Bike Workout on 9/14/2006 - FTP Intervals

Today started off with about an hour on the Computrainer this morning. Today's bike workout was, overall, not intended to be too taxing, but to include some spinning drills and a few very short intervals at or near my functional threshold power (FTP) level. The concept here is to start building a FTP "base" so that as the training year progresses, I can extend the length of these intervals and train my body to go harder for longer periods of time. Hopefully, that will translate into being able to go faster over the Ironman bike distance.

I've included another graph of my ride in the picture to the right. It's pretty easy to tell what work is being done and where. The red line is heart rate data, the green line is cadence data, and the pink line is power data. I did this workout on the Computrainer using the Coaching Software and a self-created ERG file. ERG files are a terrific tool that let you pre-set target wattage ranges throughout your workout, so that you know you're hitting the target wattage you want in your workouts. In this workout, I started out with a warm up at about 150 watts for 10 minutes. Then, staying at a load of 150 watts, I did 10 x 30" spin ups where I increased cadence to about 120 rpms to work on leg speed and pedaling technique. The spin-ups are the 10 small "sipkes" you see in the graph at the right. Notice the power and cadence graphs spike here. The HR curve shows increased effort, as HR starts to rise a bit more rapidly.

Following the spin-ups, I did 5 x 2 min at L4 (FTP) effort. These are the wider humps in the HR curve and the "square" waves in the power curve. Notice that I kept my cadence fairly constant at about 90 rpms. The interesting thing to me in this graph is noticing that the HR curve is slightly off center of the power curve. This is because heart rate lags effort by up to a minute and-a-half. So, even though you're working at a higher effort, your HR monitor may not show it for up to a minute or so. This is why being able to train (and race, if you're lucky enough to own a power meter) with power is so nice. You get instantaneous, objective feedback on your effort, and can adjust accordingly.

The workout ended with a 15 minute cool down at L1 effort.