Thursday, February 18, 2010

Rollers!

After a couple of more outdoor rides on the basic cranks I am really seeing the importance of lots of time on the rollers with the product. I spent a few sessions on them in Jan then switched to the trainer exclusively. I found the rollers w/PC's just too difficult at the time. After a couple of weeks off the rollers however, I got back on them and was amazed at the efficiency I now had.

I can't explain this improvement. I wrote above that I see the importance of roller work. I say this because on the road I really feel the lack of efficiency between my left and right pedal strokes.

I have now started to do all indoor workouts on my rollers and outdoor rides to build endurance. Three hr outdoor ride before I leave for Italy in 8 wks is my goal. Starting next week is my Tempo phase building from 30 to 60 min over 3 wks (adding 5 min per session x 3x's/wk) and after a week recovery I will perform 3 weeks of Steady State building from 2-4 sets of 8 min intervals (1:1 W:R) in Wk 1 up to 2-4 sets of 12 min intervals in Week 3.

We'll see what happens. One thing is for sure, the concentration needed for the roller work makes the time spent inside a lot less boring than on the trainer. Oh, if you're going to invest in a set of rollers, don't cheap out. Buy the CycleOps w/aluminum rollers. Little to no vibration in the hands and smooth, smooth, smooth!

1 comment:

  1. It will be interesting to see the lab results of your next test! It took me a few weeks, way back when, to get used to ridign PowerCranks on rollers. As a matter of fact I was thinking about making my own version of the emotion-rollers using my old rollers so I can stand up and simulate sprints and out of the saddle efforts. Great training log by the way!

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