Bike Training Techniques That Will Make You Ride Faster

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you by Tribalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined as always, by your hosts, Australian Ironman champion Gerard Donnelly. And I am Jordan Donnelly. So today we're talking about bike training techniques that will help you ride faster. The key things you need to be doing in training to help you go faster out on the road, because a lot of people forget that the whole point of training is to ride faster. And it's safe to say that here at Trivelo, we are data obsessed. We love power, we love FTP. However, the reason we love it is so that we can use it to go faster on our bike. And sometimes athletes forget that. So today we're going to be talking about all how to translate some training techniques for on the bike to help you go faster in a race. But firstly, as usual, what's caught your attention? Dad, the last couple of weeks.

There'S so many things. I was really struggling to come up with one that I wanted to talk about today, but I really narrowed it down.

Struggled because there were so many.

Too many. Yeah. And I wanted to prioritise the importance, I think, and really the racing. On the weekend in the triathlon scene in Victoria, they had their first set of races for nearly a year. So obviously that caught my attention with the performances of our athletes, which was, from our point of view, outstanding. But on that point, making judgments about your performance without having the right information, that's kind of the thing that's really, I really want to make sure people, before they want to, you know, sell their bike on ebay or throw their runners in the bin or burn their goggles, you've just got to take a moment to really look at every piece of information so that you're making a decision about your performance based on accurate data. So what do I mean by that? Well, the example would be one of our athletes who happened to do a time trial outdoors and he's, you know, been a member of our squad for a long period of time. And we've got lots of data on his performances over the journey. And over a two and a bit year period, he's progressed from 34ks an hour to 36 to 38. On the weekend, his power has progressed from 220, 240, 260, 270 on the week on last week during his time trial, his power was down and that was the focus that he, he just could not get past. And he had ridden the fastest average Speed that he'd ever ridden in two and a half years by half a kilometer an hour. Pretty significant.

Yeah.

So trying to explain to him that that's, that's the best result you've ever done was interesting. And, and man making sure that he could clearly see the reasons why I said that. And, but what about my power? You know, my power was down. Well, the choice is are you happy to do a PB with 80 watts or you're happy to do your fourth best with 300 watts? Obviously I'll take 80 watts. I don't care what the watt number is as long as. So that's the point I'm making. It's, you know, you've got to understand what is important. What are the, what are the most important things you're trying to achieve here? We want to go from A to B faster than we did before. That's what we're training for. That's, that's the whole purpose of practice. And you're going to talk about that in what's caught your attention. But, but that's, that's really what I'm trying to get across in, in this significant point that I'm making is don't be quick to judge yourself until you have all the information. And, and you can make poor decisions post event about how well you went and it can be quite depressing and low. You lose confidence. And the example I just gave that person had lost total confidence in his training, his program, his performance. I'm going backwards. Oh no you're not. That's the best you've ever done. So let's just stop there and think about that for five seconds before we now make our next judgment call about how to progress from here. Well, what happened with the power meter? Something happened. Was it calibrated? You know, we go and investigate why the power was down in that effort because the power meter wasn't working properly. He actually executed terribly. He rode 276 for the first five minutes. 270, 265 to 53. And he still did a PB. Imagine if the power meter was working properly and he rode how he's meant to ride, which is holding you every five minutes. Holding and progressively improving. He would have actually ridden faster had he executed better. So, so, you know, how's my form? Your form's unbelievably brilliant. It's the best it's ever been from. I don't want to ride anymore. Yeah, that. They're the two extreme thoughts that he had.

Yeah.

So by the end of the conversation, I'm saying to him now, how do you feel? He goes, well, I feel pretty damn good about that if that's the fastest I've ever ridden. Whereas before I wanted to sell my bike on ebay. So the point is there, you know, find out more data, make a better base decision.

I guess that's your role as a coach as well, is to help with that analysis because it's not always clear to the athlete. But you're just making the point that you want athletes to not make a snap judgment and wait till you get all the data and you can make a proper list. Level headed assessment.

Exactly.

And there was another example as well from comparing. Someone just was looking to compare times on the weekend to their last race and you really pointed out a pretty key factor that would stop them from making a poor snap judgment.

Yes. And one of our athletes was saying, right, I've done Olympic distance triathlon many times and my best 10k off the bike in this race is 38 minutes, 2020, which is pretty damn good running. That's not the point we're trying to make here. The point that, that she was making was I would hope to run that time in this race. And, and I said, well, was that a full 10k in that last event? And well, it turns out that it was 9.6. So because races aren't always exactly, they're not 10k to the, you know, sometimes.

They'Re more, sometimes they're less.

It could be 10.1, it could be 9.8, it could be 9.6, could be 10.4. So it's near impossible, you know, to get the swim distance. Right, to get the bike, you know, 40k, it's going to be 39 or 38 or 42 or 41. It's not going to be 40. Exactly. So, so comparing your time is a mistake. You need to be Comparing for the 10k your average speed that you are running at the average pace. So what the question I asked was what was your average pace in that 38 miles minute, 10K, 356 or 352. Whatever it was. I said, okay, if, if you run a 41 and you run 3.49pace, she's going, hey, how's that possible?

It could be 10.8 K. That's right.

That's how it could be possible. Which one are you going to be happy with? The 38 minute result or the 41 minute result? Clearly you've run a 349 compared to a 355. So you're going to be happy with the 41 minute result. So looking for the right, you know, data is, you know, you can't go by time in an event that's not, it's not a 400 meter track and, and it's not a 50 meter swim event. They are undisputable facts. It's 50 meters and some pools have been 49.5. Not many ass tracks have been 398. But, but the point is on an S track you know that that's a variable. You know, you can guarantee that's going to be the same but in a triathlon there isn't. There is no course. And of course then you can't, I'm saying you can't compare this Olympic distance where there was 300 meters of altitude elevation in the ride and this one's pancake flat. They're both Olympic, Olympic distances. But you're comparing apples with oranges. So you need to be, you know, if I've done Noosa tri five times, that's a race I can compare. But you still would have conditions like temperature, wind that would affect that.

So she was looking for the right thing, but you've just got to be careful not to say, well I'm only a success If I run 38, 20 again because that wouldn't have helped. Yep.

So my summary to her was, you know, in the swim, what's your per 100 meter pace you swam at? You know, it might have been a 1500 and you swam 1750 because you swam crooked but your average pace was 144 and previous it was 148 yet my time was two minutes slower. Well, we can fix your swim direction but your swimming pace has improved. So that's a plus. You know, for the bike you look at power but you look at average speed. The power is a technical issue that could be inaccurate.

That's what was the previous example.

But the average speed is something that's pretty much guaranteed. And as a runner you're looking for the average pace. So they're the three things that we want to concentrate in a triathlon.

Yeah, really, really good points. And I had a, I experienced a similar kind of test mentally myself and this is, this is what I wanted to touch on. I had a pretty interesting, interesting experience last time.

It's gutsy that you want to talk about this. Jordan, I'm very impressed.

Yeah, I don't always enjoy talking about this stuff as personal, but basically for listeners to know, I've always had A goal since I was a teenager, to be honest, to break two minutes for the 800. A lot of my running friends did it when we were growing up and I just could never do it. I was, I was quite small back then and I just didn't have the power to break two minutes. And since then it's been a goal. And every few years I think I've kind of had a crack at it and not probably serious enough until about three years ago I said, right, I'm gonna knuckle down during the summer season and have a proper crack at an 800. Cause it's a very specific distance to train.

Let's put this in context. You're 18, 19 trying to break two minutes for 800. You're now 28. So it's not a few years. It's been a 10 year ambition with two to three years of actually trying properly.

Yeah, I don't like admitting it to people because I, I've had this goal for 10 years. It's eluded me for so long. But the last few track stations I've had a serious crack And I've ran two minutes flat. I don't know how many times now.

Six or five.

Yeah, five or six times.

So under 201, five times 2.4 for the listeners. That's basically between me and Jordan in distance across the table.

And you just think to yourself, why can't I just get an extra meter faster? You know? And every race is slightly different. Um, but I had a really good training year last year in the lead up to track season. For a lot of other years my base was probably missing. I probably had the speed but not the base. And this year it was the opposite. I had way more base and now I just have to try and fix the speed and came into the first race of the season last Thursday night and we had a pretty specific plan to give it a red hot crack. And I was mentally, I psyched myself up probably more than I ever have because I just said I'm sick of, I'm so sick of this, I am just ready to break it. Um, and I'm just. I wrote a note on my hand to remind myself as I was warming up, as I was getting ready for race, even when I checked my watch at the 200 mark to really mentally go. And we ran the race and I ran 200 0.05 and I mean I ran 2.4 or 2.6 but 0.05 is the smallest gap I've ever had to not breaking Too many.

We're talking Andre. And a second. So, so two minutes and one second. We're not talking about that. We're talking about two minutes. No, seconds. Zero. Zero point zero.

Five point zero. Five hundredths of a second. Yeah. And I, when I crossed.

That's a PB, George.

It was a PB. Yes, by 0.3 of a second. When I crossed the line, I thought I had it and I was, I was really not in a good way afterwards. I really pushed myself. And then I spoke to you maybe five minutes later on the phone. And I could barely talk, to be honest, at the time. And you said, I think you got it.

So I took a screenshot. It's at the Milers Club is, is filmed. And I froze the film with Jordan crossing the line. And the time on the screen is there saying 159.6 and Jordan's over the line.

Yeah.

So I sent you that saying, you did it.

Yeah. And I said, I said, I think I did it as well, but I'm going to wait for the official results.

But official results came out.

Yeah. And I was pretty happy and I thought, I'm still, I'm not going to celebrate properly until the official results come out because you have to go for the official results. And a few minutes later, they come out. Five minutes later or something. I was just sitting there anxiously waiting and they came out and I looked at them and I just, I almost cried, to be honest. And I just, I looked at the time and I just thought, you gotta be fucking kidding me. I thought someone was playing a cruel joke and I stared at it and actually refreshed it to think maybe they'd made a mistake or something, which was a feeble attempt. And it was a pretty dark five minutes, to be honest. I just, I literally just said, I give up. I'm not doing it again. Yeah, I just said, fucking, I'm not training anymore for it. I said, I'm gonna do something else. I'm not even gonna train anymore. You know, I was really, I was really quite negative, which you can expect the reaction. I've never had that, that big of a negative reaction before. I was just so angry. And then I gathered myself and I put my, put my shoes on and trudged out to do a warm down. And I was just cursing the whole warm down and I was just so angry at everything. And funnily enough, I ran for five or 10 minutes and by the end I had a little fleeting thought and I just thought, oh, maybe I'll go again. And I went, nah, I'm sick of was quite a dark half an hour. And I think as athletes, I call anyone that puts a number on or anyone that goes into a race an athlete. Some people like to not call themselves athletes unless they're pros, but I think all cyclists and triathletes are athletes. And as athletes you have highs and lows. You experience these things in a range of forms throughout races that you're doing and training sessions. And for me, this was one of the lowest ones. And just at the time it just means everything. And then in this grand scheme of things, it doesn't mean anything but just the amount of effort you've put in, the amount of times you've had to go. I got in the car and I was just still in that headspace of I'm done. And then after about 10 or 15 minutes of driving, something flipped again and I just went, I'm not done, I'm going again. The next race is in a month and you just need that little bit of time to settle and reset and get the emotional charge out of it, out of your thought process. And suddenly I was as motivated as ever to go again. And I think I text you by the time I got home and said, fuck it, I'm going again. And you just feel more motivated to put in it, put your head down and put an even harder month in and see if you can shave off 0.05 of a second.

It's an unbelievably good story and it's a shocking feeling that you've had. And almost everybody who's listening has set themselves targets and goals and, and underachieved. And you've got so many options available to you and it's a real strength of character. You know, we've used the example of Daniel Byrne. He doesn't mind me using his name, but he took three years to break his three hour marathon and he ran under 301 twice within a minute. And finally he ran 3, 259, just under, under one minute, under three hours. Yeah. And the difference in feeling with literally 50 seconds either side was euphoric.

Yeah. Yeah.

Compared to depressed.

Yeah.

But it took, it took a lot to get there. He was a 320 marathon runner, so it was amazing effort anyway.

Yeah.

But the reward, when you do it and when you do do this, which will be, you know, it will happen. There's so many positive things that have come out of, of what you just did. Because it was your first run for a year, you know, you Talk about horse races. You know, first run, it's their crappiest run, and they're better for the run and they'll do better next time. You had a race plan and you executed the race plan unbelievably well. Exactly what we planned, you did to do. You did, except you just ran short out of legs at the end. And that's probably from race practice, race fitness.

And we spoke about that. The fact that when you have a plan and you execute the plan as well as you could, you actually a little bit less disappointed with the result. And that was what I took solace in a bit later, a couple hours later, that the process was correct. It's just that end result wasn't there. So actually happy with the process, not happy with the result, but that's okay.

Yeah. And just believe that, you know, we did talk about this last week's podcast, where there's going to be challenges thrown at you, and unfortunately, those challenges have been thrown at you every time you've done it. And, you know, I just remember Daniel just having the same conversation with him about, you know, we're going to go again, but you need. The athlete needs time to want to do it themselves. I'm not going to sit here and say, come on, Jordan, you can do it. That's not my decision. You have to come to me and go, no, I'm doing that. And I'll go, awesome, let's do it. But you have to make that. You have to have time to absorb. And it's almost like what I talked about in what's caught my attention was, you know, sure, your data that you got, we can't change. Whereas what I was talking about was looking for the right. Yeah, but this is, you know, this is a challenge that's thrown at you and you're up for it, which I. I just love that, you know, the more you challenge, the more you're gonna. I'm not giving up. And, you know, I don't care how long this takes me, I'm gonna do this. And that's when you've got that mental approach. You will do it. I've got a few guys who. I just trust their judgment. And, you know, one of them, and he said, oh, next time, no worries. And you've got text messages from lots of people. You know, we interviewed Jordi Williams, who's an Olympian aspirant, saying, no worries, next time, you'll smash it. Yeah. You know, and that. That's a good feeling.

Encouraging.

Yeah. But you've still got it You've still got to do the work.

Yeah.

And you've still gotta, you know, it's not going to happen. You've still got to go through the process.

And I, I hated saying this to myself, but I did say to myself, well, look, you couldn't. You did as well as you could. But I did have a very relaxed month leading into it. You know, come, I had a big training year and so come mid December, I took my foot off the pedal and I, yeah, had a very relaxed month of training. It's very cruisy, not much intensity. And so going into it, I wasn't quite informed.

Anyway, you had one week of track training. You know, I was even to say, well, you know, you could do it for practice because you're not going to do it on your first. Yeah, your first attempt. But you nearly did it with the first attempt and shows you with a bit more focus that, you know, we will hopefully be reporting in one month's time that you have cracked this elusive 159.

So that's the story. We'll move on with the podcast. So today's topic is talking about pretty much these kind of conversations is training techniques to go faster and what to actually pay attention to, what's going to actually help you go faster. So one of the starting points is that when you teach athletes about power, sometimes they can become too power focused and they actually forget to race. They forget to try and go fast. And that's a common issue.

There's been a lot of examples where I've spoken to some athletes prior to an event and we've got our race plan, our power, if we're talking about cycling, time trial, if we're talking about triathlon, we've got our swim, we've got our ride and we've got our run strategies. And at the end, I'll say it's really important that you have all this information available to you the whole way through so you can make better decisions. But don't forget to race. That's actually what you're there for. You've actually got to race. So use, use the technology to assist you to get to a point where you can then be free as a bird to go for it, to race. There's an example which is a different example that you probably haven't heard before, but the first year that one of our guys won the national time trial titles, and that was one of the things I said to him just prior to the race was, you know, get to a point where you're Comfortable with. You haven't blown up by going too hard. Because this was a downhill start. And I think I said to him, you know, if your power in the first five minutes is faster than or higher than your last five minutes, I'm going to hit you over the head with a cricket bat.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, get to these points without blowing up and then race. And he came back after the race going, that's exactly the race strategy that I did. Once I knew that I wasn't going to blow up and that I could risk more. I actually, I didn't care about the power. And I've said that to many people. Say you're trying to ride 330 watts or 230 watts, doesn't matter what the number is. You're in a race, once you've got it under control and there's, you know, three quarters of the race done or half the race done, let loose and ride the power that you can, you know, that's new pb.

Yeah.

And see how high you can push it, you know, that's how you race. And don't even worry about the power. Just there's a guy up the head, I'm going to catch him in a time trial. Everybody's spaced out by a minute apart or 30 seconds apart. That's when you stop looking at the data and start looking at the race and. Right. He's my target. Use that as your incentive.

Absolutely. And you had another example on the weekend and I think we probably said a different example of this maybe five or six times on the podcast of. And you even just gave one at the very start. But we had another different person on the weekend or last week execute an FTP test, only use power, not have average speed. Think they did poorly. And.

Yep. And without naming names, it's probably the same. Some of this exactly the same person. So, you know, going into an FTP test, you know, we're banging on about power all the time. We have a very power driven coaching business. You know, it is such an important analysis tool to be using to make your ride faster. And we use heart rate, we use average speed, we use cadence, you know, and we use power. So they're the things that you should be looking at all of those things, not just one. And that's something that he actually learned from and he's been doing this for a long time. And he is the national time trial champion. And to make that mistake in a training FTP test was really good because he actually learned something. And it's only because I'VE experienced the same problem myself, where all of a sudden the power meter is not working properly. But you don't know that. You just think it's you. So instead of riding at 330 watts, you're busting your guts at 310 and you can't hold it. And you're progressively doing 310 for five minutes. 300, 290, 270. And that's what happened. And, you know, text message. I don't know what's wrong with me. That was shit. You know, just really disappointment, just like you experienced in the 800. But it wasn't because of performance. It was because of the information from technology was incorrect. So therefore you're getting false information. So we need backups. And the example is if you had average speed on your screen and you were doing 310 watts, and you're normally. When you finish that event, you normally ride at 44Ks an hour. And if you see that you're doing 310 watts and you're on the velodrome and you're doing 46Ks an hour, instantly you know the power meter's wrong. So then you would go, okay, I'll switch my attention and I'll just go by average speed. And that's having a backup. And if you were really concentrating, his heart rate was at threshold within two minutes, which meant that he was basically just riding 30 watts higher, ready to blow up than he should have, even though the power meter was telling him he wasn't. So that's another example of having more information at your. And it's there. You just choose not to do it. And now he does have those metrics on his screen.

Yeah, yeah.

And he went out and redid it after 200ks on a Saturday, did it on a Sunday, and rode 46Ks an hour at 300 watts, 30 watts lower than what he had done previously. You think he's going to be disappointed with that? Not anymore. Because he knows now that's the fastest.

He'S ever ridden after 200ks as well. And I will say that something that's caught my attention, something else that's caught my attention is the absurdity of some of the Travelo Bunch rides on Sundays. They just keep blowing out. I mean, they used to blow out to 150, 160, then a couple of guys would do, including yourself, would do 180. And then there's a few guys doing 200 on last weekend, which is.

It was open to them to do as long as they want.

Yep. And they. They really took that, that. That bull by the horns. So I guess the main point here is we have to remember that speed is the end goal, but you don't focus on speed to get faster speeds. The end goal, but that's not part of the process. The process is to focus on power, focus on your execution, focus on those other factors.

Yeah, look, if a way to look at it is input and output. Okay, so what. What does that mean? Well, what, what do you have to do to get fast, faster from A to B? Because that's. That's what we line up. Because we want to. We want to get there as faster than ever we've done before. So we have to use something. So it's effort. So we measure the effort. So that's the input. So we're measuring it with a power meter on a bike. As a runner, we're measuring with average pace. As a swimmer, we're measuring with average speed per hundred meters. So that's what we're measuring. That's the input. What's the result of that? Well, you get an average speed as a result of the effort you do. Heart rate is an output. So average speed's an output. Heart rate's an output. The distance you travel is an output. They're not the things that cause the result. The effort is what causes the output. So the harder you pedal at, the higher the heart rate goes, the easier you pedal, the easier the heart rate is. So input, output. We need to concentrate on the input, not on the output. The output is the result of our effort. And I think unless you can understand that concept, you're not on the same train as what I'm talking about.

Yeah. And I think a good example metaphor you use is the example of a football player.

Yep. So as a full forward, my goal is to kick as many goals as I can each week. That's my job. So do I concentrate on how many goals can I kick? The whole match? How many goals can I kick? How many goals? I've got to kick a goal. I've got to kick a goal. And if I think like that all day, instead of leading, taking a mark, going back, and then kicking a goal, I forgot what got me the goal. I have to lead, I have to run and chase the ball. I have to go and tackle someone. I have to do some effort to get the opportunity to kick the goal. So I'm not sure if that helps or not, but same thing.

Input versus output.

Input versus output. So unless you're willing to put the effort in the result's not going to change.

Yep. But we want to make sure that people are willing to look at the input, but also look at the output that's happening and measure it against each other. And I guess that's what we want to get into now. So let's get into some of the top training techniques that you can use to actually practice this to be able to get fast. And there's three main things we want to talk about. The first one, a top training technique, is in terms of your input. Concentrate on the pedaling technique.

Yep. Let's just get this straight. We're trying to learn how to go faster. What are, what are some tips? What are some secrets that are going to make you be able to ride or run or swim faster? So let's talk about the bike. If you have in your pedaling action areas where there's no pressure on the pedals in that, you know, let's think about it. It's 360 degrees from when you start at the top of the pedaling action all the way down to the bottom, and bringing it all the way back up to the top, that's 360. It's one revolution. If you've got gaps in pressure, then you've got wasted energy for that one pedal action. So you imagine you multiply that because we do 90 of those pedal actions per minute. How many gaps are you having? We talked about heart rate last week, about two weeks ago in our podcast about how many times your heart beats over a lifetime. But you know, if you've got gaps in your pedaling action where there's no pressure on the pedals, you've wasted that one pedal action to get 90% value. Or some people are only getting, because we all grew up with no toe clips, so we all push down. So actually only getting 50% of our value for every pedal action. So what we need to do is understand that this will be a game changer if you can keep pressure on your pedals and concentrate on that in your race. One of the things you need to think about the whole race am I giving constant pressure throughout the whole pedaling action. And you know, once I've known this so many times, if I start to think about pull up Jared in the action, all of a sudden I look down and I'm doing 280 watts with, with three pedal revolutions of pulling up, I'm now at 295. Instantly I get increase in power and guess what? That means I'm going faster. Because if I increase my power My speed goes up. So it's just a no brainer. Think about things that are going to make you improve your speed and that's one of them is pedaling fully with pressure on the pedals the whole revolution. And that seems so simple. But try it. It is so difficult to do. And we're talking a 30 minute race, a one hour race and in an Ironman, we're talking doing that for five or six hours, you will be up to 15 minutes faster. If you can keep the pressure on the pedals evenly throughout every pedal revolution that you do throughout that whole five hours or six hours. And you're not wasting energy with extra pedaling. You have to pedal a lot more to get the same power and you're.

Just constantly reminding yourself that about you in every time trial.

Yeah, there's, you know, we're gonna get to that at the end but there's, there's some things that I am talk, I'm talking to myself throughout the race about the things I need to be thinking about and it's not how far to go or how am I feeling. Yeah, they're kind of in the background.

Yeah. And this is why we're calling them top training techniques, because this is stuff you have to practice in training. You, you can't just do it in a race because you won't have the, your body won't be able to.

Well, you're not drilled in it for a start. So every training session I'm forever trying to think about my pedaling and if I'm chatting to someone, I notice that my power's dropped, my revs per minute have dropped and the intensity's dropped because I'm just talking to someone. It's very hard and you end up. My wife asked me, what did you talk about on the ride today? I thought about my pedaling technique for the whole ride and very rarely did I say anything to anybody. But, but you know, on the easy rides that's probably the time to practice, you know, really keeping the pressure on the pedals a lot. So if you're not doing it in training, if you're not doing it in the easy and in the very hard sessions, then it's not going to happen. On race day you're going to do it for 10 seconds and then five minutes later you're going, oh yeah, yeah, I've got to pull up. So it has to be part of your, part of your psyche in everything you're doing.

Yep. Point number two, and this is another concentrating one, a technique that you need to practice in training, and that is concentrating on your position.

Yeah, there's just so many studies that have been done, you know, from the extreme, the wind tunnel testing to, you know, if I. If I'm, you know, as a kid trying to ride faster. You know, you don't sit up like this trying to ride faster with your head, you know, touching the sky. You know, as a kid, you would tuck your head. You tuck your head down because I think that makes me go faster. I've got no evidence to base that on because I don't have a computer. In 1970, there wasn't even, you know, I just had a bike and. And, you know, I knew that it went faster because I felt it. So. So the position can be, you know, without. Without buying a better bike, without training any harder. This is free speed. And that's. We want to. We want to find things that are going to make us go faster. So getting in a better aero position, as long as you can still push the power, which is the effort, then you're going to go faster. So spend a lot of your time thinking about, am I in the right position? And one of the tricks I use is, is my chin aiming at the handlebars or is it up in the air? So the more I force my chin forward to the handlebars, the more tucked position I am in, which means that I'm more aero. So therefore the bike's going to go faster. So therefore I'm going to get from A to B quicker than anybody else.

Yeah. If you're putting in all this effort over 30 minutes, over an hour, over four hours, you don't want to be getting distracted and slowly getting out of position and slowing yourself down, because you're really putting in that effort in your legs. And then your upper body is letting you down because you're not concentrating.

Well, the biggest resistance on a bike is the wind. So the faster you go, the more slower the bike will want to go, because you're actually hitting the wind at a greater velocity, plus the natural speed of the wind, whether it's a headwind or a tailwind. But you create your own headwind by riding anyway. People know that you feel the wind in your face just by riding. If it's a still day, there's still wind in your face, you're creating it. And the faster you go, that doubles the resistance of, of, of, you know, trying to slow you down. So if you can hide and tuck into a little, you know, really aerodynamic speed demon machine, you're going to get Free. Free speed. So. So I. You've got to practice this in training.

Yeah.

You know, talk about cadence. If you just expect to hold that position for an hour or five hours in a triathlon or 30 minute time trial, you're going to have trouble because your body's not used to it. You're going to fatigue and you're not going to ride that well because your body can't hold the position. So, you know, strength and conditioning off the bike is going to teach you. Practicing the aero in your training, whether you're on the trainer or at the velodrome, you know, try every time you do the effort. Right. My position, I've got to hold it for this five minutes or eight minutes or whatever the session is. And then when you're doing the recovery, sit up and relax and then back, back to the position. They're little tips that'll enable you to come race day. It'll be natural. I'm now racing where's my position?

Yeah, it's basically your aim is to, you're trying to constantly remind yourself to reduce the drag as much as possible. So point number three, and this will probably tie it all together, but, you know, this is where you can be aiming for free speed is to always be assessing your power numbers, but not just your power numbers. All your numbers, all the data you have available in conjunction with each other. Yep.

And that's kind of a great summary to finish with because it's just not one thing. And the example we used of at the start of people looking at only things in isolation. So this is the system that I use and I'm repeating it throughout my time trial. And if I was doing a swim in a triathlon, I'd be doing the same thing if I was on the bike, if I was running, I'm doing different topics obviously for different sports, but on the bike we're talking about today, one of the things that are going to make me go faster is repeating these key concepts in my head over and over as I'm riding. I'm not thinking about, you know, who's on the side watching me. I'm not thinking about, you know, the wind that much. I'm not thinking about how hot it is. I'm not thinking about how far to go. I'm just reminding myself, what is my power number? What is my cadence, what is my heart rate, what is my average speed? And there, the final thing is, what's my position? So five things that are happening in my head over and over. And the minute I've stopped thinking about my power because I'm thinking I'm up to the fifth one, my position, I'm back to power. And that might have taken 10 seconds to go through that. So I'm just referring to that the whole time. And once I've got on top of that and I've got the rhythm of the race, because time trialing is an individual sport, you are just focusing on what you're doing. It's not a tactical thing, or it is tacticals with the. The strategy that you have, but you're not relying on other people around you. It's just you against the clock. So this is what we're talking about here. And if I've got those things under control, then I can start to race, which is what we started with. You know, have these concepts as your main focus. And then once I've got my rhythm going, I'm into my race halfway through, I'm happy with my cadence. I'm feeling strong in the legs. My heart rate's under control, my position's beautiful. My power number is exactly where it should be. The cadence is. You know, I've got a rise coming. I'm not going to grind up this hill. I'm going to change gears, make sure I keep the cadence in the 88, 90, 92. For me on the, on the climb, the hill will keep the power up for me. So I've just got to not grind up here and not be at 75 or 70 and then over the top of the hill, I've then got to change gears again. So on the downhill, I can get into the biggest gear possible so they're not spinning, which is going to stimulate my heart rate. I don't want that to happen. So these are the things. And then I can start to say, right, who's ahead of me? How far away are they? Can I. Can I catch them? So I'm doing all these things to get me to understand the data and then race.

I was going to say before. The wind is probably a bad example before, because you will pay attention to the wind. But secondary to these five things, you'd be asking these five things constantly. And then the external factors like the hill coming up, uphill, downhill, the terrain, the wind that comes after, when all these things are just constantly under control.

That's right. And look, definitely the terrain and the wind, as a time trialist is so key because if you're into a headwind, you need to be riding fractionally above threshold. If you're in a tailwind, it's okay to be under threshold because basically you can't ride 70ks an hour to keep the pressure of the power on the pedals.

That's a really big point. So when we teach power to athletes, it, it's quite overwhelming and confusing at first and it takes people a while to get used to focusing on power. And so we can't ask athletes to just focus on all of this at once because it's just not going to be possible. But there has to be a point where you get used to power and then refocus on all these things because if you don't, you're going to be riding uphill, downhill, into wind, into tailwind, trying to just hold that one power number and it's not going to be happening for you. You're going to actually ride quite horribly.

Yeah. There's so much more details that we haven't gone into with how to ride power, but we're talking about today how to get faster. So. So at the end of the day, you know, the things you just spoke about, you know, what should my power be on the uphill into a headwind, what should it be on downhill, what should it be on the flat tailwind? You know, they're all things and the cadence changes according to the terrain. They're all things that are next level, you know, and the athletes that we have, they all know that.

Yeah, I guess it summarizes this last point is that if you want to go faster, it is about power. But it is about power in conjunction with all these things you're saying it's about power in conjunction to what's your heart rate, doing power in conjunction to your cadence, power in conjunction to your average speed. And you've got to be looking at all those things to make sure that the end result is a higher average spin.

So if all those things are aligned, you will do a pb. If you've got the right power, the right position, the right cadence, the right heart rate, the average speed is the result of that and your average speed will go up.

That's a pretty perfect way to summarize, I think this whole thing. I guess the main take home message is that remember to the goal is to ride faster. So you want power to be your friend. You want power to be a piece of data that helps you and you want to learn how to use it well. But it is not the sole thing that's going to get you to ride faster. Um, and it's not the sole goal of your effort, whether it's in training or racing, your goal isn't actually higher power. Higher power will normally make you go faster, but as we've spoken about, power is a piece of data that can actually go wrong. And so in the cases where it goes wrong, you need to know how to focus on the things that are going to get your average speed up.

Yep. And look, if you come home and the family asks you, how did you go today? They're not going to ask you what your power was. They're going to go, did you do a pb? And if you're used to being a podium athlete, did you win? And if you're used to being an age grouper who's in it for the love of it and wanting to improve, did you do a pb? They're the. They're the two questions. It's not going to be with your power up. Not many people are going to want to know that. And that's what the point is here is, you know, these are the things we use to get the result.

Yeah. So in training, if you can take these tips, if you can practice focusing on these things, then I think the perfect term you use is it's free speed for you.

Absolutely, yes. These are gold little, as you say, hacks that will enable you to be a better rider.

Perfect. Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks very much for listening and we'll see you next time.

Sam.