CYCLING
Basic cycling training tips
Staff contributer
Posted Tue, 30 May 2000

Many recreational cyclists don't start training for big cycling events of until it is really too late! You have your bike and your helmet. It's time to start training and the sooner you do the more successful you will be. Use these tips to get going...

General points

Before starting — you must have a cycle computer. You will need it to monitor your speed and distance, without which effective training is impossible.

If you are planning to take part in long rides such as the Cycle Challenge, The Argus Cycle Tour or the EP Herald then you should be concentrating on endurance and strength training.

If you have time you can combine your cycling training with general strength training at the gym. The important muscles for cycling are the arms, legs, stomach and back.

Before weight training you must warm up as with any other sort of exercise. Use a stationary bike or jog on the treadmill for 10 to 15 minutes, or better still, cycle to the gym.

You should also stretch at the beginning and end of each training session — concentrating on those muscles you intend to exercise.

Most gyms will have equipment which will allow you to exercise specific muscle groups. If you haven't used this kind of equipment before, then ask one of the gym trainers to show you how to use it.

Exercise the arms using benchpresses and biceps curls; the legs using legpresses and squats, the stomach using situps and the back using back pushes.

Where you are using weights select a weight which will allow you to carry out 6 to 8 sets of 10 to 20 repetitions per set. You are not trying to emulate Mr or Ms Universe!

Try and get to gym for weight training at least once a week, twice if you can manage it. You could always combine your visit to the gym for weight training with a spinning class which would give you endurance training as well. More on spinning later.

How often to cycle

This is a difficult one. Ideally if you are trying to improve your time or make sure that you do a good time in a long ride, the more often you cycle the better. But most of us work and the kind of training regime recommended for professional cyclists is just too time consuming.

I have found over the years that 3 times a week is the absolute minimum if you want to have a comfortable ride, combined with visits to the gym, and one longish ride over the weekend with my local pedal power association.

The weekend rides with your local pedal power association are very important. You learn to ride in fairly large crowds of people, you learn to ride in groups and you have the stimulus of cycling with other people to spur you on. If you do the same rides in consecutive years you can also monitor your progress by keeping a record of your time for particular rides in each year. It also gives you the opportunity to do some long rides of between 70 and 100 km in company and with all the back-up which the pedal power associations offer. These long rides are important if training for rides of 100 km or more.

Mark Beneke et al. in their book "The lore of cycling" have a suggested training program for working people who want to do The Argus or a similar 100 km race in three to three and a half hours. I have followed it, sort of, and didn't manage The Argus in anything approaching that time, but certainly felt fit and comfortable when riding.

• Step 1. Assuming that you are new to cycling and not too fit, you should start out slowly with short rides. They say to avoid hills, but I am not so sure. I would suggest taking hills slowly and in a low gear, rather than avoiding them entirely. Use these rides to get used to pedalling smoothly and get your bottom used to the saddle. slowly start to increase your distance and your speed. They suggest 1000 km like this taking 3 to 5 months, but are a bit late for that, so use common sense and start to increase you efforts when you feel ready. Again the local pedal power rides are good for this. You can start with the very short routes and advance to the medium routes over a few weeks.

• Step 2. Build up to doing 300 km a week by two months before the event. They suggest one long ride — 70 to 100 km — a week over the weekends. Try and ride 40 km a day before or after work, as well as the weekend long ride, and this will give you the weekly distance.

• Step 3. Try and keep up the 300 km a week in the last month and include some interval training for about an hour each week, after a good warm up. Don't forget to stretch after each ride.

A slightly simpler approach, but without the specific targets of distance, is to cycle between 3 and 5 times a week, for one to two hours at a time, with a cadence (pedal rotation) of 80 to 100 repetitions per minute (rpm) and at a pulse rate which is between 70 and 85% of your maximum heart rate.

How hard to cycle

This is where we start to think about heart rate. If you possibly can buy a heart rate monitor. They start at around R350 and go up to a couple of thousand. If money is a problem then the basic model will be fine, since you will learn to monitor when you are in the correct training zone. If you can spend a bit more money get one which will do laps (for interval training) and tell you whether you are within your set training zone by beeping at you.

If you cannot afford a heart rate monitor then learn to take your pulse at the beginning, during and at the end of your training session. You can use either your wrist, tracing down from the base of the thumb on the outside edge, or your neck just below the jaw line. Count the number of heart beats per minute.

Your maximum heart rate is generally assumed to be 220 minus your age; for example, if you are 44 then it will be 176. You can then calculate the value for 60%, 70% etc of this. However, if you are already fairly fit, then your maximum will be higher than this. There are books available which give you ways of calculating your maximum heart rate based on your age and/or your morning resting heart rate. Your local gym should also be able to help you. Your morning resting heart rate is your heart rate just after you have woken up, before you start moving around. In general the lower your morning resting heart rate, the higher your maximum heart rate will be. As you get fitter you will notice that your resting heart rate decreases, as does your average heart rate when you are exercising. This is one of the most satisfying ways of measuring increased fitness since it is objective.

The kind of cycling we are talking about is best served by endurance and strength training. Endurance training increases your aerobic capacity — you set a pace and stay with it. Try and train at heart rate between 65 and 75% of your maximum.

Strength training on a bike is hill work. Select your gear and try and stay in it — your heart rate should be around 75 to 85% of your maximum, although on really steep hills it will go higher than this. Don't strength train more than once or twice a week and allow yourself either a complete day off afterwards or a day at which you only train at 50% of your maximum for recovery.

Make sure that you do not neglect hill training. Rides such as The Argus Cycle Tour have plenty of hills and they will slow you down a lot if you have never done any hill training.

Interval training

The basic principals of endurance training for cycling and running are similar. When running you must use interval training to increase you speed, so should you in cycling.

Interval training involves several hard efforts broken up by rest periods allowing some recovery. You can work out routines for yourself depending on available time and the kind of terrain on which you train. An example would be 15 to 20 intervals of 750 m cycling at a pace which raises your heart rate to between 85 and 90% of maximum, with 30 to 60 second rests in between in which you cycle slowly enough for your heart rate to start dropping. If you want to increase your speed, take your heart rate up to closer to 100% of maximum and allow yourself a longer recovery period in between. Do this at least once a week, particularly in the last two months before the event for which you are training.

Wind!

The first law of cycling is that there is always a head wind, particularly if you live in the Cape or any coastal area! First, don't forget that wind will chill you. So if you are cycling in strong winds, particularly if the temperature is low anyway, wear warm, wind-proof clothing or you will get chilled very quickly.

Even on a calm day you are putting most of your effort into overcoming wind resistance. It can take 9 times as much effort to cycle at 20 km per hour into a head wind of 10 km per hour as it does to cycle with the same wind blowing from behind. Tail or head winds speed or slow you by about half the wind speed; for example a tail wind of 2 km per hour will increase your speed by 1 km per hour.

What will affect you most in a head wind is your frontal area, so don't sit up straight when cycling into a head wind and make sure that you don't have jackets flapping open. Tuck yourself down, keeping your elbows in. If you are on a road bike then use the drops. If on a mountain bike grip the bars near the stem. Do watch what is happening in front of you even though your head is down though!

If you are not a very experienced rider then I wouldn't recommend slipstreaming other riders, since you have to tuck yourself closely into a group for this to be an effective way of combatting the wind, and it is very easy to catch your wheel on that in front of you. If you are experienced then this is the time to ride in a group!

Don't decide not to train because it is windy — unless it is blowing a real gale of course. It is often windy on race days and you need to be used to cycling in wind. You will get an even better work out in the wind and can probably drop your distance if training in wind.

Indoor training

There are times when time or the weather do not allow you to get out on the road. Stationary bikes are a good substitute and can be set up for particular types of training, such as endurance and hill training. Make sure that you work just as hard on these as you would when you are out on the road or you will not get any benefit.P Spinning is the form of indoor training which has become extremely popular, and not just with cyclists

This is a high intensity indoor cycling class lasting between 45 and 90 minutes using fixed gear bikes. An instructor will take you for a ride mimicking cycling conditions as closely as possible by varying the resistance against which you are pedalling. In most centres endurance, strength and all terrain classes are given.

Endurance classes take you spinning at a moderate resistance, staying with a pace for the whole class, at between 65 and 75% of maximum heart rate. Strength classes are hill training, with slow, steady resistance work which is increased constantly and gradually, like a long slow hill, at between 75 to 85% of maximum heart rate. The all terrain classes incorporate speed work, strength and endurance and heart rates between 65 and 90% of maximum.

Use indoor training during the winter to keep you cardiovascular conditioning and muscle strength up so that the start of the summer season is not such a shock! I have found that regular spinning has improved not only my muscle strength, endurance capacity and speed, but also my general cycling technique.