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Sportives and Leisure Cycling

Cycle sportives/leisure cycling are one of the fastest growing areas of cycling. They provide one day challenges of both distance and climbing. Some of the hardest cycle sportives can be as difficult and demanding as a stage of the Tour de France. Many who are wanting to ride a 200km plus cycle sportive will be anxious to consider the best way of training for a 200km ride, especially as most people have limited time to train.

Weekly longer Ride.

Once a week, it is necessary to find time for a longer ride. This doesn’t have to be 4-6 hours every week of the year. One good tip is to try every month to get a good distance ride in. This monthly ride should try to by 70-80% of the target ride. So if you are planning to do a 200Km ride, it is good to aim to have done at least, a 150km ride in training. But, a long ride once a month, will be sufficient for making you used to riding the longer miles. Obviously, if you can do it more frequently, that is better, but, it is not essential to cycle 300 miles every week.

Quality of Miles

For the other rides during the week, it is important to give priority to quality training sessions. In these sessions, the aim is to improve and stretch your fitness; it is training that will make you able to ride faster. IF you can ride faster at 10 miles, you will be able to ride faster for 100 miles. Just riding a bike at a comfortable pace, doesn’t really improve your fitness. What will improve your aerobic fitness is training at near your aerobic threshold. This training should be at or just below the pace you could maintain for a 25 mile time trial. Training at this intensity will increase your lactic threshold and enable noticeable improvements in your overall fitness levels. This will give you greater ability to ride up hills in the sportive challenge.

• The day after an intense lactic threshold training, it is good to have an easy day. Either a day off the bike, or cycling at low intensity. A long steady ride can interupt recovery.

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Hill Sprints.

Another good training sessions is to ride fast up hills at a pace, even higher than your lactate threshold;  a pace higher than you could maintain for an hour. These will improve your fitness and power.

Shifting your training from ‘easy’ base training to shorter higher intensity efforts will lead to improved performance in many areas:

• Increased blood plasma volume
• Higher performance of fast twitch fibres
• Accumulate lactate at a higher % of VO2 max
• Increased ability to ride quickly.

In short don’t be deterred from entering cycle sportives, even if you can’t commit to a lengthy training schedule. The important thing is to make the most of your limited training time and give focus to your training efforts.

It means some of these intense efforts should be done on your own. Riding in a group often leads to slow moderate efforts, the kind of riding that doesn’t do much to improve your fitness.

If you enjoy comfortable riding and you have the time to ride all day, it will be of some help. But, to make the fastest improvement, it is important to stretch your ability; this means riding out of your comfort zone.