Photo: @stetzphoto

Pull out your tattered flannel and start putting together a playlist that will have you reminiscing back to the days of Pearl Jam and Nirvana and start pedaling away.

This week’s workout, aptly named “Come as you are” was designed by Brock University’s Stephen Cheung, author of Cutting Edge Cycling and Cycling Science. Users of the Xert training platform may be familiar with it, but nonetheless it is a great endurance focused workout that stings you hard at the beginning and then makes you hold on for the rest of the hour. It’s a good test of your mental strength and I always try to put myself in a real world scenario when things get hard in the workout.  For me here, I like to imagine you’ve just gone through T1 and your heart rate is racing after running in your wetsuit and then frantically preparing to get on the bike. We all know that feeling when you first roll out of T1 and you need to use those first few minutes to relax and get into a rhythm. So with two segments of 1 minute at 100% of FTP and another 5 minutes at 90% of FTP it’s a tough start to an endurance focused workout

WU

90 sec @ 54% FTP
30 sec @ 70% FTP
90 sec @ 54% FTP
30 sec @ 70% FTP
90 sec @ 54% FTP
30 sec @ 70% FTP
90 sec @ 54% FTP
30 sec @ 70% FTP

MS

1 min @ 100%FTP
3 min @ 82%FTP
1 min @ 100%FTP
3 min @ 82%FTP
5 min @ 90% FTP
5 min @ 78% FTP
2 min @ 63% FTP
3 min @ 78%FTP
2 min @ 63% FTP
3 min @ 78%FTP
2 min @ 63% FTP
3 min @ 78%FTP
2 min @ 63% FTP
3 min @ 78%FTP
5 min @ 70% FTP
2 min @81% FTP
5 min @ 70% FTP
2 min @81% FTP
5 min cooldown

One of the keys to keeping an endurance workout like this interesting is adjusting your cadence. So after each block I would pick a different cadence range and try to hit that. This accomplishes two things, first it gets different muscles firing as you increase or decrease your cadence, secondly it keeps you engaged mentally and focused on something other than the effort feeling hard. With the CycleOps H2 I’ve really appreciated the built in cadence sensor, I’ve gone for months at a time with my cadence sensor battery dead on trainers without this feature, I would either forget what type of battery I needed or I would forget that I needed to get batteries.

 

Photo: @stetzphoto

With the triathlon season not starting up again here until June it’s best to not get into the high intensity work too early in the season, but we can get a nice little taster of it here with this workout.

 

And in case you need it here’s a playlist that will take you back to Seattle in 1994.