 In this video, I'm gonna share with you some tactics that I use in bunch riding for training to improve my road cycling performance. And during this video, I will also share some very compelling data about this bunch ride, which is very common across bunch riding more broadly. Now on the screen from the left to right, you can see cadence, speed, power, average 30 second power and time of day. Now a little tip, if you're using Garmin verb, which I do for these edits, the time of day is a very useful tool to sync your data accurately. Now this bunch ride is probably the number one bunch ride in Nusa Sunshine Coast. It leaves from the fire station at 6 a.m. every Saturday morning, heads down to Twin Waters at a pleasurable pace, as you can see. You do a U-turn and then when you hit the main beach road, or officially it's called Davidlowway, the pace is basically on until a little town called Pridgian Beach. So while the ride is 53 kilometers slash 33 miles all up, the actual smash fest is just under 15 kilometers or nine miles, which isn't overly significant, particularly when I compare it to say the hell ride in Melbourne, probably Australia's biggest bunch ride, which is full gas for just under 65 kilometers or 40 miles. Now I'm aware that with bunch riding, we can open up a can of worms with skills, etiquette, safety, you name it. So more on those topics to come. This my friends is specifically surrounding how to use bunch riding to effectively train as per the title of the video. So the big question you've got to ask yourself before going into a bunch ride is, what is your goal? That's right, you can have a goal before going into a bunch ride, whereas I know a lot of people don't. But if you do and you're effective with it, you can actually take your road cycling to the next level. Now if your goal is to just socialize, keep your fitness up and get out in the fresh air, then just go to a bunch ride and do whatever feels right for you. You can store this information for another day. But what if your goal is say a target event and you're trying to build base fitness before you start implementing some high intensity efforts? Well as you can see here, I'm cruising very comfortably in the bunch. And that's the way this bunch ride rolls for the first period. It's side by side with the two at the front sort of doing an effort for two to five minutes before you let the next two roll through. So right now I'm at the mercy of the guys at the front, which often involves stomping up hills and coasting down them, and I'm sucking your will. So if your goal is to build base fitness, I have to tell you this type of riding ain't good. Because if I was trying to build base fitness, I would wanna be sitting in my zone two with a consistent pedal stroke. Now I'm not saying don't do bunch rides if your goal is to build base, but definitely limit them. Now assuming you've got base and you're not just there to socialize, you might wanna use bunch rides for maybe improving your skills. For example, sitting behind a wheel in the right position, or maybe trying to conserve as much energy as possible in the bunch to see how efficient you can be. However, what I wanna share with you today is how to implement a solid amount of high intensity efforts into a bunch ride. How can I be smart and use this bunch ride? To not only socialize and have a bit of fun, but also to train effectively. But if you've just landed on this channel, just wanna let you know this is where I do weekly cycling videos. And I'm also currently negotiating with the brand to give away a road bike valued at thousands of dollars to a lucky subscriber. A week before Christmas, more details to follow. So if that sounds up your alley, please consider subscribing and supporting the channel below. Now, as my cycling coach, Stegel says, I don't care about how many kilometers you've done or how many miles, I wanna know about time. The body doesn't know kilometers and miles, it knows time. So it's always good to look at time as opposed to the length in terms of kilometers or miles. So between where this bunch ride will take off, which is where we're approaching, and the finish line, it's roughly 22 minutes. I wanna train my zone six, anaerobic capacity in this ride today. Now, definition for anaerobic capacity is as follows. Short 30 second to three minute efforts designed to increase anaerobic capacity, which is essentially how efficient your working muscles can be without oxygen. Heart rate is generally not useful for the fact that it has fluctuations and lags in between each interval and recovery. These efforts are extremely fatiguing. Now, as we get going, you'll see my good friend, Ian, a good Scottish lad in the pink leading us out here, a man that loves the front and throughs over all things cycling. So you'll see him a fair bit in this video today. So I'm sitting on Ian's wheel here and I've got 22 minutes ahead of me. And I'm thinking maybe I can get 10 zone six efforts in, 10 times zone six efforts. So that is gonna be my goal for this bunch ride, which will help add and strengthen to my anaerobic capacity and make me a stronger road cyclist. Can I get 10 efforts? That is a big question, we'll have to wait and see. Now, I can't be too anal with how long each zone six effort goes for, nor my exact power within zone six because I'm in a bunch ride and it's a bit of a dick swinging contest as we all know. So the efforts will probably vary in length between 30 seconds and over a minute, depending on how long I get left or hung out to dry at the front. And at times, I may need to push into zone seven, which is my neuromuscular to pull through to my turn. But I've got a goal and an understanding of what I wanna get out of this ride today. So there's a couple of big things that I'm doing here, which I wanna share with you. The first one is that when I pull my turn, I'm thinking of my zone six power. I'm not getting too carried away. You see, I used to be guilty of this, but I often see guys pull an 800 watt turn for 10 seconds as their testosterone levels turn hot at the start of the ride. And then you never see them again, they've just destroyed themselves. So being smart about how much effort I put in up front will ensure I can continue to drive turns for the entire ride. Secondly, for the vast majority of this ride, I won't fall back into the bunch, which is probably around 25 riders all up. You'll see me in the top five for most of the time. Firstly, that enables me to pull turns without having to kill myself to get into position. And number two, it is a lot safer at the front of the bunch. Now, small little safety point here. I know I'm going slightly off topic, but it's always important to talk about safety. If you're ready to pull your turn, like you can see I'm about to be, and there's a solo rider approaching where you'll need to veer out, wait until you've passed that solo rider before you make your turn. Otherwise, you're going to be three abreast, which frustrates the hell out of drivers. Now, as you can see what I'm doing here, I'm using other wheels as much as possible to get to the front and do my turn. If you're third or fourth wheel back and have to do all that work yourself or even maybe fifth or sixth wheel back, and then you get to the front and you get left hung out to dry, copping all that wind for a long period of time, you'll be cactus pretty quickly. So this is an interesting little section here. This guy has gone off the front and he's done it while we're cresting this little hill. Now, what you can't see behind me here is that I've gone to chase him and I've created a gap also. So it's me and this guy off the front with no one on my wheel. Now, unfortunately I don't have a GoPro on my rear here so you're just going to have to trust me on this one. But it's actually quite interesting to me because a lot of people train sporadically on and off the pedals all the time. So to me, this is evidence when it comes to putting in an effort, up an incline and then continuing that effort, i.e. driving over the crest, many struggle to keep the pressure on the crank. Now I have an interesting video below on circuit training if you want to check that one out, which will help you get an understanding of how to condition yourself to maintain pressure for longer periods. So we go through the Coulomb shops here and we back off the pace a little bit for safety purposes which is welcomed and a smart move by the bunch. Here we're coming out of the Coulomb area and we're ramping up in the final five kilometers and I'm getting close to my 10 efforts. Yes, I'm fatigued, but because I'm not overdoing my turns and staying near the front, I can keep going back for more and thus achieve my pre-workout goals. So there is my 10 efforts, a nice little job done. Now, the sprint for the finish line, which you can see here, is also another great way to practice your sprinting or attempting to go off the front or whatever it may be. But that wasn't on my list for today, so I'm happy to take my lactate-induced legs and head for a post-ride coffee with the lads. So let's have a look at my post-ride numbers which were some of the compelling statistics that I wanted to share with you. I mentioned at the start of this video. It's interesting when I pull up the summary from Wahoo, which is a little different to the zones I showed you, but a similar him sheet. You can see that I've spent 11 minutes in my zone six, which is pretty good. That is a nice workout and I'm gonna put a little tick next to the goal I have. What is a little bit alarming though, when you look at the numbers, is that this is supposed to be one of the main fast bunch rides in Nusa, yet I've spent 35% or the majority of time in my active recovery, my zone one, which is a very interesting piece of data to absorb if you've got some serious cycling goals in mind because this, my friends, is very common in bunch riding. So if you've gotten to the end of this video and you've gotten value out of it and you wanna learn more, I've actually put a free guide together. It's called the Complete Proven Five Step System to Stronger, Smarter, Faster Road Cycling, which will share more insights on some of the topics I discussed in this video today. Plus more, I'll link to that below and I'll catch you in the next video.