It’s tempting to train on the aspect of cycling that you like. For me, I like most training up 5 minute + hills which are around 5-10% gradient. Given my build and constitution, that is the type of cycling which is my strongest. At that kind of gradient, my power to weight ratio is at it’s best. It’s not a sprint, but an endurance event. However, sometimes you need to train on your weakest part, personally that is sprinting and short explosive bursts of power.
Given the national hill climb championship is 0.8Km up the Rake (2 minutes 30) it wouldn’t be much point training for a longer aerobic event. This kind of climb tends to favour a different kind of rider. Shorter, powerful, riders with good anaerobic sprinting capacity. So this inspired me to try and work on this kind of capacity.
Training on your weakest part
Most of Mark Cavendish’s training is not about improving his sprinting, but improving his endurance so that he can stay in contention with the peleton and be in a position to contest the sprint. As long as Mark Cavendish is there at the end, his natural talent, and high % of fast twitch muscle fibres can come to the fore. Whilst sprinting may look glamorous, the training he does (6 hour rides up mountain passes) is much less glamorous.
I’m probably the complete opposite of Mark Cavendish. I can’t sprint to save my life, but in a very steep hill climb, I might well beat him. (though unfortunately, I doubt Cavendish will be relaxing from a nine month road racing season by travelling to the Nick O Pendle for a bit of hill climb action.)
However, although I don’t have a natural abundance of high twitch fibres, that is no reason not to try and improve on this area of weakness.
Sprint Intervals
- A sprint interval is anything between 10 – 30 seconds of riding at maximum power. It’s no good using a heart rate monitor, just choose a suitable gear and wind up the speed to try and reach your maximum speed that you can.
- It is advisable to leave 4-8 minutes between each interval. This gives chance for muscle fibres to recover and make future intervals more powerful and stronger.
- When you’re doing intervals, you definitely come to feel how tired your muscles can be after a full on sprint.
- Even if you’re training for sprinting at the end of a long road race, it is best to practise your sprinting when your fresh and enthusiastic – not just at the end of a long ride.
- Sprinting in a big gear is a way to be working on improving leg strength through specific on the bike training.
Ins and Outs
Another sprint session can involve switching from riding in the saddle to sprinting out of the session. Davis Phinney writes about this interval session [link].
- You start by getting out of the saddle in a big gear, for 10 pedal revolutions,
- And then sitting back down in the saddle and sprinting for another 10 revolutions.
- Repeat these sprints three times while jumping out of the saddle and then sitting back down, and then coming out of the saddle.
- You will have sprinted 30 revolutions in the saddle and 30 revolutions out of the saddle.
This replicates the last 1 Km of a race, where you might be in and out of the saddle.
For my purposes of racing up the Rake, I was often in and out of the saddle when doing a training run so it’s good to be practising both aspects.
Higher Cadence Sprints
Sprinters get used to being able to spin a much faster cadence than we ‘time triallists’ are used to. For a sprinter on the track, 120rpm is considered average. It is only at over 150rpm that a sprinter considers themselves to be spinning fast. For many ordinary cyclists, they tend to gravitate towards a cadence of 80-100rpm. To improve sprinting, you should try increase your cadence, keep in a slightly lower gear but work on leg speed and get used to progressively higher cadences.
Try these intervals where you start off in a low gear and sprint to a high cadence 150rpm. The intervals get harder as you progressively increase the gear
- Interval 1. Enter low gear 42*16. Jump out of the saddle and sprint for 30 seconds until you can’t increase your cadence any more
- Interval 2 Increase gear 42*15 and repeat the interval
- Interval 3 Increase gear 42*14 and sprint until you reach maximum.
You can keep going increasing your gear until you can no longer reach that maximum cadence target.
It doesn’t matter which actual gears you are using. The main thing is at the start it should be relatively easy to reach maximum cadence. Also, if you’re unused to spinning in high cadence, you might start off with cadence target of 130rpm. A very proficient sprinter will be targeting a higher cadence.
Personal Sprinting Intervals
Starting at the end of August, I’ve been trying different types of intervals to what I’m used to. Rather than several at 4-5 mins. I’ve been doing intervals based on the principles in the ‘pyramid training‘
These sprint intervals have involved starting off with 15-30 seconds intervals. and then graduating to 1 minute intervals.
Recently, I wrote about the difficulties of riding in Queens, NY. But, it has one unbelievable saving grace. An outdoor velodrome (Kissena) where you can just turn up and ride. Every city should have one. The surface is a bit lumpy, but it’s traffic free and perfect for some sprinting style intervals. Basically, after a good warm up, I’d sprint for one lap and see how fast I could go. This meant intervals of around 25-30 seconds. It was great fun, though I realised how little sprinting power I actually have. I also realised how rarely, if ever I’ve tried to sprint in my cycling career.
For these intervals, I was using a big gear 50*15 (on my new Specialized Allez) I would go up to the top of the banking on the velodrome and then get out of the saddle, and try and increase the speed as fast as I could and then keep accelerating until the end of the lap.
It was quite a new experience to be sprinting. When I did some really good sprints, your legs feel like they are going into a different zone, all those anaerobic parts working away. It doesn’t feel like it’s your heart rate that is stopping you, but the power of your muscles. I did about seven * 30 seconds intervals. and then three one minute interval sessions. I didn’t manage the full pyramid training session recommended by Dr Gordon Wright.
I was conscious of how limited by sprinting is compared to other people. I went out for a ride with a local rider. He weighed 30 kgs more than me, and was an incredibly powerful rider. It was harder to drop him on hills than you might expect. But, when he started to sprint for road signs, I realised that I just don’t have than explosive sprint power.
Anyway, it’s fun to be trying a new form of training. Who knows, it might even help my hill climbing, and if it helps me do well in the national hill climb championship on the Rake, I’ll be sure to let you know. 
Weight Training for Sprinting
Again weight training is an area of cycling that I have neglected in cycling. But, for sprinting, strength training is more important. Sprinters work on core strength exercises for both their legs and also other muscles used when sprinting.
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Photo Credits
Photo M.Cavendish by By scarlatti2004
Photo: C.Hoy top by Harold
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