Race-Ready Speed Tricks

Five easy moves to boost speed and beat your best time.

- Selene Yeager

FIRST THINGS FIRST: improving fitness, raising lactate threshold, and producing enough wattage to toast bread (or at least your riding buddies’ legs) takes time and hard work. There are no shortcuts.

What’s often overlooked, especially with a big event like the 947 Cycle Challenge around the corner, is that there are small but significant gains you can make just by refining your technique. Working on these skills now can make you faster come race day. Here’s how you can gain instant speed.

Sprint Faster

Gear down a hair. One of the most common mistakes riders make when initiating their sprint is tossing it into a huge gear before they jump, which actually leads to a slower blast-off than they’d get out of a lighter gear, says cycling coach John Verheul.

“That big resistance may feel powerful, but remember: power is force times velocity, and that second component is worth a lot,” he says.