If you don’t have any more time to give to the bike, there are still plenty of changes you can make to your routine to improve endurance.
No matter what our goals are – whether it’s racing, riding sportives or simply riding for the love of it – we can all be significantly better on the bike and enjoy our cycling more if we improve our endurance.
Getting better at riding well for longer makes perfect sense.
Most cyclists don’t have hours and hours to spend training to improve endurance.
But if you don’t have any more time to give to the bike, there are still plenty of changes you can make to your routine to improve endurance.
The most common sense piece of advice to give any cyclist is to be consistent with training.
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Try and get four to five rides in per week. Even four or five one-hour rides are much better than one weekend spin of four or five hours.
Ride to work at least three times a day if you can and add an extra loop of 45 minutes during at least one of your commutes home.
If you are riding sportives of any length, improving your endurance is a must (Photo: DC Images)
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Try a half hour indoor training session on the turbo trainer at least one day per week.
Try training before breakfast; have an espresso to kick start yourself but no sugar is allowed in it. This kind of training will help your body to adapt to using fat as its source of fuel.
Start off conservatively with 20-minute rides but you can build it up to 1½ hour rides; still before breakfast.
Do some sweet spot intervals. The sweet spot is that training zone just below your functional threshold power/heart rate.
These are aerobic based so won’t bring you to a peak too soon. They can also be done on back to back days and will increase your endurance.
The intervals could be two 15 minute periods at 90 per cent of functional threshold power or 95 per cent of functional threshold heart rate.
You would warm up for 15 minutes first and cool down for another 15 minutes at the end, and take a break of 15 minutes in between. These will increase power and endurance.
Have a look at the video below when this advice is expanded on.
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