Riding short distances can also make you stronger and faster

Wheels of Happiness

Rizal Philippines
August 7, 2016

Before I used to think that only long slow endurance ride can make you fitter. So on week ends, it has to be only Jala jala, Famy, Sampaloc or Bugarin ride.  Not so. I read that some short rides can make you fitter and stronger:

1.  Interval training  .  Say hard anaerobic efforts near 90% of your max heart rate:   say 5x of 20 to 30 seconds each which can be:

     1. Sprinting up the last part of hill climb (that you are nearly out of breath)

     2. Hard effort sprint

2.  The interval can be made to have shorter rest periods

3.  Or changing pacing of rides.    You can chase some fellow riders and overtake them

So for instance my ride today consisted of:

1.  Chasing keeping pace with a roadie (I had a MTB with me) from Bilibiran to  Mambog

2.  Not letting an MTB a 29er pass me at Callahan Cardona and led him downhill to Cardona.  I time trialled the two km up to Morong mun building doing something like 30 to 40 kph

3.  Climbing  the Diversion of Cardona and accelerating the final 500 meters. I did the climb using 32 x 32

4. Sprinting at Calumpang very hard effort from one end to another.

I was sweating profusely after doing the run.  And the test of whether I did it hard was when I had 3 hours nap after lunch

I am happy with my ride today