Originally Posted by carleton

Some people treat the Kilo as a fitness test of sorts. They do it maybe once or twice a year at a local event or whatnot. You'll never see your best possible time that way.

In general, the Kilo is a race that takes lots of preparation to perform your very best. Even moderate preparation will yield nice gains.

If you break the Kilo down into 4 areas:
- Standing Start
- Acceleration to top speed
- Speed endurance
- Mental toughness

Then train the first 3 individually (the 4th gets trained along the way with the others). The top 3 can be measured and tracked using advanced bike computers that save data for download. No need for a power meter. In your training and testing, you'll find what gears work best.

Once you find a good program that trains those areas sufficiently, then they should all come together for only a handful of test kilos and big event kilos each year. IMHO, the worst way to train for kilos is to do kilos. Why? If you are doing kilos properly, it's brutal and may lead to actual clinical overtraining. If you are not, then you are just doing 1K pursuit efforts.

Originally Posted by topflightpro

First kilo I did, I barely made it to the finish line I was so spent. I collapsed on an open patch of grass and was only able to get one foot unclipped. I was like a fish out of water, gasping for air and flopping on the ground trying to remove my helmet and unclip.

I vaguely remember someone coming over, leaning over me, blocking the sun, and taking a look at me as I thought I was dying and said, "Yeah, you did it right."

Originally Posted by carleton

hahahaha, true. I've seen roadies come to the track and do their first Kilo then stroll into the infield like it was nothing not realizing that they simply didn't ride it hard enough. Not many cyclists train to tap into max efforts. So, what they think is 10 (max) is really about a 7 or 8. Getting to 9 or 10 takes a lot. Much of that is mental.