time trialling

The last three years at Tokyo~Itoigawa, I've ran an average speed of 34 / 35 kmph. To ride 8 plus hours at this speed you have to be comfortable on the bike and focused on maintaining a steady effort for the duration. I know how hard I want to ride in terms of HR (about 150 AV) and in cadence (about 90 AV) but it has to feel right too.

In cycling lots of training time is given to base training (low intensity, aerobic), followed by high end work at lactate threshold and above (hill climbing, intervals etc) interspersed with rides for recovery.

Little time is given to riding hard aerobically. One good way to train in this area is time trialling. Record your time between two fixed points. It doesn't matter if the points are 10km, 30km or 300km apart. The main focus is in doing a sustained effort, be this flat out, at a given heart rate or at a given level of perceived exertion.

Today I did two 20 min T Ts and two 40 min T Ts. I didn't pay too much attention to HR, rather tried to ride at the tempo that I want to ride in Tokyo ~ Itoigawa:

TT1 Kita Sabaishi ~ Kariwa (R73)
17:47 mins, 10.1 km, 138 HR, 35 m climbing, 34.1 kmph

TT2 Kariwa ~ Kita Sabaishi (R73)
17:11 mins, 10.2 km, 134 HR, 35 m climbing, 35.3 kmph

TT3 Yasuda ~ Ishikawa Dam (R252, R12)
41:07 mins, 23.7 km, 144 HR, 170 m climbing, 34.6 kmph

TT4 Ishikawa Dam ~ Yasuda (R252, R12)
40:21 mins, 23.7 km, 138 HR, 40 m climbing, 35.2 kmph

(Total: 90 km, 310 m climbing, 33.6 kmph)