Training & Nutrition - how often should i do intervals?

now that i have a decent base in, i need to start doing some serious intervals before i start juniors racing again.

before i start, i should say that i do not have a HRM and don't have the cash to get one. so i have to take an old-fashioned approach to this. anyway, i ride six days a week, usually totaling 200 miles. how many of my weekly rides should be dedicated to intervals? i'd rather dedicate an entire ride to these instead of mixing them into my normal rides.

also, how many sets should i do? and what is a good recovery time? i need to get the most out of my workouts. i REALLY want to do well this year.

thanks alot for any info!!

Before I go into this I am warning you that I'm NOT a coach and the way I do intervals is dictated by my spinning instructor. Furthermore, spinning is an indoor activity performed on a stationary bicycle, more information here: http://www.spinning.com/. So anyway, if you hurt yourself or you get some crappy information from me I'm not responsible for your hurting yourself (though I'll feel infinitely bad about it, trust me).

So anyway, in spinning I do two kinds of intervals:

A) Power Intervals - Three minutes up sprinting as hard as I possibly can. Sometimes I'll do jumps up and down (eight count in the saddle, eight count up, eight count in the saddle, eight count up, etc for about 8 total repetitions) and then I'll spend three minutes in the saddle recovering and spinning my legs out to let the lactic acid out of my legs. I repeat this three times in a set, normally only doing one set per 50 minutes of riding. I usually do these on simulated hills (high resistance).

B) Normal intervals - jumping (eight count in the saddle, eight count up, eight count in the saddle, eight count up, etc). I'll do jumping for about 8 total repetitions and then I'll sit down for a minute or so recovery, then do it again. Generally I do this four or five times in a 50 minute set.

I hope this helps, maybe I'm using incorrect terminology or didn't understand what you were asking, but I sure hope this helps! Take care and best of luck!

i don't think they recommend doing intervals any more than twice a week. your wanting to do them every day is valid seeing that life is one big interval.your legs are young but i don't think you'll find anyone recommending more than the 2x/week.

Oh, I didn't think about you maybe meaning it in that way. I do interval days twice a week (Monday, Wednesday) and ride the rest of the days (varied distances, usually dependant on how far I'm commuting or where I want to go that day or if I'm feeling energetic and go for a longer ride.

Without knowing more, I'd vote for twice a week, in addition to 1 race pace group ride a week, if you can handle it without overtraining. To paraphrase Joe Friel (The Cyclists Training Bible), many cyclists go too hard on rest days and not hard enough on work-out days. Be sure you're letting yourself recover adequately between workouts... that's when you get stronger.

Well twice per week is often recommended. But if you go out and do some fast competitive rides with your buddies those might well count as "interval" days.

You need to recover from intervals and doing them too often is nearly as big a mistake as not doing them at all.