My racing season is winding down, but, I’m still doing some interval training for the remaining hill climbs. These are some of the training sessions I like to do.
Train like a Race
One of my favourite type of interval training is just to ride up a hill as if it was a race. This enables you to check your times and see what kind of improvement you are making. The length of the hill will determine the intensity of the hill. If it is a short hill which takes 2 minutes, it is pretty much a sprint. In this kind of session you will be getting are trying to get close to your maximum heart rate / effort level. After doing one all out effort, you will never be able to replicate the same effort level in other intervals.
Do As Many as You Can.
Another way to do hill intervals is to race up a hill pretty much as fast as you can. Measure your time and then try to ride up the hill as many times as you can, keeping within 20% of the initial time. For example, if the first hill interval takes 3 minutes. See how many times you can then ride the hill in under 3 minutes 30 seconds. It gets harder and harder and means you work on the ability to race with lactic acid in the legs.
Train With Other People.
Sometimes when you train with others it might inspire you to try a little harder. There is nothing better than a bit of competition to motivate yourself to keep training hard. It can be difficult to find someone of similar ability, but is good if you can.
Fartlek.
Fartlek is just when you go on a training ride and sprint for certain signposts or the crest of hills. It is an unstructured form of interval sessions as the gap between intervals is not fixed but it makes it a bit more interesting.
Pyramid.
Pyramid is where you start off with intervals of a certain intensity say 80% of your heart rate (or you can use a power output, if you have a power metre). Then in the next interval, you increase the intensity to say 85% of your heart rate. Then 90%, 95%, 98% before reducing the intensity back down to 80%. This kind of closely monitored session is best to do on a turbo. I can’t say I ever do it.
When you are doing this kind of interval sessions, you really have to learn to listen to the body. Sometimes, you just can’t maintain effort levels close to your maximum. It is better not to force it. But, if you do feel strong, it is good to make most of the day. Also, I don’t advise getting into a routine of doing intervals every week. It is the kind of training good to do in cycles. Some months off, some months on.
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