Today was my last hard day of training for the Everest Challenge coming up this weekend. Part of the ride include some interval work on the bike, hard for 7 minutes and easy for 3 minutes.

When I do intervals training for a marathon I used fixed distance (such as mile repeats) but this is not as useful for a bicycle because the grade and the wind have a big bearing on the effort. It is easier to just use the lap feature on my Polar heart rate monitor. Each 7 minutes hard equates to about 2 miles and is a similar lap time running mile repeats.

This curve shows my heart rate for each of the four repeats. I was able to only briefly get into the “red zone” for the first interval but primarily did the intervals in the anaerobic zone. It is normal with intervals to not be able to push your heart rate as high on subsequent intervals and that is what happened. (click graph to enlarge)

My average/maximum heart rate for the four intervals was 159/167; 157/162; 156/163, 154/161. I found it hard to take my heart rate up for this type of interval training compared with climbing a steep hill. I guess my “climbing legs” can push my heart harder. I never was a good time trialist.

This is clear when I look at yesterday’s graph climbing Mt. Hamilton. For over 18 miles I was able to get to an average heart rate of 158, about the same as the average for the four 7 minute intervals today. Of course having David H. push the pace so hard helped. (click graph to enlarge)

I have changed my method of calculating my heart rate zones so some of my prior entries were based on a different approach using the default setting in my Polar Heart Rate software. I have now defined the zones based on the reserve between resting heart (45) rate and maximum heart rate (180) using these four zones:

Max or Red Line (red color) – 90% to 100% or 168 to 180 bpm
Anaerobic (yellow color) – 80% to 90% or 154 to 168 bpm
Aerobic (green color) – 70% to 80% or 140 to 154 bpm
Recovery (blue color) – less than 70% or below 140 bpm

I may fine tune these zones going forward.

Categories: Everest Challenge, Training
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