How to build power and endurance for time trial success

 

Time trialing is racing against time. It requires you to lean over onto your TT bars and push against the wind – just you and your bike. It comes down to what your body and mind can do when you're out there by yourself. Let's use the example of someone who wants to break one hour for a 40 km.  Improving both your aerobic endurance and power at the lactate threshold will decrease your time over the distance. 

 

• Aerobic endurance is the time during which you can exercise without producing lactic acid (and it building up) in your muscles

 

• Functional threshold power or pace (FTP) is the highest mean average power or pace you can maintain for one hour.

 

To ride a 40 km race at one hour, you will have to ride at 24 mph (40 km/hr).   There are several workouts you can do to help build yourself up to this pace

 

• Intervals

 

First, start out doing 6-minute intervals and try holding 24 mph. Give yourself 2 minutes rest in between and start with doing 5 to 7 intervals.  Slowly increase the number of intervals until you reach 60 minutes total of intervals. Once you reach that goal of completing 60 minutes total, start to increase the interval time.  Try 6 x 10 minutes on week one.  The next week try 3 x 20 minutes.  The following week try 2 x 30 minutes and the final week before your 40 km TT practice doing one full hour and holding it at 24 mph.  This is practicing holding the pace.

 

The second intervals to work on are one minute all-out efforts that help to improve your handling of lactic acid.  Start out by doing one minute all out efforts with one minute recovery.  If you cannot recover in one minute, back off on the effort.  Try doing this 10-15 times. Each week, reduce the recovery time.  So, try one minute all out and 45 seconds recovery.  The following week, try one minute all out at 30 seconds recovery.  Next week try one minute all out at 15 seconds recovery.

 

• Building strength

 

Find a climb of at least two minutes.  Try climbing seated in as big a gear as you can manage and push it as hard as you can without hurting your knees.  Do this for one minute.  Have complete recovery between each interval. Start out with doing 5-7 intervals.  The other interval to do is climb out of the saddle for two minutes in as big a gear as you can manage.  Repeat 5-7 times with complete recovery in between.  By climbing seated and out of the saddle, you are working different parts of your body and you'll have a more complete strength training program.

 

• Improving pedal-stroke efficiency

Improving the efficiency of your pedal stroke is also part of the equation of becoming a good time trialist. Each pedal stroke should be well rounded and you should put equal power around each turn.  There are several things you can do to increase your efficiency.  First, slip your bike onto rollers.  On the rollers, you have to pedal efficiently just to stay upright.  If you are new to rollers, start by riding for only 10 minutes.  Increase the time on the rollers by 5 minutes.  Once you get to holding 30 minutes on the rollers, slip in one minute intervals with as high a cadence as you can handle.  Within a 30 minute session, try five one-minute intervals

 

All these workouts will help you to beat the clock and to finish below the time you need to break your own record.  Still, you have to go out and just race TTs.  Get used to the position, get used to the pressure and get used to making that all-out-effort required by a time-trial.