Based on our recent poll most of you are interested in becoming faster. Here are three steps that will increase your speed.
Increasing your speed can become more important once you start riding more and want to keep up with your friends or colleagues.
„train with others who are faster than you, as this will motivate you to go faster”
1. Train with others
Biking behind someone else will improve your aerodynamics by up to 40%, so driving behind someone will help you to get fast. In addition to this, train with others who are faster than you, as this will motivate you to go faster. Once you have pushed yourself to go faster you will also increase your average speed when you ride solo. So make sure to text your cycling mate.
2. Aerodynamics and body weight
Be more aerodynamic by tucking in your elbows, lower your head or consider aerodynamic gear like an aero helmet if you want to go pro. Also, less body weight equals more speed, so be conscious about your diet and ditch those extra corona kilos to speed up!
3. Work on your lactate threshold
Lactate threshold is reached when lactate starts to quickly accumulate in muscles and blood. This is loosely explained by the following three definitions: the maximum power (speed/Watt) you can maintain for 60 minutes, 85% of your maximum heart rate or between 50‑80% of your VO2max.
Increasing your lactate threshold will enable you to have a higher power output with the same heart rate, which will make you faster with the same effort. Your lactate threshold is around the average heart rate you can maintain during a 30 minutes (around 16 km distance) flat ride.
Increase your lactate threshold by interval trainings, start for example with 2x15 minutes at your lactate threshold with 5 minutes recovery period in between and build up to 2x20, 3x15 or even 3x20 minutes when the previous step is becoming too easy.