Interval types

PPO, Pmax, FTP, VO2max: Reading the literature, and even blogs, on interval training can prove a nightmare as authors demonstrate that their chosen training method produces wonderful results - but leave you with the nightmare of working out how to carry out out in your garage.

I'm hoping in this post to go through a few terms I've seen and how they relate to each other so it's possible to use studies in your own training. This will assume you have a power meter (or software allowing you to use your turbo as a virtual power meter, eg PerfPro or Trainerroad).

I'll be describing intensities in terms of FTP; not because I agree with FTP as a concept, but because it's the main metric used by power-geeks and their software.

Four By Four

I'm often asked for turbo sessions so I thought I'd detail one of my favourites - the Four By Four. If I had to choose just one session it'd be this one. It's a total of 25 minutes plus warmup, but it can be so hard I have to get a friend in for moral support.

Simply put:

• Warm up (I usually take about 15 minutes, with some bursts)
• 4 minutes on
• 3 minutes off (some people take 4 but I find it's too much)
• Repeat for a total of 4

Stash!

As a former Boatie I have learned that the best part of being part of a team is the inevitable kit stash.

LePirate Belay Glasses

 

Seems a strange item to be reviewing on here, but I've finally solved a problem that's been plaguing me since the start of my heavy turbo use over the last few months.

Another attempt

Attempts at perfection are the enemy of progress. I had a clear idea what I wanted to do with this blog, but frankly trying to make it perfect meant I rarely ended up publishing anything!

As part of some research work I've read about the CRAPL - an attempt to justify releasing half-baked code and ideas on the basis that it's far more useful for people to read something badly-written than to read nothing at all!

So I've binned off a fair bit of the blog, and will try to make a better effort to put stuff up here - on the basis that it'll not be quite what I intended, but more like a series of post-it notes with bits of information that hopefully you might find useful. I'm planning kit and race reviews, training ideas, and I have a keen interest in physiology so there'll probably be some geeked-out posts too.

I've become a member of Team Zoot Europe so there will probably be a fair bit of Zoot kit - I'm hopefully getting a pair of the new Makai shoes before too long to try out, amongst others. See you out there!