Originally Posted by chas58

That is great. For most people that work, any seat time is beneficial…

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

I'm fortunate to be a daily year-round cycling commuter early in the morning, with a pleasant, minimal one-way distance of 14 miles, easily lengthened during the nice weather. My commute is really my only chance to train.

I had long rejected the idea of intervals because getting on the Road early is a challenge itself, and I didn't want to lose my enthusiasm by punishing myself too much....

Intervals on the road during a defined commute are more variable than what one can do on a trainer. I have quickly learned that I must watch out for traffic and not pay too much attention to the stopwatch on my cycle computer. Sometimes the stopwatch times out during an interval and I have to reset.

Often the terrain is out of synch with the interval, e.g. downhills on the intensity interval, uphill on the rest interval, with stoplights interspersed.

As mentioned above I just use “Rating of Perceived Exertion” (RPE) as my monitor (see subsequent post). I consider my usual happy-go-lucky pace is at an RPE of 50 (out of 100), and previously sometimes tried to ride most of the commute at a steady 60. So I ride about 6-8 miles at my usual pace (exertion) to totally warm up, then I estimate my RPE during the intense one-two minute intervals to be about about 70-80 [done on uphills].

I then may revert to my usual RPE of 50 for the remaining 2-3 miles to cool down.

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

Cadence

I’m a 40+ year cyclist and I ride mainly for fitness. My training tool is the Relative Perceived Exertion (RPE) Scale, and I use cadence to chose gears to maintain my desired exertion....