How to get faster and maintain energy levels?

CyclingObsession

I do mainly solo riding and If there is hills of 500-600 elevation gain I can usually travel an average speed of 16.7mph and there are loads of hills on this route. I did 77 miles today and had to stop, how do you maintain energy levels? I ate a 300gm bowl of porridge to fuel myself and I had an energy bar and electolyte drink. I want to get much faster but find I have hit a wall, I usually do 200-300 miles per week most flat with 1 or two hard hills each day, weekend rides are full of hills usually. I tend to average from 17-20mph on the flat I'd love to increase the flat to 19-20mph and the hilly rides to 17-19mph. Would aero bars help? What do I need to do to achieve this

Scrumple

Do intervals.... pick points ahead of you on the road and ride as hard and fast as you can to reach them. Then recover.

You need to build power and muscle strength.

Find a club and get on a chain gang, doing through and off. You need someone to push your riding speeds up even if in short bursts.

No shortcut, just hard work.

CyclingObsession

Should I go on shorter rides and just in interval training then or do it on the longer rides

Scrumple

Like long distance runners, you aint gonna run faster by just doing mileage.
Like featherweights, you wont punch harder without bulking up and changing your style.

Etc.

You need to ride faster and you'll do it better by hard, intense riding for as long as you can manage it. By definition, if you do it on the longer rides you'll not have the power to really increase the speeds. Vary your training, and replace some hill repeats with sprints and racing fast and hard.

It isn't easy alone - unless you can face the pain - so find a fast club ride and hang on for as long as you can. And keep doing it. mix it up a bit. Ride the last 10 miles of each route as fast as you possibly can (TT riding is what you need - hard as you can for the distance).

bahzob

I think the answer is in 2 parts

1. Train so that you become fitter. Being fitter means:
>> Being able to go further/faster for the same energy input
>> Conditioning your body so it stores more of the fuel you need to ride fast (glycogen).
>> Losing weight if needed, which will make a big difference especially up hills.

>>> There are lots and lots of training plans around so plenty to choose from. Plenty of suggestions on this forum. Key with all of them is that they require you to put your body under stress for a certain amount of time. If you do longish rides then the sort of thing you can do is
>> Do some max effort sprints early on in the ride when you are still fresh
>> Go up hills as hard as possible aiming to reach the top completely knackered
>> Ride as hard as you can for 12-20 minutes, rest 5 minutes then do another 12-20 minutes.
>> All the above are better than riding at a steady constant comfortable pace for 3-4 hours.


2. Having enough fuel to keep going

If you ride for more than an hour or so then you need to take on some fuel. There is a simple calculation that can help with this
>> Your body can process around 1g of sugar per kg of body weight per hour.
So if you are 70kg aim to eat around 70g of sugar each hour, little and often. How you do this is up to personal taste. Jelly babies work great for me, I just keep in tri bag and nibble regularly.

If you are at target weight then doing this should ensure you keep fueled. If trying to lose weight you may need to compromise a bit to ensure you burn more calories than you consume.

Other:
- Aero bars will help go quicker but unless you are actually competing I wouldn't bother. Its a cop out and they can be dangerous.
- If not already done so get a bike fit. If your bike is not set up properly you may be wasting energy

Herbsman

bahzob wrote:

>> Your body can process around 1g of sugar per kg of body weight per hour.
So if you are 70kg aim to eat around 70g of sugar each hour, little and often.

Interesting. So if I weighed 140kg I should consume 140g of sugar per hour? Rubbish.

There is a limit to how much carbohydrate that a person can absorb per hour (~60g per hour for glucose and up to around 90g per hour for a combination of glucose and fructose), and it's not dependant on bodyweight.

bahzob

Fair point. I did say that you should adjust this if overweight though. I guess it is possible that someone who is 140kg will not be overweight but I'd guess they would then absorb more carbs/hour than someone half their size.

Whatever, I forgot to append the usual warning that this is a maximum and will be more than enough for most people especially since most will not be riding flat out for the entire ride. Will do so in future.

sungod

someone who weighs 140kg probably *has* been consuming 140g sugar per hour :-)

SBezza

Depending on how long you are going to be riding for you might not need to start eating at the hour point, I can do 2-3 hour rides on just water and never run out of energy, I get fatigued obviously, but even at a good tempo effort you should have enough glycogen for 2 hours +. The fitter you get the easier it gets, and reportedly you are actually able to store more glycogen as well so can go longer without fuelling. Once you start going longer then yes you need to top up, but at endurance pace alot of the energy used would be fat.

Hard tempo rides are a great way of increasing speed, but obviously the rides will be shorter, 1-2 hours normally, and are tough rides if done correctly, these will be done at a higher speed than a long endurance ride, and coupled with a good recovery stratergy should see good gains. You could mix up some tempo riding during an endurance ride, but there is a good chance it will make you tired and the remainder of the endurance ride might not be as pleasent.

One thing though is not really worry about average speeds, once you get near 20 mph averages any gains are going to be hardly visible as terrain and enviromental conditions will cover most fitness gains up.