I'm just starting out with any sort of serious training and racing. So excuse the really stupid question, but how do you time these? Mainly the 100% intervals and shorter intervals, it doesn't seem like looking at my watch is a very safe thing. Count off in my head? Are these mainly meant for a trainer and not out on the road?

You can glance at a watch safely. Count pedal strokes for the shorter intervals (count both sides so you don't pedal harder on one side).

You should probably get a cheap cyclocomputer though. If you know pretty much any cyclist who's owned more than one bike, they have an old cyclocomputer laying around that you can probably just have.

I've got a cheap stop watch I've attached to some packing that a work laptop came in (foam stuff) and put this over an old pair of tri bars - this puts the watch just where I can see it ...

I haven't done an FTP test, and don't own a power meter. I do have a LT test (186) and a MHR of 210. How do I adapt these workouts so I can use them with HR instead of power?

(And i know it's a lagging metric, i have no money to spend on power right now. I just got my license and I want a car so I don't rely on my parents to get to 8 AM junior races which are 3 freaking hours away. /rant)

Learn to judge your rate of perceived exertion accurately for durations under 10 minutes. Before a power meter, I learned to do this by doing hill repeats with negative time splits, then tightening the spread. Initially, there would be a 30 second spread between my first and last times. As I learned the sensations better, I got it to where I could do six 5' hill repeats, each one faster than or equal to the previous, and only have 10 seconds between the first and last. Once you have that dialed in, you have a pretty consistent comparative power meter built in that you can use for the ~5' type interval durations.

For longer stuff, HR is reasonable. You have to combine RPE and realize that RPE is going to ramp for steady power, and so is HR.

For shorter stuff, again, use RPE. For standard anaerobic intervals, I generally do the entire interval at RPE 9, regardless of power -- so you really don't need power for the workouts, but it helps to track improvements or losses due to cumulative training fatigue.

Looking over the recipes, I had a question about the Pyramid workout. Is the main consensus 5 min between each set (1' on, 5' rest, 1' on, 5' rest, 2' on, etc.)? I have seen variations of this workout where the rest between was equal to the interval length itself. Thanks.

Either way is a valid workout, but it varies depending on your goals. If you are focusing on anaerobic work capacity, then I would stick with the full 5' or longer recoveries. If you think about equal work/recovery intervals, then you're going to cut power significantly on the work intervals, but it will improve your recovery ability and give you some race feel for a hard course/hard race.

I was looking for base workouts in the thread, and I didn't recognize anything. What do you do for base? I need winter pedaling and to do base right now - it's too cold out!

Base is boring. As many hours as you can tolerate at z2.

I'm sure you wanted to say "ZZZzzzz2!"

So I can probably just use my HRM and my Friel-based HR zones for that, or even a polarized scheme. Nice thing about that is, I can just add in HIT a little at a time as I begin to feel sharper.

don't forget to floss:

Thanks so much for this.

I rarely come by here anymore since I quit racing (I was over 60 and taking a long time to recover from a crash) and hardly ride anymore.

A common question is if one can do these without a power meter.

One can do these things without a power meter, but it is not easy. I happened to live in an area that was pretty flat and not very windy so I could use mph as a surrogate for power. The hard part is first finding your FTP mph and that hurts a lot, but finding it out with a power meter hurts just as much. In either case you give a steady effort for one hour that exhausts you and you don't feel like riding the next day. One can cheat and do a twenty minute test and adjust the FTP down.

Then bump up or bump down your FTP mph accordingly. Just remember that small increases in speed at higher speeds take a lot more power as the power required goes up with the cube of the speed.

For example if I wanted to hurt myself badly when I was in race shape for 55+ masters racing I could take my road bike out for a 40 km ride and finish it in about 63 minutes or about 24 mph. (I was not a really strong racer.) So when I did ZeCannon intervals I would do them at 25 mph. Like Waterrockets said the first two feel great. By the sixth one I was in exercise induced Tourrette's syndrome.

For me I found it best for increasing FTP to do two 90 minute rides at 85 to 90% FTP every week and one set of ZeCannon intervals. Riding at FTP didn't do much for me for training. Any other forms of sweet spot training and intervals over threshold would probably work just as well. I just happened to like ZeCannon intervals over the more old school 2x20 s or the sets of one minute intervals for raising FTP. Do what works for you.

Now the sets of one minute intervals worked really well for me for training up for 800m to 1 km attacks at the finish so I did not ignore them. IIRC I used to do them at about 33 mph.

I would also have one day every couple of weeks when I would get warmed up really well, shift to my highest gear and be at a near standstill, and then hit the pedals as hard as I could for 10 seconds and rest one minute. I would do a set of ten. If you do this make sure you are close to home when you finish. And make sure that your chain and cassette are in good shape.