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Faster #8 - Cadence
12 May 08 08:49 PM | ericgu | with no comments
Armstrong had a fast cadence, and he won a millon Tours de France, so we should all ride at a high cadence, right? If you ask 10 cyclists about the importance of cadence, you'll get 3 different answers and 7 blank looks. Cadence is confusing, but...
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Faster #7 - Heart Rate Monitors
11 March 08 09:08 PM | ericgu | 2 comment(s)
Lots of the cool guys have heart rate monitors. Should you get one? I'm going to assume that you are doing a set of structured workouts. So, if you're doing that, you need to set your training zones. You can do that by taking a percentage that...
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Faster #6 - Cadence drills
29 February 08 09:07 PM | ericgu | with no comments
To travel at a given speed, you need to put out a given amount of power. You can either do that by pedalling slowly and putting a lot of pressure on the pedals, or by pedalling faster and putting less pressure on the pedals. Since the more pressure you...
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Faster #5 - Specificity
25 February 08 09:17 PM | ericgu | with no comments
Initially, you just start riding. Perhaps you're doing it for fitness, or to lose weight, or just for recreation. And then, at some point, you decide that you want to get a bit more serious, so you start riding a bit faster, riding a bit farther....
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Faster #4 - Ceramic bearings...
09 February 08 09:34 PM | ericgu | with no comments
Ceramic bearings - bearings with ceramic balls rather than steel balls - are a common choice by the top-end cyclists. So, how much do they really gain you? If I can, I try to figure out what sort of maximum gains you might see when from a specific increase...
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Faster #3 - Ride with the fast guys
26 January 08 03:30 PM | ericgu | 2 comment(s)
or girls... This is probably the most common suggestion that riders give when asked how to get faster. I know that I got it, and it led me to head out on a lunch ride with some co-workers. At the time, I'd been riding for about a season, and had only...
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Faster #2 - Light Wheels
22 January 08 08:01 PM | ericgu | 2 comment(s)
This time, we'll talk about whether lighter wheels make you faster. This last summer, I upgrade from a set of Bontrager Race X Lite wheels (which run about 1900 grams) to a custom set from OddsAndEndos (which run around 1500 grams). That's about...
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Faster #1 - Aero bars
14 January 08 06:41 PM | ericgu | 1 comment(s)
I've wanted to write more, but I've kept getting involved in big articles, and running out of steam partway through them. Instead of that, I'm going to write a series of short articles about whether something will make you faster or not. First...
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Getting Faster - Training philosophy
27 October 07 05:17 PM | ericgu | with no comments
When people first start riding, they rarely have any training philosophy other than "just go out and ride". And initially, that's enough - the mere act of riding at all puts a fair amount of training stress on your system, and you therefore...
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Getting faster
20 September 07 08:19 PM | ericgu | with no comments
Post 1 of several It's a pretty common question... "I've been riding for a while now, and I'm the slowest in my group. How do I get faster?" There's no simple answer to this question, because getting faster isn't one thing...
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