Bmach

Can you do hiit as part of a 30 mile ride?

srode1

Sure, I did it all summer and fall but it really has to be on roads that make sense for what you are doing. If you are doing 2 or 3x20s, you need a long stretch without interruptions so you can go 20 minutes non stop a the power you are targeting for instance. Shorter intervals are easier to find places that work. I'm doing work on the trainer now due to the weather, but will go back outside when a break comes.

colombo357

Yes and no.

DrIsotope

I'm sure some people can, but I cannot. I've been bonked enough times that I think I'm incapable of riding at or near 100% unless I do loops right near the house. If I head out for 30 miles, I'm moderating for 30 miles, with the knowledge that I'm riding (at least) 30 miles again tomorrow.

OBoile

Yes you can do HIIT as part of a 30 mile ride. It certainly won't be the entire ride, but part if it? Sure. I'm pretty sure the idea of riding 10 miles to a nice hill, doing interval work on that hill and the riding 10 miles home is a pretty common one.

Seattle Forrest

HIIT is supposed to take everything you've got, you should limp home from it, and be in a bad mood the rest of the day. You could do it at the end of a ride, but why ruin an otherwise pleasant time on the bike?

But for context, I'm a natural sprinter, and realized that HIIT wasn't doing me any good so I stopped doing it a few years ago. Better to train your weaknesses than strengths.

burnthesheep

20's I wouldn't say are hiit. That's a different energy system, or at least contribution of energy systems from what hiit is.

I would say hiit's duration of each "rep" would be about 3min maximum. And that's pushing it.

I'd say hiit is more in the 1min range and less per rep.

Could be 1:1 work. Could be 30s/30s stuff. Could be 40/20's. Whatever.

While the intensity of 2x20s can suck given the duration, I don't think that's the energy system they had in mind with all the studies talking about it.

Just IMO.

Carbonfiberboy 

My understanding of what's called HIIT is that the second letter is the key to it. High intensity is not 2 X 20 or hill repeats or whatever we commonly do out on the road. There are many different workouts, Tabata intervals probably being the most well-known. On the road the simplest is probably 1 minute on, 1 minute off, maybe 6 times. Best on the flat. Go very hard, but not as hard as you can for the "on" minute, then spin easy for the easy minute. It will take a few times to get the hang of it, that is, to see how hard "HARD" can be and still allow a set of 6 intervals of about the same RPI or power. HR will rise the whole time. You don't want to blow up, at least not until the 6th. Anyway, that's one way to do it. It takes maybe a mile of straight flat w/o stops, or a shorter chunk where you can U-turn during the easy bit.

I've done these in the context of a much longer road ride. You want to do them maybe 1/2 hour - 1 hour into the ride. Then ride the rest of it at whatever pace feels OK. You should be able to recover just fine if you're in good enough shape to do the HIIT in the first place. Road riding is all about being able to recover during the ride.

Reynolds 531 

I agree with his IMO.

Based on my own observations of myself and friends.

Seattle Forrest

Here's my observation - it comes with a double yer money back guarantee.

When an athlete (including a recreational one) says "HIIT" they mean Tabatas or something very much like them. Very high stress and very short duration. At or very close to 100% effort.

When the general public says "HIIT" they mean anything involving intervals, at any intensity above sitting on the couch. Generally for weight loss purposes, not for fitness or even health, because that's the fad du jour. Often weights in a circuit. Planks would qualify.

Just like history is written by victors, dictionaries are written for common usage. So "HIIT" is coming to mean almost anything broadly. But I think when people in here say it, they usually mean short bursts of anaerobic that take almost everything out of you, like short and punchy hill repeats.

Seattle Forrest

For me a 20 minute power test is extremely hard and by about 17 minutes I'm thinking I could just die now and not have to finish it. But I wouldn't consider a 2x20 HIIT. I mean, doing the Enchantments as a day hike was hard too, and I stopped a few times (so technically it could be divided into "intervals"), but I wouldn't consider that HIIT either.

OBoile

Why would hill repeats not fall into this category? I frequently ride to a short steep hill that takes ~1 minute to ride and do precisely what you've described here.

Carbonfiberboy 

Well that would, but I've tried that and found it much trickier to do the 1 minute leg-unloading spin and be at the bottom of the hill at the 1 minute mark. Way easier on the flat IME, that's all.

Carbonfiberboy 

I know folks say 100%, but they don't mean that. 100% only lasts maybe 10 seconds and the next one won't be 100% without maybe 5 minutes recovery, which is a completely different workout. Tabatas on the road seems a little crazy IMO. Safety first. I won't even do them on my rollers but fine on a trainer.

Which reminds me, another very effective but totally different high intensity workout one can do on a longer ride is 45" all-out hill sprints with 5 minute easy spinning between sprints. A good location is a good bit of flat feeding into a nice low traffic hill so you can turn around and repeat.

canklecat

If you're doing full gas HIIT in conjunction with an outdoor ride, the first 5-10 miles of a ride could be a warmup. But after the HIIT session there probably won't be enough gas in the tank for anything more than a slow and easy cool down ride home. If I have enough energy for a regular ride in conjunction with HIIT, I wasn't doing the HIIT right.

But I stopped doing HIIT outdoors last year. If I'm putting out full effort, it's potentially dangerous to be gasping for breath, with my head hanging down and trying not to fall from dizziness, while on a road. If you check the GCN training tutorial videos, they usually show two or more partners riding together for outdoor HIIT sessions, for that very reason.

I still do hill repeats and high effort training sessions outdoors, but now I do real HIIT efforts only indoors on the trainer. I also want to be watching my heart rate via my handlebar display. Another thing I don't do on outdoor rides -- I don't even have a simple bike speedometer/odometer on my road bikes now. Phone goes in jersey pocket and I look at it only after stopping. I don't want any distractions on roads booby trapped with distracted drivers.

And I keep HIIT sessions fairly short. I need at least 15 minutes to warm up properly, then the HIIT work itself, and another very easy 15 minute cool down. The whole session doesn't take more than 45 minutes, 2/3 of which is warmup and cool down. Some folks can warm up and cool down quicker, so their HIIT sessions might take only 20-30 minutes.

Hermes

Here is a reference for interval workouts that include HIIT that may be helpful. These could be included in longer rides. https://www.bikeforums.net/33-road-b...cipe-book.html

Bmach

Thanks guys