Originally Posted by Plainsman
Thanks. I've never really done intervals. I checked out the link, and I appreciate that. Must admit though, some of that is over my head. Say I just want to do 25 miles, and really be consistently fast a la a time trial. Would that be a threshold power workout? If so, what exactly does that mean? Do I start by taking, say 8 minutes out of a ride, and cranking as hard as I can for those 8 minutes, recover for a while (how long) and repeat. I'm sorry if this is all elementary stuff, but this is a new concept for me. I'm just getting into competition, and up until now just rode at whatever pace felt good.
As the others said about intervals, these are short-duration, high-intensity efforts. The 8-minute ones are kinda stuck in between anaerobic intervals and threshold tempo workouts. To really improve your TT speeds, you want to separate your intervals into two types. Do the short 1-4 minute ones at high intensity and max out your HR at the end. These develop muscular efficiency (more power for O2 consumed). Really good ones are pyramid sets of 1-2-3-5-3-2-1 with sufficient recovery in between.
Also do longer 15-20 minute intervals at threshold to develop the aerobic system. Hillclimbs are good for elevating the HR and holding it at LT.
Basically what you consider "riding hard" for 8 or 30-minutes isn't anywhere nearly hard enough. You'll need to max out your heartrate regularly and maybe even puke a couple of times. THen you know you've been training hard enough...
