If you don't have the aerobic base, it doesn't matter how many intervals you do. You'll never be able to recover sufficiently. That's why it's so important to do your base training and your endurance training BEFORE you attempt doing your interval training. This can take weeks or months to get to interval training, depending on how fit you are. With an adequate aerobic base, you'll start seeing your recovery time drop after you've finished the work effort. When that happens, you know you're fitter. Until then, if you continue to have a difficult time dropping heart rate, either you're not structuring your intervals correctly and you need to revamp your interval training, or you don't have the aerobic base to do the intervals yet.

It gets frustrating telling people they haven't trained base enough, only to see them ignore what you're saying and go right back to interval training without doing anything to develop their fitness. It won't be surprising if the riding season is lackluster.

Take the training back to the basics.

Koffee