The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Sunday, 12.13.15. “You’ll wish you went outside”
Howdy folks,
What’s the workout today?
Well, ideally you’d be doing the same thing as yesterday.
Ideally.
Problem is, that’s a workout that’s going to see you outside for a good stretch of time.
Up here in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve been getting hit by wrath of god type weather lately, and spending most of the day outside in the torrential rain and gale-force winds just ain’t everybody’s bag. Most people have better sense than that, frankly.
So, what’s a masochist – but not quite the “ride outside in the apocalypse” level masochist – to do?
How about…
The Doppelganger –
(AKA: “You’ll wish you went outside”)
– 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. As always, 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 Way Over, No 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.
Again, don’t go so hard that you blow up and can’t hold the effort until the end.
This is some difficult s***, man. It’s like a race, dig?
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
– 5 minute recovery
– 10 minute Way Over/No Under (Yup. Again.)
– SPRINT at the very end of the last interval. 30 seconds, all out.
Really all out, like “I’m sprinting for the win/my life” 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.
Ouch…
Notes –
Yes, this is f-ing hard. Re-thinking that staying inside today thing?
You can always just sub in a 2×20 (or better yet a 3×20…) when you can’t race. These are hard damn workouts if you do them right, but certainly nothing like the nightmare I just handed to you…
Have fun!
M
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