Rate my intervals

[Chris S]

I must admit, as I was typing, I was less and less sure of the 5min one...

But - when I do 5m intervals, it makes my legs burn like Bloody Hell. Burning = Lactate, and I though lactic acid was the product of Anaerobic energy production.

[inc]

How anaerobic are 5min and 20min intervals?

How anaerobic would depend how conditioned you are and what the load is not the duration.With the workload  above your LT then AT you are working to  condition  your body to deal with  the increasing lactic acid. Completely anaerobic work can last probably a maximum of 10-15 seconds but as soon as you start working above your LT some of the work is training the body to cope with anaerobic energy production. For endurance events like the LEL there should be no anaerobic element and any training would best be focused on developing aerobic power which is achieved with long rides at level two.

[inc]

I have highlighted the area that contained the 9%.  I didn't go into Zone5 at all.  I hardly ever do.
Perhaps I need to try for my max again. 
Now I have my bpm zones established, I'll read that site again and figure out which zone I should be in.
I'll post back this evening.

Apologies GruB, I didn't notice the zone 1 bit. If you stick to the four zones you will find it a lot more practical to stay in a wider zone. It is not so much a matter of recording them, you need to stay in a particular zone to get the particular improvement you want to achieve. If your max hr is 186 then zone two including upper and lower would be 141-161 and you could set your hrm for just that zone with an alarm if you go out of it.

[Wendy]

...exactly.  They are mostly aerobic intervals.

[mike]

I had a look at my zones and they are broken down the following way:

Zone1 = 50-59% of maximum
Zone2 = 60-69%
Zone3 = 70-79%
Zone4 = 80-89%
Zone5 = 90-100%

I've had a look with the traininpeaks software to try and compare power & heart rate zones. 

it says:

Anaerobic capacity - no HR zone,   power is > 120% of FTP. 
VO2 max    = HR > 95% of max,     power 105 - 120% of FTP
threshold   = HR 85 - 95%,             power 90 - 105% of FTP
tempo        = HR 75 - 85%,             power 83-90%
endurance = HR 62 - 75%,             power 55-83%
'active recovery' everything below those!

My absolute record for keeping power above the 'anaerobic' zone is about 2 minutes, so these might not be quite right.   According to the numbers I can hold about 2x FTP for 45 seconds.

meh, it's all just numbers innit.   I'm going to go ride my bike. 

[Greenbank]

This is one of the reasons why power is "better" than HR for this kind of training.

HR is slow to respond to changes in workload to be of use in maintaining constant effort. You start a 100 meter sprint with a HR of 50bpm and finish with it way below maximum despite putting in maximum effort, i.e.

http://www.greenbank.org/misc/hr_run.jpg

The above is a plot of my HR over time for a 20 minute treadmill run at 10.5kph. I'd warmed up and my HR was 100bpm but it still took 5 minutes of running at 10.5kph before it started to level off at 170bpm and then cardiac drift took it up to 182bpm as I got hotter.

Without a power meter I'd just try and put the same amount of effort by "feel" and use the data from the HRM to analyse how well I did this. Certainly easier on a turbo than out on the road. You'd be better off targetting specific HR zones rather than trying to replicate power based training purely from HR readouts.

[inc]

...exactly.  They are mostly aerobic intervals.

How anaerobic are 5min and 20min intervals?

Are you sure you don't want to change that statement?

And your point is.

[mike]

hill repeats for me tonight, six of the bastards.  4 minutes up, 3 minutes back down again, with a 10 minute recovery in between each set of 3.

nice and even power across the six, even though it nearly killed me - it seemed much harder to do it on the TT bike.

[Chris S]

A real 2x20 for me tomorrow.

Real as in - not on the Turbo.

[mike]

more hill repeats tonight.  Six again, but an extra minute on each, so 6 x 5 minutes at 'bastard hard'.  My legs feel bruised.

[simonp]

Must get round to analysing the powertap data from the Fred Whitton Challenge.

What I did notice was 350W for 3mph. 

Must also try to find the place I locked the back wheel on the gps track, to see if I can work out what speed I was doing.

[mike]

at 3mph?  that's nuts!

my intervals tonight were at about that power but a bit quicker..

[nmcgann]

more hill repeats tonight.  Six again, but an extra minute on each, so 6 x 5 minutes at 'bastard hard'.  My legs feel bruised.

That's the joy of training My legs have ached continually since Jan 1st when my plan started to ramp up 

Neil

[simonp]

at 3mph?  that's nuts!

my intervals tonight were at about that power but a bit quicker..

Yep.  On the steepest part of Honister, which is one of the worst climbs.  Fortunately it eases off a bit in the middle.

The hard thing with sustained climbs like that is that at 3mph in the lowest gear your cadence is very low - but if you're having to put out the same power as you'd use for >20mph on the flat then you need massively higher torque.
3mph on 30x27 is about 35rpm, compared to a more normal 90rpm cadence.  Not good for the knees.  

[mike]

three very very short intervals last night, "just for fun".

Quite simple really, select suitable gear, point bike up hill, then flat out for 40 seconds. 

Try not to be sick, wait for vision to return to normal and then have a ten minute ride back round to the bottom of the same hill.  Only three laps but it utterly destroyed my legs, I nearly had to walk up the gentle hill on the way home and they're still sore this morning.  Over 800W average power for the three bursts though, so they died for a good cause.

[simonp]

Been reading about training VO2max.

VO2max Intervals

4 minute intervals at 100% VO2max seems to be the idea.

Sounds like fun.

Not til after LEL though. 

[mike]

yep, have tried a few of those.  I have no idea what my VO2max is, so do it at 115-120% of FTP. 

I've worked up to 2 sets, each set 4 x 4 minutes with 5 minutes between each and 10 minutes between sets. Each 'on' is actually five minutes, the first minute is a brisk warmup with 30 seconds at 120% of FTP then 30 seconds at about 80%, then the four minutes of joy.

you'll need a hill..

[simonp]

You can estimate it from your PB time at 2000m rowing (a recent time!).

I get 53-54 ml/min/kg from that.  I posted the link in another thread.  Concept2: VO2max Calculator

However that doesn't tell you your wVO2max, which needs a conversion.  You need to know how much oxygen per joule - I think it's 0.28ml but I'm not sure.  You need to convert from ml/min/kg to ml/sec, then divide by 0.28.  Doing that calculation for me, based on a VO2max of 53.5, gives 229W.

Which, on the basis I know I've done 198W for an hour on the MSG 300, sounds about right. 

[mike]

do a 2k when I dont have to??

madness!

[simonp]

I targeting getting my 2000m time down to 7 minutes.  That would put my VO2max at 60.

Given it was 65 when I was 25 (and cycling every day) that might be a bit of a stretch.

[simonp]

Found this thread again, failed to find it last night.  Did 3x15 @ 225W.  Power output was steady rather than all over the place.

[Rich753]

For 15 mins intervals you are riding at around lactate threshold (or functional threshold power, depending on your terminology)?

[simonp]

For 15 mins intervals you are riding at around lactate threshold (or functional threshold power, depending on your terminology)?

Yes.  225W is LT2 for me.  I've got a nice graph of my lactate concentration at 25W intervals.

[inc]

 225W is LT2 for me.  I've got a nice graph of my lactate concentration at 25W intervals.

You will know if the intervals are having an effect as your HR should decrease if you continue using a fixed load, and of course the load will have to be  increased to maintain the improvement. I personally still think HR is a better indicator of the effect of training loads, also as you get fitter the load will automatically increase which can be accurately monitored with the powermeter

Is your lactate graph projected or were blood samples taken every 25W interval.

[simonp]

 225W is LT2 for me.  I've got a nice graph of my lactate concentration at 25W intervals.

You will know if the intervals are having an effect as your HR should decrease if you continue using a fixed load, and of course the load will have to be  increased to maintain the improvement. I personally still think HR is a better indicator of the effect of training loads, also as you get fitter the load will automatically increase which can be accurately monitored with the powermeter

Is your lactate graph projected or were blood samples taken every 25W interval.

Blood samples @ 25W intervals from 100W to 275W.