Gear Combinations for Intervals on Indoor Trainer?

Hello,

My name is Adam and this is my first post here. Although I'm not new to cycling, I wanted to check with more knowledgeable riders on gear combos while training indoors (I use a CycleOps II Fluid Trainer).

I've been training along with the CTS Trainright Mountain Bike DVD (it came with the trainer and is the first training video I've ever tried; I think it's really good, IMHO). My bike is a road bike with a Shimano Tiagra set: 3 chainrings and 8 rear sprockets.

I had previously kept it set on the middle chainring for the whole workout, shifting between the second-to-highest gear (second-to-smallest sprocket) for the spinning and recovery portions to the highest gear (smallest sprocket) for the speed intervals. However, since installing a Cateye Atrale 8 computer that works off the rear wheel (my old one was a front-wheel computer), I noticed my cadence was way too low. In order to ramp it up sufficiently and not die of exhaustion in the process, I had to change gear combinations, going one lower for both (still using the middle chainring, from the third-to-smallest sprocket for spinning/recovery to the second-to-smallest sprocket for the intervals).

Basically, considering my inexperience with trainers and interval training in general, this feels OK to me. Is this an acceptable choice of gear combinations (i.e., any cross-chaining issues here, any preferential alternative combinations to use, etc.).

Thanks for any comments. There really is a wealth of valuable info within these forums, I just wasn't able to find a similar topic.

 

hmm. tough question to answer because its so general or vague?? i would have to say that in general, there are endless combinations of gears/intervals/cadences you can ride and depends on the goal of your workout as to which ones you choose.


for example, if you want a muscular strength-type workout, you can do 4 x 2:00 in gears 39x15, 39x14, 53x17, 53x15 @ 75rpms seated. 3:00 recovery spin. then do the whole thing again standing. you can do just 8:00 steady climb, standing, in 53x13 @ 60rpms. you can probably find example workouts somewhere that are free. ...unless you take a spinning class, have a coach, or are on a team. aside from that, for the recreational cyclist, i don't know what to tell you! just be creative

not sure how new you are or not, but the translation of the above are 2 minute intervals; 39 = small front chainring, 53 = big front chainring; these gears all for a standard bike with 2 front chainrings and a 10-speed with rear cogset 12-25. you can do a google search for more detail.

 

Don't worry about the gears or speed, especially on a Fluid 2. Use the proper gear(avoiding extreme cross chaining of course) to give you the right cadence at the right level of effort. If you're in the granny gear, no problem.

 

Thanks very much, Equus123 & Spunout, for your replies. I really appreciate it.


Adam "ag098"