For those of you following along at home hoping to crib the entire Carmichael Time-Crunched Training Plan by following my workouts, know that this one will take you down the wrong road. It's not a Carmichael workout. Drawing on my vast personal experience and deep awareness of not being as fast as I'd like to be, I made this one up myself. It's predicated on Dave's theory that races are harder at the end than at the beginning, so workouts should be similarly structured. The workout is designed to increase my body's ability to go faster, when it doesn't really feel like it.
At its core it's a 4x6: 4 efforts of 6 minutes each above threshold. I gave myself 4 minutes rest between each so each set is an even 10 minutes. Whenever I have to think about what minute to start and finish on I get confused.
The "screw" in this workout is the one I turn. The first interval is just 6 minutes at a hard but steady pace. On #2 I upshifted for the final 2 minutes. On #3 I turned the screw for the final 4 minutes. And on #4 I turned the screw two minutes in, and then upshifted again with 2 minutes to go. You can see the steps in the green power line on the top.
The result was an increase in power for each interval: 311, 330, 333 and 343 watts. But I'm hoping for some psychological adaptation also. I hope that after learning to go to the well in training, I'll be able to do the same on game day. Some moves never happen for fear the well is dry.
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