Are we there yet?

Great idea Cat.  For me personally, I love indoor training for some reason, and today is extra special as I'm stuck inside with a day off from work for almost the whole state of MA. 

This week I started focusing more on uninterrupted training, taking out some of the 5 min recovery spins I used to do.  I want to work my way back to doing solid 1x60's, and eventually plugging in some 1x120 once in a while.  Today the plan is to do at least 1x40 @ ~high L3/ low L4, with some 1 min @ >115% within the last 10 minutes of that 40.  I figured it's a starting point, instead of the usual 2x20, just eliminate that 5 min rec. for now, and add some surges here and there. 

I also think it would be a nice chance to take some pics of your winter setup, if possible.

Here's mine, along with my exucse to train inside.  :)   The outside pic was taken 5 minutes ago.

Cold winter here in Virginia also.  I am spending alot of quality time on my trainer.  I have been using the CTS "Cycling for Fitness" DVD's, and just doing intervals watching TV.  I am waiting on two more CTS videos "Threshold Power", and Max Power".  As you can see, I want more power!!!

Just seeing that snow covered parking lot... really puts into perspective our "cold snap"

here in NC.  Brrr!  40 degrees.  Thank goodness for winter riding in southern locales!

No such thing as quality time on a trainer to me. I'll go ski a few runs and do the trainer again tomorrow.

This morning I spent just over an hour on the rollers.  Mostly tempo with 4 sets of 2 minutes high intensity intervals.   The good news is this was my last rollers session for the winter, the bad news I had to go the LBS and sign up for spin class.  Its time to disassemble my bike and sell it on ebay.  Gotta fund the Guru build.

Here is my Michigan basement / bike shop / man cave.

And here is out side earlier this year. 

I was being facetious about quality time.  I would also like to be outside, but feel compelled to put more time in on the trainer.. 

No training yet today.  Last night..

Set out with a goal to hold 250 watts for 15 miles.  Just got this indoor trainer and thought I'd try to do a ride similar to my most basic outdoor ride, which is 18 miles at a moving average of 20mph.  Don't train on the road with power, so I have no idea how to compare.  My moving average speed for the indoor ride was 20.5 so maybe I'm in the ballpark.   The last time I rode outside a couple of weeks ago I was off my mark, struggling to average slightly above 19mph over 20 miles, but it was windy, cold, .... whaaa whaaaa. :)  

 After futzing with settings initially, I made my goal of 15 miles last night, getting off to a good start at 250 watts @ 85-90 cad, but had to back off to 225-235 watts which I held strong through 10 miles.  Had a mental shut down between 10-12 miles and had to regroup, kick myself in the butt and get after it again.  Managed to drive to 300 watts to finish.  I could have spun it up a little more towards the end once I knew it was almost over, but decided "why?".  Disappointed, but at least it's a start.

I'll blame missing my mark last night on 20 quasi GS training runs on snow yesterday afternoon.   ... OK I'm out of shape and I have to admit it.   I have to say riding the spinner is more difficult than a similar ride outside.  I don't know if it is the boredom, the constant need to keep spinning, or what, but it's a challenge and feels like a heck of a lot more work.  Maybe it will get easier as I get more time under my belt.  I hated the few  spinning sessions I did at the gym last year - too hot, too loud, and absolutely nothing like actually riding a bike.  On my own I think I can make it a little more "road like".  Was going to get the e-motion rollers and use my bike, but didn't think my wife would deal well with those, so chose something we could both use.

No actual trainer photos yet, but stock photo....

Quote:

Originally Posted by sitzmark 

No training yet today.  Last night..

 

Set out with a goal to hold 250 watts for 15 miles.  Just got this indoor trainer and thought I'd try to do a ride similar to my most basic outdoor ride, which is 18 miles at a moving average of 20mph.  Don't train on the road with power, so I have no idea how to compare.  My moving average speed for the indoor ride was 20.5 so maybe I'm in the ballpark.   The last time I rode outside a couple of weeks ago I was off my mark, struggling to average slightly above 19mph over 20 miles, but it was windy, cold, .... whaaa whaaaa. :)  

 

 After futzing with settings initially, I made my goal of 15 miles last night, getting off to a good start at 250 watts @ 85-90 cad, but had to back off to 225-235 watts which I held strong through 10 miles.  Had a mental shut down between 10-12 miles and had to regroup, kick myself in the butt and get after it again.  Managed to drive to 300 watts to finish.  I could have spun it up a little more towards the end once I knew it was almost over, but decided "why?".  Disappointed, but at least it's a start.

 

I'll blame missing my mark last night on 20 quasi GS training runs on snow yesterday afternoon.   ... OK I'm out of shape and I have to admit it.   I have to say riding the spinner is more difficult than a similar ride outside.  I don't know if it is the boredom, the constant need to keep spinning, or what, but it's a challenge and feels like a heck of a lot more work.  Maybe it will get easier as I get more time under my belt.  I hated the few  spinning sessions I did at the gym last year - too hot, too loud, and absolutely nothing like actually riding a bike.  On my own I think I can make it a little more "road like".  Was going to get the e-motion rollers and use my bike, but didn't think my wife would deal well with those, so chose something we could both use.

 

 

No actual trainer photos yet, but stock photo....

 

Just so you know, speed and distance on that bike are not affected by using different resistance settings.  You would get the same speed/distance at 30 watts as you would at 600 watts if you used the same cadence; therefore, it's best to measure your workouts by power and duration. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by postal_bag 

 

Just so you know, speed and distance on that bike are not affected by using different resistance settings.  You would get the same speed/distance at 30 watts as you would at 600 watts if you used the same cadence; therefore, it's best to measure your workouts by power and duration. 

 Agreed.  Speed and cadence are inextricably linked because of fixed gearing.    I only mentioned average speed because it happened to match my outside rides of similar nature (time or distance)    Whether the power generated has any relation to the power of my outside rides is unknown since I don't have a power meter on my bike.

Since my focus is on power in a fairly tight cadence range (85-95), time and distance are basically fixed (90cad = 23.3mph) around 0.388miles/min.  Choosing a duration of time or distance is arbitrary .  If I want more power input at 90 cadence I add more resistance and hold the pace.  My ultimate goal is to increase the power I can sustain in this key cadence range.

The weekend was cold but I managed to get outside but also got caught in rain that turned to wet heavy snow on Sunday, last forty minutes of that ride was full on survival mode just trying to see with the snow coming down sideways.  Tuesday was another lucky outdoor day but with a ton of layers for a brisk ride with the temps hovering near freezing. But since then it's back into the pain cave with heavy snow turning to slush outside. A solid hour and half of Tempo on the TT bike on a set of e-motion rollers I recently found on Craigslist which are amazing for passing the time on Wednesday followed by an HOP workout on the CT this evening.

It's only mid January but I think I'll survive the indoor season again. At least I get outside from time to time even if I get drenched pretty often. It sure makes it easier to do the indoor work when there's a reasonable chance that one or more rides in the coming week will actually be outside on a bike that goes somewhere.

-Dave

I'm kinda summing up for myself but publicly.

We had exceptionally dry autumn so my full-time indoor season started quite late, in the last week of November. Since then I kept doing three 1:20 sessions per week on rollers with lots of moderate tempo intervals though and my favourite 30 sec all-outs and moderate squatting with weights combined with upper body work. After a block of 5 weeks I felt that I was tired and took 2 weeks off during New Year holidays and was spinning more often but at lower intensity of 65-75% of MHR. Progress is monitored via av. speed for a standard session and AvHR. Recovery went quite well and my av. speeds went up a bit although I think they should go down because I do very little volume.

There are 9-10 weeks of indoor training left, it depends on the weather. I think it's time to start doing VO2max work once a week and go back to 4 times/week schedule... if only our newborn baby allows.

I've bought the TCTP book and gonna do the field test on rollers tomorrow, just out of curiousity. I don't like very narrow HR zones in the book and I can't afford intense intervals longer than 3 min outdoors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming 

The weekend was cold but I managed to get outside but also got caught in rain that turned to wet heavy snow on Sunday, last forty minutes of that ride was full on survival mode just trying to see with the snow coming down sideways.  Tuesday was another lucky outdoor day but with a ton of layers for a brisk ride with the temps hovering near freezing. But since then it's back into the pain cave with heavy snow turning to slush outside. A solid hour and half of Tempo on the TT bike on a set of e-motion rollers I recently found on Craigslist which are amazing for passing the time on Wednesday followed by an HOP workout on the CT this evening.

 

It's only mid January but I think I'll survive the indoor season again. At least I get outside from time to time even if I get drenched pretty often. It sure makes it easier to do the indoor work when there's a reasonable chance that one or more rides in the coming week will actually be outside on a bike that goes somewhere.

 

-Dave

Based on your comment and my curiosity I just looked at the e-motion website and those rollers do look interesting.

Even though our area was paralyzed by a winter storm it appears that it will reach the 40 degree mark today and tomorrow with full sun. A small portion of our group will be back in business tomorrow and then another solo ride on Sunday. All other days are indoor training with the typical 2 x 20's at 80 to 95% FT. 

Edit: I just looked again and it will be in the low 30's during our outdoor ride. It will reach the 40 degree mark until late afternoon.