I’m relatively new TR and in general build for the first time. I completed Lion Rock this morning, and I found that for me the hardest part of the work out was that the recovery between sets was excessive. By the time the next set started, I was basically fully cooled down and the opening sprint of the first interval was jarring and caused my legs to burn in a way that didn’t happen for the next two sprints in the same set.
I took a look at the Lion Rock variants, and it seems like Lion Rock -4 is the same power targets and interval durations, but the inter-set recoveries are reduced to 5 minutes, which probably would have been ideal for me. But given that it’s a “minus” variant, I infer that it’s supposed to be easier.
So I’m wondering: Is dealing with the sudden return to high effort after a long cool-down an intentional part of the workout? Or is just anticipated that many riders will actually need a full ten minutes to recover between sets? If it’s intentional I’m surprised that it’s not mentioned in the instructional text.
Ultimately I’m curious if I would lose any training effect by swapping in Lion Rock -4 and saving myself 15 minutes the next time this one (or something similar) comes up.
Link and pick for quick understanding
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Not sure if it’s intentional or not, but there’s probably benefit to be had from learning to handle a sudden jump after a longer easy effort, perhaps different from repeated intervals but still beneficial in its own way. You could look at that gap as just a TSS filler, but personally I think it’s intentional to shock your system after a longer rest period where you start switching into easy mode mentally and physically and then have to work again. In the real world you may have to do a similar effort after a prolonged time riding easy so it’s beneficial to know how to quickly adapt
Hunter is another example of this IMO
So Lion ROck comes fairly early in the General Build program…and it is pretty common for early program TR workouts to have a decent amount of recovery. Those recovery periods get consistenly shorter throughout the given period / program.
So in LR, you are getting a taste of the type of workouts you will see in the General Build program, but with generous rest. As you get fitter, those rest periods will be much shorter.
Don’t worry too much about recovery or work periods of any individual workout…the key is how the whole plan comes together.
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Good point. In SSB there are workouts like Hunter which have super long recovery periods. These are shortened over workouts/weeks to fit more Work in. There’s still plenty of benefits to keeping pressure on the pedals for a ~10 min rest interval, even if it is at 40%
What benefit?
My 2pence is its better to have much shorter recovery and do some z2 at the end of the workout instead. Better than spinning at 40%
Because there’s benefit in being able to GO and then relax a while then GO again. Races aren’t a GO GO GO and then ride the end at Z2 deal
Even outside of racing if you just want to hunt strava segments, you may be going hard on one and then riding easy a while between segments
I agree, but thats why I do things like ride at z2 for 2 hours then do my intervals
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Whatever works for ya, I’m sure there’s benefits to be had either way and others. When I’d did Lion Rock on Saturday the final set almost caught me off guard because I was mentally in chill mode zoned out to YouTube. It was actually pretty interesting to have to switch myself back “on”
Def could have used longer breaks for Mitchell though…
Applying constant pressure for 2 hours — for some people it’s harder even at really low powers, so it’s a good way of building fatigue resistance. I guess the running equivalent would be ‘time on your feet’.
It’s also a good way of getting some extra volume in. Sure it’s not as potent as z2 but in the context of a tough workout (e.g. 3x20 SS) it’s enough.
