Cycling and running are both things we learn to do as kids and as such I’m sure most of us feel fairly confident that we can do them well enough.  If asked most people’s limiting factor to speed in those activities the answer would be fitness, finding the time to train and equipment.

The technical aspect of cycling gets overlooked because when people start taking it more seriously they can already ride and the emphasis is on training hard and spending as much money on carbon as you can afford.  Both of those make you go faster but if you were switching to a new sport you’d learn how to master it before splashing out on the best kit.

It’s  obviously easier for me to talk about rowing but taking the time to learn the technique and get the right force curve makes a far bigger difference than the boat one rows in.  Yet despite having that knowledge from one sport I’d failed to apply this to cycling.  I’ve been very lucky in that the physiological benefits from years of rowing training meant I can move a bike ok but it wasn’t until I got a Wattbike to help with preparation for this year’s Etape that I realised quite how inefficient I was.

The first thing I did was look at the rankings for 60 minutes and set about trying to do that for an hour, apart from various pieces of me being splattered all round the room after I blew up with 15 minutes to go there were some other key learnings.  Apparently a good force pattern from the pedals isn’t the perfect figure of eight I was effortless producing, according to Eddie Fletcher the Wattbike magician I was losing 0.75m per pedal revolution with my signature profile.  I might as well have been cycling through mud. 

I was only pushing on the way down not squeezing the pedal all the way round and at 85rpm I was about 15rpm shy of the efficient cadence.    I dropped the resistance, increased the cadence and focused on getting a more efficient force profile from the pedals.  In the next hour I went 700m further and didn’t explode over the gym since then I’ve done some longer more technical sessions and am preparing myself for another crack at my 60min pb – my legs can’t wait.