Time for the trainer

There are two types of people (cyclist at least): those who like trainer workouts and those who HATE trainer workouts.

Guess what type of guy I am? Yep, I dig them. They are the ultimate in efficiency and super controlled and measureable, bit sweaty though. I think there are some pretty damn good mental adaptions taking place as well. Intervals are hard, intervals on the trainer are even harder! Additionally I think that the pedal stroke on a trainer is more complete, your body seems to pull all the way around the pedal stroke a bit more, similar to doing seated big ring intervals (more on that later).

I recommend using sun screen even when you are on a trainer —->

So here it is:

warm-up: this was 45 minutes for me as a buddy stopped by to BS while I was warming up, didn’t want to be rude and start having a heart attack in front of him, so a bit longer of a warmup.

20 times (30 seconds full gas/30 seconds easy)

3 sets of these with about 10 minutes rest between.

For me the “full gas” is between 450 and 500 watts. the “easy” is around 150 watts, I have found it is easier if I keep a bit of effort going on the easy part.  I did this workout in my 53×15, only changing gears for the break between sets. I have a LeMond trainer and it has some real resistance, If I let the “easy” drop under 100 watts then the effort to get the “full gas” going is a real slow RPM flog. My average power for the first set (20 minutes) was 287 watts, the normalized power was 347 watts. These are pretty damn hard and not for the weak of mind.

Shot of this workout below, this is similar to the workout I have been doing on the track (view it here).  At a glance the workout look exactly the same.  If you look closer though they are not, the work intervals have a very different profile.  The trainer ones are much flatter, I am actually pacing myself within reason.  On the track it is a power spike and then the power declines till the end.  At the end of the day the HR profile for the set’s is very similar and the average power for the sets is about the same.

Now keeping track of the count is no easy task, I can’t imagine doing this without using a lap counter.  I use the lap feature on my Garmin for more than one reason though.  The first is just simply to keep track of the count, this workout is 120 laps on my Garmin, that is 60 “work” and 60 “rest” intervals.  Additionally I use the average lap power, my goal is to average over 450 watts for each interval, or higher if I can.  Though I don’t try and hold greater than 500 watts average as I know I will only have 2 or 3 and be blown out for the set, the Garmin works great for this.  And of course the lap time feature is important, I watch those 30 seconds tick by in slow motion and then hit the lap button and rest, another 30 seconds (those recover 30 go by much faster eh?) tick by and I hit the button again.  Repeat over and over…  I think I can program my Garmin to do this for me, when I get some free time I will figure out how to do that (when I am like 75 years old).

I have a shot of the individual work intervals below (I left the rest intervals out of the chart as I did not want it to be 3 feet tall).  I have highlighted the average power for the work interval, this is the number I race against during each interval.