JohnnyCool

I commute 2X's/week on Tu & Th. My commute is 20 mi each way. My weekend rides are usually with my wife on our tandem where we try to do one shorter ride, 18-25 miles, and one long ride, 40-60 miles each weekend. We don't do any intervals on the tandem but it's a great fat burning ride. I know that you don't want to overdo interval training but I'm wondering what's the best way to incorprate it on my commute. My thought is to do some both days on the way home. I would pobably need to start doing it for a brief period and then increasing until I can do it for most of the trip. The first 15 miles of my commute are bike path, so I have several underpasses to contend with and a couple of cross-over bridges, but no lights or car traffic and the whole route is flat.

patrick07

I'd say 2 or 3 minutes of effort over LT (80% of MHR) and the remainder of a 10 minute span in "recovery". If you do that the first time out you can gauge your response and increase those "over LT" times. Maybe you gould go from one bridge to the next bridge at high intensity and the recover until the next landmark, keeping your focus on distances rather than a set time.

My commute is much shorter at 3.9 miles so I try 4-5 minutes spinning at about 15 mph. That's the warm up phase. I do about 19.5-22 mph for about 4 minutes because of the busy street I'm on at that point. When I turn off, I go about 14 mph for 2-3 minutes and then the rest of the way to work at about 19 mph. I try to keep my recovery and the intervals about the same time length. I started out like I suggested above to see how I was feeling and came up with the 4-4-2-2 approximate minute method. My ultimate goal would be to make the whole trip in 10 minutes and without throwing up!

JohnnyCool

Thanks Patrick. Any others have advice on how to start incorporating interval training in terms of how long in each phase (effort and recovery). Is doing it on Tuesdays & Thursdays on the way home an adequate amount for improvement?

Guest

I usually race from light to light on days when I want to do intervals. Here in DC, they time the lights and when you see you've got 10 seconds to make it to the light, and you've got a block to make it, you can accelerate quickly and hit that light just in time.

Koffee

caloso

I sprint for the lights too. I've got a couple of spots where I know the timing of the lights perfectly and it requires some hammering to make them. For instance, I've got a three block sprint (400 m according to gmap-pedometer) where I have to go from a trackstand to 27mph in order to make the green.

Guest

I like doing the quick starts too- working on the quick accelerations when the light goes from red to green is fun. Then I either go for sprints or just do some endurance rides and work on the spinning.

Koffee

caloso

Don't forget to coast across the line with your hands in the air like you just won a stage of the Tour!

Roody

I periodize my commute. I'll do some intervals for a few weeks, then I'll just sprint for home every night for a few weeks, then I'll ride in a hard gear to work on strength for a while. In the summer I concentrate on volume or distance, and I go for intensity in the winter. Right now I'm working on getting my cadence up a little more, so I'm spinning a lot. Over the last couple years, I've gotten my rpms up from 60 to 90. Now I'm aiming for 96 in three weeks.

patrick07

This made me count the lights on my current commute route of 4 miles. Three.

Lights on my old 7 mile commute. Four.

Wow, do I have it good after all!