Workout duration

Triathlon Forum
1

I am concentrating on improving my biking this offseason and am concentrating on sprint & olympic distance races next year.

How long should my indoor bike trainer workouts be during the offseason? I am planning on 4 per week of 60 to 90 minutes.

Is there much benefit of longer workouts? I plan on doing these at low intensity based on Friel’s TTB.

As i get closer to race season the workout duration will probably be about the same and only intensity will increase.

Does this sound about right or am I missing something?

2

bump
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3

Not everyone around here loves them, but I’m a big fan of Spinervals. Last winter, I did 2-3 Spinerval workouts, ranging from 44 - 90 minutes, and I felt much stronger at the start of the season than in years past.

I used to just spin for 30-60 minutes, listening to music while doing some limited interval work, high cadence stuff, etc. I’ve found that Spinervals keeps my workouts more focused than what I was trying to do on my own.

4

I would suggest getting outside as much as possible and bumping the workouts up to 2 hours. I don’t think you need much more than that for olympic distance, but bike fitness should be an arsenal you don’t use…it makes running that much easier. I feel like a 1.5-2.0hr bike into a 30 minute run is a perfect workout for olympic distance and still keeps the time committment realistic.

5

Sounds reasonable, but you could throw in a few longer rides to help boost your overall endurance, it should help you on the run. Hopefully you can do these outside instead of on the trainer…

6

Thanks for the responses.

Judging by the title, can I assume spinervals focuses more on speed than endurance?

I would love to get outside for some longer rides but Nov 1st to April 1st is strictly indoor riding here - I’m about 200k north of Toronto.
We’ll try to see how long I can stand the trainer during Monday Night Football =/

7

There’s just about 30 (by last count, I think) different versions, each focusing on a different aspect of cycling. Some for base building, power development, speed, hills, time-trialing, etc. So there’s lots to choose from, with different lengths as well, ranging from around 45 minutes to three hours.

I have several, and they help to keep my trainer workouts from becoming too boring and/or too inefficient.

8

MTB. It will improve your pedaling efficiency, and break up the monotony of trainer sessions and being on the road.

Eric

9

I just got Chris Charmichaels(spelling oops)book and he has lots of good ideas in there along with weekly shcedules, great for improving your cycling I hope…

t~

10

haha - cool!
This was my 1st year in tri so i rode my old rigid MTB with slicks for biking.
But i got a road bike 3 weeks ago and put my knobbies back on the MTB and got a front suspension fork and have been doing some MTB riding and loving it.

Totally agree that its a whole different animal and definetly breaks up the routine. Hope to be able to ride it for the next two months or so…

11

Good deal

Eric
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12

If you want to improve your cycling I would suggest one or two 3-4 hr rides per week during base and another two hour or so rides. After that 1 threshold ride, 1 fast group ride and one long ride per week would be good.

13

you are a lot more mentally tough than me if you spend that much time of the trainer. I would go berzerk.

14

We shall see…
I haven’t even got a trainer yet.

I figure If I can do 60mins on the treadmill and even 90 watching football I should be ok on the trainer as long as there is something on TV

15

It’s not that hard, you get used to it pretty quickly. I do 2-3 rides of 90+ minutes on the trainer a week… If there are some intervals or pick-ups or heck even 1-legged drills to break the time up, it goes by pretty fast.