There’s nothing quite like pinning a race number on and going bar-to-bar with other riders – the whirr of the hubs in the heart of a peloton is enough to get the hairs standing up on the back of your neck, while the surge of adrenaline as you follow a break or make a last-minute sprint for the line is hard to emulate on a training ride.
To stay up with the pack, though – whether it’s WorldTour or Cat 4 – requires training, and if you’re not willing to put in the effort between races, you’ll find yourself spat out the back of the lead group with the first increase in tempo.
Fortunately, at age-group levels, getting and staying in race shape doesn’t require the training schedule of a pro rider.
In fact, you can do much of your race prep without leaving your front door, thanks to indoor training.
Training platforms such as Rouvy mean it’s never been easier to hit your weekly intensity and volume from the comfort of your own home, adding accuracy and focus to your training load and saving outdoor spins for longer, low-intensity rides or for finessing racing skills such as group riding and bike handling.
From training plans to recceing race routes, here’s how Rouvy can help you smash your next race.
Follow a training plan
Arriving at the start line ready to race requires a structured approach to training if you want to be competitive.
Building a solid aerobic base with social club runs and coffee rides will only get you so far, and you need to include some high-intensity work if you’re going to stay in the bunch when the hammer drops.
Following a training plan is the easiest way to add some focus to your riding, and will help to improve your consistency, fitness and power numbers in a measured, achievable way – simultaneously preventing overtraining and wasted time in the saddle.
Rouvy has 25 official training plans to choose from, and each has a specific target – from increasing your base fitness through to focus-simulation drills that mimic the threshold-exceeding ebbs and flows of a criterium or road race.
In addition, it’s possible to import plans from third-party apps, such as TrainingPeaks and HumanGo, which is ideal if you’re already working with a coach.
Replicate the route
Having the physical engine to race is only part of the puzzle – the difference between winning and finishing in the middle of the pack often comes down to tactics and knowing when to time your attack.
Reconning and riding the race route, or even key flash points such as climbs, is a great way to get the upper hand over the competition, because you’ll know exactly what to expect come race day. But doing so is difficult unless you live close to the course or have the luxury of a pro-level support crew.
Rouvy takes the effort out of the equation with its Route Creator feature.
Alongside a range of thousands of ready-made routes for you to ride, it provides a way for any user to film routes using an action camera IRL before turning them into customisable, real routes.
These recreate the experience accurately, down to subtle shifts in gradient, using the footage and GPS data.
These community-generated routes aren’t restricted to their creators either, and can be found and ridden by other Rouvy users – enabling you to finesse your efforts on the sweeping bends of north London or Cheddar Gorge from anywhere in the world.
Balance indoor and outdoor riding
While it’s important to ride outside to retain essential racing skills such as bike handling and holding the wheel of the rider in front, indoor riding won’t blunt your outdoor abilities – and can boost your ability on the road if balanced correctly.
That’s because indoor training can be a lot more accurate and focused – ideal for those hard efforts around or over your threshold.
Rather than having to match your effort to a specific power output, as you would on the road, training platforms such as Rouvy enable you to use a turbo trainer’s ERG mode to automatically adjust a session’s prescribed resistance as you go – all you have to do is keep the pedals turning and grind your way to the end.
Not only does this make it impossible to ride too hard or easy, increasing the precision of each workout, but it’s much more time-efficient without the need to ride to a quiet stretch of road to do your efforts.
Plus, it’s safer, enabling you to ride in the red without worrying about other road users or running out of tarmac.
It also means you can save outdoor spins for the less intensive, aerobic-focused rides, where hitting the higher power zones is less important – unless you’re after bragging rights when sprinting for town signs.
Work on specific fitness skills
If you know the profile of the race’s course, it’s a good idea to work on specific fitness skills that will give you the edge come race day – for example, a hilly course is much more likely to tap into your VO2 max and threshold power zones than a flat course, where all-out anaerobic and neuromuscular efforts will help you in a sprint for the line.
Rouvy’s suite of training plans includes five based on ‘typologies’ – sprinter, rouleur, time trialist, climber and master – that will hone your fitness for the task in hand.
But beyond its training plans, its routes, workouts and events can all be used in preparation for your next race. All are tailored to the amount of time you have to train, and filtered to focus on a specific outcome – whether that’s cadence drills, a mountainous course or putting your training adaptations to the test in an e-race.
Want to try it for yourself? Head to Rouvy.com to learn more.
