Monday, August 17, 2009

Monday - Intervals

It's a pretty indisputable training technique for improvement - regular interval workouts. And not just for running, or cycling, but weights and most every sport that can be broken into brief periods of intense activity followed by a period of rest. So, if you want to improve in your sport (go farther, faster, stronger) add some intervals.

Today was the first time in the almost two years that I've had my Garmin Forerunner 305 that I've used the Interval workout on the device. Usually I have some goals related to time and or HR and use those. But with the device running the work out - it was a bit tougher.

I set it up for 20 intervals (not sure how many I'd do, but wanted to error on the high side). Each one was 30 seconds of maximum effort followed by 60 seconds of recovery. I used the ride to and from the dam as my warm up and cool down rides respectively. The dam was full of Dragon Flies. Not as dense as the swarm of bees, but at high effort speeds many of them were not able to get out of the way: hitting a Dragon Fly is much different than having Nat stuck to your face. A proper description of what it feels like at 25+ mph to have them hit you escapes me, but it's not fun and is a bit distracting. Thankfully they were mostly in the first half (2 miles) of the dam.

The trip across had 7 intervals and the trip back had 8: so 15 all together. Looking at the numbers I'd say they weren't all at 100% effort. I read a nice definition of 100% effort: it's how fast you go to save your life. That's pretty simple: you can't go faster than 100% and when your life depends on it - that's your max effort. So today's effort wasn't maximal, but maybe 90%.

I am thinking I will add another day of intervals: Th or Fr, but will change the effort time to be only 15 seconds long and still keep the 60 seconds of recovery. This should facilitate my effort for those 15 seconds to be closer to 100%: it will be out of the saddle maximum acceleration for the first several seconds and then pushing hard in a seated position for the remaining seconds. It sounds like a good work out and will work my body a little differently than 30 seconds at 90%. I'll again let my 305 run the session - it's relentless; couldn't careless if I'd like more time to recover.

[The graph shows the HR and Speed information for the warm up period and then the intervals.]

No comments:

Post a Comment

hit counter link
Provided by website-hit-counters.com .