Bike Intervals

One last workout assigned by my awesomely supportive and highly informative temporary coach.

Of course being a bike noob, I could not understand the interval progression at all. He called for 3 interval sets, in 15, 13, and 12, at increasing zones, and going from faster cadence to slower, to whatever I could pump out. My question was: "You can get 15 gears on your bike?? I only have 10 - what a rip-off!!" LOL I assumed that 15 was the hardest gear, and that I'd have to translate it to about 10, 9, and 8 on my bike - which didn't make sense because based on the other metrics, I should be working harder as I went along.

Well, duh. It's not the number of gears, it's the number of cogs in the gears. He educated me that a typical cassette on my bike would have 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, and 25 cogs from smallest to largest. So I really would be increasing difficulty as I went along.

With that out of the way, I rolled down to my fave local section of the waterfront trail and did this:

Warm-up: 15mins easy

3x 3mins on 15, zone 2, 90rpm, 1min rest
5mins easy
3x 2mins on 13, zone 3, 85rpm, 1min rest
5mins easy
3x 1min on 12, zone 3(?), as high as possible, 1min rest

Cool-down: easy spin w/ transition skillz

The hardest set was the second one because it was a bigger jump in gears, but still had to hold for 2mins. But I really love intervals, so this is super-fun. I actually did the last recovery reps in the same gear as the first work set.

For the cool-down, I threw in trying to dismount off my shoes. I wanted to try this tired, as at the end of a race. I didn't totally crash, but it was a very awkward dismount, and not race-worthy at all. I remounted, and veered sharply to the left, which would also be dangerous at the mount line. So these need practise before the next sprint.

--Distance: 17.8km
--Duration: 60mins