With lots of challenges happening at the moment such as festive 500 and counting up are yearly totals on Strava, it's hard to get away from the expectations that your true worth as a cyclist can be dominated by how many miles you can get in. But does it really mean that it makes us faster cyclists?
Yes and no! Once you start cycling you will get faster just by logging in more miles and building up your endurance. As you are able to go on longer rides and also recover better from them. However, a lot of cyclist reach a plateau and without any focus on speed stop making progress. Another issue is that without sufficient recovery you will burn out from too much cycling and may even get slower as you are not well rested.
If you want to get more miles in my advice would be to:
Build up gradually, by adding a little more time on the bike each week
Be consistent in your cycling. Don't go crazy one week and then do nothing the next.
Give yourself regular rest days. Schedule them in and force yourself to take them even if you don't feel like it.
To build up your speed the best thing you can do is a combination of working on getting more time on the bike and interval training to build up your intensity.
Having milage goals are great as they can give you focus and confidence that you have the time to get out on your bike.
One other bonus of getting faster is that you can get in more miles in less time!
To talk with me about getting faster on your bike Book a Free Discovery Call
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