The Workout of The Day for Saturday, 8.25.12. “Wait, what? Cough.”

Howdy folks,

This weekend – if it’s at all possible – I recommend getting in the last (or almost last!) road or MTB race of your season. The Cross racing is right around the corner, and it’s really darn hard to match the intensity of racing when you’re training on your own!

So, if you can manage it, your workout today is –

Go Race!

No racing in your neck of the woods?

Today’s Workout – if you’re not racing – is…

The Doppelganger –

Remember just a paragraph ago, when I was saying that it’s really hard to get race-level intensity without racing?

Yeah.

This workout is hard.

Really, really, DAMN hard.

Make sure you’re up for it, don’t do it if you’re feeling a bit gassed, and feel free to cut it in half. Or less.

You’ve been warned…

– Warm up well. If you have time, warm up as you would for a race. It’s good practice, if nothing else.

– After you have warmed up, do five full-gas starts. Focus on the second effort in your start, working on getting back on the gas right after you max-out on your initial effort and begin to sit down.

– 20 minutes at your 2×20 pace.

– 2 minute rest.

– 10 minutes of Over/Under intervals

The baseline for this interval is the level of effort/output you just did in the 20 minute effort.

However hard you went in that interval, you are going to try and hold that for the 10 minutes.

Easy, right?

Here’s the rub.

You’re going to sprint for 10 seconds every minute of the interval.

How hard are you going to sprint?

Hard, but not so hard that after you sprint, you can’t sit back down and keep churning away at your 2×20 level.

This takes some practice to figure out.

Don’t get all freaked out if you blow it and can’t hold the effort until the end. You tried, right?

Having said that, don’t wuss out and quit. This is some difficult s***, man. You want to get faster, right?

OK.

Here’s how this works.

Use a stopwatch. Put it on your bars.

Start the stopwatch.

Start the interval with a sprint, out of the saddle pretty hard, but not full gas.

Sprint for 10 seconds.

Back in saddle, drop into your 2×20 zone. Hold this until the minute mark, then –

Sprint again. 10 seconds.

Back in saddle, 2×20 level until 2 minute mark…

Repeat.

Repeat…

Repeat, until you have hit the 10 minute mark.

– 5 minute recovery

– 10 minutes at 2×20 level

– 2 minute recovery

– 10 minute Over/Under Intervals

– SPRINT at the very end of the last interval. 30 seconds, all out.

Really all out, like “I’m sprinting for the Maillot Arc en ciel” all out. You should be at least half-blind at the end of the sprint.

Heck, you should be so gassed when you start the sprint that just upping the tempo a little bit puts you in a box.

You asked for a race simulation, right?

Ouch…

Yes, this is really damn hard. You asked for it.

You can always just sub in a 2×20 (or better yet a 3×20…) when you can’t race. That’s a hard darn workout if you do it right, but certainly nothing like the nightmare I just handed to you…

Good Luck! You’ll need it!

PS: (cough) new (cough)teeshirt (cough)