Topic Title

Well I've heard it's a good way to boost your speed and help performance in TT's so that's what I want to do, boost my speed to improve performance in TT's

I went out and did an interval session today, I don't know if there intervals are right or wrong, I've read about the Internets and found one site suggesting 3min on and 3 min off is a good way to improve.



Those are all the stats I have, blue are the rest intervals.

So I went along and did this, it was sort of tough I was struggling on bits of some of the 3min sections but one of the weird things was my legs where not as bad as if I was doing one of the thursday night TT's, suggesting my lactic threshold is higher and I was not near it, but at the same time I felt I could not push any harder.

On another forum one guy said if at the end if your intervals you don't feel the need to sit down or get sick then you are not pushing hard enough, well I did not feel the need to get sick or sit down so I don't know if I was not going fast enough.

So I need abit of guidance on intervals, this is what I want to do to improve my speed and TT times. all the websites have some different ideas on intervals so I am totally lost now!!!

As I'm sat here my legs are not very tired too, they are abit achy but I'd be expecting them to be pretty tired and very achy if I did an interval session hard enough? I know when walking up the stairs I get a big lactic buildup in the legs???

I don't know if I should be having that long of a rest, if the actual intervals are too long? too short? If I should be going by distance and not by time?



Need some help anyway please.

Thanks
Will.

Hi Will,

Ive been concentrating on Time Trials this year and have been using interval training each week since the beginning of feb.

I set myself two goals, to go under the hour for a 25 and to do a short 21 minute 10mile tt.

I looked at how I would achieve this, firstly I thought about the 10, I realised that once my 10mls pace was sorted then I needed to develop specific endurance to enable me to hold this speed for almost an hour in order to acheive my goals.

The intervals you have done, shown by your garmin stats are better suited to a road racer where recovery is the name of the game.

For time trials you need to develop sustainable power and therefore would be better doing longer intervals of say 4 lots of 5min intervals with 5mins recovery between each, each interval done at your 10mile tt pace or just above it, recovery should be spinning the pedals with little resistance to remove lactic acid and get your heart rate back down. Moving on from this session you would increase the length of the interval but at the same time reducing the number of reps, ie 2 lots of 10 mins, gradually working up to 2 lots of 20mins hard with 10 mins recovery between, this last session being one used in prep for a 25mls tt.

Will, you need to plan your weeks carefully when doing intervals, if you ride the thurday spocco series then you should count these as a hard workout by which to measure your performance gains and typically be looking to get long rides in at the weekend, monday an easy hour, tuesday intervals, weds easy hour, thurs race, friday rest. Going too hard all the time wouldnt allow your body to adapt to the new stresses you are placing it under so an easy hour is just that. Every fourth week should be really easy to allow your body to recuperate, and after every ride you should be looking to refuel straight away with a meal high in protein or a recovery shake.

Ive acheived my goals already this year, key to it was the planning and listening to my body. Good luck

Thanks for that seems really helpful!!

At the moment I am doing saturday or sunday long rides which is usually well definitely over 100 miles and at quite a tough pace on the H group, then depending on which day, if it's a saturday I'll rest sunday, or monday for a sunday run but if the ride was really long and hard I'll allow 2 days to recover.

So today I have done the interval, thursday I plan on doing the TT, then Friday I'll rest.

I struggle to achieve TT pace when I'm not in a TT, dont know if it's just in my mind though.

It seems hard to imagine that one interval session a week can greatly increase performance though.

But my main goal is to get a 25min 10 and then a 24, I don't think I'm up to 25 mile TT's yet.

So next Tuesday I will do 5mins pushing hard then 4mins recovery for 5 reps and see how I'll go.

Is it ok to cycle fast back from the TT's? I usually still feel in the TT mood after and like last week I averaged 21mph over 36 miles, 13 miles of the TT and 23 home and that was my PB.

The thing making me really want to train is when looking through the results on the TT section and you got woman and men of all ages doing 26mph averages over 50 miles!!!

One interval session a week isnt much I agree, but because of your long rides on a weekend and the club events on a thursday if you tried to squeze anymore in then you would end up being overtrained and tired all the time with the increased risk of becoming ill and not reaching your full potential.

If you was racing on a weekend instead of thursday nights, then thursday would be another interval session. The key thing here is that if you ride your bike purely for the enjoyment of it then what you are doing is fine, but if you want to improve certain aspects of your performance then you may need to look at doing more quality sessions rather quantity.

Most competitive cyclists put the miles in during the winter months and then when race season comes along they reduce the mileage and increase the intensity of sessions. Most of the guys I know who race do two hard sessions midweek, one race at the weekend and a long ride of 2 1/2 hours on the day each weekend when they are not racing. Their total mileage for the week is probably the same as what you total on a weekend alone.

Dont forget that recovery is vital from hard sessions, this is where the performance gains are made, you break your body down with excercise and then it grows back stronger than before, however if you dont give it the rest it needs to recover and grow back stronger then you just keep breaking your body down and become overtrained and tired all the time.

So on the weekend I should be doing a shorter and faster ride to get my performance up?

I've tried making some sort of routine but it was a mess really but atm I'd rather concentrate on getting faster than super long runs at the weekend.

After my TT I could use the 23ish miles home as interval training? But after a TT would interval training do anything?

After my TT I could use the 23ish miles home as interval training? But after a TT would interval training do anything?

No, it'd be a waste of time because you'd be knackered. Ride home easily so you are fresh to go hard another day.

Would you say the interval I did yesterday would have done anything, like helped my performance or anything in the slightest, I know it takes time. My legs feel totally recovered now and I'm just wanting to go out, but I've got a TT tomorrow would a ride out today just cycling normally be a bad idea, not thrashing it, just 18-20 as normal for 10 or 20 miles.

The only reason I ask the above is because I like to be out on the bike often and it seems only 3 days doing properly cycling at the moment.

Tuesday would be interval
Thursday TT
Saturday or Sunday club run (or maybe both?) Or maybe fast short ride if there is any?

Then the rest of the days I have to ride slowely or I wont improve?

Just I'm used to going out on the bike most days, having rests of course and doing short loops and random routes around my area and now it's as if I'm hardly on the bike and it's just abit..... well meh.....

To quote Eddie Izzard: "what do the french say when they get a deja-vu? 'Bloody-hell, feels like I've been here before'!"

This stuff about getting enough rest is well trodden ground - suggest you listen to the advice Will, listen to your body and apply some common sense.

Back to the original question about intervals though. Testers tend to do long intervals, roadies do short intervals (generalisation, but good enough for the purposes of this thread). 3mins is a bit twixt-and-between, possibly more suited to early season. But, each to his own.

More importantly, riding intervals takes practice. Driving yourself to delirium is a skill. Your body, naturally, resists. Even after a lay-off of a few months you'll find you have to re-teach yourself to do it. You can't do it when fatigued. Its harder to do in bad weather. I find (found) a hill helps. Some mental imagery helps, imagine you're chasing down someone slightly irritating (Cadel Evans?) Try some (Andy Murray) fist pumping. Caffeine.

When you've got the hang of it - focus on the penultimate effort, its easy to give it what-for on the last one, but you'll sub-consciously hold back on n-1.

For you Will, try the road from Cawood through Stillingfleet and finish each effort up that drag towards Escrick.

Is that probably the reason I can push harder in TT's, cause I've got more of a reason then?

I'll give that road a try, the windy bit near stilling fleet is steeper than I thought too. I'll give 5mins on and 5mins off a go but I'm sure I am breathing normal after like 2 and a half mins. Or as you said finish up on the drag, so once I've done from cawood to stilling fleet once I go back and repeat?

I'd argue that both long (say 20min) and short (say 4min) intervals are both useful for both TT'ing and road racing - they work different physiological systems, but both are used to some extent in each discipline**.

The important thing though - from extensive reading and less extensive personal experience - is getting the intensity right. If you're doing 4min intervals you want to just about be able to do five, all at similar intensity. By the end you should feel awful, nauseous, like you've been scoured out inside. Likewise threshold intervals should be bang on threshold - say 2 x 20mins at a steady fast pace (which really does take an awful lot of concentration and discipline) so that when you look back you know you couldn't have gone any harder overall. If you can do more, or TT it home, you've not done them right. The next day your legs should feel heavy and you should really feel like you want a rest (unless you're really pushing your training and you're keeping very careful check on your overall training load / recovery etc). As has been said before, the physical changes which make you stronger actually happen during recovery - ignore the recovery and you'll be wasting your time spent doing the intervals.

Cadel Evans? Slightly irritating?!?

**I found (and I know lots of others have found) that doing 5x4's pushed my threshold power up too.

But my main goal is to get a 25min 10 and then a 24...

Hi Will, it's great to hear you've got past the knee/bikefit worries for now and you're focused on going faster. I'm convinced having a goal like this is a big step in itself - when you have a goal, you have a reason to do stuff properly rather than just going out and riding fast all the time.

All the advice here is good, but I just wanted to add my 2pth on the question of rest. You said "I like to be out on the bike often and it seems only 3 days doing proper[] cycling at the moment."

That "proper" is the problem. Proper <> Fast. In training, Proper = the best thing for you on that day in order to achieve your goals. If yesterday was a long club run and tomorrow is hard intervals, then "proper" for today is a day off or an easy spin, leaving you fresh to attack the hard bits with the energy they deserve tomorrow.

I think I find fast riding as tempting as you, and so if I'm riding back from Selby on a Monday night before a race on Tuesday, I have to make sure I back off and take it easy. I'm mad enough that I'll actually start visualising the race in my head, and feeling that the easy pedalling now is making me stronger for then. It works for me.

Another thing - 'proper' when you're injured means taking lots of rest, because that's actually the best way to achieve your goal of going faster, because it's the quickest way to recover fully and get back to training.

Goals are great, they make all the other stuff make sense, so keep focused on them, understand what each session does to help you achieve them, and I reckon you'll be pleased with the results. When you're riding steady, just imagine coming round the last bend of your 10mile TT with 24:xx still on the clock (but don't get carried away...)

tom

Thanks for the comments.

I guess maybe then I'm not disciplined enough when doing TT's and maybe not pushing hard enough, I know after last Thursdays TT from sherrif hutton I was doing between 23 and 26mph solid and then out of york was doing a steady 21mph with some jumps up to 28ish and found I was easilly able to do this at the time which was weird.

It's just odd, you do the interval, you are going along, you think you need to be at nearly your threshold so you keep on pushing but then I get to the point, I dont know if I am pushing too hard or not enough, but at the same time I am feeling loosing my breath and my legs "appear" to be getting tired out, I talk myself into stopping pedalling or dropping the effort sometimes and think when I do it, well I could not go on any more, but sometimes I manage to go past that as find I can keep on going.

It's all really weird. I am unsure about doing 2x20min intervals at the moment, I am thinking it's too long and I'd really struggle unless I focused on maintaining a certain speed, I reckon if I thought, for 20mins I need to try and maintain 21-22mph, I could keep inbetween that, but pushing my hardest I'd not know and I'd be doing 23-24-25-26-19-18...huffing and puffing... find the energy... 21.22.26....... stomach cramp.... cramp in my shoulders..... have to stop..... start and repeat...and it seems a little crap.

I'm going to try 2x 4mins, on the course rob suggested and see how I do, yesterday though the day after the intervals, I did about 8x3 I think, I found my legs started aching about 2 hours after but the next day I got up and when I woke up and managed to feel strong and not weak as usual when I wake up my legs where fine and I was like I could go out and do a good fast ride. I did no riding yesterday and I'm hoping it'll help in the TT tonight.

The other weeks I set out on a ride, I then set myself a target, do a loop at 20mph average, so I did a random loop of 35 miles, tadcaster, acaster malbis, transpenine trail, ulleskelf, cawood and averaged 20mph, it was tought and the day after my legs where killing me, the last bit from riccal to cawood and back to wistow was torture but on that day I managed to keep going.

I do find intervals fun, I got the impression from some comments on here, cant remember where exactly that some people found them boring.

Cadel Evans? Slightly irritating?!?

The slightly was an edit - worried about being sued for slander. But now I've got as committee member to join in I feel like I have all those club assets for him to go for instead!

Did you see Astana's body language when they pulled him back in the Pyrenees? "Get back back there where you belong!" Or was I just imagining it?

To quote Eddie Izzard: "what do the french say when they get a deja-vu? 'Bloody-hell, feels like I've been here before'!"
.

No idea what you mean?

Would there be any point doing interval sessions over long distance? So basically I can still go places at the same time as training.

I know there is 2x 20mins but would any improvement be seen out of doing 40min intervals at a high intensity but not the sort of intensity you'd expect over short 4mins or long 20mins intervals?

I have a loop that goes to goole and round up to york and back, it's about 40 miles, maybe I could incorporate interval training into that?