So I have seen Scott mention this type of ride before…where you ride endurance pace and throw in sprints to increase your rate of XSS production during the endurance part
would love a critique on this ride…is this the general idea? what would the application for this be? (I am not training for anything specific…general fitness). Is there a “limit” to how many of these I can do weekly in terms of recovery / overtraining? since it was really only ~5 minutes of sprinting, it felt “easier” overall than an hour of say riding at my LTP
thank you!
P.S. would make a good podcast episode no pressure
IME this type of “endurance” ride with well-spaced sprint efforts provides several benefits.
Verifies your PP and keeps your top end in tune especially during long periods of base training.
Time seems to go by quicker and the blues feel easier as you prepare for the next jump.
I feel recharged after a ride like this. Adaptation trigger?
Typically I shoot for 30 sec efforts until the 30 turns into 20.
Not quite. It’s about sprinting to bring MPA down (check!) and then settle in close to threshold (sweet spot or at threshold) while MPA recovers. In that scenario you clear the accumulated lactate by burning it as fuel in the muscle. If you lower the pace as much as you do a bigger part might be cleared otherwise while your muscle fall back to mainly fat.
See Bangarang, Welcome to the jungle or Going under for how it’s done.
Hey @genefish, sorry just saw this now… This is a great way to improve your Peak Power! You nailed it - the key to really work on top end power is to ensure your MPA fully recovers before the next sprint.
Likely depends a bit on your training load(s). I would advise no more than 3 high-intensity sessions per week. Although the overall time spent sprinting is quite low, I would still consider this a high-intensity session. As @ridgerider2 mentioned, you can try and pick your biggest gear (so you don’t spin out and lose resistance) and try and hold for ~30s if possible. The longer you can hold the effort, the stronger the XSS “dose” of each sprint will be.
And as @Beutelfuchs mentioned, you can give it a bit of a different twist and focus more on Threshold Power by doing endurance under fatigue. Alternatively, you can do ~30s efforts at slightly lower power with less recovery between to give more of an emphasis on training your HIE, like SMART - Dirty Little Secret:
Isnt it a bad idea to throw sprints inbetween an endurance ride? I always thought you could end an endurance ride with a sprint effort but your body needs time to switch its sprint engine to endurance and drop hr. Meaning a large chunck of endurance effort after a sprint isnt really using the endurance source (fat burning, low hr,…) . In short, fat vs glucose as main engine source arent a light switch i thought? i know im mixing power with hr led training in my answer.
If your goal is to do a pure endurance ride, then yeah, you probably don’t want to do any intensity. But a ride like OP’s is excellent as a high-intensity ride that can help effectively train their Peak Power! So I think it’s totally fine!
no pressure
