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I have tried doing intervals over the past few years without much success. The pattern is to occasionally have one good session and get fired up with enthusiasm then hacking it in after twenty minutes at the next session. However after reading the Time Crunched Cyclist by Chris Carmichael and trying the sessions he suggested plus finding various tips online I have managed to find a method that works pretty well.

Mix an energy drink and sip that while you get ready, this raises the blood sugar levels and will make you more inclined to keep going, this is a tip from Chris Carmichael and basically he is saying give yourself plenty of chances to succeed. Also make sure before starting that your mp3 player, bike computer are charged and ready to go.

Make sure you can keep yourself from getting too hot as that will eat into your performance, if not this time then the next time. I have a large floor fan, the largest I could buy at Argos basically.

I use the warm-up session described in the Time Crunched cyclist which seems to work pretty well. The initial warm up is to do 10 minutes easy which may sound like a lot but is worth trying as it gives your body the time to wake up and get going. I think about how hard the intervals are going to be, that usually means I am in no hurry to get started with them and the initial 10 minutes passes quite quickly enough.

Then do a structured warm-up of  (see below for details):

1 minute fast pedal

1 minute easy recovery

1 minute fast pedal

1 minute easy recovery

1 minute steady state power interval

4 minutes easy recovery

Where fast pedal is a cadence of somewhere between 100-120 rpm on a very light gear. You should go as fast as possible without rocking your hips or bouncing on the saddle.

The power intervals are maximal efforts on a medium gear that allows you to build up to 90-100 rpm for the last half minute. What I do is to gradually build up in the first half minute then go as hard as possible in the second half minute.

Once you have warmed-up you do your intervals session proper. I don’t have a power meter so my mistake was to go hell for leather to get up to the right heart rate zone, therefore pretty much guaranteeing failure.

To avoid this I have worked out what speed/gear I need to be doing to reach the threshold zone, obviously you need a bike computer that can measure the speed of the rear wheel for this to work. I accelerate up to that speed and then wait for heart rate to catch-up, which can take a couple of minutes. Of course if you have a way of measuring power then you can avoid having to do this.

Make sure you leave enough rest between intervals (RBI) time to recover from the previous interval, Chris Carmichael recommends half the length of the interval as the RBI time.

The image shows the speed chart from an interval session, this show the three spikes caused by the fast pedal and power interval warm-up then a nice neat set of 3 x 10 minute plateaus for that particular set of intervals.

And don’t skimp on the warm-down as that is required to avoid stiff legs the next day, five minutes minimum ten minutes recommended.

Mixing a recovery drink before you start is a good way of guaranteeing you get started on recovering the minute you complete the intervals. You can then start sipping the recovery drink while warming-down which is when it will have the most beneficial effect.

I do have a bike permanently mounted on the turbo with a Continental turbo specific tyre on the back wheel, any old bike will do as long as you can dial in the same position as you have on your road bike, but whatever you use make sure that the rear tyre is inflated to the correct pressure. But my turbo is a cheap magneto model with no computers or adjustments or anything, and that works fine, you don’t have to spend shed-loads of cash to succeed!