Hill climb Intervals

wiredued said:

If the most important goal of the year is to do the Mt Washington hill climb in 1 hour 45 minutes or less how long should your intervals be 2 minutes 4 minutes 6 minutes? How many reps would you do? How long should the breaks be? Right now my wattage and wieght would put me a little over 2 hours according to www.analyticcycling.com .

You need to raise your functional threshold by doing intervals at that power. Most common set of these are 2x20's, but anything over fifteen minutes long per interval would do (2x15's, 3x15's, etc). Also, since functional threshold is a percentage of vo2max, you should do some v02max intervals as well, especially if your threshold is high relative to your vo2max. These intervals should be from 3-8 minutes and you should aim to do 20-30 minutes in a session, with work:rest interval at 1:.5 - 1:1.

How are you measuring intensity? do you have a powermeter?

I measure intensity this way I find my threshold at resistance 7 cadence 90 for twenty minutes heart rate 90%. Then for my intervals I go above that lets say 100 to 110 rpm at resistance 7 just to make sure I pass through the threshold.

whoawhoa said:

You need to raise your functional threshold by doing intervals at that power.

I just noticed that word "Functional Threshold." Is that a new buzz word? How does that differ from the typical "threshold" we're always talking about?

Orange Fish said:

I just noticed that word "Functional Threshold." Is that a new buzz word? How does that differ from the typical "threshold" we're always talking about?

Lets see if I can explain this simply and correctly, since I'm not the one to ask if you want the long version:

Functional threshold=40k tt power. Same as threshold. Used instead of "lactate threshold" becuase the way most labs measure "lactate threshold" results in a power that can be sustained for around 3 hrs, while most cyclists and some coaches believe that "lactate threshold" is roughly the same as functional threshold.

Orange Fish said:

I just noticed that word "Functional Threshold." Is that a new buzz word? How does that differ from the typical "threshold" we're always talking about?

Well, for one, It's a lot more useful than a dysfunctional threshold. 😉

See what all the buzz is about here:
peakscoachinggroup.comPower Training Chapter.pdfOpen ↗ 🙂