firenze --

I definitely recommend getting a heart rate monitor. It's a good way to guage how hard you're working and over time you'll see improvement in your fitness.

I've been off the bike for the past few months due to a shoulder injury and have recently started riding on the trainer. I'm starting slowly -- getting my legs used to pedaling again and my cardio system used to doing its job. A typical ride is 35 minutes of riding while watching the morning news before work.

5 minutes -- warm up
25 minutes -- find a gear that I can spin at 90 rpm without having my heart rate shoot thru the roof (70 - 79% of max heart rate is what I'm after)
5 minutes -- cool down; slow pedal and get my heart rate down to 60% of max

As I've been improving, I've tried the following variations during the main part of my workout:

- trying spinning at 95 rpm instead of 90
- spin for 100 rpm for about 2 minutes, and watch what happens to my heart rate
- spin a slightly higher gear at 90 rpm for 2 minutes, and watch what happens to my heart rate
- look at how long it takes for my heart rate to drop back in the 70% - 79% of max range (recovery) -- as I get fitter, it should take less time for me to recover

One of these days I'll write out one of the workouts from the Sallys' book, but in the meantime this type of workout is helping me get the miles in and I'm still finding it kind of fun.

-- Melissa