Another really fun session – fartlek means “speed play” in Swedish, and it is all about playing with speed. Effectively, training is fairly unstructured – you’ll ride at a steady pace, then sprint for various landmarks – lightposts, trees and the like.

This is great for developing power, strength, and top end speed. Again, these kind of gains require hard work, in short bursts – you’re better off doing 30 minutes well, than putting in mediocre efforts over an hour.

• Start with a warm up, 5 minutes followed by 5 x 20 second fast cadence, 40 second easy cadence will do.
• Ride at a steady pace, then choose items along the way to sprint for 20 seconds – aim to do around 10 of these, then cool down. If you want to practice sprinting with less warning, perhaps in quick succession (similar to multiple attacks in a road race), opt for ‘red car sprints’ – sprinting every time you see a red car. Of course, do be careful in traffic.

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