In addition to @julianoliver excellent suggestions I wanted to focus some attention on this question:
Normal.
General build has a lot of intensity, in particular the anaerobic and VO2max workouts like Spanish Needle, Baird, Bashful, etc. Some people find these easier than sweet spot workouts, and some people like myself find them harder than sweet spot.
If you struggle with anaerobic/VO2max workouts, there are two ways to continue and complete the workout:
- short 10 second back-pedal to give muscles a quick rest, while still keeping your breathing high
- reduce intensity
Skipping ahead to week 5, the workout Dade +1 has these notes under Goals:
Important : Try to settle on a demanding but repeatable power output such that you can finish as many intervals as possible. The goal is to accumulate a productive level of stress at a high level of intensity while avoiding the need to frequently quit intervals early.
which is a nod to reducing intensity. These need to be really hard, but repeatable. Don’t reduce intensity too much. On a really good day I can get thru a vo2max workout like Mills without changing intensity, other times I’m struggling and reduce intensity to 95% or 92%. As long as your breathing heavy and struggling to get to the end of each interval, you will still get the benefit of these vo2/anaerobic workouts.