Zwift Academy Semi-Final Workout #5 (Outside!) Recap – 5 min max effort + sprints post 2 hour Tempo

Yesterday’s SF workout consisted of a warmup followed by 2 x 1 minute all out efforts with a strict 7 minutes recovery after each, Then 2.5 hours of Z2, pushing into Z3 on hills, followed immediately by 5 min max effort. Then a 20 min warm down, & finishing w 3 x all-out 15 sec sprints on the minute.

I LOVED this workout!! It both gave me the opportunity to showcase my strengths, AND forced me to work on my weakness… at the very end of the ride… ouchie! Ha!

My WU period was ~18 min bc it took me this long to get out of town & onto the farm roads. My 2x 1 minute efforts felt great! The 1st was up a slight hill, & I put out my 2nd best 1 min effort ever at 460W. (I would have been shocked to PR at this point given the level of fatigue from last w/e’s race that I’m currently training through, so was STOKED w this result!). My 2nd 1 min effort was slightly lower, but on flat terrain, & I was also pleased with it!

I started into the 2.5 hour block conservatively at ~170W, & gradually built to 185W over the first 10 minutes. I settled in & held a steady 185W for the next hour (pushing a bit harder into hills). After an hour, I upped it to ~190W and held this over the final hour+ through the end of the block.

Straight into the 5 min Max Effort, & it felt really great! I held a fairly steady 270-275 W for the duration, and feel that this was a good level, as I finished the 5 min completely & totally spent ☺️.

At the end of my 20 min warm down, I was in a less than ideal spot for the sprints (20+ mph winds out on the open farm roads all day had slowed my pace a bit from my projection), but I made the best of it! I totally messed up the 1st one… I launched strong and felt great, but when my Garmin started beeping the 5 second countdown to mark the end of the interval, my sprint fogged brain interpreted the first beep as the end of the interval & I shut it down at 10 seconds…. CRAP! Oh well, regroup & on to the next! The other two sprints were ok…. my #s weren’t stellar, but they WERE really good, & an improvement for me, so I was happy with them 😁. One step closer to bringing those fast twitch muscles out of hiding!! 🤣.

I finished the ZA portion of my ride at a gas station with an Icee, and then spun easy for another ~25 minutes back to my car.

This was my favorite TrainSharp Cycling workout yet! Hill repeats on deck for today