Good Trainer Workout

I was supposed to wake up this morning @ 4:45am to start my bike ride at 5am but I overslept by 45 minutes. This presented a challenge because I typically won't "start" a ride M-F any later then 5am because traffic really picks up around 5:45-6am south bound out of McKinney which of course is the direction I head for the start of my route. Anyway, with the outside ride canned because of my laziness I decided to try a new trainer workout that I picked up off of Chuckie V's website:

http://chuckiev.blogspot.com/

The details of the workout are:

Ride (1:30) … Indoor ride focusing on "big gear" work, along with a set of Tabata Sprints, like this...

a) Begin with a 15-minute warm-up, steadily elevating your heart rate (HR) to 80% of max HR levels or thereabouts.

b) Continued warm-up: do 12 x 1-minute efforts alternating standing in a bigger gear at 65RPM; seated in your aero-bars in a bigger gear at 60RPM; seated spinning at 100RPM, all at a maintainable, submaximal (90% of LT) heart rate. No rest between or after each minute.

c) Now for the fun, the Tabata Sprints. After spinning lightly for a minute or two, sprint ALL-OUT for 20-seconds, recording your maximal power (if you have a power meter…and you should!). This is followed by 10-seconds recovery and ONLY 10-seconds recovery. Repeat this 8 times. Wipe puke from chin.

d) After spinning lightly for a few minutes, start with the strength focus. This is entirely dependent upon your current bike fitness but in general you'll want to start out VERY conservatively. I suggest beginning with 3 sets of 6-minutes as 2 minutes of standing in a big gear at 60RPM; 2-minutes seated "grinding" in a big gear (in your aero-bars) at 60RPM; and 2-minutes seated aero-bar spinning at 110+RPM, all done at a Zone 3 type of HR (or 90% of your lactate threshold HR). Each 6-minute "set" is then followed by 4 minutes of easy upright-seated spinning at a low HR. Increase this each week if your knees allow for it. Eventually you'll want to aim for close to an hour's worth of strength-related efforts. Again, these are sub-maximal and not all-out. Think of it as weight-lifting on the bike with a easily-maintainable weight

.e) Ride the remainder of this 90-minute workout at a high Zone 2-low Zone 3 HR (or 85-90% of LTHR) and record power in relationship to that HR, spinning at 90+RPM in your aero-bars.

f) Finally, be sure to do at least a 3-4 minute cool-down in an easy gear at a moderate cadence (80-85) with a low HR.


I personally hate the trainer and typically do everything I can to avoid it but I can honestly say that this was a really tough workout that I enjoyed. ChuckieV is also offering a free offseason triathlon plan that can be found at:

http://chuckiev.blogspot.com/2008/12/free-triathlon-training-program.html