Garmin 500 and HIIT

anthdci

I have been trying to use my Garmin 500 to do some interval training on my commute to and from work. At the moment I have a workout set for 5min recovery and 30 second interval which is fine as a concept. However in practice this morning for example 2 of the 6 intervals was completely wasted being in traffic or at a red light and another cut in half by arriving at a junction.

Is there anyway to create a route and specify certain points that are the start and end of an interval. So rather than the gamin giving me a 5 second count down it can give me a meters until start countdown instead then count the 30 seconds.

I know I can do it manually by keeping an eye on the time and doing it without the workout setting but when I'm doing the interval I find myself dropping off full effort to check the time, the audio que is very helpful.

imposter2.0

Sounds like you have discovered the inherent problems of riding intervals on a commute. I may have misunderstood, but I would suggest a five minute recovery is excessive for a 30sec interval.

anthdci

Imposter wrote:

Sounds like you have discovered the inherent problems of riding intervals on a commute. I may have misunderstood, but I would suggest a five minute recovery is excessive for a 30sec interval.

Yea I know 5 mins is a bit excessive but I haven't being doing it long so I am just finding my feet and seeing what works.

imposter2.0

anthdci wrote:

Imposter wrote:

Sounds like you have discovered the inherent problems of riding intervals on a commute. I may have misunderstood, but I would suggest a five minute recovery is excessive for a 30sec interval.

Yea I know 5 mins is a bit excessive but I haven't being doing it long so I am just finding my feet and seeing what works.

30sec on + 30sec off would make more sense - for a fixed duration like 5mins, maybe. The idea of intervals is to place repeated stress on your CV system so your body adapts to higher workloads. 30secs every five minutes is almost certainly not going to bring about any kind of adaptation.

Save the intervals for rides where you are able to concentrate fully on completing the interval - ie not a busy commute where traffic stopping/starting is unavoidable.

anthdci

oh ok. so your saying something like this would be better

10 min warm up
5 min of 30sec on 30 second off
5min rest
..
repeat
..
10 min warm down

normal ride is 50 minutes. So that would be 6 sets. Unfortunately with how busy my life is at the moment the only rides I get time for is my commutes.

imposter2.0

It would certainly be more productive than riding 30secs every five minutes, but whether 30sec intervals are right for you in general is impossible to say, without knowing more about your riding history and what you are trying to achieve with it...

anthdci

My primary goal is to get my metabolism going so I lose so of the 15stone I'm carrying. My commute is 12.5 miles each way doing it 3-4 times a week. Heart rate averages about 150bpm on my commute with a max of 190bpm. Rest is about 60-65bpm.
I have done a few 60-70 mile rides averaging 15-16mph but with having other commitments I cant do it as often as I'd like.

Thanks for the advise.

Tom Dean

Aside from what sort of training you should be doing - do you really need the Garmin to tell you when to start your efforts? Unless you have a specific reason to do very complex sessions that are too hard to remember it seems more trouble than it's worth. Genuine question, I use a garmin 500 and have never considered using this functionality.

imposter2.0

anthdci wrote:

My primary goal is to get my metabolism going so I lose so of the 15stone I'm carrying. My commute is 12.5 miles each way doing it 3-4 times a week. Heart rate averages about 150bpm on my commute with a max of 190bpm. Rest is about 60-65bpm.
I have done a few 60-70 mile rides averaging 15-16mph but with having other commitments I cant do it as often as I'd like.

Thanks for the advise.

If weight loss is the aim, then it might be more useful to forget the intervals and simply use one leg of the commute (ie either out or back) and ride as hard as you can maintain for the duration of the ride. That will probably burn more calories.

The HR numbers don't mean much without some kind of reference point - like an accurate MHR number.

JackPozzi

Without going into whether it's the right kind of training to be doing, the easiest way is just to set the rest interval to last until the lap button is pressed and have the work interval set to the appropriate time. Then when you've been resting for about the right amount of time and there's a clear stretch of road ahead press the lap button to start the interval for 30 secs...

anthdci

Imposter wrote:

If weight loss is the aim, then it might be more useful to forget the intervals and simply use one leg of the commute (ie either out or back) and ride as hard as you can maintain for the duration of the ride. That will probably burn more calories.

The HR numbers don't mean much without some kind of reference point - like an accurate MHR number.

Will that not just burn more calories for the ride duration? I had read that HIIT was good because of the effects on metabolism and got your body burning more calories over the whole day which was more overall.