Winter turbo «

I’m always asked how I bike train through the winter in Scotland. The answer is indoors on the turbo trainer so here is some of my best base strength and endurance sessions. I have two notes of caution from personal experience.

1) Be prepared with a fan and any cooling techniques like ice water and cold wet towels. You may require longer rest intervals than your are used to in order to maintain your core temperature.

2) Turbo training is at best a very specific form of cross training for cycling and is no substitute for the road. The road requires constant adaptation of cadence to maintain power which is a skill and peddling dynamics are also different since the turbo will allow some slippage of the tyre. Make sure and get some road time before any races in order to be safe.

The great bonus of turbo training is that it is very efficient with very little junk time and no down hills. In the power graphs shown you can see on a road ride for a relatively inexperienced rider it is stochastic with little time is spent in the green aerobic development zone. On the turbo however virtually 100% of time is at the correct intensity. You will be glad to hear this means you can get more training benefit for less time.

What most people want to know is what sessions to do and how hard. Well entire books are written about training intensities and zones. The gold standard for me is getting a lactate profile done on a computrainer. Looking at the first deflection point as the aerobic threshold and then aiming to accumulate ride time in the zone just above this level to specifically stimulate aerobic adaptation. You can estimate your aerobic threshold at around 65% of your cp30 test power (30min time trial). This can vary wildly however depending on your fitness and for me is more like 70-75%.

So over the winter I do a lot of turbo time at 70-75% with specific blocks of harder riding within almost every session with specific goals in mind.

1) Tuesday- 80% effort intervals at variable cadence and pace I’ll use in an ironman. I like to do solid race pace intervals moving my cadence to try and simulate road more.

3-5min @ 80% race cadence-10rpm

3-5min @ 80% race cadence+10rpm

3-5min @ 80% race cadence

For me I tend to average about 300-310 watts for these 15min blocks if I stay in control, with 5min steady riding not on the bars to recover and repeated 3-4 times.

2) Wednesday- 80% effort BIG GEAR strength intervals. There are no hills on the turbo so I do some big gear work on the aerobars.

6-8min @ 80% 75rpm

6-8min @ 80% 65rpm

6-8min @ 80% 55rpm

In reality I start in 53×15 and drop 2 gears for each section finishing on 53×11. 6min easy off the aero bars then repeat 3 times!

3) Thursday- THRESHOLD DAY! I always say threshold riding should be saved for specific sessions. For me that is today, you can do any length of intervals but I have built up to 4x10min @ 350+ watts with 5min recovery. I need 50% recovery to keep my heat down on the turbo trainer so that what I recommend. Start with sets of 3min at 90-95% cp30 power and see how you go.

4) Saturday- There is no hiding from the long ride. I do between 3 and 4 hours with 2×30 to 40 min at 80%. This will be beyond most less experience athletes who should start by building time in your zone 1. Once that becomes easy however you can start including higher power intervals.