One-Hour Workout: Endurance Ride with Cadence Boosters
This workout combines lower intensity riding with some key cadence drills to improve your pedaling—and all in under an hour.
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With races postponed or canceled and no clear idea of when they might resume, now is a great time to keep your training endurance-based and at a lower intensity. It’s also a perfect time to work on some key skills (like pedaling) to ensure you’re the best athlete you can be when you do get to race again. This endurance ride workout involves plenty of lower intensity aerobic endurance work with a short threshold, higher cadence effort sneakily tucked away in the main set. The idea here is to get you working just for a shorter spell at a higher intensity and then transitioning straight into lower effort cadence drills, which will force you to focus on smooth, fluid pedaling, even while fatigued.
Warm up for 15 minutes, gradually building heart rate and cadence so you’re sustaining 90-95 rpm. Your effort level should be around 6/10 RPE (rate of perceived exertion) by the end of the warm-up. You’ll then start the 6 x 2 minute cadence drills, riding for one minute “on” at 105 rpm, then one minute “off” at 85 rpm. Really focus on hitting that 105 rpm without worrying about speed, power, or heart rate.
Ride easy for 10 minutes before then hitting the 5-minute block at threshold effort (think a solid 8-9/10 RPE) while also maintaining a cadence of 100 rpm. This is not easy and will require focus! You then get a 5-minute recovery block afterwards, though, so take advantage of that!
You’ll then wrap it up with 2 x 2 minute cadence drills, same as before: riding for one minute “on” at 105 rpm, then one minute “off” at 85 rpm. Cool down with 10 minutes easy riding at your choice of cadence, ensuring you bring your heart rate right back down.
Note: if you’re looking to make this workout longer, add in another 5-minute block at threshold with 5 minutes recovery after and increase the number of 2-minute cadence drills at the end.
Endurance Ride with Cadence Boosters
Warm-up
15 minutes, building effort level to 6/10 RPE and cadence of 90-95 rpm.
6 x 2 minutes cadence drills as: 1 minute “on” @ 105rpm; 1 minute “off” @ 85 rpm.
10 minutes easy riding
Main Set
1 x 5 minutes @ 8-9/10 RPE (think threshold effort) holding 100rpm cadence into 5 minutes smooth easy riding
2 x 2 minutes cadence drills as: 1 minute “on” @ 105 rpm; 1 minute “off” @ 85 rpm
Cooldown
10 minutes relaxed riding