I just did Portsmouth outside and oh my it was brutal. I don’t often do anaerobic workouts (maybe that’s a problem), and I feel after this one today that my anaerobic system is quite weak compared to the other systems. At my current ftp value of 280, doing VO2 Max workouts means being in the 300 to 350 watt range and that’s going alright. But hitting 400-550 targets in anaerobic workouts just kills me, like my puny leg muscles just can’t push that kind of raw wattage regardless of my aerobic fitness.
I am curious about what you all do for training this system.
How regularly do you do anaerobic workouts?
Do you have particular reasons and goals when doing such workouts?
I’m on a “demanding” event plan with my A crit race in July and I’m just at the end of a 2 month specialty phase. Two anaerobic workouts per week, anaerobic steps like Kettle and then 15/15s on/offs like Guye. I dropped to 2 hard workouts per week last month because I thought maybe I’m old (47m) but went back to 3 hard workouts per week this month and I’m really glad I did to get in the extra 4x5min VO2max workout.
I don’t feel like I quite dialed them in perfectly. I felt like they’ve been a bit too “easy” this month, on the border between med/hard and then hard/very hard, and TR didn’t progress me linearly week over week in Workout Level nor Power curve. I don’t know that I’m supposed to progress up and up during specialty, but it would have made me feel more like I achieved something if it did that for me.
Edit: anaerobic workout was bang-on today: very-hard!
I came up as a mountain biker and often rode in places where the courses had lots of steep sharp up and down sections. I’m also a big guy. Short anaerobic intervals are probably my favorite kind of workout because of that experience on MTB.
Unfortunately, I do them very rarely these days because I mostly ride road and gravel now, and my focus tends to be on increasing my ability to hold power over time, which is my weakness. I love an anaerobic workout, but dread a threshold one.
All that to say we’re all individuals and our strengths and weaknesses are unique. Before you start adding a lot of anaerobic intervals to improve your fitness in that area, think about your health and cycling goals, and where you want/need to improve. You may need more of them, but you may also benefit more from focus on other goals.
Historically I wouldnt have touched Vo2 or Anaerobic being primarily focused on TTs, focusing on Tempo, Threshold and SST
But my mental capacity for 2x20 Threshold/SST efforts has diminished somewhat, especially on indoor rides. They are do-able effort wise, but soul destroying and thus I am now replacing many of these sessions with Vo2 work. Keeps it interesting
I think everyone benefits from some level of anaerobic work in order to build a matchbook for surging, whether it’s digging in a little harder on certain sections of climbs or whatever, but obviously depends on goals. It’s helpful to think of two types of anaerobic work: anaerobic power and anaerobic capacity. So you’d want to do really short max efforts (1min repeats usually) to help build the maximum power, but to build capacity you’d want to get into doing stuff like 30/30s where you are going full on for the 30s (and you’ll be dying at 5-6min). Personally I’d start with building the capacity first and then the max power for myself
I do mixed kinds of rides - pavement and dirt - but I’ll care more about blazing through an MTB XC trail than any of the road stuff. Anaerobic work makes sense there, so I think I’ll pursue that as a tertiary, behind SS and VO2.