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Coaching - Getting more from the Club 10s

Peter Anderson is our British Cycling club coach and British Amateur Weight Lifting Association Instructor. He is also an accomplished time triallist. He offers to club members advice and support on all aspects of training.

Have you enjoyed the club's series of 10 mile time trials? Want to go faster? Here Peter Anderson gives advice on training for the Club 10 mile time trials.

Club 10s are very often the entry point for a lot of club riders and for good reason. They are accessible, cheap and easy to enter, plus you don’t need all the flash kit to do a decent time. The main objective is to go out and see what you can do and then try and improve. It doesn’t matter if you are a road racer, time trialist, 'cyclosportif' or a club rider who wants to find some extra speed: you can all benefit from competing in a club 10 mile time trial. First the good news. They are short in duration. The bad news is that you have to ride close to your maximum and that is going to hurt. So instead of just turning up and hoping for the best here are a few tips on making them a rewarding part of your bike training.

If you are a novice it’s a good idea to make sure that you have got a decent base of miles in your legs before venturing out to North Holmwood. The time for easy base miles is during the autumn and winter months. If you are regularly commuting to work on your bike and turning up for the Sunday club runs you should have enough fitness in your legs to start on more progressive forms of training. For instance gym work. Developing leg strength, core fitness (abdominal and back muscles) as well as suppleness all helps to make you a faster rider on the club 10.

Strength training on the road
Once you have established a good base of miles (at least 1000 miles) you can then move on to exercises which will help you to push a big gear more quickly. Try pushing a bigger gear than you would normally use on the road, say 53X15, try this out on a flat road ideally with the wind behind you. For novices I would recommend doing two intervals of five minutes work with five minutes spinning in the small chainring for recovery. You should be working at up to Level Three and no more. In terms of perceived level of exertion this should feel hard on the legs but you should have something in reserve. Seasoned roadies should be doing 15-40 minutes of work at level three. For those of you aspiring to elite status you need to be seriously thinking about measuring power output as well as heart rate. If you are doing a mid week handicap road race and racing at the weekend then Level Three work is more than enough training for a 10.

Power training
Ideally you would be doing this type of training before you start the competing in club tens. The best time for this type of periodised training would be March/April. Hill intervals are one of the best ways of developing power. Long steady climbs are the best for developing the torque required for quick ten times. Unfortunately we don’t have the Pyrenees on our doorstep so we have to make do Richmond Park. Try the drag up from Roehampton Gate to Richmond. Pick a specific start and finish point and using a medium gear pick up your pace so that your heart rate is around 10 BPM below your average for a ten mile time trial or feels like effort eight on a scale of one to ten. Towards the brow of the hill you will be close to maximum effort. Time your efforts and when they start to fall by 10% you can warm down and ride home. Aim for around four efforts.

Intervals
If you are pressed for time you can do intervals on the rollers. They are a quick and effective way of adjusting your body to the lactic acid overload you are going to experience during your club ten ride. Make sure that you have plenty of fresh air circulating around you or better still use an electric fan to cool you down. Ensure you have plenty of fluids to hand. Warm up steadily for 10 minutes. Choose a loading or gear that provides resistance but still allows you to spin at around 85-100rpm. Do a practice interval of one minute and try to accelerate into it so that by around 45 seconds you are very close to maximum effort. At 60 seconds you should have nothing left, if you have you need to adjust the loading or try harder! Spin easily for a further 60 seconds and then repeat the effort. One minute on and one minute off. Start off with five efforts and build to around 10.