When I would train for marathons, I liked to do weekly speed work, either a tempo run or intervals.  While I might do quarter mile repeats when getting ready for a 10K distance race, for the marathon I found mile repeats worked well for me.  I could only do about 4 of them, since that meant 4 miles running well over my lactate threshold.

For cycling I patterned a similar workout.  Since it took me about 6:45 to 7:00 minutes to run the mile repeats, I duplicated that with 7 minutes flat out on the bike, followed by an easy 4 minutes.  I choose a relatively flat course that included a couple miles of warm-up from our house and then a straight shot, with no need for stop signs or traffic lights during each of the 7 minute intervals.  The blue sections on the map are the intervals done at speed and the red sections the recovery portions.  From the map it would as if I could fit in a 5th interval at the end, but there are too many stop lights and I am way too tired to try a 5th one.  It seems as if all I can do is ride the 4.5 miles back home.

You can see the four intervals, followed by the recovery period from this heart rate curve.  I tried to get into Zone 5 on each interval (for myself that means 167 bpm or higher), sometime I was able to do except for the 4th interval where the 8 mile run and the prior 3 intervals were finally taking their toll.  At some point your legs and can’t push the heart as much as the heart can deliver.   I have my Garmin Edge 500 setup to show the heart rate zone I am in, which works well for this type of workout.

Using a circular course allows me to average the 4 segments so as to somewhat cancel the effect of the wind.  This allows a comparison between different dates.  I have kept this table at the bottom to show those.  With the 8 mile run before, I was not able to quite do the same average speed.  There was also a strong headwind on some sections, a penalty you never quite get back on the other sections.   Since this is for training, the actual speed is not as important as getting my heart rate up sufficient to exceed my lactate threshold, with a short recovery and then a repeat.  This is the best way to improve one’s lactate threshold.

I have a course where I do interval training on the bike and have kept track of some of the past training. We were headed out on the tandem for a ride today and Anne said she could not be gone too long. That was the clue to do a speed workout so we rode the tandem and did the same interval training I have done before on my single bike. I was anxious to see how the times would be on the tandem. The intervals consist of four segments of 7 minutes, at maximum speed, followed by about 3.5 minutes of recovery.

It turns out we did very well, averaging 22.2 mph for the 4 sections and I was able to get my heart rate up to 167-171 on each of the legs.  Anne took her heart rate up to 154.   We were back home in no time and still had a good workout.

My Polar heart rate monitor software allows you to setup what it calls sport zones.  The default is 5 zones all based on maximum heart rate, with the maximum intensity zone defined as 90-100% of maximum heart rate, hard intensity zone of 80-90% of maximum heart rate, and so forth.  With a maximum heart rate of 180 bpm, that would give me a range in the maximum intensity of 180 x 0.9 = 162.  On a recent 95 miles race, with 9,500 feet of climbing I used my Polar HRM and had reset to use the defaults.  But the 7 hours during the race showed 2 full hours in that red zone.  Since this red zone should be above your Lactate Threshold, it indicated that such a range was too wide.

One heart rate zone calcualtor that is more sophisticated because it also uses your resting heart rate.  You calculate the difference between your resting heart rate and maximum heart rate.  For me that is 180-45 = 135.  Now instead of using just 90% of maximum heart rate, you use 90% of that difference plus your resting heart rate (0.9 x 135 + 45 = 167).  That small change from using 162 and 167 results in a reduction of time in that recent race from 2 full hours down to 45 minutes.  Use this handy calculator to use this approach for your own zones.

Today I needed to take my bike into the shop to have the steerer tube slightly cut because when the Trek Store built up with the new frame, they didn’t cut it quite enough so the LBS needed to add a spacer on the top of the stem.  I thought this would be a good chance to do a time trial up Suncest.  All my other times up that hill were part of a long ride, including the recent Warriors race.  It took me 21:15 to make the climb, more than two minutes faster than my previous best.  I was in the “red zone” for 16:30, or most of the climb.  I had an average heart rate of 166 during the climb with a maximum of 176.  That indicates two things.  One that my maximum heart rate is indeed close to 180 and that using 167-180 bpm as the “red zone” is about right.  Below is the heart rate curve from the Suncrest time trial.

Anne and I went for a 4.5 mile run this morning.  She was going to have lunch with a friend so there was no time for cycling together today.  I thought it would be a good day for some interval training.  The weather is getting warm and I knew that it would be in the high 90′s today. so I did not want to wait too long.  Around 11:00 am, I headed out on my single bike for the loop I have done before.  I did not have aerobars on the bike right now and did not want to bother to put them on just for this speedwork since I need to have them off for the race next month.

The good thing about doing speed work on the same course is you can compare your times between days.  Since cycling speed is greatly affected by the wind, I have a loop course with each of the four intervals after I make a right turn so the wind should average out.  I felt I did very well today, even though I did a speed workout two days ago running.  I was able to get my heart rate up to a high level during each of the four 7 minute intervals, averaging around 165, with a maximum heart rate of around 172.  With interval training you want to push your heart rate well above your lactate threshold.  The recovery portion is such that you get your heart rate back down before the next interval.

This chart shows my heart rate and speed.  The course is not completely flat so you get some varations in speed during each 7 minute interval, but the total climb is only 400 feet for the whole loop.  Notice how the heart rate goes up quickly at the start of each interval and stays in the red zone and how I slow down enough for the rest portion to get my heart rate down below 130.    Click on the graph to view enlarge.

I record the data on my Polar heart rate monitor so I can compare each workout with the same course on other days.  Even though I was no using aerobars today (which would account for another 1 mph) I did well compared with prior workouts, especially getting my heart rate up high, which I find hard to do on a flat stretch.

The Death Valley Double is this Saturday.  It has been difficult to get ready for a double century that takes place so early in the year.  With vacations in November and December I was not able to really get much biking in until January.  Two weeks ago some of our kids and grandkids were visiting and I wanted to spend more time with them.  Then this February had many rainy days.  Last week I was finally able to get in a lot of miles, over 350 of them.  I did a long 112 mile ride last Saturday. I felt like a slug because it had a lot of climbing, but I did make it without much stopping.  Although my accumulated miles so far this year are not quite what my training program called for, it is higher than the last two years.

I was not able to get in a real long ride, like 130 miles, but I did some long rides on Thursday, Friday and Saturday that hopefully accumulated had a similar effect.  You can see on week 7 that I was only able to get in a 52 mile ride, but at least on last week I got closer to my training plan.

As I mentioned, I felt like a slug on Saturday.   When I looked at my average speed over the 112 miles, it was not too bad considering the 8,700 feet of climbing.  In my training log I have a lookup table that shows my overall  effort when I consider average speed, climbing and total distance.  By averaging 14.7 mph, I did get a “fast” grade for the ride, even though I could not keep up with the lead riders the second half, as I could last year.

Today it was raining all morning. I had already taken a day off yesterday so I felt I needed to get back on the bike.  I went to the bike shop and bought some fenders to put on my old bike and then headed out to do some interval training.  It took me so long to get the fenders installed that the weather had cleared and the roads were mostly dry.  I have a course for interval training and measured how I did compared with similar training last year. I could not find my heart rate strap so I was missing that data, but overall I did okay, although not quite like last year.  It is a circular route so only the total can be compared with the winds different each time I do it.

I suppose that gave me the mental boost to drive on even harder, taking my heart rate into the 170′s, approaching my maximum heart rate.  When I came across the timing line I pressed my HRM without looking, not wanting to have that knowledge affect when I was taking the split.  I quickly looked down and realized that I had beak my prior best time by a single second, but seconds count.  I did have to push my heart rate higher than previous, due to being 4 lbs. heavier and 1.5 years old.  In any case, it gives me additional confidence for the Everest Challenge this weekend.

To prove I did not do it over some slightly shorter distance, here is tonight’s readout from my Polar HRM.

And this is the same data from last year.  You will notice that tonight (above) was even a slightly longer distance measured than previous (below).

You can see from this graph how high I had to take my heart rate (click to enlarge).

This was the second time this month for a new PR going up Metcalf.  Earlier Ann and I set a new best time on the tandem.  It is fun to be setting new PR’s in your 60′s.  I think both our tandem time and my single bike time tonight will last for awhile as the best time in the bike club for our age group.  Here is the best times each year for our climbs up Metcalf.

I was chasing Doug R. all the way up.  He can easily drop me on the hill and that is what he did today.  Still I was happy with my time of 41:19, less than 4 minutes off my race time last year when my average heart rate was 168 all 6.7 miles.  Also today we had ridden hard all the way from the bottom, including Thomas Grade so I was not rested at the start of the measured climb.  After the ride Doug told me he was planning to do the Everest Challenge also.  I said he could ride up with Eric and I and would be great to have a third person.  Maybe Doug can place in our age group since I am sure I can’t.

So yesterday I set out to do repeats up this hill.  I watched the elevation on my Polar heart rate monitor to know where to start and stop each interval.  I pushed hard to climb 400 feet vertically, then biked easy for a 200 foot climb, then repeat.  I was able to do three repeats when I reached the summit.

This graph shows my heart rate increasing for each of the three repeats.

My times were not quite as fast as when I did a similar 400 foot climb up Thomas Grade, but then I had ridden 120 miles the prior day and was not yet recovered.

Click here to see all my cycling repeats and intervals training.

I took a look at my climbs up the backside of Mt. Hamilton.  These were part of a long ride and I was not pushing the pace but show them here as a comparision.