One of my favourite workouts, when the season gets going.
iād love to come and race in the UK! maybe one day. High peaks district riding was a blast.
Yeah, I was hesitant to do this type of workout in January, but SSBMV2 has other VO2max sessions that are similar. Iād rather do this in January than Spencer!
I actually started my the General Build a few weeks ago, but stopped after the first week and went back to SSB2. I really didnāt want to do that type of work this time of the year. For me anyway, it seemed like the workouts in General Build are more appropriate for outdoor riding, so Iāll hold off until then.
Youāll get no argument from me 
I follow you on Strava. Looking at your 2019 year, I have no doubt that youād have a blast. If you can make it happen, you really should. I do think thereād be enough variety in terms of teams, conditions and courses to make a trip well worth your while
I actually added this one in yesterday for next week myself.
I did Taylor -2 yesterday, which is an easy 30-30 workout (3x 14min at 120%). However what I found interesting is that the first 10-15s of each interval basically feel āfreeā with no obvious physiological load like HR increase our āburnā. That means it feels like youāre only doing 15s of work, and you get this every interval. If you do 3min intervals, you only get it once.
I recently did a block of both 30/15s around 125% and 4x8, 5x7, 5x8s at 102%. Iām debating if I should do another block and increase intensity when if I feel good. After a 6 week block I only had a 2 watt increase in FTP. I never felt overly fatigued so I am going to increase volume if time permits.
That was my workout as well. Iāve taken to making them a hard start by manually cranking up the first few intervals and gradually bring back down as the set progresses to get uptake sooner
This was the first time I had done this one. Just be careful not to getting too excited on the first few, youāve got 40 of them! That 20s rest start to really pinch. After the 2 min. recovery between sets, I had trouble getting back up to speed for the first 2 intervals each time, but the legs eventually kept coming back.
I likely went a little too hard for this workout overall, as my NP was 290w before the cool down, with an FTP of 300. It is tricky to find a balance for these efforts though.
Rattlesnake is like that, but with 30/15ās.
Or you can cut out the 15ās and just do a solid 8min hard start descending power interval (or in the case of Rattlesnake, 9-12mins).
Itās not as savage as it sounds. Trust me. 
. NO!
go harder than 100% though if only going for a minute
amen to the mental side of this, massively important and my biggest issue with only doing tabata; thanks!!
I like to do 40/20s, Rattlesnake, 30/15s, 30/30s, that kind of thing, indoors.
Absolutely hate the 3min @ 120% on the turbo.
However Iām fine doing 3-5min repeats outdoors because then I do hill repeats and the target Iām aiming for isnāt āthe end of the intervalā but āthe top of the hillā.
Doing a TRUE Tabata interval workout would mentally and physically crush any TR user. Better we stick to the much less intense intermittent power style interval sessions (200% FTP vs 120% FTP).
teeeeccchhhnically i think itās 170% lol. have a great day Donut!
170% VO2maxā¦roughly translated to 200% FTPā¦the anchoring metric of TR. (itās actually closer to 205% but thought Iād give TR users a break since VO2max is a bit of a fuzzy zone)
Would be interesting to see the results if anyone is interested in undertaking a Tabata phase:
10min warm-up
8x 20s on/10s off @200% FTP
4x/week for 6 weeks
+1 long Z2 ride
For those sets, Iād do a minute at 110@ of FTP, then the :15 recovery.
I tried to find a graphic, but in Ernest Maglischoās Swimming Faster (the '83 version), there was a graphic of eliciting VO2 max over the course of a 5 x 800m on incomplete rest, showing that the swimmer did not reach VO2 max until the third repeat, but that the last two repeats held them there ā so that a variety of combinations of duration and intensity could be used to elicit and then maintain VO2 max of the course of an ~15min duration set of 50, 100, or 200m repeats ā that you didnāt have to keep throwing 400-500m efforts over and over at athletes, which could result in some boredom.
Another way of setting intensity for these is doing 1:00 to 2:00 efforts on :10-:15 rest at current 8min power. The first half of the set will be ok, but the second half will well and truly suck.