Cycling Tempo Workout & Endurance Training for Beginners
What Is Tempo Riding In Cycling?
Tempo bike rides are 76-90% of your FTP if you are cycling with a power meter, so think of it as you can still talk to your friend next to you, and although it may be slightly labored, you can speak in short bursts of sentences. You probably need to catch your breath here and there if you are telling a story.
Your brisk group ride’s pace is tempo cycling training. The crew is buzzing along, with some decent effort at the front, and you’re definitely coasting at the back. That said, the group ride usually turns into a hammer fest at some point, but that is clearly not tempo cycling.
Tempo cycling training is often substituted for endurance riding (50-75% FTP), and this is why we are making this post. The good thing is that both tempo cycling training and endurance training physiologically develop the same things in the body, and help create a fantastic aerobic fitness. Cycling is an aerobic sport, even at very short track events, so having aerobic base training in cycling is extremely beneficial to a cyclist.
The biggest difference is the fatigue that develops from tempo cycling training, and the shift in how you produce power. We often start producing power through the glycolytic system if you ride too deeply into the tempo zone, or low threshold, and we want to avoid this as much as possible when we are looking for aerobic adaptations. If the ride is meant to be endurance, stick to endurance. Let’s take a deeper look at tempo riding and the body.
Related Post: Endurance Ride Training for the Time Crunched Athlete
What Does Tempo Riding Do To Your Body?
Let’s take a look at this amazing chart from Training and Racing With A Power Meter.
As you can see, you get more of the aerobic, endurance based adaptations, by riding tempo, and it doesn’t FEEL that much harder.
Sure, you can make a case that threshold gets even more of those adaptations, but this is very debated now, and you can’t repeat it as often or ride it for as long. Would it be more realistic to ride a few hours of endurance, a couple hours of tempo, or just ONE hour of threshold? Even a full hour at threshold is a big request for most cyclist to complete. Threshold is just too intense to ride over and over, coupled with the fact that you are heavily relying on glycolysis for fuel.
You can read his article on Sweet Spot training here, which is somewhat outdated. While we used to be huge fans of sweet spot back in 2010, it isn’t something that we utilize, since we’ve seen athletes perform better on a Pyramidal or Polarized Type program with much more of a focus on Aerobic/Endurance Riding.
That said, if you’re feeling more old school and into the Threshold Model of Training, check out our article on Sweet Spot training to see when you should use it, and how to use Sweet Spot Training To Avoid Getting Dropped From The Break.
Let’s get back to the tempo conversation at hand. Why is it the Silent Killer?
See Also: Home Bike Trainer Guide
Why Would You Ride Tempo For Cycling Training?
If you are a believer that cycling is an endurance and aerobic sport, you would obviously want to develop that type of engine. As we mentioned above, you need to be able to do it for longer periods of time, so you can’t just ride threshold (100%) day after day. The fatigue is too high.
But what if you don’t have tons of hours to train? BINGO: enter tempo cycling. It’s a great way to bake the cake faster. BUT, you must remember that it is more fatiguing, and this is why it is the Silent Killer.
When athletes build their fitness through the winter, the indoor riding gets boring when riding at 75% day in and day out, so they ratchet it up towards tempo; it’s more fun, but not TOO hard.
They see improvements in their aerobic efforts, so they continue to do so. Everyone is hyper-obsessed with CTL (Don’t ruin your season being obsessed by it), and tempo produces a larger Training Stress Score, so the CTL climbs higher, and faster!
December passes, January passes, February passes. Three months of lots of tempo riding, probably not enough rest weeks, and all of a sudden we find athletes overtrained (IN FEBRUARY!). These athletes quickly lose motivation to train, and sometimes even ride a bike, and spring is just around the corner!
I realize that this sounds crazy, and that it wouldn’t happen from innocent tempo riding, but it does! Want some proof?
It actually happened to me when I went out to prove a point for my blog post about not ruining a season because of an obsession with CTL. If you noticed, most of that base riding was at tempo, and not just endurance. I did that in order to drive the CTL up to show that a high CTL does not equate to race readiness in cycling.
What happened? i got sick (twice), created a nagging hip pain (possibly from too much intensity too soon in the year?), and lost some motivation to train indoors.
IT KILLED ME! I crush over 10,000-16,000 miles a year, races 30+ P/1/2 and Masters 35+ events, and can put my body through the ringer. At the end of the block, and while writing the post, I could feel that too many tempo bike rides had crushed myself.
Now we want to be clear, tempo is a great tool, but you can overdo it. So, check out our guidelines on when you can use this to improve your cycling, and not hamper it.
When Should You Ride Tempo?
We love using tempo rides in the following situations:
You get stuck riding indoors on the weekend when you have a 3-5 hour endurance ride planned. Bad weather or just no time, use the following tempo cycling interval: 3 x 20 minutes at 86-90% FTP, or 1 x 60 minutes if you can handle that.
You’re starting up your base phase and just getting into the gym. You can ride endurance OR tempo around these initial lifting workouts, where you really want to focus your energy on your strength program.
Tempo, and longer durations of tempo, are great as you work your extensive aerobic capabilities. These tempo rides are also great workouts for a century ride, as the higher TSS in less time will allow you to complete the work, or accumulate similar kilojoule expenditure, in shorter amounts of time as you train for your big event.
Tempo is a great way to build up your ability to ride at higher intensities for longer durations, which is really important and underutilized skill. Instead of 150 TSS from a 3 hour ride, crank out 70-80 in an hour, or 105 TSS in 1.5 hours. It’s less than 150, but you’re short on time!
Are you in the middle of a big build phase and need to keep the training stress high, but you’re getting fatigued? Assuming you rested on Monday after a big weekend of rides, and have a high intensity session on Tuesday, add a Wednesday tempo bike ride in at a longer duration to work on riding harder, longer.
Time Crunched Athletes: Use these rides 1-2x a week along with your higher intensity rides. You’ll be able to stay close in fitness to the girls and guys that have 2-3 hours to ride at endurance, but make sure you recover hard! You’re riding at higher overall intensity and will need the rest.
Related Post: Indoor Cycling Training for Aerobic Adaptation
How Long Should My Tempo Intervals Be?
Start off with manageable chunks, especially if you are new to formalized cycling training, with intervals of 10 minutes in duration. Work your way up to 3 x 15m and 4 x 20m, and then start looking to elongate these. Eventually, a couple seasons later, you may even start looking at a 120 minute, continuous session! This may sound daunting at first, but everything builds on each other and you can do it!
How Long Does It Take For Tempo To Work In Cycling?
Just like endurance rides, tempo is part of your long game strategy, which is another reason why you don’t want to use tempo intervals over and over and over, or it wouldn’t leave time for anything else race specific or with intensity. While you need to spend time on the really hard stuff (VO2Max and beyond), your body can only handle so much of that at once, and this is when you shift to other aerobic cycling training that is easier.
Working on the endurance part of cycling is a nonstop effort, but the gains come slower. That being said, tempo would work in about 3-6 months time, where you’d see you heart rate decrease on the easier rides, and you’ll be able to ride further at the same consistent effort.
See Also: Cycling Muscular Endurance Training
Have A Goal For Your Cycling Ride
Tempo is super fun; we really love it, not only for the whizzing speed that you’re riding at, and the amazing adaptations that you can reap from it, but make sure that it fits into your overall plan! Make sure that you can use this tool properly to get into good form that you can build on.
Don’t use it so that you are so tired that you can’t train your VO2Max system efficiently, or go out for a solid Sprint session.
Interested to learn more? Let’s start a conversation. Respond with your thoughts in the comments or reach out to us directly!
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Thank you to everyone for your comments and questions, let’s continue to foster a constructive conversation about cycling; let’s #EvolveOurIQ Together.
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