Summer is certainly the season to spend more time on two wheels. As you’re logging biking hours, generally speaking, there are two types of rides: leisurely jaunts (made better with good company) and those meant to push your limits. While both have their place, it’s the structured training rides that are going to help you hone your cycling skills.

“My biggest gripe with many riders is that their day-to-day training is too homogeneous,” says Jonathan Cane, an exercise physiologist, coach, and author. “If you’re trying to bring your riding to the next level, you want to diversify things. That means easy days should be easier, which in turn facilitates hard days being harder. If your easy days are too hard, your quality days will suffer, and you'll be in an endless cycle of mediocre rides.”

If that sounds all too familiar—and you’re tired of just cruising— pair these seven tips with with a cycling computer designed to take your cycling to the next level, like the Hammerhead Karoo 2 ($399; hammerhead.io), to tackle your big biking goals.

1. Know Where You Want to Go

    Here’s a question you should ask yourself every time you go for a ride: What am I trying to achieve today? Cane points out that many cyclists hop into the saddle with no clear objective. “It’s easy to go do laps in the park and jump in with some friends, but their agenda shouldn’t necessarily be yours,” he says. This is where goals come in. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish—whether it is to increase your speed, endurance, or power—then tailor your training plan accordingly. The right regimen—something that takes into account your level of experience, how much you ride, and your end goal—will boost your overall fitness, shore up your strengths, improve on any weaknesses, and allow for rest and recovery.

    2. Assess Your Base Line

    Intervals of biking at different speeds, for example, are a great way to gauge where you’re at endurance- and speed-wise. Certified strength and conditioning coach Frank Baptiste recommends adding this interval-based workout to your repertoire: Warm up for five to ten minutes. Go for three minutes hard, working at an 8.5 out of 10, followed by a three minute recovery at 6.5-7 out of 10. Repeat five to eight times, then end with a five- to ten-minute cooldown. Do this workout a few times per week, alternating with slow, long-distance recovery rides and shorter near-threshold rides, and collect data to see how you’re improving.

    hammerhead karoo 2
    The Hammerhead Karoo 2 can help take your training to the next level.
    Hammerhead

    A cycling computer with an autolap feature, like the Hammerhead Karoo 2, will make it easy to track your intervals and compare your rides over time. With the workout view on the device, you can overlay your progress over the current selected workout to see how you stack up. (It works just as well when you’re using a smart trainer, on days when rain or heat have you biking indoors.) And when you’re looking for more workouts, the Karoo 2 also lets you pull in sessions from third parties.

    3. Work From Your Weaknesses

    It may be most fun to stick to what you’re best at, but resting on your laurels is not going to move the needle when it comes to improving. If you’re a sprinter, for example, you likely don’t love time trials, but working on those threshold efforts is a great way to improve your overall ability as a rider. “After all, you can be the fastest sprinter in the field, but if you get dropped before the sprint, it probably won’t matter,” Cane says.

    If the skill you need to practice is climbing, tailor your regimen to that. This 12-week climbing training plan gives you a workout breakdown, as well as the terms to know, advice to follow throughout the plan, and more.

    Download the 12-Week Climbing Training Plan

    4. Monitor Your Progress

    Just as with intervals, collecting ride data is key here, too. Bike computers have come a long way from just offering up speed, distance, and time—and displaying only one of those variables at a time. A device like the Hammerhead Karoo 2 offers all sorts of ride data, including elevation, grade, and temperature, so you can totally geek out. “When you’re climbing, the Karoo 2 is great because it can tell you details like how far you are from the top, grade broken down for every 100 meters, and even 30-second average, lap average, and ride average VAM (Vertical Ascent in Meters),” says Cane.

    hammerhead

    5. Take It Outside

    If the summer temperatures are driving you to cycle on your indoor trainer exclusively, schedule some early morning rides before the heat sets in. So while you can credit your indoor training with building your aerobic capacity, endurance, and strength, it’s the open-air cycling that is going to hone your real-world skills such as pack dynamics, cornering and 180-degree turns, out-of-the-saddle climbing, sprinting, and other performance skills. And if you’re worried about getting lost, your cycling computer can come to the rescue. Cane says that when his wife—a competitive multisport athlete who’s training for the Arna Westfjords Way Challenge, a 595-mile, four-day race in Iceland—goes out for an epic day of training, he uses the Karoo 2’s live tracking feature to monitor her progress.

    6. Go for a Group Ride

    Riding with a group allows for more ability to accommodate a wider range of fitness. “It’s a valuable way to work on your skills and bike handling, plus it’s a great way to “even out” the playing field when training,” says Cane. That’s something he’s noticed in his own biking experience. He confides, “I might be the weakest rider in a group, and incapable of holding the same pace as the other riders when riding solo, but if I draft within the group and minimize or eliminate my turns at the front, suddenly I can ride with them.”

    Another bonus to group rides: increased endurance. A study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine observed 58 women who exercised independently or with a virtual partner found that those exercising with a bike buddy pedaled longer.

    7. Recovery Period

    One cardinal sin many cyclists commit: forgoing the cooldown. “Without that step, blood tends to pool in the working muscles, even after the ride is over,” explains Cane, who says even a light cooldown—ideally at 50-60 percent of your functional threshold power (FTP)—is enough to help redistribute the blood flow. (You can figure out your FTP using a power meter, and pair it with the Hammerhead Heart Rate Monitor to receive supplemental data, helping you to detect trends in power and heart rate.) “That can help decrease soreness and also decrease the risk of a phenomenon known as orthostatic hypotension, which is a fancy way of saying, your blood pressure gets really low when you stand up from a seated or lying down position,” explains Cane. In other words, a cooldown is key to heating up your biking performance.

    Ready to amp up your summer regimen? Pairing these tips with a killer training plan and a solid cycling computer to monitor your progress will help you become a stronger rider by the first day of autumn.

    Headshot of Rozalynn S. Frazier
    Rozalynn S. Frazier

    Rozalynn S Frazier is an award-winning, multimedia journalist, and certified personal trainer living in New York City. She has created content for SELF, Health, Essence, Runner's World, Money, Reebok, Livestrong, and others.