Indoor and outdoor ‘Kitchen-sink’ sessions to have you ready for racing come the tri season
Both of this month’s workouts throw everything at you – they’re ‘kitchen-sink’ sessions, says Nik Cook. But they’re ideal to help build your engine and handle race-pace efforts
February is always a time of masochistic pleasure for British triathletes. It’s a month where, despite the atrocious weather, you reap the rewards of your winter toils to date, put in the really hard sessions and emerge, into March, hardened in body and mind. If you’ve been following this series of bike workouts throughout the winter, you’ll be ready to take February by the horns, wrestle it into submission and be set for season-long bike split PBs. If you’re arriving late to the February party, go back a few issues, accept you won’t hit peak form for the start of the season and vow to do better next year!
Both of this month’s workouts throw the kitchen sink at you, testing your fitness, pacing, mental strength and your awareness of training zones. Your weekend outdoor ride is up to four hours with efforts in the second, third and fourth hour. In hour two you’ll put in two long-tempo efforts, not too hard but perfect for preparing you for what’s to come. In hour three, you’ll work just below and at threshold. As well as boosting your functional threshold power (FTP), these efforts help you develop an innate feel for this key intensity. Finally, in the final hour of the ride, there are some sprint efforts to keep you focussed and to squeeze the final drops of energy out of your fatigued legs.
The indoor session is a bit of a monster at 1:30hrs, so there’s no shame if you only manage it once… but the ideal is twice separated by at least 48 hours. It covers a range of intensities from explosive 15sec efforts, 1min efforts for anaerobic capacity to drawn-out 5min-long VO2 efforts. All harder than race-pace but great engine builders. As the efforts get longer, so do the rests but you’ll find it delivers an amazingly intense endurance session too. Don’t forget to have plenty of water on hand, at least a couple of gels and race position is compulsory.
The aim here is to provide a main outdoor ride session for the weekend, complemented by a shorter indoor session that can be tackled several times during the week. Heart rate and power zones are given where appropriate and are based on the British Cycling Zone Calculator (http://tinyurl.com/jvxcpom). 220
As well as boosting your threshold power, these efforts help you develop an innate feel for this key intensity