Tuesdays seem to be my day of training at the moment, although I’m not sure that 3 session in a day is necessarily good thing.
I’ve just done a Turbo Trainer session that felt OK. Either I’m getting better or the calibration is a little out as I keep increasing the wattage for each session but still manage to complete them. I did my 1:1 minute intervals today which I haven’t done for about a month. Last time I did them I did the hard efforts at 360 Watts which had me working at 89% of my maximum (162bpm) and said I’d have to try them at 370 Watts next time.
So, this time I started at 370 Watts but that felt too easy so I increased the wattage with each rep until I was at 400 Watts which felt sufficiently difficult. So after a 15 minute warm up I did
- 1 minute @ 370 Watts, 1 minute @ 120 Watts
- 1 minute @ 380 Watts, 1 minute @ 120 Watts
- 1 minute @ 390 Watts, 1 minute @ 120 Watts
- 1 minute @ 400 Watts, 1 minute @ 120 Watts
- 1 minute @ 400 Watts, 1 minute @ 120 Watts
- 1 minute @ 400 Watts, 1 minute @ 120 Watts
- 1 minute @ 400 Watts, 1 minute @ 120 Watts
Followed by a warm down.
The 400 Watt intervals were pretty hard, getting my heart rate up to a maximum of 166bpm on the last one (92%), but I can’t believe I’ve really improved that much in one month. I’m not complaining if I have, and I guess I’ll have to try all 7 reps at 400 Watts next time.
I’m not sure how my legs will feel at circuit training followed by swimfit tonight though.
Heart Rate from todays Turbo Trainer Interval Session
I didn’t think I’d be able to do that!
Yesterday, despite still having a bit of a cold, I did my 3:2 minute intervals workout on the turbo trainer. Last time I did this workout on Feb 1st I did the hard efforts at 280 Watts and wrote:
My legs were feeling it come the end, but it does seem as though I’m improving. Just in time for some races throughout the summer. It does mean I will have to increase the wattage to 290 Watts next time, which I sure will start to hurt!
So, true to my word, I increased the wattage to 290 Watts yesterday and thought I would struggle. Once again though I completed all seven repetitions and it wasn’t too bad. you know what that means… 300 Watts next time.
My heart rate did peak a little higher than last time (158 bpm rather than 155 bpm), but that is nowhere near my maximum, so hopefully I’ll at least get close to completing it at 300 Watts. Maybe I am improving for real.
Turbo Trainer Workout
I’ve had a bit of a cold lately, it’s nothing too bad just a sore throat, headache and bunged up a bit, but considering what happened last time I exercised whilst ill I’ve been taking it easy.
Last time I ended up getting pericarditis and spending several days on the cardiac ward at Bronglais Hospital. A good enough incentive not to do the same again but doing nothing is next to impossible. I haven’t been swimming or to circuits and I’ve missed out on a night MTB ride, but I mist admit to having done a couple of fairly easy Turbo Trainer sessions. I’m sure the odd recovery style session on the Turbo Trainer can’t do me too much harm. I hope not anyway.
Hopefully the cold will clear up soon so that I can get back into some training ready for the Mawddach Goldrush. Otherwise I’m going to be struggling to get round.
I’m enjoying this and seem to be getting better.
I did the same workout as last week, 3:2 minute intervals on the turbo trainer. Last week I did them at 270 Watts with the final one at 280 Watts and my heart rate hit 164bpm on the last one. This week I increased the wattage to 280 Watts and expected to struggle. The first repetition did feel quite hard and I still thought I might struggle come the end, but as I got into it they seemed to stay relatively easy. So much so that I increased the wattage to 290 Watts on the last one. Despite that my heart rate only peaked at 155 Watts.
My legs were feeling it come the end, but it does seem as though I’m improving. Just in time for some races throughout the summer. It does mean I will have to increase the wattage to 290 Watts next time, which I sure will start to hurt!
Nice steady interval workout
It looks as though my hard work on the turbo trainer may be paying off as I seem to be making some improvements.
I did my 1 minute interval session yesterday, where after a warm up I try to do 7 repetitions of 1 minute hard and 1 minute easy. After a little bit of experimentation over a few weeks I found my limits and could just about do these with the hard effort at 350 Watts. I have since done a few of these at 350 Watts, which normally gets my heart rate up to around 90-95% of my theoretical maximum.
Last time I did them on January 19th they felt a little easier and heart rate was only 89% of its maximum so today was the day to increase the output to 360 Watts. I had tried them at 360 Watts before and failed miserably. On that occasion I only managed 5 repetitions, but today was different. In fact, although the last one did feel quite tough it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I managed all 7 reps and with a maximum heart rate of 162bpm I was still only working at 89% of my maximum.
This may all sound very encouraging and it looks as though there are signs of improvement, but it also means that I should try them at 370 Watts next time. I don’t think I’ll be able to complete all 7 reps at that power output, but it has to be worth a go.
I felt quite good at circuits and in the pool on Tuesday too, so maybe I’m just having a good couple of days – We’ll see how I fare in the real world on my night MTB ride tonight.
Heart rate from todays Turbo Trainer workout
It’s always good to mix things up a little on the Turbo Trainer. Also, I had coffee with Jon the other day, my friend who did the various tests on me at the Sports & Exercise Department at Aberystwyth University. Whilst chatting about training he said that the session to do out of the ones he’d given me were the 3:2 minute intervals. I hadn’t tried these before so I though I’d give them a go yesterday.
The idea is that after a warm up you do up to 7 repetitions of 3 minutes at a pre-determine, hard workload and then have 2 minutes rest. John had set me a target of 275 Watts for the hard 3 minutes. I can only set the power output in increments of 10 Watts on my Tacx Flow Turbo Trainer so decided to give it a go at 270 Watts. My workout therefore was:
Warm Up:
- 5 minutes @ 140 Watts
- 4 minutes @ 200 Watts
- 1 minute @ 100 Watts
Main Set
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 280 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
Cool Down:
- 4 minutes @ 180 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 140 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 100 Watts
Here is my heart rate trace during the workout, peaking at 164bpm (90.6% of my maximum)
Todays Turbo Trainer Workout
As you can see although it was quite hard, I still felt OK on then final repetition and actually did it at 280 Watts rather than 270 Watts. Next time I shall have to try it at 280 Watts throughout. In fact, talking to Jon last week, he was saying that if I can do all 7 repetitions of any of these interval sessions then the idea is to up the wattage immediately as they should really be so hard that you can’t quite complete them. That sounds like torture to me but I shall start increasing the wattage until I can no longer complete the whole set.
I did enjoy this set of intervals though as they seem to be working a little on endurance as well as power. 3 minutes can actually seem like quite a long time!
I’ve just finished a 4:1 minute interval workout on my Turbo Trainer. I have promised to people that I’d post some of my workouts here, but this is one I’ve mentioned before in a previous post.
As you would expect, the 4:1 ratio is 4 minutes ‘easy’ at 100 Watts and then 1 minute of hard effort. Which such a long rest, the hard efforts are pretty hard at 400 Watts for me. The first time I tried it I couldn’t manage all 7 repetitions, but I did manage them the next time with my heart rate peaking at 169 (93% of my maximum) on the last two reps.
Today it was pretty hard again, but my heart rate was only 165 (91% of my maximum) on the last couple of reps. Maybe there’s some improvement afterall. Trouble is that means I should probably try it at 410 Watts next time which will be difficult.
They may be pretty evil at the time but these interval sessions are pretty good and hopefully have some effect on my overall fitness and strength. Time for a nice cup of tea and a rest now though.
Heart Rate Graph from todays Turbo Trainer Workout
My Tacx Flow Turbo Trainer has a built in calibration device allowing it to ensure that workouts you do on it are consistent despite changes to things such as tyre pressure, contact pressure, bike you use etc. Any change to such things would make a difference to the efficiency and could therefore adjust the effort needed for a particular workout.
The calibration system is easy to use. Press a few buttons on the computer, then pedal up to a certain speed at which point it tells you to stop pedalling and it then measures the amount of time it takes for the wheel to come to a halt. From this, the turbo trainer can work out what braking resistance it needs to use so that it remains calibrated from session to session.
It is recommended that you do this from time to time just to make sure the machine is still calibrated correctly and you should do it if you change things such as a tyre, tyre pressure or anything else on the bike. I’ve done it a few times since having the turbo trainer and the calibration result has always been ‘+2′. As I understand it this means the braking resistance is slightly higher than a factory default of 0.
The bike I use on the turbo trainer is quite nice, everything works really well on it, it is smooth and has an amazing rear hub and I keep the tyre pressure high so that always made sense to me as the turbo trainer needed to up the resistance a little to compensate for the efficiency of the bike. However, the bike is also 20 years old and the tubular tyres on it have been on there for 20 years. Most of that time it has been sat in a shed and the years had taken their toll on the tyres. The cracks and splits in the rubber finally succumbed to 500 miles abuse on a turbo trainer so I replaced the rear one over the weekend.
Cue a re-calibration of the Tacx Flow. I re-calibrated today with the new rear tyre and this time got a reading of ‘+1′. I left it at that as I assume that means it will now give me a braking resistance that will allow me to replicate workouts I was doing before despite the new tyre.
The only way I could test it was to do a known workout and see how it compared. I therefore did my normal 1 minute interval session with the hard efforts at 350 Watts. Trouble was I was planning on upping this to 360 Watts next week as it was now beginning to feel quite comfortable, on top if which I was well rested today and felt quite good.
The workout did feel a little easier than usual with my heart rate reaching around 162 on the efforts rather than 166, but I now don’t know if this is due to the slighty lower braking resistance following the re-calibration or the fact that I should have been in good form and I’m improving.
I guess I’ll have to see how it pans out over the next few sessions… It does of course mean that I’m still on target and can increase the power output on the hard efforts to 360 Watts next week as planned.
Heart Rate from Todays 1 Minute Interval Turbo Trainer Workout
I’ve just done another of my 1 minute interval sessions on the turbo trainer and I think I’m finding my limit. The session involves a 10 minute warm up and then 7 repetitions of:
- 1 minute hard
- 1 minute recovery
Followed by a warm down. The first time I did it I did the hard intervals at 320 Watts, that was OK so I increased it to 340 Watts the second time which actually felt a little better! I then upped the wattage to 360 Watts on my third attempt but couldn’t do it and only managed 5 repititions at that wattage.
Today I decided to split the difference and try it at 350 Watts. This time I completed all 7 repetitions and it didn’t kill me. It was pretty difficult but it did feel OK. I think I’ll do a couple more like that over then next two weeks and then try it at 360 Watts again. My heart rate was up to 166bpm on the final few repetitions which is about 92% of my theoretical maximum so that’s a pretty good workout as far as I’m concerned.
Interval Training Heart Rate Trace
One of the nice things about using a Turbo Trainer for cycling training is that your workouts are repeatable without issues such as the weather / terrain making too much difference to your performance. This means that it is a useful tool for tracking your progress as you can repeat a workout exactly and see how you compare to previous workouts.
One test for such comparisons is the PWC test which compares power output to heart rate. There are various ways of doing this, some more complicated than others. The idea is to find your power output at 170bpm.
Performing the Test
Performing the tests are easy. After a warm up you simply need to do two consecutive 6 minute workouts in which the workloads are selected to produce a steady heart rate between 120 and 140 bpm on the first session and 150 and 170 bpm on the second session.
This obviously takes a bit of guesswork to start with in order to get the workloads right, but the idea is to achieve a steady heart rate within those ranges by the end of each ride.
For each session, the Heart Rate (bpm) and Power Output (watts) are recorded.
Calculating your Results
You can either plot your results on a graph with power output on one axis and heart rate on the other. Join the two points with a straight line and extend the line out to 170bpm to find your Power output at 170bpm, or use the following equation:
Where:
- P1 = Power (watts) for session 1
- P2 = Power (watts) for session 2
- HR1 = Heart rate for session 1
- HR2 = Heart rate for session 2
Don’t worry about doing it yourself though, use the form below to calculate your PWC results:
Repeating this test regularly allows you to track the progress of your power output.
My PWC170 Results
I tried the test today and my results were as follows.
- Heart Rate 1: 122 bpm
- Heart Rate 2: 152 bpm
- Power 2: 260 Watts
Power 1: 180 Watts
This gives me a PWC170 result of 308 Watts.
The advantages of this test are that it is quick and easy to perform. If you have an Ergo-trainer, a heart rate monitor and half an hour to spare you can do it. You don’t have to have a helper to note down lots of figures and it isn’t too strenuous either. It may not give you meaningful results in the same way that doing VO2 Max tests and such like will, but it does allow for comparisons to be made so that you can chart your progress.
