Have you ever been on a group ride, race, or climb and felt your legs burn so bad you had to ease off the pace to get them to stop? Right, we all have! This sensation is your legs filling up with lactate and your body is unable to use and clear this fast enough.
So how do you fix that? You train it!
Transitional intervals are the best to train this system and this type of effort. By transitional we mean switching between things like power zones (high lactate to lower lactate), cadences (high to low), fueling systems (glycogen to fat), and mindsets (intense to relaxed.)
We are going to share with one of our CINCH transitional workouts to give it a try. If you would like to use our exact zones please visit this page here to calculate yours.
* We do not use FTP so if you don’t have time to do the 12 min test, you can use your best 10 minute power in the last 6 weeks or so to input.
Workout:
1 hour
15 mins easy warmup well below your Base Zone.
High Fat Burning 20/40 Interval
1 x 12 mins
Alternate between
20 secs High Medium Zone 90 rpm
40 secs Low Medium Zone 70 rpm
5 mins recovery below your Base Zone after the 12 min interval
Threshold Raising 20/20’s
3 x 4 mins
Alternate between
20 secs High Threshold 90+ rpm
20 secs easy (can be as easy as you like up to Low Medium)
Take 5 mins recovery between each 4 minute set
The secret to success here is NOT going much over the targets here. Yes of course, you can do MORE. But doing more does not train the goals of this workout which are becoming efficient transitioning in your high power fat utilization zones and transitioning to and from your High Threshold. This workout will not only help you improve your group rides and races realtime, but it will also set your physical engine to progress and grow from its current level.