ericmerg1

If I do some sort of cardio every day what should my split look like?

Like Sunday would be active rest at zone 1 then Monday at 2 then Tuesday at 4 then weds 3 then Thur and fri would be 1 or 2 respectively and sat would be a long miles 3 day with some short hard efforts (like 4-5 efforts over the course of the hour)

kingston 

Check out these British Cycling Training Plans. I believe they are all heart rate based plans.

Seattle Forrest

That depends what you want to achieve.

kingston 

I've been goofing around with heart rate training this winter with my fixed-gear on rollers for the past month or so. I have one of those old fashioned monitors (two fingers on the carotid artery) so I came up with this little cheat-sheet. BPQM stands for Beats Per Quarter Minute. Every few minutes I check my pulse for 15 seconds to see what zone I'm in. I'm going to try to calibrate it over the winter to see how accurate it is. I did a threshold test using the same approach, so I'm sure it's not super accurate to begin with. Curious if people with actual heart rate training experience think this seems about right or is seriously flawed in some way. I'm not planning to get a real heart rate monitor, I'm just doing it to make riding rollers slightly less monotonous.

Carbonfiberboy 

Whatever you tried to do, it didn't work. IME if you don't have a real HRM, you're better off estimating zone by your breathing than any other measure. With a HRM, once you figure out your zone limits, 2 beats one way or the other can make a difference in effect. You'd be better off paying attention to what you're doing than to your carotid. The nice thing about a HRM or PM is that you can see in a split-second glance where you are along the continuum without interrupting your concentration on the work.

Zone 1: sweating begins. Breathing is deep but easy.
Zone 2: Anywhere between Zone 1 and the point at which the rate of deep breathing begins to increase rapidly.
Zone 4: Deep, rapid breathing is necessary. Stressful.
Zone 3: Between Zones 2 and 4. Can keep this up for an hour or more.
Zone 5: Uncontrollable panting. 8-10 minutes is the absolute limit.

Carbonfiberboy 

The OP's plan is a decent starting point, but more complicated plans work better. Depends on current status, goals, timing, etc., etc.

kingston 

As always, I really appreciate your insights, but you may be dismissing the table too quickly. The MPH column is the only column in the table that isn't either taken from someplace else or a calculation based on that. The point of estimating the speeds for each zone is so that I don't have to actually measure my heart rate, which by the way is not terribly difficult to do with my method when I'm just riding rollers. Based on the math, 2-3 beats-per-quarter-minute (8-12 beats per minute) is actually all that separates the zones.

I took the first three columns are directly from training peaks with a threshold of 175 BPM. That may or may not be my real threshold, but it's probably in the ballpark. Assuming training peaks has the zones right, those columns are right. Beats Per Quarter Minute are just the training peaks Beats Per Minute divided by 4, so I'm pretty sure there's nothing wrong with the first 6 columns of the table. In column 7, I tried to estimate the speed at which I'm in that zone, which I think may be pretty close based on your breathing descriptions. Column 8 is cadence which again is just math based on the speed and the gear I'm running.

So here are my speed estimates based on your breathing descriptions:
15 mph - Zone 1: sweating begins. Breathing is deep but easy.
17 mph - Zone 2: Anywhere between Zone 1 and the point at which the rate of deep breathing begins to increase rapidly.
21 mph - Zone 4: Deep, rapid breathing is necessary. Stressful.
19 mph - Zone 3: Between Zones 2 and 4. Can keep this up for an hour or more.
25 mph - Zone 5: Uncontrollable panting. 8-10 minutes is the absolute limit.

I may be one mph low across the board, but this still seems pretty close to me. I already have a zone training program from British Cycling that seems pretty good so I don't need any help with that. I have all winter to calibrate the estimates. It's 1F in Chicago right now, which is close enough to my 0F cutoff that I'm riding the rollers this morning instead of going outside.

Carbonfiberboy 

You can see the table in your post, if that's what it is, probably because of your google log-in, but I can't and presumably neither can anyone else except you. You might be able to make it into a PDF and attach it.

kingston 

Hmmmm. This happened before when Google photos changed the way they manage permissions. I'll look into it. In the meantime I have attached the .jpg

I rode for 1:45 on the rollers this morning. I was planning to ride for 2:30 but gave up with 45 minutes to go. It's just so uncomfortable not to be able to move around or really get out of the saddle. Anyway, most of the ride was Zone 2 with a few Zone 5 efforts. While I didn't attempt to check my pulse during a Zone 5 effort. I spent most of the time around 17 mph and my HR was consistently at about 38-39 BPQM (152-156 BPM), so I feel pretty good about my calibration of roller speed - HR for Zone 2.

Carbonfiberboy 

If you start panting a couple beats above 174, I'd say that looks good. Your rollers must have a resistance unit? Those speeds look very close to what I get at those zone boundaries on my ancient fluid resistance set. That is a nice thing about resistance rollers: being able to go by power, i.e. speed.

On the HR thing, I find that some days my breathing, as in my previous post, doesn't agree with HR, HR usually being a bit low after hard workouts. In which case, I go by breathing more than HR.

kingston 

I just have the cheap hundred dollar nashbar rollers, which are fine for the minimal indoor riding that I do, so no resistance that I know of, but I will say that it seems to take a bit more leg strength to maintain the same speed on the rollers than it does outside. I'm pretty comfortable with the 17 mph estimate for Zone 2, but the speed estimates are likely a little low for the higher zones. The workout I did today called for several 30 second max efforts where I was able to hold 29 or 30 mph which is right around the limit of my ability to maintain a smooth cadence (~130). If I start to ride more inside I may try the magnet resistance trick mentioned recently in the rollers thread. Your feedback has been really helpful. Thanks.

kingston 

An E-Motion Rollers System just popped up on my local CL today.

Turns out I kinda like riding rollers better than riding outside in really crappy weather. Is it worth the upgrade from my cheap nashbar rollers to the to the E-Motion resistance rollers?

Carbonfiberboy 

I think so. You'll be able to do a lot more with them.

kingston 

Thanks. Sent a message to the seller. Can't look at them until Friday night so hopefully they will still be available.

kingston 

I bought the insideride model H rollers today for three-fifty based on your recommendation. Hope I like them.

kingston 

I rode the e-motion rollers for an hour this morning, and the ability to get up out of the saddle is pretty great, but I still don't get the advantage of resistance. There are three manual resistance levels that seem to just make it harder to pedal. On my cheap nashbar rollers I can do essentially the same thing by using higher gears. What am I missing?

Carbonfiberboy 

Try hitting the sweetspot at 50 cadence. OTOH, not every rider has that kind of power, so not every rider will feel the same need, eh? However as a low VO2max guy of 71, I figure most BF posters are stronger than I am. My set has ~500 watts and I can't hit it below 70 cadence with that resistance. It's a fluid unit, so I can take the belt off if I want just plain rollers. I can hit over 40 with the belt off. My max 30" effort with the belt on is about 30, which probably is about 500 watts. 30 is OK with me on my rollers. Over 40 doesn't feel safe as my cadence must be ~115.

kingston 

That sounds hard

I'm more of a spinner, but I'll give it a try. All of my geared bikes have fat tires, so I have been using my FG. Sounds like gears would make these rollers more versatile. I have a frame and a box of parts just waiting to be a bike that would be perfect for this, so I may need to bump that project up in the queue. Thanks as always for your advice.