Commute to Success

By Paul Pickup

In the first of a two part series, cycle coach and elite rider with Pedal Heaven RT, Paul Pickup, explains how you can Commute to Success…

As a cycling coach, one of the most frequent requests I get from riders, is not necessarily how can I go faster, but instead, why can’t I go faster.

Quite often this is from somebody who has been cycling for a long time or who already does a lot of training and rides their bike near enough every day. They ride hard and can hit good figures and speeds, but they are always consistent, never great. Improvements are minimal at best and so why, with all that riding aren’t they going faster?

A normal schedule for somebody who commutes to work goes something like this: Monday to Friday simply commute to and from work, with most days ridden at a good hard tempo; Saturday may be a day off the bike and is instead spent out and about with the family, doing household chores, shopping, etc; whilst Sunday is then a long ‘club run’.

Even with the one day off (off the bike at least, inevitably it will still be spent on their feet all day) they are racking up a lot of miles and time exercising or burning energy and that’s not even taking into account the type of job that they do. So, let’s assume one leg of the commute is 60 minutes, plus the 3-4 hour club run at the weekend, then we are talking about almost 15 hours of training per week. That sounds like quite a lot for someone with a full time job and a family. But is it a lot, or is it maybe too much?… Read More >