Intervals?

Take off the HRM

I don't see how an HRM could be usefull and can easily see how it would be counterproductive in doing intervals. Anyway I think you are onto the common method as described in the above posts. Intervals 2x per week is the max. For one (the more important one) do ~6x at ~3min, for the other do 2 or 3x at ~10min. I think you should pick a start point and a turn-around point and time each effort. I personally try to get all 6 of mine below a cetain time. I usually have 10 sec of margin on the first few, but by the last one it gets really tough - that is called training. I think it simulates racing which is the goal. If you MTB and ride road you will notice this will give you an advantage on the road because they generally don't train for such pure power like this. Personally I always need help in middle ring climbing so I have selected my interval hill to isolate that. Also I think there is about a 4-6 week delay before interval training shows an improvement in your racing.

xctico said:

Hey, I'm started doing intervals yesterday (85%+HR). I picked a nasty climb (asfalt) by my place, and climbed it as far as I could for 5 minutes, then turn back. (yesterday, I only completed 1 and a half intervals, today I did 4). My initial goal is to do six, 5 minute intervals twice a week. After I'm able to do those, I'll start increasing the lenght of the intervals until I can climb the whole thing in one interval (should be around 15-20 minutes at full throttle, is one long steep bastar).

My question is, should I aim at doing more than six, 5 min intervals, before I start increasing their lengt? If so, how many?
Should I try to increase speed instead of lenght once a week, and do longer intervals the other day?
How bout working with the same 6 int but reducing recovery time?
Should I do intervals more than twice per week?
any other suggestions?

Click to expand...

Are you doing a double day training on interval days?

The problem with doing intervals is that you can easily end up just doing a short ride where you'd otherwise have been doing more miles.

Something that works fairly well is to build the intervals into a longer ride. As well as breaking up the monotony it makes it easier to fit all your training into a week.

Try doing a four hour ride, with intervals of eg. 5x2 min after 2 hours and then again after 3 hours.

Also on long rides doing a sprint or short fast effort every hour is very effective.

There's lots of different interval routines which achieve different things and everyone has their own favourites of course.

The ones I'd definitely recommend are short sprints up to around a minute but in a very low gear so you're having to rev as fast as possible. If the chain comes off you're getting it right. Excellent for lactate tolerance.

The other one isn't strictly interval training but works well. After a good warmup find a flat road and put the bike in top gear eg. 53/11 and don't change gear for 15-20min. All you have to do is keep moving: speed and rpm aren't important.

It's great strength training but don't do it more than once a week as it'll put a lot of strain on your knees.

Ok

Since you are apparantly much more well trained than me (my longest race was 4 hours, typically 2 - 2.5hrs and you do 12 & 24hr solo) I shouldn't disagree, but I will. First, a long, i.e. 25min climb is good training, but that is not an interval, that is climbing (and would require a very big hill - at least 1500ft). There is no way someone can put out maximum effort for 25 minutes and that to me is what intervals are for. In fact 3min is actually considered long. Some sources recommend 30 seconds. That is the kind of effort I'm talking about - the kind that can only be sustained for a short amount of time. To me the intent of intervals is to build power, not muscle endurance. It seems doing the short intervals makes me faster on the 25min climbs, but not the reverse. 25 minute climbs build muscle endurance, which is very important, but it's not an interval - they don't make you faster they make you not slower. Maybe 1x per week do the 3min intervals and 1x per week do 2x25min climbs.

I get more out of doing intervals on hills due to working against gravity as opposed to air - which is variable. Plus I like to ride a trail on the way back to the bottom while trying to recover. I guess doing the same cadence on a flat would be equivalent, but I top my gearing out.

Trevor! said:

Have you thought about doing longer intervals first? 5 minutes is short IMHO. At the moment I am doing 25 minute reps (2 of them) becuase that represents racing better. Also reps on hills is silly unless it is for SE workout (50-60 rpm at E2ii) to build muscular endurance.

Do them at 75% and make them longer then increase them to really get top end endurance - That would be wiser, and do them on flatter terrain..

Click to expand...