newbie turbo trainer question

mogse

hi
newbie questions
how near to the road is the speed you can produce on a turbo trainer?
seems to be harder to maintain the same speeds that I can on the road. I have a basic fluid trainer made by Volare

i'm fairly new to turbo training and cycling for that matter its only been 4 months
i'm interested in training for Duathlons which have 10 mile bike sprint sections.
on the trainer once a day i do.
5 x 1 minute flat out at a 90 cadence with 1 min 50 cadence between sprints to rest.
I can just about hold an avg of 40kph for 5 x 1 minutes
the last sprint minute is very hard to maintain and I normaly only reach avg of 39kph.

is that the type of indoor training I should be doing to improve my 10 mile bike times?

thanks

daveryanwyoming

That depends on the design of your specific trainer but in general, your speed on the trainer won't match your speed outdoors. The Kurt Kinetic trainer for instance simulates climbing a 1% grade. Unless your outdoor comparison rides also go uphill on a 1% grade you shouldn't expect the speeds to match. I don't know what trainer you're riding or it's particular power/speed curve but it's unlikely that it simulates a perfectly flat road with no wind with your same aero drag characteristics, etc. Unless it does your speeds indoors won't match what you typically do outdoors.
No, you're doing workouts that will target your anaerobic capabilities. Maximum efforts less than 2 to 2.5 minutes will target your body's ability to process sugars in the absence of oxygen. Trouble is your 10 mile bike legs need to be ridden aerobically, especially if it follows or will be followed by a run. So you're training one system when your races demand high performance from a totally different metabolic system.

Try some steady 20 to 30 minute efforts that are just below your best race pace with 5 to 10 minutes of easy pedaling between them to get a bit of mental and physical rest. A lot of folks like 2x20s for a total of 40 minutes in level. Riding these close to, but a bit below your race pace will allow you to get more time in level than killing yourself on each effort and these will target core aerobic fitness instead of focusing on anaerobic fitness. Search these forums for info on SST, FTP, Tempo and other terms you'll come across related to building a strong aerobic base. Google Arthur Lydiard for background on how this has been applied very sucessfully to running and think about what that means to both your target sports.

If you want some motivation read the first 30 pages or so of this thread: http://www.cyclingforums.com/t314849.html and hard as it seems try to think about the concept of getting faster by raising your sustainable power before trying to max out your top speed with anaerobic efforts.

Good luck,
Dave