right? That’s big, especially when you’re riding at threshold. One of the big things that we did with our athletes last year in the preparation for the Peaks Challenge Falls Creek  is work on reducing their body weight down to a real athletic level so that they could climb at their maximum.”

By losing a few of those extra kilograms of body weight that you are caring around you will save a heap of time on your ride. I recommend that you only lose 1 kilogram per week. And the myth about losing strength when dropping your weight is unfounded. I’ve never seen it in the athletes that I’ve coached as long as they are losing fat, not muscle.

So with seven weeks to go you can lose up to a maximum of seven kilograms.

All the best with your training and see you on the start line of the Peaks Challenge Falls Creek.