I am looking for workouts that could help Zwift racing, where there’s always an hard start followed by sweet spot/tempo transition and then a few 1-to-5 minutes efforts here & there (plus sprints, one at the end and sometimes others in between).
For those hardstarts and 1 to 5 minute efforts, I came across Standish workout, which I see was thought for mountain bike racing, but the kind of efforts are similar to those I’m talking about.
Now the questions: I’ve been trying Standish twice (last week and this week) always failing to complete the last 30 seconds @ Vo2max for 2nd and 3rd repeats (workout is 3 x (20" hard start/ 2’ Sweetspot/20" hard again/2’ @105%FTP and finally those 30 seconds at Vo2max power)).
When I come to those last 30 seconds I’m always too spent and can’t increase the pace for that final kick.
I’ll keep trying the workout once a week for a while to see if I improve, I would like to hear from others that have tried it and/or have suggestions on how to improve there / which are the main limiters for those failed transitions
Standish looks like a weird workout. It’s a bit something and nothing in my opinion.
I don’t think the rest periods are helping. For me, they would be too long. I’d be warmed up from the previous effort and by the time the next one starts, I’d be ‘cold’ again.
Have you tried distinct increases/decreases in cadence for and between the efforts? Try shifting some of the load.
What has your training looked like prior to attempting this workout? Are you able to complete Over/Under workouts? To me, this more like an O/U session than anything else.
Yes, I have tried over/unders even recently and normally no problems to complete them properly. Phisiologically I am more a time trial guy, even longer ones, meaning that for me it’s better to keep a steady (even high) pace, while I struggle in variations, but that’s what happens frequently in Zwift racing, though. That’s why this workout had caught my interest; instead of 5 minutes steady, 5 minutes are varying quite a lot here. I think your observation on the duration of recovery is correct, I could try and shorten It a bit and see what happens. Cadence, I normally try to spin as fast as I can during recoveries, during the ‘hard’ parts I try to keep it as high as I can, May be a bit lower for the 2 mins at sweetspot (which feel as the most manageable ones, of course)
I haven’t looked at the Standish workout but if it’s like how I’m picturing, maybe what’s limiting you isn’t the ability to hit those efforts, but probably the ability to recover. some on/offs after you’ve got a base built up to help with repeatability and lactate clearance (billats like Katahdin)
Katahdin looks interesting for my needs too, lactate buffering is surely an issue here in my difficulty to “change” between hard…and harder pace. I’ve seen there are different opinions on the fact that repeated shorter (like here, 15 seconds) intervals can have the same effect on improvement of longer power durations (up to 5 minutes).