In regards to my earlier article, "Training the Right Stuff at the Right Time", I've had some discussion with my athletes about not just working hard and being "tough" with a workout but making sure that the hard work done is what the training intention was. For example, if an cyclist is having trouble breaking clear of the peloton, yet can maintain a very high pace, has a high lactate or power threshold, then he needs to include anaerobic work to develop an explosive jump.

Sprints, or speedwork, and intervals are two very different animals. Speedwork has maximal efforts, maximal recovery time and every advantage is used to go fast, aided with the wind or slight downhill. Intervals can be with the wind, against the wind, uphill...on a course that mimics an upcoming race or event. They too have a specific time, in this case submaximal work but, unlike speedwork, the rest is a specific time regardless of how well the athlete has recovered.

Below are a few graphs that may help illustrate some of the points made.

#1 Sprint work: The first graph shows athlete A's 8" sprints, excellent spike of effort (explosive) with enough time for a full recovery in order to do another maximal effort. The goal of the sprint workouts are to stress the anaerobic system and to have enough recovery to replenish the energy stores within the muscle.

#2 Sub-maximal intervals, aerobic/tempo/threshold (athlete A): The slope of the line is a little too steep for a sub-maximal interval effort and needs to be a bit more gradual, more like a "hill" rather than a "spike." This shows me that the effort was more like a long sprint effort rather than a ramp up as in a TT or pursuit. The goal is to get to the cruising pace more gradually than you would in an explosive sprint.

#3 Sub-maximal interval (athlete B): With these intervals, you can see that the rider gradually ramped up to the given zone, a bit more time to actually get to the peak of the interval. This indicates that the effort ramped up to a certain level of pacing. Although this rider did 7 intervals last week, he felt that he could only do 3 quality intervals this week. Doing less with specificity and purpose is far superior than slugging through 10 half-baked "zoneless" intervals that do basically nothing but expend calories and compromise the next training session. Make sure the fatigue is from specific work that reaps dividends in fitness rather than just being a hard worker.

Tip: Concentrate on getting the gear going round to the target rpm in the appropriate gear (ie. 85-95 rpm in 52x16) rather than trying to get into the target heart rate zone as quickly as you can, will help you avoid working too hard, going anaerobic, to accommodate the phenomenon of heart rate lag. You can see this with the pacing of a pursuiter having a more relaxed start with the goal of getting the gear rolling to the optimal cadence, (not interested in acceleration) as opposed to the kilo rider who wants to get the gear going as fast as possible.

It's not always about being mentally tough and pushing through the workout. Certainly, that needs to be done, no question about that. However, when specific training is scheduled, whether speedwork or intervals with their specific work to rest ratios and intensities, the parameters must be adhered to.

Tough work AND the right work. It's time well spent.

Graph #1 - Athlete A - 8" Sprints

Graph #2 - Athlete A - Sub-maximal Intervals

Graph #3 - Athlete B - Sub-maximal Intervals