Professional cyclists train upwards of 30 hours per week. The reason is simple: They race better on 30 hours a week than they would on 20 hours. It’s just the nature of the sport—the more you ride, within reason, the fitter you become.

But most of us don’t have the time to train like a pro cyclist, especially if we also engage in triathlon training, marathon training, or other endurance sports. So how can you get the biggest fitness bang for your bike-training buck? Try any one (or all three) of the following tips to make your cycling workouts as time-efficient as possible.

1. Ride Hard
No doubt you saw this one coming. There are only three variables you can manipulate to increase your cycling fitness: frequency, duration, and intensity. That is, you can ride more often, ride longer, and ride harder. Obviously, riding longer and riding more often are not ways to make your training more time-efficient, but riding harder is. If you’re not doing much high-intensity training already, adding such workouts to your regimen will likely increase your fitness level while reducing your time commitment to cycling.

Because high-intensity training is stressful to the body, you must allow time for sufficient muscle recovery between tough workouts. So, two high-intensity rides per week are plenty, with perhaps a small amount of additional high-intensity riding (such as a few short sprints or a 10-minute fast finish) on one other day.

There are two basic types of high-intensity rides you’ll want to incorporate: interval sets and threshold efforts. A typical interval set is 5 x 3 minutes hard with 3-minute spinning recoveries. You can also perform this type of workout on hills for strength building and climbing practice. Just be sure to warm up thoroughly before doing your first interval. A typical threshold workout is 20 minutes at lactate threshold intensity, which is approximately the fastest speed you can sustain for one hour. Warm up for at least 10 minutes before this type of effort as well.

2. Ride Inside
It’s widely agreed that using an indoor trainer allows a cyclist to get a good workout in less time than it takes outdoors. Why? Because it takes less time to prepare for such a workout and there is no stopping at traffic lights or coasting down hills.

In triathlon training there is currently a trend of professional racers choosing to perform much, if not most, of their bike training indoors. While they don’t necessarily do so to save time, it does allow them to achieve a high level of cycling performance with less time on the bike. The poster boy of this trend is American Andy Potts, winner of the 2007 Ironman 70.3 World Championship. Potts typically rides outdoors just once a week. His other rides are performed on an indoor trainer and last just 45 minutes, on average.

3. Ride Long—a Little Less Often
To develop a high level of cycling endurance you need to perform long rides regularly. There’s just no substitute for those multi-hour weekend tours that leave you hollow-legged at the end. Typically, cyclists perform at least one long endurance ride per week. But you can get similar results by performing a long ride once every 10 to 14 days. If you chose to ride long every other weekend, be sure to complete a moderately long ride on alternate weekends. For example, if your usual long ride is three hours, ride two hours on your “off” weeks.

You can also save time by bunching your long rides before events. Simply stay consistent with your training and maintain a solid base of fitness, then build the endurance you need for the event by riding long once a week for only the last six to eight weeks before the race.