Break out your RPE coaching skills and take riders from sort-of-hard to hard to harder efforts while challenging them to describe to themselves how their body reacts: breath, muscles, mind. Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) is the focus of this ride. If your bikes have meters, coach your riders to make the change, i.e. hard to harder, feel it, describe it, look at watts, then forget about the numbers and lock in the pace and intensity.
This ride finishes with a fast flat that ramps speed from a hard effort for the first 3:00 minutes, faster/harder for minute four, then all out for minute five. I use two back-to-back songs by Spiderbait for this effort – they kick! and have rides use the first :30 seconds to gear up and get to their hard effort.
This profile is fun, fast and a great way to keep both you and your rider’s RPE vocabulary alive and well!
Stay awesome!
