Good Advice

I received the following in response to my Feeling the force entry earlier this week. I thought it was too good to remain hidden in the Comments so I'm reposting it here:

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Anonymous said...

I'm not a coach nor an exceptional rider, but I like riding indoors, so here's my advice.

The key to surviving trainer time is to keep it structured, e.g. 20 min warm-up (includes 1 min jumps), then 3 min medium intensity, then 3 min harder intensity, 3 min hardest, and back to medium, etc.. Do 3 times without resting, then rest 12 min and that's 1hr. Now you're ready to repeat it again, that's 1.5 hrs. I even structure my 10 min warm-down by riding at 115 RPM's and lowering RPM's by 5 every minute down to 70 and I'm done.

I couldn't ride steady indoors just to put in miles, that's inhumane. Yesterday I did 1.75 hr including 1hr tempo ride. This time the slight burn and visualizations made it interesting.

Concentrate on riding and visualizations, not on music or television. Always approach the trainer with a plan in mind. "What do I want to accomplish today? A tempo ride? Intervals? A fitness test? One legged?" Know what will make you be satisfied with your ride and do it.

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I did one set of the building 3 minute intervals (5x3) during this morning's trainer session and ended up with the following average heart rates: 145, 160, 174, 175, 161. I don't have cadence on my computer but I'm guessing the reason #4 was harder than #3, even though the gear was smaller, is because I rode it at a higher cadence than I did for #2. Either that or my recovery sucks right now...