Intensity

This past week I began ramping up the intensity during my training workouts. With the more important races approaching and the season now underway, the duration of my workouts has begun to diminish a little while the intensity has increased. I'll be including 3 days a week of high intensity type workouts, 1 long day (4-5 hours) and a few easy/recovery rides. Training the muscles groups to work hard and then recover is the key at this point. And this cannot be possible without proper nutrition and hydration, especially since the temperatures are beginning to increase.

Here is an example of a workout I am doing:

Pyramid Hill Intervals. Warm up well and then do the following intervals at your CP6 power (zone 5b) or VO2 Max level. My CP6 is 380-400 watts.
Do 1-2 minute efforts at lower cadence 60-80 rpms, and 3-4 minutes efforts at 80+ rpms: 1 minute at CP6, 2 minutes at CP6, 3 minutes at CP6, 4 minutes at CP6, 3 minutes at CP6, 2 minutes at CP6, 1 minutes at CP6, (total = 16 minutes at CP6) Alternate between seated and standing climbing. Recover for time equal to interval (for example, 2 minutes on, 2 minutes recover).

These efforts may seem somewhat easy at first, but towards the end they start to get difficult. It's also best to use a power tap or some other unit that measures power because HR will lag behind. These require a day or two of "recovery" type rides or a complete day off before doing another such workout. I am doing my intervals on either Wednesdays and Saturdays, or Tuesdays and Fridays.

If you are looking for a challenging workout give these a try. They are best done on a slight incline (6% gradient) and on a road without any stop signs or lights. We've all got our favorite climb, right.