Intervals

Last night I went to Central Park to do an hour of interval training. I took the Pulaski bridge into Queens and got on the Queensboro bridge. There was a van used by the construction crew parked right at the entrance but there was enough space for me to get by. I didn't think much of it until I got about halfway over the bridge and there was a crane sitting in the middle of the bike path. I ended up having to lift my bike over the "legs" of the crane and walk past it. When I got to the Manhattan side of the bridge the gate was closed and there was a construction guy telling bikers/pedestrians the bridge was closed. He asked me how I got through (no one stopped me) and then opened the gate for me.

I made my way to Central Park and started the timer on my watch. I would do 5 minutes of riding while trying to keep my heartrate within 80-90% of my max, followed by 5 minutes of recovery riding. I'd repeat this for one hour.

Unfortunately it seems to me like my heartrate monitor is a little finicky. At high intensity it often seems like it is not accurately measuring my heartrate and is giving me a number that is too low. One minute it will be registering 169bpm, a minute later it will register 184bpm without any (perceivable) increase in intensity. I think the problem may be the contact points on the chest strap - I may need to keep them moist by spraying water on them more often. It could also be the battery in the chest strap as I have already needed to replace the watch battery. Despite this it is still a useful tool and I'm better off training with it than without.

After an hour of these intervals I still felt pretty good so next time I think I'll double the high intensity interval but leave the rest intervals at 5 minutes. Ultimately I'll have to be able to sustain a high intensity for an hour so I'll have to continually increase the duration of my intervals over the two months I have to train.