Improve your ability to use oxygen
These workouts not only teach your body to use oxygen more efficiently, but they also improve your power, endruance and speed.
These workouts should only be done during the build, race and peak phase and only occasionally during the base phase.
Do one of these interval sets twice a week during none race periods, once a week during race periods. These should be started after a through warm-up of 10-15 minutes, including 2 1 minute hard efforts at high cadence.
These workouts require knowing your target heart rate zone. Get your zone using the Zone Calculator.
- 2×2’s: do two sets of intervals. each set includes 5 intervals, and each interval is 2 minutes long with 2 minutes rest between interval. The zone should be at 5a-5c. 8 min recovery between sets. 110 RPM. Can be done all season long.
- 20 1×1’s: each interval is 1 minute long with 1 minutes rest between interval. Effort should be max you can sustain for 1 min, power level 6, or get up to zone 5a-c. 110 RPM. Best done during base season
- Power Intervals: Do 4-6 intervals that last 3-5 minutes at high power level 5, zone 5. Cadence should be 110 RPM. Recovery should be the same time as the interval. Best done during build phase or race season.
- Hill repeats – Do 3-5 min each hill to power level 5, zone 5. Hill grade should be around 6-8%. Cadence should be 80-90 RPM. Recover the same time as the interval. Best done during build phase or race season.
- Over Unders – Start with two minutes at zone 3 then 1 minute hard effort at zone 5, then back to zone 3 for two more minutes. Continue for 9 minutes to complete one rep. Recover for 6 minutes easy spinning between. When in zone 2-3, be in the high zone 2’s or low 3’s. Best done during Base or early build phase
- Pyramid. Do 1 interval in each segment 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2,1. Recovery for each interval is the same as the last duration. For example. the first interval lasts 1 minutes, then recover 1 minute, the second interval lasts 2 minutes, then recover 2 minutes, and continue to the end. Effort is zone 5 for each interval. Cadence should be 110 RPM. Best done during build phase or race season.