What's the best way to improve speed?

[SwissVan]

My survival instinct kicks in long before then

[IdeJongh]

As the guys above said - cycle faster! One leg at a time!

 

There is an inverse relationship between distance and effort... less effort = more distance and vice versa. You say you can easily handle long distances, which in my humble opinion, means you are cycling without much effort. Put some back into it

 

You seam to have the base, so do as the other guys said - some shorter, harder rides. But you seem to be contradicting yourself - you say "when it comes to shorter races I can't keep up", but then in the next line you say "training methods for improving 'Long term' speed". Do you want to go shorter and faster or longer and faster?

 

I know what he's on about. Some of the short races a few of my buddies kick my ass, I dont have the leg power (yet!! wooohahahaha) but I have the endurance/base so when we do longer rides, +60/70km on the mtb then they cant keep up.

 

He noticed his lack of legs strength when doing shorter rides, masked by good endurance on the longer ones, makes sense or am I chopping trees with a baseball bat?

[andydude]

I know what he's on about. Some of the short races a few of my buddies kick my ass, I dont have the leg power (yet!! wooohahahaha) but I have the endurance/base so when we do longer rides, +60/70km on the mtb then they cant keep up.

 

He noticed his lack of legs strength when doing shorter rides, masked by good endurance on the longer ones, makes sense or am I chopping trees with a baseball bat?

 

More like a chainsaw! That's how I also understood it - just wanted to make sure. The extreme situation: a track sprinter won't be able to keep up with a road racer over 100km and the other way around. Obviously his situation is somewhere in the middle. I still say he should just train harder on the shorter training rides, e.g. attacking rollers and/or climbs a bit more, but he won't really need to do intense intervals, lactose threshold training etc. In doing that he'll probably lose some of his endurance and he won't have time to train everything.

 

He could have phrased his "problem" differently - "I sometimes struggle on the shorter rides, but I kick ass on the longer ones!"

 

I don't know if this will help at all though...

[TitusTi]

There are lots of scientific ways to improve various things but cycling is essentially a simple sport. If you need to climb better, climb more, if you need to be faster, ride faster more often. Pretty simple really.

[Scotticus]

From what youv'e gathered.... it's intervals, intervals and more intervals.....

But not consecutively....at intervals