(20 minutes easy to gym, 45 minutes interval training, 20 minutes at tempo effort home)
The WOD:
Tabata 1:
15 minutes total (1 min. work, :30 seconds rest on spin bike)
Tabata 2:
9 minutes total on C2 (1 min. easy + 8 min. straight :20 seconds work, :10 seconds rest)
Tabata 3:
9 minutes total on spin bike (1 min. easy + 8 min. straight :20 seconds work, :10 seconds rest)
Tabata 4:
9 minutes total on C2 (1 min. easy + 8 min. straight :20 seconds work, :10 seconds rest)
NOTES:
It's raining a shitload here at HQ, like get blown off the Golden Gate bridge type Biblical motherfuckin rain. Now I'm not made of sugar, so I pedaled my ass to the gym for this WOD. I was surprised to see that my bike was the only rig locked up in the bike rack as I watched a steady stream of 'rock climbers' roll into the gym bundled up in the latest designer Gore Tex wonder gear for the treacherous twenty foot walk from the parking lot to the interior of the gym. I know I'll have plenty of bike rides ahead of me this year where I will get slammed with an unexpected downpour, so the 20 minutes to the gym and back in my finest rain gear--3-year-old snowboarding pants and the Gore Tex jacket that got destroyed when I slammed my face into the ground during my 9-hour ride in a snowstorm in Colorado for work back in September--was a touch of mental prep for when that moment comes again. Normally the least safe thing about riding in the rain is dealing with cars, who become even more unattentive than normal as drivers juggle lattes, cell phones still pressed to ears here in San Francisco even though it's illegal and stupid, motivational yoga tracks on iPods, etc.). But there were very few cars on the road. If I were 10% harder, I would have held a static bodyweight squat between every interval the Mark Twight way.
Anyway, getting to the program. You'll see that I spec'd a 4-way tabata. Conventional wisdom would say this is stupid as a tabata effort should really completely drain you as these efforts should truly be all out. However, having spent half a decade riding with a power meter, I have a very good idea of when I am not putting out on workouts and the plug should be pulled. I was able to maintain the power levels I was shooting for during the WOD--VO2 max. While I only had my heart rate monitor and my legs as a guide, I know what hard feels like, and I made this hard. Spend enough time riding with a power meter, you get a very good idea of how you should feel throughout interval sessions, even when you don't have a power meter to guide your effort. If you're using a heart rate monitor to gauge tabata efforts, you're wasting your time. Heart rate lags effort, so if you're doing a conventional :20 on, :10 off tabata, you'll find that your heart rate hits its peak during the rest interval, when you're not going hard.
Another important consideration is gauging your effort so your last interval is as hard as your first. If you're going so hard you totally blow up early in the WOD, you won't make it to the end. It takes a lot of suffering to figure out how to gauge these efforts, but it's worth it. Find your limit, hold it, then the next time you're at your edge, push it a little further.
www.andrewvontz.com
www.drillit.tv
@vontz
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