Jobiensis

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?

waterrockets 

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.

rykard

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 ...

newjunior

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)

waterrockets 

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.

oespinoza83

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.

waterrockets 

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.

Road Fan

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!

bdcheung

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

Road Fan

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.

Creakyknees

don't forget to floss:

krumvis

Thanks so much for this.