I am new to trying over under intervals, but was wondering about the results I had from yesterday's ride. Rather than doing 2x20s, I rode 2 minutes SST at a lower cadence (easier on the lungs), then 1 minute at Vo2 max (higher cadence) for each interval.
The average power I got was at or above threshold, and felt easier than just nailing it at threshold for 20 minutes.
That was all the more surprising since I had done one hour of SST on the trainer in the morning, so it was my second workout of the day.
Is this consistent with other folks' experience on over/under?
I am new to trying over under intervals, but was wondering about the results I had from yesterday's ride. Rather than doing 2x20s, I rode 2 minutes SST at a lower cadence (easier on the lungs), then 1 minute at Vo2 max (higher cadence) for each interval.
The average power I got was at or above threshold, and felt easier than just nailing it at threshold for 20 minutes.
That was all the more surprising since I had done one hour of SST on the trainer in the morning, so it was my second workout of the day.
Is this consistent with other folks' experience on over/under?
Hmm, it shouldn't feel easier. In fact, since your average power was higher with the varied effort vs. steady, your Normalized Powers should have shown an even greater discrepancy. IMO, you may have simply had a better workout when you did the over/under intervals (not a morning person? 😉). It could also be that a steady effort is mentally more taxing (boring) to you so it "feels" harder. It's amazing what a little focus can do in training, especially indoors.
Hmm, it shouldn't feel easier. In fact, since your average power was higher with the varied effort vs. steady, your Normalized Powers should have shown an even greater discrepancy. IMO, you may have simply had a better workout when you did the over/under intervals (not a morning person? 😉). It could also be that a steady effort is mentally more taxing (boring) to you so it "feels" harder. It's amazing what a little focus can do in training, especially indoors.
Agreed. The focus was brought by making myself a slave to my powermeter on a local climb for 2x20 minutes.
On the same climb just doing repeats, I find it tough to maintain the same average watts (290), but perhaps I did just have a good day. Normally, I would find it tough to recover from 1 minute efforts at an average of 320-360 watts by riding at 240-250 for 2 minutes when my threshold is around 280. Also, I find spending too much time staring at the PM on a steady effort can psych me out, so the structure here also helped somewhat.
The highest 1 hr average power I have ever acheived on a trainer was during a Bill Black Hour of Power (TM) where I was surging over L5 every 5 minutes or so. I find it easier mentally to do a hard 30 second effort knowing that I have several minutes to sorta recover, rather than a FTP workout where you just grind away and suffer constantly. Breaking it up into chunks also helps pass the time.
