Rider Manual - Cycling Training Guidelines: Warm Up and Warm Down

Table of Contents:

1. Getting Started
2. Types of Training Rides
3. Intensity
4. Warm Up and Warm Down
5. Group Riding
6. The Training Plan
7. Nutrition
8. Conclusion

Each workout should have a proper warm up and warm down. Your warm up should last 15-30 minutes and start at a nice comfortable pace to get your muscles warmed up and ready for the harder work ahead. The first 10-20 minutes should be done at an easy effort level, you should then add in 4-8x60 second pickups where you build your pace up your workout intensity.  Rest for 60 seconds between each pickup. This will ensure you body is ready to go when the hard work starts.

Your warm down should be 10-30 min of easy pedaling in an easy gear. This is used to flush out your legs and help your body recover for the next training session.

Long rides
The long ride is the key workout to get you ready for the Tour For Kids. Doing back-to-back long ride days in training is very important in order to train your body to handle it during the event.

But you must follow a proper progression – you can’t just jump into training and do a 4-hour ride if the longest ride you have done in the last few months is only 45 minutes.  So make sure to build slowly, and don’t add more than 15-30 minutes to your long ride each week. Also make a note of your total training hours each week and try not to add more than 10% from one week to the next. This is especially true for the novice athlete or an athlete who is currently doing more training hours than they have done in the past.

One of the keys to finishing a longer event like the Tour For Kids ride is to make sure you pace yourself properly.  Your long ride is the perfect time to practice this. Too many people go hard right from the start and burn up valuable energy that will be needed down the road. So practice constraint and keep your effort levels down, aim to do most of your long rides  at an Easy to Steady pace you will have some Mod Hard sections on hills, but limit the amount of Hard efforts you do, especially in the first half of the ride. Many athletes sprint up hills like each one is a race. That will be fine for the first few hills but you will be walking up hills by the end if you overdo it. To help make hills easier be sure to have your bike fitted with the proper gearing. Check the course profile and if it is a hilly segment, make sure you have enough easy gears to allow you to climb the hills with a decent cadence. This will allow you to climb without over-exerting yourself.

Endurance Ride:
Endurance rides should be at the same intensity as your long ride (after warming up aim for a steady effort level) but of a shorter duration. These rides are used to build your aerobic base while allowing for a quicker recovery time than a long ride. Athletes planning on riding multiple days during the Tour For Kids can do endurance and long rides on consecutive days (even up to 3 or 4 for more experienced athletes) to help prepare for the multiple days during the Tour For Kids ride.

Intervals:
For the more experienced rider, it’s also a good idea to add some intensity – in the form of intervals – to your midweek rides. This can be in numerous forms and different settings. Some good examples are:

• Hill “repeats” on local hills
• Mid week time trial run with a local cycling club
• A workout on an indoor trainer

For example you can ride a local hill that takes 3-5 minutes to climb, repeating the cycle 4-5 times for an intermediate rider, and 6-8 times for an experienced rider. Use the ride back down the hill for recovery.

Many local cycling clubs have weekly 10-20km time trials, these are a great opportunity to go out and work hard and to test your pacing and check your performance over the course of the season.

Another example is a workout on your indoor trainer where you ride a pyramid of 5/8/12/8/5 minutes at a Hard effort level with 2min rest between each interval.

The effort level for all of these workouts should be Mod Hard to Hard but you should be able to finish all repeats at the same speed and you should always finish feeling like you could do one more (just don’t do it!!). Add one more interval per week or extend each interval by a minute or 2 to provide a progressive overload to your system over time.

Tempo Ride: 
This workout is slightly longer in duration than your interval workout but at a slightly lower intensity. The idea here is to find a rolling stretch of road with little traffic interference. After a proper warm up (same as for the interval workout) hold a Mod Hard effort level for 30-60 minutes (20-40 minutes for an intermediate rider and 30-60 minutes for an experienced rider). Your effort level should be Mod Hard but not all-out. Conversation may be difficult but you shouldn’t be gasping for breath and you should finish feeling like you could still go longer. Any hills will provide a little variation in intensity. Go slightly harder up the hill, but not so hard that you have to rest down the other side. A few rolling, but not very steep hills are best. You can add 5 minutes per week to this workout to provide the proper progression.

A proper warm down of 15-30 minutes of easy pedaling should also be done after this workout as well to help aid in your recovery.

Recovery Ride:
This is a short, easy ride used to flush your legs out and help your body recover for harder workouts. Many athletes make the mistake of going too hard in these workouts. The intensity level should feel (very) Easy and these rides should be short, 30-60 minutes. Going too hard or too long is counterproductive. Many athletes go too hard during a Recovery ride, and therefore remain tired, reducing their performance in their subsequent harder workouts. As a result, these are wasted training sessions: they are not stressful enough to provide the proper overload and at the same time, not easy enough to allow for recovery from previous sessions.

Cadence:
Cadence is a very individual thing, and the right cadence will depend on the athlete, the day and the terrain. But in general your cadence should be between 80-100rpm, any lower or higher is likely to be inefficient. For multiple day rides it tends to be better to be at a slightly higher cadence (90+rpm) this just helps to alleviate some muscular fatigue that can occur when pushing big gears day after day. Having the right gearing make a huge difference here and always err on the side of easier as opposed to harder gears, if you are forced to pedal at <60rpm or go Hard to Very Hard to get over hills because your gearing is too big this will make the ride much tougher and your recovery from day to day much harder. Compact cranks (front chain rings of 50x34 as opposed to the more traditional 53x39) help to make like easier for many long distance athletes and may well be worth the investment.