5 for Friday: Why I Like Indoor Cycling

I've spent all winter riding indoors except for my weekly Saturday Ride. I've ridden indoors when it's raining outside. I've ridden indoors when it's warm and sunny which it is most of the time. It's easy to go outside in San Diego. It takes some focus to stay indoors. I'm not afraid of cars so that's not why I do it. You can see in the background my road bike sitting against my paddle board both asking for my attention.

1. Bang for the Buck - There are no stop lights indoors and there are no down hills. 
2. Controlled Pain - You can control pain better indoors. In my case that means go hard. 
3. Short Hard Intervals - On this day I did 5 x 5 minutes at 100 - 110% threshold heart rate. It's really difficult to find a place that isn't 40 minutes ride first to do this on the roads. It's really easy to get on the bike warm up for 25 minutes and be done in 60 minutes. 
4. Results - My 40 minute time trial has gotten faster over the winter. 
5. My Wife likes it - she is afraid of cars. She likes that she doesn't have to worry about me indoors. 

Two workouts I like doing. 

3 x 15 minutes at 95% of threshold - This is hard because the interval is long and the effort is hard. 

9 x 2 minutes at 110% of threshold - I like this better than 5 x 5 

Both of these can be done in 60 minutes. I generally do the 3 x 15 in 75 minutes to give me more warm up. I run 20-30 minutes off the bike on these days. Those runs suck until they don't. 

One thing I've learned. In general while riding you don't grip hard on the bike you kind of just rest your hands there and bend the elbows. No upper body tension. When I go hard and it starts to get really hard I grip the bars with full tension like a sprinter. When I do that I get that extra 10% out of my legs that I need to finish the effort. This also works if you need to get that last pull up or whatever lift you are tying to do.  

It's a good life....