The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Tuesday, 10.24.17. “Suffer these gladly”

Howdy folks,

Before we get started, just a quick reminder… if you live up here in the Seattle area, the Cyclocross Workouts at the JBM Velodrome are switching from Wednesday to Tuesday as of tonight.

Details here…

(click the banner)

Despite the change in nights for the local training series, I’m going to continue posting up skills based workouts on here on Wednesday, at least for now.

I think.

Let me know how that works for you.

As that is the case, today we’re diving back into interval land. As mentioned in previous posts, I think it’s useful to do the more complicated interval type workouts a couple/few weeks in a row so that you can derive max benefit from them; there’s a learning process that most people have to go through with these before they can really nail the output levels, and the mental state necessary to really drive through them.

Having said that, saddle up! Today you’re once again suffering through…

VO(to the)max 12/50

Warm up

Warm Up: 20 min @ 40 % of FTP
throw a couple of efforts at or > ftp in during warm up to make sure you’re ready
Repeat 12 times
1. Hard
  
  Work: 50 sec @ 110 % of FTP
2. Easy
  
  Recovery: 10 sec @ 75 % of FTP
Recovery

Recovery: 15 min @ 40 % of FTP
Repeat 12 times
1. Hard
  
  Work: 50 sec @ 110 % of FTP
2. Easy
  
  Recovery: 10 sec @ 75 % of FTP
Recovery

Recovery: 15 min @ 40 % of FTP
Repeat 12 times
1. Hard
  
  Work: 50 sec @ 110 % of FTP
2. Easy
  
  Recovery: 10 sec @ 75 % of FTP
Cool Down

Cool Down: 10 min @ 40 % of FTP

Ouch.

Still not clear on all this wattage based stuff, or just don’t have the requisite gear to make use of it?

No sweat. For you, today is…

2×20 Tuesday!

Pretty simply, the 2×20 looks like this:

– Warm up.

– Go as hard as you can for 20 minutes.

– Recover for 5 minutes.

– Go again for another 20 minutes.

That’s the basic version. Success on this is, however, all in the details.

First of all, warm up.

No, seriously. Don’t just hop on the bike and blast one out.

Warming up makes a difference, especially if you’re doing this as a test session.

You don’t need to do anything super hard or super involved, just make sure the legs are up and running before you kick off the workout proper.

Spin for a bit, blast a couple of 30 second to 2 minute efforts off pretty hard, spin a bit more, then go for it.

When you do go for it, really go for it.

But in a controlled sort of way.

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 interval. If you run out of gas before you finish the second interval, you went to hard. If your vision isn’t blurry at the end of the second 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. How constant?

Can you keep it in a 10 watt range?

Probably not.

15 watts?

More likely

20 watts?

Try.

Keep it steady.

These take practice to do well, and the better you get, the harder they get (you’re welcome.) This is a workout that’s a natural for the turbo trainer, and that’s how I do ‘em.

This is a good thing, because I always wind up flat on my back on the floor trying not to puke after the 2nd interval.

I’m really not kidding about the blurry vision thing. You should aspire to seeing-spots level of output on these.

If you can learn to push through your limits, really push, you will get better and you will get better fast.

It’ll be painful, though.

I promise.

Have fun!

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