Should I be changing tactics?

It’s now almost two years since I began doing weekly on-bike force exercises. These efforts seem to have had at least some effect. It’s easier to push my pace several miles per hour faster than I could go before I began those little intervals.

But I think it’s time I let those force exercises go for a while, and focus more on just plain riding faster, now that I seem to have better strength for it! To begin, I’ve started pushing for 16 mph or more for a minute at a time, with two minutes of easier riding in between. Do it three times, and ride easy for 5-10 minutes before starting another set.

However, I’d better not continue to use that approach. These intervals require some conscious effort to hold to the higher pace, but to be honest, they’re only “sorta hard”. If I’m really to improve my pace, I must either make the intervals longer, or harder, i.e. do them in a harder gear. Or maybe perform some of the intervals longer, and others harder? Would such an approach let me work both fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers?

This is the point I need to have been at when I began working up to  my last Tour de Cure . I would have had more than a year to work on improving my pace. Well, now maybe I can work on increasing my speed, because I seem to have improved my strength a bit. Changing tactics seems to be a non-stop continuum.