Last night was another Green Monster spin. I tried another Kinetics program, and it was a bitch. Three sets of 4 repeats 20 seconds hard 10 seconds rest connected with a few minutes of dog speed. 20 seconds is not much and I can usually go really hard. But only ten seconds is no rest at all.
Yet hard things are worth trying. (F U Yoda)
After a warm up of ten minutes the program asked for 396 Watts and I replied with 425. Ten seconds is just enough time to catch your breath, but it aint rest. The next 20 seconds was barely 390 Watts. Then down the graph went. On the last push I was 350 ish. This constitutes as hard as I could go. It was all of two minutes but shit that was hard. Then there was a few minutes of real easy spinning where my heart rate dropped and I got actual rest.
The next set was basically a repeat of the first. The initial push was again well over 400 Watts and each later one less and less.
The level asked was well into Anaerobic for me so ten seconds is nowhere near enough to get the aerobic debt cleared. Perhaps that is the point. The point of these routines is never clear. The point never matters when you are cross-eyed and sweating like a pig.
I much prefer the type where I push stupid hard then get enough rest to let me push as hard the next time.
I am not starting from zero here. I know I have weaknesses. I know I really do not work those out until the weather lets me outside more.
It is hard to push based on a clock be it seconds or minutes. It is easy to convince yourself to push if the top of the hill is right THERE. It is easy to push if you are ALMOST on the guys wheel. It is a different head space. Yes it is mental.
Mechanically your body has internal limits and fatigue is a way our body avoids injury. There is a cool lab experiment where they make a person do a thing to exhaustion then short circuit the brain with a magnetic pulse and then they have full power again for a really short time. It really is in your head. If you are the kind of person who can ignore fatigue you are very special. I aint.
I guess this kind of thing can help. For all that I am confident this is good for me in some way.
Actually this exercise was labelled Tabata. That is from a University Study in Japan with 20 seconds on and ten seconds off for young athletes. It is a real thing. Fartlek is different and only vaguely similar, but it is much easier to make a pun with.
