The Workout Of The Day for 12.12.12. “Hellish”
Howdy folks,
Sorry about the empty blog the last couple of days. My road trip down to the USGP races in Bend went a little long, and was a little bit challenging, logistically… so no way to get posts up during most of the trip.
Back now though!
So, onward…
If you’re still racing at this point in the year, you’re probably either living in a country other than the US, or you’re looking ahead to the big races down the road, like Nationals and Worlds.
Good for you.
In most of the country, though, this is where things get tough.
We really haven’t figured out this “Cross in January” thing in the US, yet, and the race opportunities are few and far between this time of year.
Which is a bummer.
We’ll be talking about ways to work around this problem in the next few days, so stay tuned.
Today, though? Today we need to get some work in, and if you’re playing along with us, you’re deep in the season, and you might just be losing a little bit of your endurance at the tail end of the races.
So, gird your loins, this one is gonna’ hurt.
It’s the…
3×20, aka Hell Day.
Day. I said day, didn’t I?
Anyways…
– Warm up. Pretty well.
– Go as hard as you can for 20 minutes.
– Recover for 5 minutes. Or maybe a bit more.
– Go again for another 20 minutes.
– Recover for 5 minutes. Or maybe a bit more.
– Go again for another 20 minutes.
The idea here is to go as hard as you can for the duration of both intervals without being forced to go easier at the end of the second or third interval.
If you run out of gas before you finish the second or third interval, you went too hard.
If your vision isn’t blurry at the end of the third interval, you went too easy.
If you’re doing this with a powermeter, you want your wattage output to be as close to constant as possible. We’re talking 10 watt variance at the most.
Keep it steady.
These take practice to do well, and the better you get, the harder they get.
This workout is great on the trainer – if you can stand to be on a trainer that long – and that’s how I usually do ‘em… but I’m crazy that way. This workout is probably best when you do it on the trainer, unless you have a really peaceful stretch of road you can use, but it takes a certain kinda crazy to do it, no doubt.
Have fun!
M
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