How.To.Ride.Faster

[dplasters]

Disclaimer: I do not race, have not raced, I have essentially no credentials other than based on the BAFS/Bike Arlington club I ride quickly, so I figure – why not?

I pick random segments/sections of my commute to give high effort. I typically take Monday and Friday easy. Because my commute has so many lights and stop signs I know that my average speed is more indicative of my luck at the intersections than my effort, so I try not to let that get in my head and instead focus on the unbroken sections of effort. I don’t use a power meter or any device other than the strava on my phone.

I’ve found that pushing myself for a whole commute is counter productive with all the stops I have. Much easier and effective to say “Ok, all out for the next mile”, short easy spin, “Ok, all out again”.

I use a timbuk2 especial medio backpack. The raider is their lighter and racier bag. I don’t think that makes that big of a difference though.

Endurance Road bikes have a pretty relaxed geometry and will put you plenty upright in traffic but assuming you are flexible/comfortable enough can be plenty aero in the drops. The Jake/Esatto would be the Kona equivalent from a quick spin on their site.

[Judd]

@lordofthemark 144921 wrote:

The Bike
The Dew is what it is. A hybrid, and I guess not the fastest hybrid out there. I do not regret my choice, its pretty resilient, and I ride on some crappy roads, and like being upright in traffic, and have had only a handful of flats, etc. But I do wonder how much difference say a relatively cheap road bike would make. But not likely to get that anytime soon – our N+1 will be a hybrid for my wife, and I am also not sure how many bikes our building will allow us to keep in the good bike room (I do not want to put any in the bad bike room, and I do not think my wife wants any in our unit).

I started on a steel Trek hybrid and bought an aluminum Trek 1.2 aluminum road bike, which is an entry level model. In my case it made about a 2-3 mph difference at the time. My carbon fiber road bike (a Trek Madone 5.2, which is a slightly more than entry level carbon road bike) makes me about 2-3 mph faster than the aluminum road bike. In my case, it was an instant speed boost.

[Steve O]

Like dplasters I have no credentials other than my observations over the years riding with and among others under many conditions and at different distances and circumstances.

The bigger factor between you and bike is you–the motor. I used to relish the occasional day I had to borrow my wife’s hybrid if mine was broken or something. I would still roll on past plenty of commuters on their carbon road bikes. This still happens sometimes when I’m on my vintage 3-speed.
My bike is 31 pounds of steel, rack & fenders and my tires are not particularly fast and I only remember to add air every week or two. In the winter I put a generator hub on the front. So my bike is not making me fast. I can’t keep up with dcv and the other robots, but I’m happy with my speed in general. I suspect I would be faster on a faster bike, so it’s not 100% motor/0% bike, but it’s definitely not the other way round.

I agree with dp on “intervals.” That’s how runners get faster. Feel free to JRA as usual for most of your ride, but push yourself on a particular segment or hill to or beyond a point of uncomfortableness. Sprint. Sprint uphill if you can.

Part of the problem is that a bicycle is such an extraordinarily efficient means of transportation, one can ride long distances without actually working all that hard. Actually, that’s not a “problem,” it’s a big part of the glory of bike riding. But you have to make yourself work hard, because the activity itself (unless you have to deal with a bunch of hills) won’t make you.

[dkel]

I don’t know how this figures in, but I’ll throw it out there: my fastest commutes (or rides in general) are most often the ones where I make the effort to climb faster/harder. I can make a greater effort over an entire ride, and there will be some gain in speed, but I can seemingly slack off on a ride except for hammering the climbs, and I get a surprising benefit in time/speed. This could mean that I’m generally a lazy climber most of the time, and I’m making the biggest difference by changing my climbs…but I don’t think that’s what is actually happening: I don’t get passed on climbs very often on my average efforts, so I can’t be too much worse than average overall. I just think massive gains can be had by expending the effort to improve on the most difficult and otherwise slowest parts of the ride. YMMV. Feel free to debunk this if you know better than I do.

[trailrunner]

If you really want to ride faster, then you have to transition from commuting to more serious training. That includes volume and intensity. And if you’re really serious about going faster, ride with other serious people. When going fast was important to me, I used to do a fair amount of group rides, including the Tuesday – Thursday Wakefield ride. I’ve rarely pushed myself harder than I did on those rides, when I determined not to get dropped. I also had a good friend who was the same ability to me, and when we rode, we’d constantly be pushing each other.

[Vicegrip]

More motor cures all kinds of cycling issues. Making more motor can be hard more so in some of us. Along with working on more motor making the most of the available watts can be addressed.

I see a speed delta across the bikes I ride. Same motor same route consistent different average speeds. From my reading I see that tires and riding position are big factors that can be changed without much effort or time frame. Going from a flatbar 33mm+ size tread tire bike to a drop bar road bike with road tires for an instant speed boost. Tires and wind resistance reduction both make a noticeable difference.
I find flat pedals to be a bother. Once you get used to clip in pedals you might find they help a bit. While clipped in you can better employ under used muscle groups during climbs and can spin in low gears with ease.
Fiddling around with this pack or that might garner some change but it will be little in relation to going from an ahem…”solidly built” hybrid to a road configuration.

My personal non pro recommendation would be the most efficient bike/setup and riding position you can use and switch to clip in pedals. ie. Get a road bike, clip in and take the time to get used to riding it. Perhaps at first at least, you can use the hybrid when you are riding in areas where you are less comfortable and the road bike when you want to keep up with other riders. I bet after a short while you would stop using the hybrid for all but grocery getting.

[huskerdont]

Goes without saying that I also have no credentials.

Cleats seem to give me a mile or two an hour with no more effort. (I have campus pedals on one bike and have experimented.)

Since getting another bike (a road bike) seems to be out of the question, consider upgrading the hybrid to a better quality gravel or cross bike. You probably wouldn’t want a road bike as your only bike anyway, and gravel or cross would work in most any situation. You can either have summer tires (narrower/smoother/faster) and winter tires, or do separate wheels for summer and winter. When I ride my cross bike, it’s definitely slower than my road bike, but really not that much (a couple of minutes over 9 miles), and definitely faster than the hybrid I used to have and much faster than any mountain bike I’ve ridden.

The right tires will make all the difference in the world for speed, but you can’t go too crazy or you end up with flats, which would be counterproductive. (No doubt you’ve looked through the tires thread, but there are some good recs there.)

Then, as others have said, longer training rides, either with a group if that’s your thing, or by yourself if you’re a self-motivated person who will push yourself and read up on training regimens. I remember when training for a marathon how much faster my mile times magically became, and it’s the same sort of thing with riding. There’s only so much endurance benefit you can get from a half-hour ride, even if you do it twice a day, but if you get a few hours in on a weekend (and give your legs time to recover, which can be hard), suddenly the weekdays become easier.

[Harry Meatmotor]

Unabashed racer here. I went from pudgy once-in-a-while commuter on a junky SS, to a leg-shaving A-pace group riding roadie, to a middling CAT4 racer who only eats salads because race weight, in the span of about 5 or 6 years.

Over the last few years there’s been some new research findings in the efficacy of different types of structured training. As I see it, there’s been a pendulum-swing in “best practices”. For a little while, the common notion that winter base miles at low tempo (i.e., Zone 2 in structured training-speak) fell a little out of fashion, and that type of training was regarded as more ineffective as other types of interval training. Long (boring) Z2 rides were sloughed off as “junk miles”. Think, the Chris Carmichael style training regiments.

Recently, there’s been a shift away from the high intensity/low duration training as the mainstay of a training plan because it typically overtrains athletes.

Now, I’m seeing much more “winter Z2, early spring Z3, sprinkle in some VO2 max and threshold work, then gobs of Sweet Spot Training*, then do some more VO2 and rest/recovery”.

*Sweet Spot Training is working at 80-90% of (what’s called) your FTP, or Functional Threshold Power, or, what your max sustained effort for 60 minutes could be.

So without sending folks into the hell that is structured training, what I would recommend is divide your time riding into 2 types of rides: relaxed-ish recovery rides of longer duration (HAVE FUN!!!! ENJOY THE SCENERY!!!!), and harder rides just below what you consider your threshold – 7 or 8 of 10 of your relative perceived effort (where 10 is all-out, and 1 is sitting on the couch) for roughly half the total time you spent doing recovery rides. Then, pick some hills on which to go all out, and repeat those hills maybe a couple times a week when the weather is nice.

Of course, your mileage may vary as far as the results are concerned! I will say, there is no point to training if you don’t have goals – with no goals, you can’t establish what you’re good at, and what you’re bad at, and therefore you can’t train your weaknesses, and ride to your strengths.

Or, just spend gobs of money on a cycling coach!

[lordofthemark]

Just to clarify where I am now

Shirlington to 14 Street Bridge, which is 4.6 miles with some “modest” climbs, Of the last month I have consistently been doing it between 13.9 MPH and 14.8 MPH. I have not broken 15MPH on that segment, ever. That seems like a reasonable goal. But this is too long to be a “sprint” ?

WB, 14st to Shirlington, I am slower – did 14.4MPH once, but other than that never above 14 MPH.

Arlington Aqueduct, EB. Only half a mile, flat, begins with some downhill and usually at the point in my commute where I am warmed up but still quite fresh. Ride it from 16 to 18.1 MPH. Fastest ride was 18.9MPH (which may be my fastest recorded segment, other than a downhill)

WB Sewage plant sprints, fastest was 16.9MPH. Usually lately I can do 15 to 16.5, but when the wind is against me, or I am feeling pooped out (sorry) I go under 14MPH. Sometimes quite a bit below.

As for hills, the longest one is still Walter Reed (the Lucky Run Trail) at the end of my westbound commute. There are several shorter ones that still give me trouble on the MVT, and even the climbs onto the 14th Street Bridge. I suppose I could focus on one or more of those.

[scorchedearth]

This is entirely anecdotal so YMMV however one thing that I’ve found which allows me to generate more power and to cope with discomfort from hard efforts is weight lifting combined with core exercises. Anytime that I’ve included that in my exercise regimen, I’ve found that I am stronger and faster on the bike. This is especially relevant to offroad riding however I can feel the difference when commuting or on group rides on the road.

[Anonymous]

@lordofthemark 144921 wrote:

Tires/wheels – I am thinking a new set of wheels, with narrower and slicker tires would help (but how many flats can I look forward to?) We can keep the old set in the unit, for when I want to ride in conditions calling for them.

Tubeless. Yes, I speak with the zeal of the (relatively) recent convert, but i have not had a single while-riding flat since switching to tubeless (and the couple slow leaks I had that were not fully sealed by sealant were still fixable without removing tire). I don’t really get pinch flats anyway, but I ride on a lot of crappy suburban shoulders alongside traffic that makes dodging debris problematic and pick up a ton of small rocks and bits of glass and what have you, so I did used to get “sharp pointy things puncturing my tire and tube” flats. And I am not nearly a diligent as I ought to be about brushing them all off my tires after a ride. Inspect my tires at any random time and you will likely find at least half a dozen bits of rock embedded in them. My year-old tires have so many nicks and cuts I’m somewhat astounded they can hold air at all, but yet they continue to do so.

[Rootchopper]

If you are planning on going fast, please please please take its somewhere else than the local trails. They are simply not designed for high speed riding, especially at rush hour.

[lordofthemark]

@Rootchopper 144994 wrote:

If you are planning on going fast, please please please take its somewhere else than the local trails. They are simply not designed for high speed riding, especially at rush hour.

Faster than I do now. Pretty much all the people I follow ride faster than me on the local trails. So I imagine I can go faster and still ride safely and politely.

For example, on Shirlington to 14th Street Bridge, my 14.8 MPH top speed puts me at 187 out of 224 members of the BikeArlington group. (some of those folks top speeds may have been achieved at off hours, but I doubt all were) On Arlington Aqueduct, I am 210 out of 266.

I am passed on the trails by plenty of other hybrid riders, and by almost all road bike riders (and occasionally by a CaBi rider). I have no intention of becoming a pathlete, but I would like to get to work a bit faster, and as I said, manage to keep up with at least the slower of my friends.

[vvill]

I wouldn’t bother trying to reduce the weight of the bike, but I agree with Vicegrip that riding position and tires can help. You could have someone look at your riding position. Generally: the more forward your saddle and the lower your bars, the faster you will go. But obviously you need to more flexible and it can be also harder to see as far ahead, and there’s more of your weight on your front wheel so handling is a little different.

If you’re running knobby MTB tires, slicks or urban tires or even a gravel tire will be quite a bit faster.

But obviously also just ride more and ride harder. Go to Hains Pt (or similar) and do a loop as fast as you can. Then do another. etc.

[KWL]

@vvill 144998 wrote:

…But obviously also just ride more and ride harder. Go to Hains Pt (or similar) and do a loop as fast as you can. Then do another. etc.

Didn’t Eddy Merckx reply “Ride lots” when asked for advice on training?

But then LOTM could just do a few rides with me. He would immediately appear much faster.

[Author]

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