TheKillerPenguin

For tempo 5min is fine. If you can stomach it you can even do a 1x40.

Wylde06

Yea, I was getting a little antsy to get going again before the 10 minutes was up. And if I extend it, I will do 2x25 or even 2x30...ill save the really long blocks for outdoors (especially once I start riding the TT bike again)

grolby

There's no reason to use half the work interval save ease of remembering the length of time. Rest intervals are going to depend on your goal for the workout. Shorter rest intervals make recovery and repetition more of a focus of the workout. Longer rest intervals make max power more of a focus. A short, intense interval could call for just as long a rest period as a tempo interval. For which more than 5 minutes is pretty excessive, generally.

Wylde06

I should say for anything >10 minutes ive done half of the work interval

grolby

For tempo, by the way, I always do at least 3x20. 3x30 when I can go longer. SST is sort of the transition between tempo and threshold, though. Not sure what I'll be doing when my coach "graduates" me to SST level in my next block, but I'm guessing it'll still be at least 3x20. You can hang out at high tempo for a long while.

Edit, yeah, but if you're resting longer for longer intervals, that just doesn't make much sense. Imagine a 30 minute block. Does a 15 minute rest make sense? Hell no. I would argue 10 minutes is unnecessarily long even for threshold 2x20s. But at that point, I would play it more by ear rather than a rigidly fixed rest interval. If you need 7', you need 7'.

Wylde06

Ive only just recently been really getting into long intervals on the trainer (at all really, I don't think I did more than 1 or 2 20 minute sets last year and none outside) so it has taken some time to get used to the mental effort, but now that im a couple weeks in I feel like I will be able to start extending the sessions. Doing them twice this week made me realize that I can definitely add more to each ride.

And I feel more motivated this year now that we have a local team and there are a ton of guys that I will be racing with. That and how my season went last year, I really want to build on that

grolby

Yeah, add them when you can. If you're spending a lot of time on the trainer, you want that time to be as productive as possible. Those 3x20s are squeezed into a 1.5 hour workout. Basically I warm up for 15 minutes, start interval, rest 5', next interval, rest 5', last interval, spin out 5'.

The mental suffering is definitely a thing. Especially since my coach has me do all my trainer work with no fan, wearing a base layer (not to worry, I'm in a 50 degree basement and have adapted so it's not that bad). Some evenings I get started and even getting up to Z2 during the first 15 minutes feels horrible. But a lot of the time once I get through the first 20 minute interval, I still don't feel amazing but I feel like I can do it.

wens

Backwards. Higher intensity can't be maintained as long, but takes longer to recover from. The extreme is track sprinters working on top end doing <20 second on efforts with 15+ minutes in between to fully recover

TheKillerPenguin

What did you do to make your coach hate you so much?

Wylde06

Tried to stay cool, obviously.

TheKillerPenguin

lol, I felt guilty and finished it on the trainer.

Today is 5 more, and since I got all the volume out of the way during the week I get to do 2hr trainer rides tomorrow and sunday. This is the last big week I have til next winter, I can't say I'm going to miss it much.

TMonk

nice!

Today is a day off the bike for me, gonna do a little bit of abs and light upper body work in a few. Tomorrow will be 4hrs low z2, and then I'm racing the Roger Millikan crit on Sunday.

caloso

Exactly, which is why I like the 5x3'(or 5') with 1' rest. You are training your recovery.

jdms mvp

haha oman. The feels from any 20min power test. At 18 minutes nothing is stopping me from powering to 20. even if power dips.... keep the legs spinning at least. I've certainly stopped pedaling at times before 10 minutes came through. Mind and legs need to both be ready for those imho. It's very rewarding to finish an all out 20 min interval imho.

dz_nuzz

It's more like why does his coach hate himself so much? His coach does the same thing for his own training.

globecanvas

Yesterday morning I did 150 box jumps and then spent the day hanging sheetrock. On the ceiling. In the attic. Which is leg intensive because from the driveway to the attic is about 75 feet of vertical.

Today I set out to do 3x6 Z5 but my legs just gave up during the 2nd one. The spirit was willing but the legs were elsewhere. They weren't sore before I rode but now they are.

globecanvas

On the plus side, Bar Mitts are awesome.

dz_nuzz

These came to my mind today. Time to keep the old LBS in business!

TheKillerPenguin

Bleh. It's cold out.

grolby

Indeed.

And as I've mentioned before, I'm trying this thing this year where I do what I'm told and see how it works. This is a guy who helped me get from basically zero last April to the best racing season I've ever had in any discipline in the fall. So some faith is not uncalled-for.

cmh

Are there any studies that back up the heat acclimation training you are doing? My feeling is that it may be valuable if you are going from cold training right to racing in the heat, but that you have plenty of time to acclimate to hot weather in the NE. But maybe there are training benefits beyond acclimating to the heat. I'm not saying it is bad, I'm just asking because I'm curious.

Enthalpic

Downhill running and exercise in hot environments increase leukocyte Hsp72 (HSPA1A) and Hsp90? (HSPC1) gene transcripts. - PubMed - NCBI

Acute heat stress prior to downhill running may enhance skeletal muscle remodeling

Heat stress enhances mTOR signaling after resistance exercise in human skeletal muscle. - PubMed - NCBI

Heat stress activates the Akt/mTOR signalling pathway in rat skeletal muscle. - PubMed - NCBI

Ygduf

heat stress is why trainer zombies are so good.

cmh

Thanks!

wens

Speaking only for myself, I don't think it matters at all if heat training improves performance, I wouldn't get on the damn trainer half the time, which I'm pretty sure outweighs any potential benefit. Kind of like what's the best diet? The one you'll actually maintain type deal.