A successful time trial is a combination of specific training, natural ability, mental strength and focus, and aerodynamics.

To be good at time trials you have to enjoy them on some level.  You might not enjoy the pain of the effort but there is something compelling about the event that attracts you.

There is a satisfaction to be found when one pushes deeply through a world of pain in the quest for a victory or personal success. If you are a time trial racer I know you can relate.

My best ever time trial performances resulted from a combination of great training, lots of visualization, and a real desire to win. Plus I enjoyed the challenge (even though I suffered while doing it).

Training for Time Trials

Training for time trials is very specific to the length of the time trial. A prologue time trial which resembles a track pursuit requires a much more intense effort compared to a 20 mile+ time trial and therefore the ideal training is different.

A prologue specialist like Chris Boardman trained only 10 hours/week leading up to the Tour de France prologue (which he won twice). His training sessions included super intense interval on the track and road.  A Tour de France overall contender who seeks to excel over three weeks, can’t afford to taper his training to that extent for risk of losing too much endurance.

As a coach I have had some great successes coaching my clients in the discipline of time trials. Applying my own experience and knowledge and studying the best time trial racers in the world, I have come up with a training formula that consistently works. Notable successes include a bronze medal at the World Time Trial U23 Championships and a US National Junior time trial champion.

To improve your time trial performance there are a few things you can do right away. Firstly, include one or two rides a week on your time trial bike or using aero bars. The goal is for you to become really comfortable and efficient in the aero time trial position.

Additionally, you can include a specific time trial workout each week with sustained intervals or participate in a monthly time trial series.  
 

Natural Ability

A time trial is a true test of a rider’s ability over a longer sustained effort. A great time trial specialist needs lots of natural talent and has to be willing to train consistently over many years to achieve his full potential.

In my years of coaching experience I have seen the best power numbers by in the men’s category as follows (based on 20 minutes at 150-165lbs): Cat 5s: 260-280W, Cat 3-4s: 300-320W, Cat 1-2s: 340-380W, international Pros: 400-450W.

Mental Strength and Focus

The key to a successful time trial is to be mentally prepared ahead of time. You want to achieve a state during the time trial where you are fully concentrated (“in the zone”). This is hard to achieve without mental preparation. You also need a lot of will power to go deep and give it your best effort.

How to get “in the zone” 

A time trial hurts a lot worse when you don’t prepare mentally. Preparing mentally for a time trial race includes lots of visualization in the days and weeks leading up to the race. Visualizing repeatedly your best effort will trick your brain to believe that it has raced the time trial many times before. If you visualize diligently, you will achieve a state on race day where it feels like you are on auto pilot, completely “in the zone”, with your body and mind knowing exactly what to do.

Will Power 

A great time trial racer has loads of will power. Strong will power can become a learned habit through regular actions of courage and discipline. A strong desire – something that really motivates you – will naturally increase your will power.  

Know what motivates you to give a super effort. Some of us are motivated by our own personal improvements, a specific event, or competing against other racers . We are all wired differently.

What motivates and inspires you to give your best effort? Figuring this out will help you tap in to your best performance.

Aerodynamic Equipment

Time trialists love to focus on improving their time trial bike and equipment. A fully set-up time trial bike is a big advantage over a regular road bike, especially at higher speed.

 The standard equipment these days for successful time trials is usually a front tri spoke or carbon deep section wheel, a rear disc wheel, an aero flat-back position (if you are flexible enough and can still put out good power), and a time trial bike.  Minor adjustments to the angle of the aero bars can save you a few seconds and result in the difference between first and second place. No wonder wind tunnels are more and more visited by serious racers each year.

In my experience there is a happy medium to be found between your best power output and the most aerodynamic position. When you start to drop the aero bars very low you begin to lose power (as you close the angle between your torso and your legs). Training regularly on your time trial bike can help limit this from happening.

A skin suit, aerodynamic helmet and aero shoe covers are standard time trial gear. These days most of the top riders have similar equipment so it is more or less a level playing field where athletic ability still shines through.

Whether you consider yourself a good or an average time trialist, one thing is for sure, you can always improve and go faster by improving the different areas related to peak time trial performance.

I remember racing in Brittany, France early March. Torrential rain and hail storms beating down. I was literally frozen all over, unable to change gears or get my food out of my pockets. After the finish I fell over, unable to unclip. In those days I was motivated to train and race in cold weather. What happened?

An inspiring goal.

You see I now ride for the pleasure and have no desire to race and therefore no personal riding goals. In my younger years, as a hungry 18 year old racing all over the world, I had dreams of racing the Tour de France. I had clear goals and trained for specific events each year.

I was successful. Winning state championship titles (Ile de France) on the road and track, finishing second in the French national championships, and making the French national team. I was inspired and motivated by my goals. Those goals inspired me and turned thoughts (goals) in to energy (action).

It does not matter what your goals are, what matters is that your goals inspire and motivate you to take action.

Make a goal that inspires you. It can be to lose weight, improve your power, or win a race. Regular goal setting is a key ingredient in finding the motivation to train consistently each week.

We all go through periods when motivation is lower, even with good goals. When you feel you have low motivation, here are a few things that have helped me to get it back quickly:

• ·          Make new goals, review your current goals
• ·          Remind yourself of your progress
• ·          Go for a group ride with friends (versus training alone)
• ·          Clean your bike
• ·          Watch the Tour de France on TV 
• ·          Hire a coach

As a coach, I can see how my clients find motivation by knowing that I am always there for them and have their best interest at heart. The structured training provides focus and direction to their training. The weekly review of training files keeps the athlete accountable. And when they lose motivation, I am there to pick them up, and to remind them of the big improvements they have already made. 

 Time now to make those goals and get re motivated!

Thanks for reading – Simon 

What makes a great climber, especially in the mountains, is an excellent power to weight ratio (watts/kg). A high power to weight ratio has two components: first, the ability to ride for long periods of time at a high power (maximal sustainable power). Typically a top climber can ride at 10% or more, above threshold power (or heart rate) for 30-60 minutes. Second, a low enough body weight so that the power translates into an advantage going uphill.

Having a high maximum sustainable power output will make an excellent time trialist on flat roads where the main obstacle is wind drag. To carry over this advantage to climbing, you need a low enough body weight in relation to the power produced. This is especially true on long and steep climbs. On short climbs of less than 5 minutes so called “none climbers” who carry more muscle can still make it over the top with the front riders by using their great power even though their watts/kg is inferior.

The 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis illustrated how much body weight can make a difference when going uphill. Riis beat the great Miguel Indurain in 1996. At the time of his win he weighed 150lbs (68kgs) and had a sustainable power output of 480 watts when going all-out on a climb or time trial. This gave him an incredible power to weight ratio of 7 watts per kilogram (480 / 68 = 7). 7 watts /kg is widely regarded as the magic number in order to be one of the world’s best.

Indurain had a sustained power output of 550 watts, a much higher number than Riis. However, he weighed in at 176lbs (80kgs), 26lbs heavier than Riis! This gave him a power to weight ratio of 6.8 watts/kg (550 / 80 = 6.8), 0.2 less than Riis. Indurain’s 70 watt higher power gave him the advantage in the time trials, where the main obstacle is wind drag. However, on the longest, steepest climbs of the Tour this was not the case as Riis’s 0.2 watts/kg advantage, made all the difference.

A few years before his Tour win, Riis’s story was quite different. He was a good professional, nothing more. At the time he weighed 165lbs (75kgs), 15lbs more than his tour winning weight. Riis was slightly overweight for a pro cyclist and could lose some body fat. With the help of a great coach he not only lost 15lbs (over a few years), but with a new, more scientific training program he was able to increase his power significantly, making him unbeatable in the 1996 Tour.

If you ever get a chance to see the Tour de France in person you will be surprised to see how skinny the top Tour de France contenders are. They are much smaller in real life compared to their TV image. This fact, substantiated by the math (watts/kg) proves that being skinny counts for peak performance uphill!

P.S. If you would like to join me on a Tour de France bike tour that promises to be the experience of a lifetime, contact me today. I am taking 2 groups on 2 tours this July.

I don’t know if Lance ever took drugs, but I do know that you can’t turn an everyday 200W cyclist in to a 450W Tour de France winner. Just to make it as a pro requires a big amount of talent and training. That means Lance must be super gifted and that he trains incredibly hard. How else is it possible to become World Champion at the age of 21 looking more like a football player than a Tour de France cyclist?

P.S. If you would like to join me on a Tour de France bike tour that promises to be the experience of a lifetime, contact me today. I am taking 2 groups on 2 tours this July.

Power offers a new dimension to training as it is a totally objective measure of your effort unlike heart rate which changes each day even though the power output may be identical.  If you performed a 20 minute interval for 5 days in a row at the same power output, you would find that your heart rate will most likely drop a beat or two each day, even though the power remains (effort) identical. This drop in heart rate is due to fatigue.

Heart rate is not as accurate when performing high intensity intervals compared with power. When starting an interval heart rate is slow to respond to an increase in intensity which means it may take you 2-5 minutes to elevate your heart rate up to the required higher intensity zone, even though the power output is in zone from the first second. 

There is a difference to how an interval is performed with heart rate compared to power. A typical interval performed with power will show a steady power graph while heart rate slowly rises. A typical interval performed with heart rate will show a spike in power at the start of the interval as the rider brings his heart rate up to the required zone, followed by a steady, slow drop in power as heart rate stays flat (in zone). 

Heart rate training is still a great way to train and for lower intensity training is as good as training with power.  It is also easier to set a limit on intensity (heart rate ceiling) with heart rate compared to power which spikes up with the slightest acceleration.

A big advantage of power is doing regular testing.  Testing shows you your ability on different durations required for performance. Typically, you can test your sprint power (5-10 second), anaerobic power (1 minute), VO2 power (3-5 minutes) and threshold power (10-20 minutes).  Repeating the testing every 8-12 weeks will show completely objectively whether you are improving.

Power makes performance mathematical. With power one can determine what power output it takes to win a time trial or mountain climb and then design a training plan accordingly. Improving your watts/kg (average watts over 20-60 minutes divided by your body weight in kilograms) is how to improve climbing and overall strength. Improving actual power and aerodynamics is the how to improve speed on the flat.

Power has many advantages over heart rate for the cyclist who is serious about improving and who enjoys training precisely and measuring progress. It is the ultimate training tool for the performance cyclists. 

The Garmin Edge 705 really caught my attention this summer while leading a bike tour at the Tour de France. One of the guests had the Garmin and would give us live updates of the current gradient as we pedaled up Alpe d’Huez. It was interesting to see how even though the average gradient of the climb is 8%, the gradient varied significantly with the steepest section at 14%. Having this information helped me better gauge my effort and to understand why certain sections of the climb felt so tough!

The Garmin GPS mapping capabilities is what really sets it apart from other bike computers on the market. The Map Source City Navigator street maps (not always included) uploaded in your Edge 705 make it work like a car GPS device with turn-by-turn navigation. If you are travelling to a new destination where you have never biked before, you can search on Garmin Connect for bike routes in the area and can save them to your device. Your Garmin will then navigate your ride with turn by turn. Even if you don’t have the street maps uploaded, the device comes standard with a built-in base map which will navigate you back to your starting point should you get lost on unfamiliar roads.

Garmin offers City Navigator street maps software for most European countries and many countries around the world for an addition +/- $99. For the bike tours in France that I lead each year, I map the bike routes out ahead of time with my Garmin and share the bike routes with the cyclist coming on the tour. Those guests with their own Garmin can upload the routes to their personal Garmin before the bike tour starts (City Navigation France required). Another benefit is that each person can see exactly what to expect in terms of distance and elevation before the bike tour and can adapt their training accordingly.

If you have a record ride over a set bike course, you can save it as a course on your Garmin Edge 705 software. The next time you attempt to break your record, simply select the saved course. The Garmin will navigate your ride and will show how you are progressing compared to the saved record ride. It calculates your goal time to each point on the ride and the distance you are ahead/behind as you pedal. This works particularly well for time trials over a set course. Another cool feature is that you can share a ride wirelessly with other Garmin users within a 3 meter radius.

The new online Garmin Connect software maps your rides on Google maps (example ride). The Player shows the progression of the ride on the map with the ride data (power, heart rate, speed, cadence, elevation) at each point during the ride. You can share your ride by email or through the social networks life Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. You can also track your progress and data with the online calendar features. This software is free to all Garmin device owners.

The 705 comes with 2 displays that you can switch between. Each display can be customized with the information you would like to see. You can have up to 8 data fields per screen. This gives you 16 data fields in total with the 2 displays. Setting up the display and other settings is very easy and intuitive. I found I could do pretty much everything without looking at the manual.

Riding with power works great and is easy to set-up. The Garmin like the PowerTap, gives you the option to have a 3 second moving average of your live power data. This means the power number you see every second on your screen is a moving average of the last 3 seconds. I prefer using the moving average when training as it gives a more constant power reading and makes holding a specific interval zone easier to achieve.

Another big plus in my opinion is the huge amount of storage memory the Garmin holds for downloads. This gives you the option to download your files every few days or weeks.

In this review I have described just some of the great features of the Garmin Edge 705. There are many more great features that I continue to discover. When trying to come up with any negatives I can’t. The Garmin is indeed the ultimate bicycle computer and I can unreservedly recommend it to all cyclists who want to have the ultimate training device.

In this video we explain mental training techniques that will help you prepare for your goal event.

A pure climber is a cyclist who can produce a lot of power in relation to his/her body weight. Pure climbers are normally slight in build and carry very little body fat. On shorter climbs like here in Florida, it is more about pure strength versus power in relation to body weight (watts/kg). For this type of climbing a big, powerful cyclist can compete with a pure climber which is not the case in the big mountains.

Here are a few tips that can help you go faster uphill –

• Increase your cycling fitness and strength (power) by improving your training. An experienced coach can help you design a customized training plan based on your cycling goals, experience, ability, and schedule.
• Reduce excess body fat. Elite male endurance athletes carry between 4-10% body fat, and elite women between 10-18% body fat. If you are way over these numbers then you can improve your performance by losing some body fat through a sensible calorie reduction that is focused on slow and long term weight loss.
• Lighten up your bike with a high-end carbon frame from a reputable manufacturer. Purchase a set of wheels with light weight rims made from carbon fiber. Studies have shown that having light weight rims are a big advantage when the road turns up.
• Ride in the hills or mountains as much as possible.
• For group rides or races, position yourself in the front of the pack as you start the base of the climb. Then drift back slowly through the pack if needed. This strategy will help you to avoid getting dropped on the climb.
• Coming in to a short steep climb after a fast descent, change in to an easier gear (small chain ring), before you have to apply real pressure on the pedals. This will avoid a sloppy gear change. Change to a bigger gear as you approach the summit and get out-the-saddle to accelerate.
• Don’t psyche yourself out before a climb in a race or group ride. If you believe you are a non-climber, make a conscious effort to be strong mentally by having the attitude “there is no way I am getting dropped today!”
• Be ready to suffer! Everyone hurts going uphill. Accept the pain and realize that it is only short lived. Stay focused in the present moment by observing your breathing, pedaling technique, or the cyclists around you.
• For short steep climbs (1-3 minutes) it is often better to climb mostly out-the-saddle using a bigger gear (slower cadence). For long climbs (5 minutes +) it is better to climb mostly seated using an easier gear (higher cadence).