Hi all, quick question. Is it beneficial to do hard start sweet spot intervals for more anaerobic cyclists as a way of minimising anaerobic contribution to the intervals?
If possible, just do longer intervals / more time in zone. By the time you’ve worked your way out to 3 × 30 or 2 × 45, who cares how much anaerobic contribution there was? 
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Probably, but that’s not why I recommend hard-start SS intervals…I recommend hard-start SS intervals because that’s the type of thing that can happen in a race. There is a lot of value to familiarizing yourself with that sensation of burying yourself a little bit and then hanging on to sweet spot.
Then when you get in a race situation you don’t punch it to get a gap and then drop WAAAAY off and get caught. Teach yourself to make that effort & then hang on and recover at a work rate that is still reasonably close to threshold. Learn your recovery response time at that type of effort.
As an added bonus, you’ll also get a better understanding of what you CAN NOT maintain in that situation.
So, will you get lots of good positive adaptation from doing hard starts? Yeah, sure. In the end it’s probably not much more adaptation than what you would get from traditional SS intervals but you for sure get a better understanding of your own capabilities by doing hard-start SS intervals.
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