I have done a few workouts recently in my plan called Red Lake +8 and Raymond +7 and these workouts are excruciating and test your toughness. They are workouts in mid-Volume Sustained Build. The suffering is very intense for me, especially during the last couple intervals and it’s mostly mental.
I find that having an approach to mentally manage the suffering is key. If I watch the interval time for example, it’s so discouraging that I’m more likely to crack. For me, I seem to gut it out best if I close my eyes the whole interval and listen to inspiring music. I will know how long the track is so I can gauge how close I am to finishing the interval based on where I’m at in the song. It’s such an incredible feeling to survive these types of intervals when you would have never thought you would be able to at the beginning of the interval.
Interested in hearing approaches others take to manage the suffering during the darkest moments of really tough intervals.