If your fed up of making going slow look like hard work then here are some tips to make your push bike go faster without having to spend all day fitting a jet pack to your saddle.

    I am a bit of an efficiency freak, placing this above most other concerns, you might attach slightly more importance to trifling things like comfort or even practicality and may wish to ignore some of these suggestions. I have attempted to put this list in "benefits gained" order, but for some of them it depends how neglected your bicycle is as to how much difference you will feel at the pedal.

    If you are riding on road, gravel or dry earth just take a moment to look at your tyres… If there are any knobbly sticky out bits on them you are making life hard for yourself. A little bit of grooved tread is ok, but anything more will give you bad vibrations, make the bike more difficult to control, and slow you down in a way similar to riding with square wheels.

    For years I didn't really appreciate what difference slick tyres might make until I tried them. All of a sudden the bike was gliding along effortlessly and would freewheel twice as far on the flat. Concerns over lack of grip are also misplaced, on dry and wet road you will get MORE grip than with soft compound off road tyres. With the added benefit that harder compound slicks don't wear out so quickly as soft knobbly tyres.

    The only thing to watch for is thick mud/gravel on the road, trips onto wet muddy verges and (to a much lesser extent) wet metal man hole covers. On all of these road hazards you will experience wheel slip because the tyre doesn't have raised edges to dig into (or hook against) the slippery surface. If your routes regularly have these hazards consider taking extra care or buying tyres with a central slick strip of rubber and knobs on the edges, it's a compromise, but will get you most of the slick tyre benefit while retaining some of the off road grip. If you regularly cycle along gravel cycle tracks definitely consider these half knobbly tyres as slicks can be slippery, though not unrideable.

    You can expect to see between 2-5mph increase in your average speed for the same pedalling effort, or the ability to cover 20% more distance. Depending on your skills changing each tyre will take 10-40 minutes, and cost £17 and up for two tyres. Your investment of time will be paid off in about 30 miles, and investment in cash after the 500miles it would take to destroy knobbly tyres (at which point your slicks would still look like new).

    Best of all… You can still pull cool skids with slick tyres, but the harder compound rubber they are usually made from doesn't wear down as much. So you can still leave marks on the road without leaving all your tyre there too.

    I am still undecided as to if tyre width by itself has a noticeable affect on speed, there is a plausible school of thought (from the Schwalbe Big Apple tyre) that a fat slick tyre pumped up hard is just as efficient as a narrow tyre at the same pressure, but with the added benefit of bump absorption and extra grip with negligible extra rolling resistance. Wider tyres are also less likely to fall into grooves and bumps in the road which can be seriously disconcerting as they drag you off course.

    However a narrow tyre can be inflated to higher maximum pressures, bringing benefits over the wider tyre in terms of low rolling resistance when not inflated to the same pressure as the wide tyre. So if handling characteristics are unimportant and raw speed is all that matters then the tyre with highest maximum inflation rating (usually narrower) is better, but if you are looking for a combination of handling, speed/efficiency and comfort a wide slick tyre might give more speed without sacrificing the other characteristics.

    I expect that you could use your personal preference for inflation pressure as a guide to tyre width purchasing by looking at the manufacturers recommended maximum pressure, and go for the widest width you can. On the principle that if you inflate to 60PSI you won't get any extra benefit from a narrow tyre that can do 85PSI compared with a wide tyre that only does 65PSI, because you will never inflate the narrow tyre enough to reap the benefits, but will suffer from its poorer handling characteristics.

    It should be noted that the handling characteristics described above are also affected by method of tyre construction and the compound of rubber used, tyre inflation and width are just two contributing factors. It can be difficult to evaluate these aspects of a tyre (even after using it), however most manufacturers will give clues in their marketing material as to which tyres within their range are optimised in favour of certain characteristics.

    Don't forget puncture resistance is invariably a characteristic you will want, there are many competing 'technologies', so it is hard to know which is best although all are fundamentally similar. More material is added to the tyre, making it stiffer and heavier, and putting more distance between sharp objects and the inner tube. Some tyres do this more successfully and unobtrusively than others. Its hard not to justify using a tyre with this protection if the one you plan to use also comes in a puncture protected version. This does work against most common threats and saves you time repairing flats.

    The compromise here is speed compared with rider comfort. If you have suspension forks this is a no-brainer, you really should pump them up as hard as possible, just remember to take some of your weight off the saddle by standing on the pedals when you see a big bump coming (easiest way is to just straighten one leg at the bottom of the pedal stroke which lifts you just clear of the saddle, with no real effort).

    Your definition of hard as possible will vary, but at minimum it should be somewhere close to the rated maximum pressure printed on the side of the tyre. Its perfectly possible to exceed this maximum by a sensible amount, but don't go mad as you increase the risk of the whole thing flying off the rim creating at best carnage, and at worst serious injury. Slick mountain bike tyres are often maximum rated between 60-85 PSI, and that's a sensible range to be inflating your tyres to. The narrower the tyre the higher you can go, with skinny tyres going up to 120 PSI.

    Within this 60-85 PSI range, softening off the tyre pressure a bit will increase the available grip, and make the bike easier to control over bumps and other irregularities that can pull you off course. Harder tyres will make you go faster more effortlessly and provide twitchy responsive handling. So its worth experimenting to find a compromise pressure that suits your riding preferences.

    You can expect to see between 2-5mph increase in your average speed for the same pedalling effort, or the ability to cover 20% more distance. Depending on the pressure pumping up both tyres with a car footpump will take 5-10 minutes, and cost nothing. Expect payback by the end of your first ride.

    Depending on the type of brakes you have fitted this can be a 5 minute no-brainer job or a frustrating two hour fiddleathon. Its also worth adjusting them so they work at their best whilst you are at it.

    Disc brakes are especially simple to adjust, don't generally go out of alignment and hydraulic ones are self adjusting, all good reasons to use them in preference to rim brakes. Hub brakes especially modern roller brakes are easy(ish) to adjust. V-brakes are relatively straightforward as its just a case of adjusting the spring tension (centring) screws and then fiddling a bit. All other types can suck up hours of your time.

    You can expect anything between 0-5mph increase in your average speed and up to 10% distance increase depending on how shockingly bad your brakes were. Time spent could be 5-120 minutes, but probably worth it to remove that annoying dragging feeling. If you also adjusted them to improve braking performance you could see braking distances halved. Unless something wore out this will cost you nothing.

    There is a lot of guff talked about how much to oil things, which generally results in a lot of people walking around scared that they don't do it enough, or do it far too much. The vast majority of people just become rapidly bored by the volumes of guff attempting to explain how much oil to use and just don't bother oiling anything at all and enjoying the bright orange colour that their chain turns.

    You can expect 1-2mph improvement in average speed and small improvement in distance. If you have let your chain rust out and go stiff then a new chain will see much bigger improvements. The main benefits here are lower frustration levels from everything working properly, and saved effort by having all your gears working when you need them. Cost will be about £8 to get some oil that lasts ages, savings from avoided costs are huge as failing to oil parts may require premature replacement at £10-50 per part. Time spent is 1-5 minutes, set against time saved replacing worn out components and cables.

    Loose the weight (you and the bike). Take anything off the bike you don't need, but don't go crazy, there is no point denying yourself things you do need. Important ones to watch are things you need for some rides but not others, for example bags, or excessively heavy bike locks (if your not stopping anywhere, you don't need the 3Kg bike lock). Also think about the amount of water you need to consume, and the extra layers of clothing you might need. Always err on the side of caution, but remember there are times when you really don't need a coat, or 5 litres of water.

    Sometimes its possible to leave things at your destination and save weight, examples might be work clothes, or your bike lock.

    Don't forget to loose weight from yourself. Chances are you're cycling for fitness anyway, so this may already be a goal you have in mind. There is no point in saving 3Kg off your bike by stripping it and your luggage right down if you then go and eat loads of pies and carry those round with you. This is without doubt the easiest, cheapest, and most value added way to save weight and ease cycling effort. If all else fails going for a good poo will loose a kilo.

    Benefits can vary from 0-3mph average speed boost or more if you cycle with an anvil on your back, and distance can be increased quite a lot if you travel light. This is generally a zero cost exercise, unless you start replacing heavy components with lighter ones, then it can get extremely expensive.

    Remember that light bicycle locks are crap, resistance to thieves is based largely on the amount of hardened steel on offer. Currently there are no lightweight and secure locks, made from trendy composite materials. This can really knacker the benefits of a lightweight expensive bike, if you have to leave it places where you would want to use a big heavy lock.

    Keep things lubricated, inflated, adjusted and lean to ensure you maintain these benefits.

    I havn't put clipless (e.g. SPD) pedals in this guide because they don't count as a low cost quick-win improvement, but I think they do deserve a footnote. Deciding to move to clipless pedals was the single biggest performance improvement I have ever made to my cycling. Even on the first ride I could notice the improvements as I was cycling along. They enable you to pull the pedals up, thereby allowing you to use a whole new set of leg muscles when the usual ones feel tired (or both at the same time if you can walk and chew gum). Once set up properly they also improve your pedalling technique by locking your feet into the most efficient (and comfortable) position on the pedals. You also get a convenience boost of not having your feet sliding off pedals in the rain.

    They do cost about £70 if you have to get cycling shoes at the same time, and they require that you spend some time setting up cleat position and perhaps taking the opportunity to tinker with your riding position, but this is nowhere near as complicated as most people would lead you to believe (I got positioning spot on after 3 rides, making some adjustments during the first ride). Fears about being stuck to the pedals and falling on your face are also overstated. If you turn down the release tension your feet stay in when riding normally but always come out the moment you try and yank your foot instinctively out to the side (which is not how your supposed to un-clip). In fact I feel safer with SPD clipless pedals than I would without them because my feet won't unintentionally leave the pedals, which means I can be more confident with the bike. Although I will confess to not being entirely comfortable practicing low speed things like curb jumping and manoeuvring when clipped in, but that's purely psychological.

    For reference I use: Specialized Nimbus EX tyres with a Kevlar anti-puncture belt, although I want to try some different tyres when these eventually wear out (sometime next ice age). Inflated to at least 80PSI. I oil things every 50-200 miles depending on motivation, and road conditions. I clean things only when they have obviously attracted something that will grind them away to nothing (e.g. sand or fine grit). I am crap at keeping weight off the bike as I like gadgets and being prepared, but am fortunate to be short, and therefore lightweight by design!