Intervals

onabike

I have been doing some intervals on my local time trial course. I was doing 3-4 minutes at above time trial pace, so ideally going at ~ 25mph.

Thing is, I find it really difficult to get the correct effort level as the changes in wind direction from day to day mean that I can be cruising fairly easily at 27mph or battling like mad just to keep it above 20mph on exactly the same part of course.
I've since found a more sheltered road but the wind still makes it almost impossible to compare intervals from session to session.
Also dont think i'm getting the effiort level right as, although each interval was very hard, I wasn't really that tired after the session or next day.

I'm on the verge of getting a new turbo with power meter, and so i hope this will help. Or maybe sticking a rear wheel computer onto my current turbo....

Anyway, how& where do you do your intervals? And how tired are you afterwards?

singlespeedexplosif

this is why using power or HR for your intervals is so much better than using speed!

there are many different kinds of intervals too so you can't really compare
...and what was your recovery between the 3-4 min spells?

onabike

hi,

I worked for 4mins, rested for 2 mins. The 4 minute blast was very hard, but was anything from 27mph to 20mph , and I did five. I used a HR monitor.

This has been my first year time trialling + trying to train right. I started doing 2x20 mins last Winter and then over the Summer got my time down from 27.15 to 25.50, but couldn't get it any lower after awhile. Therefore reckon I need to add some of these shorter intervals to my cyclling if I am to improve next year.

cougie

I think turbo is the best place to do intervals. You can concentrate 100% on them and not bother about the road or traffic. And the circumstances can be repeated easier.

stevewj

I used to get despondent if my 1.63 mile intervals were slow due to adverse wind etc, but as I work on heart rate, it really doesn't matter if I do 3.30 or 4 mins as long as my HR gets to threshold in the first min or so and stays there for the rest of the effort. O.K it's a bit depressing looking in the diary and seeing they are slow, but I was doing some slight uphill half miles reps in 1.12 average earlier in the year and doing short 27s yet the week of a PB of 26.01 on a windy out and back, I did 1.19 followed by 1.23 before packing it in as I was so knackered, so conditions massively affect times but as long as you get the HR or pwer right it will bring about the required benefit. This is the only thing that keeps me going after my first effort is slow and I feel like packing the session in..