Types of workouts

By request, here's an explanation of what I mean when I mention what kind of workout I'm going to do.

Intervals: As the name suggests, this workout is intervals of hard effort interspersed with recovery. For example, 2 minutes on followed by complete recovery. When I say "on" I mean putting out as much effort and power as I can sustain for the length of that interval. Therefore, a 1 minute interval will be extremely fast, whereas a 5 minute interval might be a little slower but it has to be sustained longer. Recovery doesn't mean stop, it means slow down and keep the legs moving quickly, but in smaller gears so I reduce the effort and let my heart rate slow. A subset of intervals would be a ladder interval workout, 1min on, 1 min recover, 2 min on, 2 min recover, all the way up to 5 min, then back down to 1 min. Those are hard. The goal of intervals is to increase anaerobic fitness and power.

Tempo: Tempo workouts are like time trials. Pick an amount of time, usually 45-60 minutes, then go as hard as can be sustained for that entire length of time, also known as the aerobic threshold (where you stop being able to supply oxygen to your muscles at the rate they want it). For me, these workouts are a mind game, constantly reminding myself to keep pushing hard and not ease up. This kind of workout gets the muscles used to working at threshold and can increase aerobic threshold.

Fartlek: It's a Swedish word, apparently means "speed play", probably really means pain and suffering. This workout is like intervals, but without full recovery. So, I would do a 3 minute all out effort, then rest for 30-60 seconds, then another 3 minutes, rest for 30-60 seconds, etc. Another option would be to ride somewhere with varied terrain and push hard up every hill, recover on every descent and alternate hard efforts and recovery on the flats, continue until puking or passing out. This is much harder than either regular intervals or tempo because without full recovery it takes more effort to get the power up during the hard interval. Unfortunately, this is also what road racing is like, short bursts of speed followed by minimal rest and more bursts of speed. So the purpose of fartlek is to get used to race conditions, learn how to deal with suffering, and increase anaerobic power.

Anaerobic power is what will win a race, and what I'm lacking since I've never done any real athletic training before. That's why I do a lot of interval workouts and should do more fartlek workouts (they're just so hard to do by myself).

Today I was going to do intervals on my bike, but then the weather decided to turn ugly. It's currently 95 degrees and 60% humidity, not good outdoor workout weather. So instead I did intervals on the elliptical in the gym. It's better than nothing, but really not the same as on the bike training. Being on the bike works slightly different muscles in slightly different ways, enough of a difference that I wouldn't get too much benefit from doing regular elliptical workouts. Which is too bad, because it's going to stay hot here for quite a while.