Intensity

smilzo

Sorry for the dumb newbie question but when articles talk about training intensity what are they referring to?

Cheers
Jon

BeaconRuth

They're referring to how hard you go.

Ruth

Alex_Simmons/RST

And in those articles they probably refer to various measures of intensity, with common measures being your own perceived exertion level or measures based on use of a training tool such as a heart rate monitor or a power meter.

And along with intensity comes the next part of the equation - duration.

e.g. you can sprint really hard but only for a handfull of seconds.

you could attack the last few hundred metres of a climb but not be able to ride that hard for 20 minutes.

If you ride for 3 hours, then overall you can only go so hard. and so on.

So think of it as an intensity-duration trade off. The harder you go, the less time you'll last going that hard. However, the fitter you get, the longer you can go harder.

We can all ride as fast as Lance up a hill, it's just he can do that for 30-40 min where I might be able to do it for only a few minutes.