The good ole bike shop ride and triathlon training

Note: I am comparing non-draft legal triathlon racing and training to bike shop rides. Draft legal triathlon is a different type of race with the bike leg being much more like a criterium. Bike shop rides can be very beneficial to the draft legal triathlete but should be used sparingly and appropriately in the training plan.

Bike shop rides are great training, lots of fun and are a great social event. Many bike shop rides are between 25 and 40 miles and take anywhere from 90 minutes to 3 hours depending on the group you ride with. Group designations are typically A (Fastest), B (Fast) and C (a little slower than fast) and often are billed as no-drop rides. Meaning that the slowest person in each group may have to, voluntarily drop back to a slower group. This could also mean the slowest person on the ride will be riding alone or with the ride sweep. What is a ride sweep? This is a person that rides behind everyone else to make sure riders return safely and may provide some assistance if needed with a mechanical issue or flat. This particular person sometimes winds up being a hero to someone that bonked or was just on a ride that was too fast or long for them on that particular day.

A few years ago I had the honor of being a bike shop ride lead. I met many fantastic people and made many great friends. The rides always, no matter how much I tried to keep them casual, turned into hammer fests. The one thing that stood out in every ride was the vast array of cycling skills and etiquette. At the end of this article is a list of a few things (skills and etiquette) we can all, including me, do to be better bike shop riders, triathletes and race participants.

Bike shop rides are a blast with a level of excitement and sometimes danger, adding to the excitement, that can only be duplicated in actual criterium bike races. They are great for doing stoplight to stoplight (HIIT) intervals, often 1/2 to 1 mile in length. I have personally nicknamed them 1-mile hammer fests and generally, always have a sprint to the finish. I remember on a few bike shop rides the stoplight was my best friend. The stoplight did two things for me; 1) Caused the group I was riding with to stop allowing me to catch them and 2) Gave me 30 seconds or so to catch my breath. Oh, hail the stoplight!

Bike shop rides are also very educational. Over the years riding with bike shops, through trial-by-fire, I learned many basic riding skills; how to draft, some basic bike handling skills, basic cornering skills, the basics of riding in a paceline, how to relax in a group, group riding etiquette, and probably the most important how to know where everyone else on the ride is and to anticipate what they are going to do next. I was never able to really master or feel extremely confident with any of these skills until I had a cycling coach and a team to train with. My coach and fellow team members taught me the correct way to perform these skills and the nuances of each one and more.

Bike shop rides are great for pushing your VO2 Max, LTR and FTP if you train with power. Due to the hammer fests that many bike shop rides turn into they do very little to improve an endurance athlete’s endurance. Though riding at VO2 Max does help build endurance these types of workouts typically are reserved for certain times during a triathlon training plan. This can also hold true for swim and group runs, as well.

Triathlon bike training sessions typically will be much more solo, may consist of short HIIT intervals or longer LTR/FTP intervals. I look for routes that include sections allowing the group to go longer distances without stopping. Triathlon training sessions, more than likely will contain longer bouts of HR Zone 2 training (RPE of 4-6 training) depending on the race you are training for. Plans for shorter races may include more intensity and less volume. You typically won’t have a paceline, drafting or large groups riding together for long distances in a triathlon training ride. Your training plan may even seem like it has a lot of slow riding that feels uncomfortable leaving you wanting to go faster. DON’T, this is actually a good thing, so stick to it. Following your structured workout is the best way to train.

Triathlon training sessions with a group, namely The Orange Swim Buoys Tri Club, will generally not include drafting and will practice bike leg triathlon rules. These sessions may be a drop ride or semi-drop ride, may or may not have A, B, C groups. The training session lead will understand that each person, including themself,  has a specific workout they should accomplish that may even be a different duration than other riders in the group. There may not be a ride sweep meaning you must know how to fix a flat and be ready to ride alone.  These dynamics make for rides that often wind up being somewhat solo with designated regroup points. Some triathlon training sessions may have a coach or more experienced triathletes that will give you pointers or teach you new skills (you may see this on some bike shop rides too).

Triathlon training sessions typically are structured with a warmup, sometimes drills, the main set and a cool down. The warmup may be between 5 and 15 minutes. The main set may include short intervals, long tempo sessions, hill repeats and sometimes VO2 Max intervals. A triathlon bike training session may look something like this (one of my favorite types of workouts): Total Time 90 Minutes; 5 Minute warmup Zone 1, 10 Minutes Zone 2, 30 Minutes Zone 3, 40 Minutes Zone 2, 5 Minutes Zone 1 for a cool down. A Tempo workout like this would be designed to build your lactate threshold and pacing strategies, things that are very important to successful triathlon racing.  I will say I have never been on a bike shop ride that had any structure, especially like this.

Triathlon training sessions are usually very specific depending on what part of your plan you are in; Base, Build, Peak or Taper. In Base you may be building endurance, In Build, you may be working on race-specific training similar to the workout above. The Peak phase would be just before your goal race and in Taper, you may be cutting back on volume while keeping the intensity the same or vice-versa. All of this is scheduled based on a goal race such as a Sprint, Olympic, or Long Course 70.3 or 140.6 distance race.

Back to the bike shop ride

Keeping all this in mind, bike shop rides are great and could very well be a tremendous tool for triathlon training. BUT, they can also hinder your training. Going on a 2-hour bike shop ride that is pushing you into VO2 Max for long periods may very well cause your workouts for the next few days or longer to falter making the quality of those workouts not conducive to your goals. Too many unstructured workouts could cause you to become over-trained or under-recovered. This is when the body has not had enough time to recover between workouts to maximize the benefit of the overload/recovery principles of training.

Enjoy your bike shop rides making sure they fit in your plan appropriately and don’t hinder your next few workouts. They can make you faster and stronger but the process of a properly structured triathlon training plan will more than likely provide better results, while balancing the workload for the Swim and Run, helping to prevent injury and making sure the workout you are doing is being performed at the correct time for the correct purpose for your goal.

IMHO Bike shop rides have all skills of riders that fall into a number of categories:

• Fast and have great group riding skills.
• Great group riding skills – no matter the speed.
• Fast with poor group riding skills. 
• Great group riding skills at slower speeds but fall apart when hammering.
• No group riding skills.

So what group riding skills should we practice? These should apply while racing and training too.

• Be courteous.
• Calls out ”On your left” when passing. Note: pass on the left not right.
• Calls out and points out objects on the road that may be a hazard.
• Doesn’t overlap the wheels of the rider in front.
• Understands and can execute a paceline and eschelon – The echelon is where riders position themselves at slight angles alongside each other, to ensure they get the best protection from a crosswind and preserve energy.
• Calls out and signals slowing and stopping.
• Signals turns in advance.
• Can control direction when looking backward to check on the group or traffic, or pulls out of the group to look back.
• Calls out “clear” when crossing intersections, parking lots, turning
• Doesn’t blow snot rockets or spit in the group.
• Calls out ‘standing’ when they are going to stand on the pedals or ride out of the saddle – Why is this important? The bike typically will travel slightly backward when a rider stands and pedals and most will jerk to one side left or right when they lift out of the saddle. This may be exaggerated when climbing. If you are drafting very close you may hit wheels. See next paragraph.
• Proper shifting technique – Ever see someone swerve right or left when shifting? This is caused by the reaction of the bike when pressure is applied to one side of the handlebars unequal to the other.

Most importantly, be safe when riding in a group. Be aware of who is around you. If you’re not comfortable around someone move away from them, nicely say ‘I am going to drop back for a few”.  Never ever overlap wheels. If the rider in front swerves your wheels will hit. YOU WILL CRASH TAKING OTHERS WITH YOU and the person in front may not even realize you crashed.

Thank you for reading

Be fast, Be safe, Stay healthy

Mike