I got on my newish-to-me turbo trainer earlier today, having not done any substantial exercise for a few weeks (poorliness and then apathy 😳 ), and I ‘gave it some stick’ doing (well, trying to do) intervals. After a 10 minute warm up, during the first interval of sprinting full-on, my HR touched 198. Seeing this I eased off and only did 45 seconds of the 1 minute interval, then 3 minutes recovery and then 30 -40 sec intervals after this, each time getting up into the 190’s on the HR, with 3 and a bit mins recovery in between 4 more times. I cooled down for 10 mins. This was based loosely on a recommended session in Cycling Plus mag a couple of issues ago.

I’m 39 yrs old, 15 and a bit stone, 5’11” – ie. I’m carrying some timber round the middle. Before the bad weather kicked in in Nov I’d averaged about 50 miles per week, the majority on-road. Since then apart from a few gentle holiday miles in nice warm South Africa over Christmas I’ve not been out at all.

So my question to you is: was I in danger of giving myself a heart attack? I generally believe ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ but my wife, who used to be a PE teacher, was rather alarmed and told me off…

I know about the old ‘220 – your age’ thing but I understand that’s a rather poor yardstick.

I await the STW collective’s considered opinion…