Okay, now for a couple of changes...
You'll notice the blog has taken a different look. I'm just toying around to try to keep a fresh look.
You'll also notice no Amazon links for music. I have to assume from all my reports that just about everybody that frequents my site is almost exclusively downloading from iTunes. So rather than to give myself busy work I have decided to leave Amazon behind. (Maybe people only use Amazon for books?)
You'll see some other changes in the future, but for now lets get you a new profile...
I did this profile tonight and was rewarded with 690 calories being burned according to my Polar FT7 and an average heart rate of 77% of my max. Oh, and there was a huge puddle of liquid, freakin awesome under my bike!
Just like any other STRENGTH ride you should be staying in the 75-85% of your max heart rate, but we're not going to spend as much time on hills in this particular profile. In fact we don't really hit our first hill until song #5 where we'll have some switchbacks. For those non-road riders, a switch back is when you change direction as you're climbing a hill. As you can imagine, this change in direction requires some extra effort. On your Spinner® you'll want to leave the seated climb by first going from medium resistance to heavy resistance, and then coming to a standing climb for 15 seconds. After you've "completed the turn" you dial back the resistance to where you started before the switchback.
Got the idea now what a switchback might be like?
Just looking at the picture makes me tired.
I play around with a lot of fast flats on this ride, whether it be before the first hill or on a plateau. The key to these flats are that you play around with the resistance to simulate wind, and you have to have enough resistance that you stay >75% of your max heart rate. Those without monitors, if not careful may end up with a nice low intensity interval ride, which is okay, but you may want to caution them against going too light. I always try to coach the participants to imagine what riding into the wind is like, that way their windy flat doesn't turn into a downhill with now resistance.
Enjoy!