Perscribed Bike Intervals vs. Hilly terrain
Looking for advice on how to handle hilly terrain with the planned bike intervals.
I'm in the Lehigh valley near Allentown, Pa. there are hills in every direction... how do you plan to incorproate them in the intervals or do you make the hills the interval?
Like to hear the team's and coach's thoughts.
If folks can provide examples (either on Strava or other platform that would be very helpful!!)
Thanks!
-Tom
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Good question. I have similar issues here in the hill country of South Texas. There are no long climbs, but lots of steep short climbs and rollers constantly. I can't do an FTP interval longer than about 8' outside if I ride towards the hills. Fortunately, I can ride west and be on flat terrain within 20-30 minutes. So, if I need to do longer FTP sets like 12, 15, 20' I will go the flat roads. No stop lights or stop signs, etc. Or...I do them on the trainer. VO2 work I can easily do on the hills....just have to adjust the times a little (both rest and VO2 efforts). For example, if I'm supposed to do 6 x 1.5' VO2, I'll ride the hills and just accumulate 9-10 minutes at VO2 levels. Not as ideal as 1.5' on/off, but better for me mentally than the trainer!
If you have the luxury of some longer climbs (look at Coach Rich, Dino Sarti on Strava and look at their Chantry climbs for example), you can repeat a climb at FTP. The hills around me are just not long enough to do that and stay at FTP for long enough. I end up cresting the climb and then spinning out down the descent at well below my FTP.
Hope that helps and I'm sure others will chime in with other ideas.
Depends on the length and gradient of the hills. Where I live, I have all sorts of options to play with, climbs from 23%/50' vertical (try it sometime) to 4000' in 21 miles. So I've learned a few things about using hills for intervals.
I can do FTP intervals on rolling terrain, and on steady climbs. I've got a five mile loop near my house which takes me 13 minutes for four miles of work, then about 4 minutes for one mile of recovery. Here's the garmin file for that; https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/784718018. The two FTP laps are right in the middle. The trickiest part is getting myself to work as hard on the downs as I do on the ups. My VI on that loop is about 1.02 - not so good for what's supposed to be a steady effort. Here's a graph showing elevation (red) and power (yellow) over distance. Notice how my power drops as I go down hill:
Better IMO are pure climbs, the steadier the grade the better, This morning I did 3 climbs in the neighborhood, of 720. 630, and 350 vertical feet, 1-2 miles in length, 10-16 minutes in time. My VIs were all about 1.005. Here's the Garmin file: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/799949361, and here's what the power/elevation chart looks like for one of the climbs. It looks like the power is jumping around, but the AP and NP were exactly the same for a VI of 1.00:
The point of using "hills" for FTP work is to take what the terrain gives you, and just try to do the total work time indicated in that day's workout. EG, today, the workout was 2 x 20'; I did climbs of 16', 14', and 10'. I've found that anything less than 8' probably isn't really an FTP interval; 10' is even better as a minimum. I also discovered a rule of thumb that for most climbs over 200' vertical gain, I can assume a little over 2 minutes of work time for every 100' of gain. [If you look at my IF for today's climbs, you might notice they are in the range of 0.9-0.93. That's because I am working at about 2500 meters/8500-9000' altitude, and that decreases my FTP about 5-10%]
A word of caution: I think it is very important to find a place to do FTP and VO2 intervals where traffic and road obstructions (like stop lights, driveways, intersections) are not an issue. It's hard enough to work at that effort level without having to worry about ending up in the ER. So my Five Mile loop is on a park road which is closed to cars until 10 AM. My FTP neighborhood climbs are on residential dead end streets. And the short climb I use for VO2 intervals is a dead end road in a little used park.
When I ride outside with the buds, it's about GO time. Just hard work. ABP riding at the easiest. Hard to get pretty intervals of any length of time due to rolling terrain and the usual stop sign/stop light/traffic stuff. We do this maybe once a week. It might be my once per week of overachieving session. The shorter VO2 sessions are much easier since a much shorter stretch of road is all that is needed.
But, for the longer/cleaner interval work, stick to the trainer. Nothing beats it for efficiency and specificity. Long intervals, uninterrupted. By now you should know your delta between the indoor and outdoor stuff so that's an ez adjustment when you go outside.
It's not sexy on Strava but it's all about purpose and results at your race!