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Cycling - making the most of your commute
Your daily commute is a golden opportunity to put in some training time. Here's how to make sure your ride to work is time well spent
Catch the bus or train to work and it’s a chance to read the paper and listen to one side of other people’s mobile phone conversations. Drive to the office and you can pick your nose and listen to Nick Grimshaw. Use your bike to commute and you can enjoy some ‘you’ time and boost your fitness. Whether you pedal a couple of kilometres or a couple of hours, your ride to work is never wasted time.
Short commutes
Short commutes usually include a large proportion of town or city riding, so it’s dangerous to attempt to increase your performance while threading your way through the oblivious rush hour traffic. While there may not seem much you can do in such a short space of time, you can try working on an area of technique – pedalling cadence, for instance. High cadence work – spinning the pedals quickly, preferably in a relatively easy gear – helps increase your comfortable cruising cadence. Get used to spinning to work then when you ride at the weekend you’ll automatically pedal at a higher cadence whatever gear you’re in – and you’ll be pedalling more efficiently.
You can also turn a potential annoyance into an advantage. “Red lights can be a pain but should be seen as a chance to practise a standing start,” says cycling coach Ben Wilson (www.personalbestcycling.com). “When the lights go green, make an effort to get up to speed as quickly as possible. Do this both seated and out of the saddle.” For more of a workout, shift into a big gear as you approach the red light, then accelerate against that resistance for 15-20 seconds. Shift into an easier gear after the initial acceleration; this will improve power and muscle fibre recruitment.
The logical step for short-commute cyclists looking to get more from your twice-a-day ride is to extend your riding time. Adding 30 minutes to a ride when you’re in a mad flap trying to get out the door in the morning probably isn’t very appealing, so the best approach is to increase your ride time in five-minute increments so you can gradually get used to allocating the extra time – or plan the extra kilometres the night before.
Assuming a cyclist travels to work at an average of 19km/h, an extra 15 minutes on a ride will add almost five kilometres to a journey – around 48 kilometres in a week. If time is too much of an issue in the morning, just adding time to the ride home is a good compromise.
Long commutes
Long-distance commuting isn’t necessarily ideal if you’ve got a specific performance orientated goal because it can be difficult to fit high-quality workouts into your ride to work. Balancing training and recovery is vital, so if you’re doing structured training rides throughout the week and adding a long commute on top of that, you might compromise recovery.
Distinguish between your ride being ‘just a commute’ and a training session. If you’re using your ride to work as training, respect the ride – fuel and hydrate the same way you would for a weekend session. Make sure you fuel adequately before and after your morning commute and, if you’re riding home, during the working day too.
“When at work try not to spend too much time on your feet,” advises Wilson. “If you’re after a recovery ride then leave plenty of time for the ride to and from work so you aren’t racing the clock. Incorporate intervals or sprints into one of the rides, and make sure you refuel and recover properly.”
Another solution is to up your bike commuting during the off-season or when you have no big event planned. When you’re looking to peak, commute on the bike less and focus on quality sessions that don’t take you to or from your desk.
This feature is brought to you by Get Into Cycling from Future Publishing, the publishers of www.bikeradar.com
The ride to work can be a bit tricky to navigate, so we've got some tips for you:
