As I've previously mentioned I'm not really a fan of riding indoors however, with the lockdown I did spend a fair amount of time training inside.
As a cycling coach and a rider who has pretty much always ridden to a structured workout having my PC screen "showing me" the watts I needed and my smart trainer trainer making all the resistance changes really did make the workouts "easy".
By this I mean I never had to think about my training, I just rode and my PC and trainer made sure I stuck to the plan.
With Level 3 came a little less restriction so I decided it was time to hit the road once again.... freedom never felt soooo good... :-)
As good as it was, I suddenly realized that I was struggling to remember just what I had to do, in many ways I felt I was riding blind. In the old days, I would just write what I needed to do on a piece of tape and stick that on my stem and away I went.
Well, this got me thinking, I have all the technology why not simply load it into my Garmin and take all the guess work out of it, hence this weeks blog as I'm sure I'm not the only one with a memory like a sieve... :-)
As I use TrainingPeaks and a Garmin Edge 520 when riding a quick Google search gave me the info I needed to get myself sorted. Obviously you would need to read up on the system you are using.
Having used this on a few rides now, I can say with confidence that it does work way better than the old masking tape on the stem trick. It's simple enough to setup and really does help you hit your numbers.
A few pointers before heading out, for sure if its a basic ride, something like a recovery or aerobic workout where its pretty simple to remember your numbers I would not bother but add in some intervals and a bit of mental and physical fatigue and for sure you will start to struggle to recall everything that's required.
Another thing I would look at doing is opening up your workout in TrainingPeaks before you upload it to your Garmin and enable your "lap" button to determine just when you start the interval phase of your workout especially if you have some traffic to navigate or need to ride a few extra miles to find an appropriate section of road that's both safe and practical.
As a cycling coach and a rider who has pretty much always ridden to a structured workout having my PC screen "showing me" the watts I needed and my smart trainer trainer making all the resistance changes really did make the workouts "easy".
By this I mean I never had to think about my training, I just rode and my PC and trainer made sure I stuck to the plan.
With Level 3 came a little less restriction so I decided it was time to hit the road once again.... freedom never felt soooo good... :-)
As good as it was, I suddenly realized that I was struggling to remember just what I had to do, in many ways I felt I was riding blind. In the old days, I would just write what I needed to do on a piece of tape and stick that on my stem and away I went.
Well, this got me thinking, I have all the technology why not simply load it into my Garmin and take all the guess work out of it, hence this weeks blog as I'm sure I'm not the only one with a memory like a sieve... :-)
As I use TrainingPeaks and a Garmin Edge 520 when riding a quick Google search gave me the info I needed to get myself sorted. Obviously you would need to read up on the system you are using.
Having used this on a few rides now, I can say with confidence that it does work way better than the old masking tape on the stem trick. It's simple enough to setup and really does help you hit your numbers.
A few pointers before heading out, for sure if its a basic ride, something like a recovery or aerobic workout where its pretty simple to remember your numbers I would not bother but add in some intervals and a bit of mental and physical fatigue and for sure you will start to struggle to recall everything that's required.
Another thing I would look at doing is opening up your workout in TrainingPeaks before you upload it to your Garmin and enable your "lap" button to determine just when you start the interval phase of your workout especially if you have some traffic to navigate or need to ride a few extra miles to find an appropriate section of road that's both safe and practical.
Once you are riding you can scroll through your Garmin pages as normal and at the start of each step you will be notified by a beep (actually 5) with the targets flashing up visually as well.
It's also important to note that you can set this up for power, heart rate or perceived exertion.
The link below is the YouTube clip that I used to navigate my way through the setup.
https://youtu.be/_j2LkXqNArw
I hope you find this to be useful, now all you have to do is get out there and ride... :-)
Ride safe & enjoy
It's also important to note that you can set this up for power, heart rate or perceived exertion.
The link below is the YouTube clip that I used to navigate my way through the setup.
https://youtu.be/_j2LkXqNArw
I hope you find this to be useful, now all you have to do is get out there and ride... :-)
Ride safe & enjoy