For all intense purposes? Isn\’t it, \”for all intents and purposes\”? Not always!

Intensity, so they say, is the component of training that cyclists most often get wrong. (See The Cyclist\’s Training Bible, p. 33) When they should be taking it easy, they ride a little too hard; and when it\’s time to go really hard, they\’re under-rested; and can\’t go hard enough. 

Am I making that mistake? Is it why I\’m making so little progress towards improving my cruising pace?

Brief but intense efforts are needed to improve force. They can also help to improve anaerobic endurance as well as muscular endurance. For me an intense, or \”force\”, workout looks something like this:

1) Ride easily for a mile or so, using the small ring and larger cogs.

2) Shift onto the large ring. Keep shifting to smaller cogs until it feels very hard to pedal and my cadence has slowed to about 50.

3) Work to push the cadence to 70 or so. I began with 10-second intervals; and at first it took most of the 10 seconds to get my cadence up to 70! 

4) After the pre-determined amount of time (10 seconds, or whatever) shift to the small ring and bigger cogs, and ride easy for two minutes.

5) Repeat 2) through 4) twice. That\’s one set.

6) Ride easy for 10 minutes before doing another set.

Sometimes I do two or three sets during a ride; sometimes only one. Usually my first hard effort goes the best, and I suspect that I don\’t ride easily enough between hard efforts. 

What I have done does seem to have helped, but not as much as I would like. For all intense purposes, I guess I\’m not intense enough.