How To

Eight ways to get faster on the bike

Everybody wants to be able to ride faster. Here are eight things to think about if you want to be a better cyclist

Train with heart rate or power

Want to improve your speed on the bike? Read on!
No matter what, when you're riding on your own it's far more efficient to try and get out of the way of the air than attempt to overpower it
Having an expert design your training plan can take some of the guesswork out of training, and also help to ensure you recover properly and don't overtrain
Intervals might hurt, but they'll bring big gains (Pic: Media24)
Training with power might still be reasonably expensive, but it's by far the best metric for measuring your effort
Unless you're going fast enough to justify this position, then you can still pedal!
Going out with stronger riders will force you out of your comfort zone (Pic: Polka Dot Cycling)
Are you a masher or a spinner?
"Ride lots" was Eddy Merckx's opinion on how to become a better cyclist. It might not be that simple but hours in the saddle definitely make a difference

Train with heart rate or power

Training by feel sounds like a great idea, and purists will insist that it’s all you need, but especially for newer riders training by feel is a one way ticket to going far too hard, or not hard enough.

And that’s why people have spent years looking for the metrics that matter most in your training and figuring out how to accurately monitor them.

Even though it’s taken a few knocks over the last little while, training with heart rate is still a good way to monitor performance. You can set your zones, target your training correctly and make sure that your recovery sessions really are recovery.

But power is king. Sure, power meters are still expensive, but they’re not all that expensive any more. You can pick up a Stages unit for £599 which is still a big spend, but to put it in perspective it’s a third as expensive as an average set of carbon wheels and in the same price range as an upgrade set of aluminium clinchers.

The reason power is so sought after is that it’s constant. Whether your riding uphill or down, into a headwind or with a tailwind, on a road bike or an MTB, one watt is one watt. Heart rate varies according to various factors like whether you’re ill or slightly unwell or whether you’re just excited, and it’s not particularly accurate for high intensity intervals because it takes too long to rise to that consistent level, and by the time it’s showing the true number the interval might already be over.