Man I dread threshold intervals too. I just have a really hard time sustaining that kind of effort on the trainer. In a race…I can hang on for longer and go way deeper…taste of blood in the mouth, gasping for breath…but by the time i get to the last couple long threshold intervals on a trainer the desire to bail just becomes overwhelming.
I’ve developed a way of dealing with threshold intervals 
I concentrate on one leg at a lime and count out the pedal strokes. If I’m aiming for a cadence of 95 them I’ll count up to 95 on each side and… lo… 2 minutes have gone. Repeat as necessary.
It helps balance out the leg imbalance I know I have as well as passing the time. You’re only ever aiming at 1-minute durations at a time rather than thinking about 10/12/15/20 intervals which will be more daunting.
I do endurance rides of 200 miles pd on multi-day rides and when I was starting out it definitely helped to break down the distance into manageable chunks. This is a similar psychological “trick”.
May not work for everyone
This. Threshold workouts are not easy and require focus and attention ahead of time (nutrition, hydration, etc) but should be well within reach if your FTP is set correctly.
1 Like