Getting The Most Out Of Your Bike Workouts

As an athlete with focused goals and a training plan to help you reach these goals, it is now time to put in the hard yards on the bike.

To insure you have the best chance of hitting your session goals and to record the data necessary to analyse, reflect and learn from we have provided a step by step list list of things to consider before heading out the door.

Bike Computer Setup

1. Insure your Power meter is connected to your bike computer..
2. Insure your Heart Rate monitor is connected to your bike computer.
3. Insure you have a Cadence sensor connected to your bike computer. Some power meters included this.
4. Record data every second, don’t use smart recording.
5. Include 0’s for your recording to give accurate power results.
6. Dont use auto pause as this can cause data accuracy issues.
7. Insure your zones are setup on your device (Power and Heart Rate). 
8. Setup page(s) for training. We suggest the following:
   1. Overall page for the entire workout
      1. Time
      2. Distance
      3. Avg Power
      4. Avg Heart Rate
      5. TSS
      6. Time of day
   2. Page for your intervals
      1. Lap time
      2. Lap distance
      3. Lap power
      4. 10 sec power
      5. HR
      6. Cadence
9. Setup your bike computer to synch to your phone once the workout is completed and then for your bike computer app to link with TrainingPeaks automatically

Bike Setup And Maintenance

1. Get a bike fit! An optimised fit will give you the best chance to reach your goals and most importantly reduce the risk of injury.
2. Use rear lights for training – the more visible you are the safer you will be.
3. Carry spares!
4. Maintain and clean your bike regularly. A well maintained bike helps your perform to your best and reduces the risk of injury that can occur from crashes on a poorly maintained bike. Nothing makes a team mechanic happier than riders who maintain their bikes either!

Before Your Workout

1. Review the workout or download the structured workout from TP onto your Bike Computer. See the Garmin Connect Sync article on how to do export your structured workouts with your Garmin device and Wahoo Elemnt and Elemnt Bolt Planned workout sync article for your Wahoo device. Remember to KNOW the target power ranges that have been set for any intervals.  
2. Plan a suitable course for the workout prescribed. Depending on the terrain available you may have to adapt the workout. With some of our riders recently racing in Europe access to hills is sometime an issue so just use over gear work or a head wind to simulate the same load on your body.
3. Insure you have planned your hydration, nutrition for the planned workout.
4. Insure you have planned for the appropriate gear for the conditions, especially with a wet or cold day.
5. Always do a quick bike check before leaving.
6. Slightly dampen your HR monitor contact points so your HR is accurate from the start.
7. Calibrate your power meter before the start of the ride. We recommend to set this up as a prompt on your device automatically at the start of each workout.

During Your Workout

1. Fuel and hydrate!
2. If the weather conditions are really nasty opt for an indoor session instead. Staying healthy and safe is the most important thing to remember as this leads to consistency.
3. Follow the planned workout as closely as possible adapting where necessary to terrain and conditions. 
4. Lap your computer on the intervals prescribed.  One variation to this is if we have scheduled on / off intervals of shorter duration.  For these it is ok to lap for the set instead so you can focus on execution of the interval rather than fussing with your computer unless you are using a workout that automatically does this for you.
5. If any of your devices fail (it happens) don’t let this affect your session.  It is great practice to continue to execute the workout to the best of your ability if your power meter or HR monitor stops working – this can happen in racing too.

After Your Workout

1. If you are cold or wet get into the shower ASAP – don’t hang around in your wet gear – grab your protein drink on the way!
2. Always clean your hands and wipe your face before starting on your post session meal. Staying healthy is critical for athletes 😊
3. Have your post session protein drink ASAP while stretching after the session.
4. During your stretching / post session drink insure your workout has downloaded and record how you felt and how hard the session was.
5. Have your shower.
6. Review your session in TP.  Check that you met the ranges planned and executed them as specified. Reflect on your session and record comments on the session.  If there is anything that might affect your following days plan send a message to us.
7. Note any problems with your bike or gear and make a plan to get these fixed if you have any problems.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  If your power meter did not work but your HR did, change the TSS to use HR.  If. neither worked and you think you hit the session as planned update the actual TSS to what was planned. If nothing downloaded then update these all manually.  As we use these metrics to insure you are tracking towards your plan and goals it is critical this information is recorded ASAP after the workout.

MISSED WORKOUTS:  If you miss the workout then please update the workout with a completed time of 0 and add the reason why.  Don’t be tempted to move the workout to another day, continue with the planned sessions and  talk to us first and we will reschedule the week as required.