Rest Intervals?

ironmtngrl

Question:  Does it make an OS workout less effective to have rest intervals that are longer than the typical 2 minutes?  The reason I ask is that here in Virginia we get some fairly mild winter weather, and so doing workout on the weekends outside isn't crazy.  But the best terrain for doing intervals are some long mild hills.  I would do the hard work up the hill, then have to come back to the start point, which would take longer than 2 minutes.   Should I do a longer work interval to get the same effect?

My favorite near-by hill gives me a max of 12-15 minutes of uphill work.

Thanks,

Bev

 

scdankert

Beverly, here's my opinion on this. The muscular adaptations occur during the "work" portions of your training. The purpose of the rest intervals is to allow yourself to recover enough that you can complete the next work interval. As a result, you can take longer breaks without it hurting you except that you then must lengthen your entire workout time. In other words, if you have 10' rest intervals when your workout suggests 4' you'd need to add 6' to your workout to make up for the extra rest time. I hope this helps.

dan_forbes

 Beverly, you may want to consider trying your best keeping the rest interval, I think for the majority of workouts, especially when you are doing threshold and VO2 workouts, the rest interval time is just as important as the work interval.  You are working on building a resistance to lactate in your blood so to speak.  That is why the first one or two intervals don't feel so bad, but once you get past that, you begin to feel the burn, that's because your muscles haven't had enough time to fully recover and are working overtime.  That is how you get stronger and faster, building your resistance to that and teaching your body to remove the waste left over from burning fat/carbs more efficiently so that they can work at a higher rate.  Try to stick to the program as much as you can.  Kill it!

Dan

 

Michele Cellai

You don't want to coast during the RI. You should be working at 60% of FTP if by power and what ever the recommended HR range is on the plan.

Al Truscott

To riff a bit on what Michelle said: the EN racing strategy encourages an even pace, including on downhill sections. If you have a "gentle" (to me that would be 3-5% grade) hill that takes 12-15 minutes to go up, it will help you come race day to "work" the downhill return a bit ("60%" instead of coasting) by pedaling enough to get the sense that you are meeting some resistence. You'll get used to working downhill sections.

Coaches RnP often say outside hills are always a good idea, even if they don't precisely match the time interval the plan prescribes that week. Just so long as you are able to work hard enough on the uphill, meaning "90-100%".

O2BFast

I need to work on my rest intervals I see. I am definitely not hitting 60% FTP on those. I'll need to increase my work on the rest ! Good to hear !

Jon Bergmann

Hmm. I did just the same thing today. I was concerned that my rest intervals were too long, but I had no choice as the hill ended. I was on a pretty steep grade: >6% and pushing it down the hill was not an option unless I wanted to eat pavement. I anticipate doing most of the work on the trainer, but riding outside is much preferable

Swoodowrth

Good discussion as I was wondering about this when i was on the training this morning. My rest intervals have become what used to be my 90-100% so I backed off on the rest interval to 85%. I sure hope this carries through when I do my next testing. I have also lengthened the RI at times.

ironmtngrl

Thanks for the feedback. Seems like there is some conflicting advice though so I think I"ll post this to the Micro thread too to R or P to weigh in.

Bev

Coach Patrick

Bev, a bit more rest is okay for sure. But if your 4' scheduled rest is taking you 8' to get, that's another story. At the end of the day, we want your workout to include X minutes at FTP. If you get them as written or close to it, we're happy!