Subject: RE: resting during cycling intervals I think it depends on the nature of the intervals that your doing and how you are defining hard. I work with a coach/trainer for cycling right now and the first thing we did was find my "Recovery Gear". During longer rests/recovery I fall back to this gear. There are a number of intervals in a session where like you said the recovery is shorter duration at which point the slower cadence is what allows you lower the heart rate.
The other thing to consider is what is the purpose of the intervals that your doing. Some intervals are designed to push you to Anaerobic Threshold repeatedly. As this is information that is being provided to me through my specific sessions I may be misinterpreting something but generally these shorter recovery intervals tend to be when we are working on getting to that anaerobic level.
a typical interval for this for me looks like
Hard Intensity 90-95 RPM for 2 minutes
Recovery same gear but 65 RPM for 30 seconds
Repeat 3-4 times
Recovery Gear 90 RPM 2 minutes
Next interval
Looking at the heart rate data you can see the heart rate climb steadily through each interval until you finally are at your MAX. The 65 RPM parts do see Heart Rate drop a bit but the next Hard intensity pushes it up passed the previous level |