By Christopher Cudworth

Stick your neck out a little and vary your routine.

Here in Illinois, land of few hills and much wind, cyclists have to be creative in order to keep from falling into a rut. Stuck in a tarsnake of too many familiar routes and too much routine.

Even when you vary your routes, race the Strava segments to keep yourself entertained (and competitive) and ride the only hills around every chance you get, riding can get repetitive.

Last night while squeezing in a 25-miler before dusk it was my objective to take new turns and ride a different route. Still, when I got home and was about to check the cyclometer to see what pace I’d ridding, I stopped and said out loud: “17.8.”

Sure enough, that’s exactly the pace per mile I’d ridden. “Oh boy,” I thought. “Something might be wrong here.”

Useful predictability

In running I once had uncanny skills at hitting pace per mile. When running through Chicago’s Lincoln Park one day I caught up to another runner who asked, “How fast are you going?”

Told him, “How fast do you want to go?”

“I’m trying to do 6:20’s,” he told me.

“C’mon,” I replied. “I’ll lead you.”

And we cranked off 3 straight miles within one second high or low of 6:20 pace.

“You’re weird,” he said. “Who does that?”

“Comes with the territory,” I told him. “Run enough miles and enough intervals and you know exactly how fast you’re going.”

Pace setting

That same summer I was “hired” to be the pacesetter for a Master’s runner who ran a 5K in about 17:40. He wanted to get down to 17:00. We met at a track with his coach every week. I was doing 2-a-day workouts at the time so I simply added his workout into the routine and ran 3 times a day. I know, obsessed? Yes, I was.

The typical workout consisted of an interval set going from 400 meters up to a mile and back down. We’d do it all at 17:00 5K. I ran in front and he followed behind. He met his goal 3 months later.

It may be time to put some of that pace intuition to work in my cycling. Like too many cyclists, I tend to go out and ride without a plan. Easy days aren’t easy enough. Hard days aren’t hard enough.

Know how fast you’re going

And here’s the ironic part: It takes a certain amount of predictability in order to vary your routine.

In other words, if you don’t know how fast or slow you’re going, or don’t pay attention, it is far easier to fall into a rut. Ride the same pace. Every day. And get home every ride and find out you’ve ridden 17.8 mph. Again.

Find ways to push yourself

It’s not that hard to change. A few summers ago when I added interval work and even did faux criteriums of 30 minute rides at 20mph+ in my neighborhood, my overall riding improved like crazy.

All by simply varying the routine.

Variability

But it’s easy to forget that positive training requires variability. With summer looming like a big fat chunk of riding meat, you figure you have time to change things up. Then May zips away and June too. Suddenly you’re watching the Tour and wondered what the hell happened to your own racing plans.

Well, there’s always the fall. Isn’t there?

But why hold the hopes of more fun riding at bay by ignoring the reality of time and season?

Take out the bike. Map out a short course and race, by yourself, for 20 or 30 minutes. Go harder than you’re used to going. Much harder. Go flat out. Even if you don’t repeat 100% effort week after week (which you shouldn’t) you’ll now know what your top end is. And you need to know that in order to improve it, build intervals around it and yes, even take yourself to a local crit and see how fast you get dragged to glory.

It’s all about varying the routine. So you’ll have something good to remember by September. Other than 17.8. Or whatever your stuck point is.