Arboleda

I'm in a "winter" state so I can't ride outdoors much. Maybe I should admit I don't "want" to ride outdoors much for the next several months

I've read a lot of agreement that winter is a good time for base endurance type of building. Higher volume, less strenuous, not much interval/sprint work.

I'm wondering what this means for me. I'm looking for a coach in my area but until then I've been doing about 25 miles per day on a Kinect trainer (feels pretty similar to outdoors) at a heart rate of about 140 to 145 BPM, 18 to 19 MPH.

By comparison my best effort on flat outdoor paved trail (20-minute segment) after warmups averages 165 BPM and I do around 22 MPH.

Does the daily 25 miles of 145BPM/19MPH sound about right for what I'd be doing November/December given the numbers above?

I know this is very much a "it depends" question but I'm wondering if I'm in the right ballpark.

dadof7

I am doing the same thing. I would keep increasing your time and go by time more than miles. I am working on 1.5 hours and then up to 2 and eventually to 3 hours.

jdon

Intervals.

dadof7

Later.

ravenmore

I like to supplement some running during the off season. Last year running 3 or 4 times a week for 3 or 4 miles helped get my resting heart rate down to the low - mid 40's.

DaveSSS 

Miles and speed don't mean a thing on an indoor trainer. It's watts (power) and time spent on the machine. Heart rate is certainly an indicator of how hard you're working, if no power info is available. I've always found indoor training so boring that tolerating a full hour was about all I could stand at one time. Training for 4-5 hours a week in the winter only helped to limit my fitness losses, compared to riding 9-15 hours a week in good weather. I didn't "gain" anything from it.

merlinextraligh

A lot of this depends on what your goals are, and what your schedule looks like. down here racing starts the end of January, so November for us looks a lot different from November in New England, for example.

That said if you follow a traditional approach to the base phase where you're not doing much intensity, you need to be going long, i.e. 4 hours or more. That's not practical for most people, particularly if you're talking about doing it on a trainer.

A good plan would be to try to get long rides on the weekend outdoors, and do some structured training 60-90 minutes on the trainer.

Early in base phase, you can spend your trainer time working on form doing Fast pedals (i.e. 120 rpm, in an easy gear, start at 3m inutes, set of 5, and work up to 10 minutes) You can also do muscle tension work on the trainer (biggest gear you got at 50-55rpm, again working up to 10 minute intervals)

After a couple of weeks of that, you can start doing tempo intervals ( 7/10th's perceived effort, or 85-90% of your threshold power) working up to 2x 30 minutes.

After a couple of weeks of that add in Steady states (8/10ths perceived effort, or 95-100% threshold power) as you get closer to your season.

Mix in rest days, and just endurance miles, between the interval days.

IMHO if you just sit on the trainer at a moderate endurance pace for 60 minues 5 times a week, you're going to pay for it in the spring.

Follow something along the lines of the outline above, and you can be stronger in the spring (i.e. higher threshold power) and ready to start doing short intense intervals to get in race shape.

thump55

The trainer is perfect for longer interval training, which is what I mostly do. On the road, it is hard to do a 4-5 minute steady pace interval, but on the trainer, it is easy to hold a cadence.

My normal trainer session is a 5,4,3 interval (with 2 minutes slow pedal in between), then another 5,4,3. I hold a 100-103 cadence for the 5 and 4 minute segments, and 106-108 for the 3 minute. I ride a 15 minute constant effort at a 7-8 out of 10 alternating either before or after the interval sets.

After you go one winter without riding the trainer at all, you will realize that any time you spend doing anything on the trainer is 1000 times better than doing nothing.

Also, be wary of burning yourself out early in the winter, and then not riding much in the five weeks approaching outdoor riding. Better to start slow (once a week even in Nov/Dec), then ramp it up after the New Year. If you hit it hard now and then do little in Feb/Mar, you will have wasted a lot of work.