Celebrate International Guitar Month with This Rockin’ Profile!
April is International Guitar Month—is your calendar marked? In my main post, I shared two bucket playlists packed with nearly 400 epic guitar tracks: one filled with famous electric guitar licks (~240 songs) and the other showcasing beautiful acoustic guitar work (~155 songs). Both playlists are perfect for crafting your own guitar-themed ride or just enjoying some amazing tunes.
When I set out to create my own guitar-inspired profile, I’ll admit—narrowing it down was tough. There are just so many incredible songs I wanted to include! I leaned toward shorter tracks so I could fit more in, but even then, some longer favorites didn’t make the cut. My riders loved the playlist, and I joked that I could teach a guitar-themed class every day for a month without repeating a song.
🎸 About the Profile
This 60-minute ride includes four work segments, each starting with a fast flat that rolls into a climb. As seen in the Stages Studio profile below, the intensity ranges from:
- Zone 3 (yellow)—moderate
- to Zone 4 (orange)—hard
- with pushes to Zone 5 (red)—very hard
- and even a few brief Zone 6 (maroon)—anaerobic efforts for that extra fire
The grand finale? An 8.5-minute climb that’ll leave your riders cheering (and maybe air-guitaring) through the finish. 🎶🔥
ICA members can grab the Express Profile below—plus, I’ve included tips for shortening the ride if needed. Don’t forget to explore the bucket playlists for alternative tracks if you want to swap a few songs in.
👉 Got a favorite guitar song you’d add to this ride? Share it in the comments—I’d love to hear your picks!
🎸 Edit 2024
My 2023 International Guitar Month profile In Celebration of Guitars was a big hit with my riders and on ICA, and I really do hope you’ll teach it—but I left so many longer, iconic tracks on the cutting room floor last time, I couldn’t resist crafting a second guitar-themed profile.
The result: Three Long, Guitar-Powered Climbs—a climbing profile featuring guitar-centric songs clocking in at 5 minutes or longer. I finally included some tracks I’ve been eyeing for ages but never dared to play…until now. I even added a song I once swore I’d never use in a cycling class: “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Honestly, I used to poke fun at this song—but trust me, it works like magic in this profile, thanks to the gradual change in tempo.
I think this second profile will blow you away—click here to check it out! Now you can schedule both profiles in April and give your riders the best of both worlds—one packed with shorter, punchy guitar hits and the other featuring longer, epic climbs. With this variety in both music and ride style, you’ll come across as a musical genius coach—and your class will be hooked! 🎸✨
In Celebration of Guitars Express Profile (PDF and Excel)
I’m confused. In looking at the section of work that begins with I Love Rock & Roll, and ends with Authority Song. It’s about 9:00 long, Z3/4/5. At the end, there is a recovery of about 2:00, before the intensity climbs again to Z3. That doesn’t seem like nearly enough time to fully recover. Is part of the point of the ride to go back to work before fully recovering? I get that Z3 is moderate, but it isn’t recovery. I have very strong riders, who I know very well, and if I told them to go back to work after 2 minutes of recovery from work of that intensity/length, they’d laugh at me.
Hey Nina,
It’s a challenging class but for a mostly Z3/Z4 effort in that second segment, I don’t believe it’s lacking recovery given it doesn’t spend much time (less than 40 seconds) above threshold. That said, in that second recovery song, it might have been better had I said to increase to Z2 at 2:10 instead of Z3 (which would provide one more minute of fairly easy effort), but still, 9 minutes in those zones, even with a short push to Z5 is attainable for strong riders without having to take too much time recovering afterward…but as you know, every profile should offer options.
You can see in the image of the ride, the second block of work is mostly Z3 (yellow) with some Z4 (orange)—that’s moderate to hard. Remember that most of Zone 4 is sub-threshold (it’s 91–106% of FTP, so 2/3 of Z4 is below FTP), so you could be doing all of the Z4 work below threshold if needed, and that little bit of red in Z5 (37 seconds) is hard but not overwhelming and not close to breathless.
An outdoor cyclist might encounter that kind of effort on a long climb for 30 to 45 minutes or even an hour or more without recovery—unless they choose to stop and rest! (I say that from experience, living in the mountains and climbing mountains of 5–10 miles in length, or 1–2 hours.)
It’s when you start spending more time above threshold or when you get breathless that you need longer recovery. Not that you don’t need to rest in a profile like this; I always suggest my riders take more recovery if needed. (They always know they can sit something out, too).
I used Stages Studio for this workout depiction and unfortunately, they don’t calculate the TSS (Training Stress Score); I wish it did. I also use Intelligent Cycling which does calculate TSS; maybe I’ll upload it to IC and see what the TSS is but I don’t think it’s a super hard class. It’s certainly not an easy ride, especially the final two blocks (and especially that final song!), but I would guess the TSS is in the mid-60s, maybe at the most, 70. That’s challenging but not overwhelming.
I appreciate the feedback and may redo the profile with that second recovery having an initial increase to Z2 instead of Z3 after 2 minutes. I could also add a caveat in the description for instructors to offer their riders the option to recover longer before starting the next segment if needed.
I taught this ride twice last year before putting it up on ICA. I’m especially careful to make sure I have sufficient recovery if I am going to put it out there on ICA.
Nina, I was curious about the TSS of this ride so I uploaded it to Intelligent Cycling and I was correct, it’s 62. (I thought it would be a little bit higher…) So this is not that hard of a ride overall, though it does have some hard segments.
Here is a definition of TSS. https://help.intelligent-cycling.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4411876777234-What-is-TSS-and-how-can-I-use-it
This was a great profile & ride! Very well received, thank you ????
Thank you Meghan, glad your riders enjoyed it!
Can’t wait for this one! It looks and sounds awesome! Thank you Jennifer!
Thank you Nancy. Let me know how it goes once you’ve had a chance to teach it!