Triathletes - can someone please tell me why I suck so much on the bike?

My Advice is Better wrote:

moanswers wrote:

Maybe that's all she wants to be?

The risk of crashing in pack riding is far greater than time trialing.

This shows you have no idea how to ride a bike. People like you think bike handling skills are not worth developing yet I've seen numerous stupid crashes from beginner triathletes that simply cannot ride a straight line let alone be stable in Aero bars. Dog forbid if they have to reach out for a bottle or look behind them for traffic. Beginner triathletes crash themselves out or even ride into oncoming traffic in races. They have to learn to ride rollers and in group rides to develop any semblance of bike handling skills.

Is it any wonder that many real cyclists laugh at triathletes for their poor handling skills?

Real cyclists laugh at zealots proselytizing old school training ideologies like riding rollers as if they're still somehow relevant.

one of many real cyclists wrote:

Real cyclists laugh at zealots proselytizing old school training ideologies like riding rollers as if they're still somehow relevant.

Well I'm sorry if I'm not recommending the modern day ideology of taking EPO and testosterone that so many Fred's and Karen's are on that they don't even feel anything when they crash.

My Advice is Better wrote:

one of many real cyclists wrote:

Real cyclists laugh at zealots proselytizing old school training ideologies like riding rollers as if they're still somehow relevant.

Well I'm sorry if I'm not recommending the modern day ideology of taking EPO and testosterone that so many Fred's and Karen's are on that they don't even feel anything when they crash.

Not only do you clearly know nothing about cycling or relevant training, but you also clearly know noting about performance enhancing drugs.

You probably should have stopped after your first post. You know, better to be assumed to be ignorant than to remove all doubt...

one of many real cyclists wrote:

Not only do you clearly know nothing about cycling or relevant training, but you also clearly know noting about performance enhancing drugs.

Sounds like you are an expert PED user.

I disagree. I was a pro and weighed 110 pounds. My first rides were with a large cycling group, probably 50-75 riders, that warmed up together and then broke off into different level groups. I didn’t know what I was doing for those first rides, but was guided along by seasoned veterans.

As I mentioned before, in another post, put in a lot more miles, resist the urge to stand up, and try to find a group of experienced riders to ride with. Yes, you will get dropped, but as long as you keep riding hard, you will get better. Also, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on a fancy bike. Get a quality one, but it doesn’t have to be anywhere close to top of the line.

This is correct information, and all the OP really needs to know. Well done.

My Advice is Better wrote:

This shows you have no idea how to ride a bike. People like you think bike handling skills are not worth developing yet I've seen numerous stupid crashes from beginner triathletes that simply cannot ride a straight line let alone be stable in Aero bars. Dog forbid if they have to reach out for a bottle or look behind them for traffic. Beginner triathletes crash themselves out or even ride into oncoming traffic in races. They have to learn to ride rollers and in group rides to develop any semblance of bike handling skills.

Is it any wonder that many real cyclists laugh at triathletes for their poor handling skills?

You only have so many hours to train. You have to fit in swimming and running along with biking.

It's called specificity of training. If you want to get good at time trialing, you ride your time trial bike. You then learn to ride straight, grab your water bottle, and look behind for traffic. You can't ride your TT bike on group rides and you can't draft in TTs.

moanswers wrote:

You only have so many hours to train. You have to fit in swimming and running along with biking.

It's called specificity of training. If you want to get good at time trialing, you ride your time trial bike. You then learn to ride straight, grab your water bottle, and look behind for traffic. You can't ride your TT bike on group rides and you can't draft in TTs.

You wouldn't tell someone to swim with bad technique or to run with bad form, would you? Then why would you tell the OP to ride with bad bike handling and lack of smooth pedaling technique?

All your so called "specificity" will do her no good when she crashes to the ground on the bike leg or even worse, dead into oncoming traffic that happens so frequently in triathlons. And she has no ability to safely "learn to ride straight, grab your water bottle, and look behind for traffic". This is not stuff you should be doing on the open road when her skills are lacking. This is stuff you practice on rollers first after learn how to ride rollers since if you crash indoor on rollers, the only thing that gets hurt is your ego and sense of pride.

And of course you can draft in draft-illegal triathlons. Haven't you ever seen all those packs of beginners trying to draft each other and crash one another out with their Aero bars during the bike leg even if they are not supposed to draft? Bike handling skills are of paramount importance since drafting frequently occurs in triathlons whether you like it or not.

Well said. I agree with this 100 percent.

Swim with swimmer

Run with runners

Cycle with cyclists!

With your size unfortunately it is not easy to find a good fitting bike, is you current bike small enough? However get help from someone experienced on you position, it doesn‘t need to be one of these very expensive Tri-Fit-Gurus.

Ride reasonably mileages (100 miles per week) the next 6 months and look how you develop, I would expect your problems will just fade away. If you then still are motivated and want to become more competitive in triathlon you can still try the fancy things mentioned in this discussion.

For sustained cycling efforts you don‘t need a lot of force, just learn to be comfortable with a cadence of 100 (and rollers are good to learn it) and use the gears.

0/10

You can sit on a road bike and DO NOTHING and go 12 mph. Ain't no way you are anything buta troll.

Wow just wow wrote:

You can sit on a road bike and DO NOTHING and go 12 mph. Ain't no way you are anything buta troll.

What is your weight?

0/10

For power - which is what you need the most - doing twice a week sessions of 1 minute reps hard with 1 to 5 minutes of easy recoveries after each rep would be much more helpful. The faster and stronger you can do the 1 minute reps, the faster you will be for the longer distances too.

Wrong - you are the troll. wrote:

Wow just wow wrote:

You can sit on a road bike and DO NOTHING and go 12 mph. Ain't no way you are anything buta troll.

What is your weight?

0/10

You litterally must be riding the brakes to go 12mph. There is no way OP is being honest. Or they have absolutely have jacked up GPS. 34/25 at 90 rpm is like 10 mph. 2 clicks up at 34/21 at 90 rpm is 12 mph. AINT NO WAY OP is truthful!

This how I learned to be fast on a bike. Sure, I got dropped at some stage, but I knew all the short cuts to catch up and get more hard training in or just ride back on my own as hard as I could. Plenty of guys get dropped as well. It's character building. I learned great bike handling skills and bever complained and when I was foinf that training, I was winning a ton of local triathlons.

I need to start up it up again. I used to love those rides. Worked really well for me.

Bike handling skills are also under rated. You can use Strava and go on Zwift every day, but a more experienced cyclist will still drop you going round a corner or series of bends. You also need to learn how to make your quads burn, and stay at that intensity and then learn how to back that off a tiny bit in a triathlon, when you are going to run fast after getting off the bike.

Ride with road race cyclists. You will get dropped. But each week, try to get further before you get dropped. Try not to be the first person dropped, or the second, or the third...

At 12 mph, no one is catching up.

Telling someone who has zero experience and rides 12 mph this is ridiculous. It's not in any way applicable.

Once a pro wrote:

I disagree. I was a pro and weighed 110 pounds. My first rides were with a large cycling group, probably 50-75 riders, that warmed up together and then broke off into different level groups. I didn’t know what I was doing for those first rides, but was guided along by seasoned veterans.

As I mentioned before, in another post, put in a lot more miles, resist the urge to stand up, and try to find a group of experienced riders to ride with. Yes, you will get dropped, but as long as you keep riding hard, you will get better. Also, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on a fancy bike. Get a quality one, but it doesn’t have to be anywhere close to top of the line.

This thread is completely off the rails, but well done on providing some actual, useful advice. To the OP - I was a decent but not great high school runner that got into triathlon and cycling bc of injuries. The more miles route works well for most people, but when you're time constrained as an adult it might not be an option...on top of that, you're racing triathlon, so there has to be time for the other two sports as well.

I went from being pretty meh on the bike to being one of the top 10 bike splits (often top 1-3) in reasonably big races on a diet of typically no more than 4-5h/week of cycling, on 3-4 rides per week. All of my riding was on the indoor trainer with a power meter, but RPE works well too. Here's how that looks:

1) 75-90min with tempo (ie 4x8min @ 8.5-9/10 on the RPE scale, 2min rest b/w, or 3x12min on 3min rest, 2x20 on 5min rest etc). The progression was usually 4x8, 3x12, 4x10, 3x15, 4x12, 5x10 etc until I got to doing about 60min of "work" on 15-25% rest. Early on, this could be as simple as warming up for 10-30min, riding at your sustainable limit for 20-40min, then cooling down for a few minutes with some light spinning.

2) 60-75min with VO2 max work. With no power meter, it's fine to do these as "best effort". Starting at 6x3min best effort on 1.5-3min recovery. Progress over 4-6 weeks to 10x3min on 1-1.5min recovery. Stay seated for the intervals. This should be a pretty intense workout, I usually avoiding running the day before. Early on, something as simple as 4x4min all out on 2-4min recovery is plenty!

3) 120min with short neuromuscular bursts. I would routinely do things like 2h of easy/moderate riding with 40x20-30sec HARD bursts in a big gear (these are near maximum effort, but stay seated). Realistically 15-25min of hard work in a big gear interspersed in the ride. Alternatively go out and ride with a group for 2-3hrs. If you're time constrained this can be as short as 90min indoors.