4 minutes of work

How could 4 minutes of work be so painful?

Did sprints today. Set up the bike on the trainer. I use a Tacx Ergo Trainer. For sprints I set it in SLOPE mode which is basically allows you to set a resistance sort of like a road with a constant grade. I then picked a pretty hard gear and started from a standstill or a very slow spin. The gear was hard enough to be difficult to get going but allowed me to spin up to 140-150rpm. Staying seated the whole time.

The Tacx Ergo outputs power and cadence among other things. I got up to 500-530 watts on some of the sprints. Maybe peaked a little bit higher. I don't know the real world accuracy of the #, but it provides me a baseline. I wish it was higher given how you read about people putting ot 1000+watts. But it's just a number I have to keep reminding myself. A number that can be increased, which is what training and getting better is all about. Also I am a small guy, if I was one of these guys I'd expect some big #s.

So I warmed up for like 20minutes. Then did
4 Sets of:

4 reps of 15 seconds sprinting, 60 seconds off

5 minutes easy recovery between sets.

So that totals to 1minute of hard work for each set for 4 sets, so 4 total minutes of hard work.

And it was hard let me tell you. Legs burning, light headed feeling, and the last two sets it was like what's the point, I am hardly able to turn the pedals and couldn't even get up to 130rpm, but I stuck it out. Afterwards I had that sick to the stomach feeling, with that sour look on your face.


So regardless of the actual numbers that face tells me that I did it right.

But man, next week the plan calls for combinations of sprint intervals followed by endurance riding. So I'll do sprints and then 3hrs on the bike. After today's workout I'm a little scared.

But fear is a good motivator for me.

And like Dave says, Bike racing is hard, chose an easier sport if you don't like to work hard.