2 x 20mins at sweetspot + bursts – total riding time 1h30mins

20 minutes warm-up – a slow progression from zone one, through zone two, with the last five minutes in zone three.

Five minutes easy (zone one – two)

2 x 20mins sweetspot efforts (upper zone three – lower zone four)

During these efforts, every two minutes you need to incorporate a ten-second out of the saddle burst. This isn’t a sprint! A burst means clicking down two or three gears and pushing on out of the saddle (for those training with a power meter 120-150 per cent FTP). Once the burst is finished settle straight back down into the sweetspot effort.

15 minutes between efforts (zone two)

Ten minutes cool down (nice and easy, zone one)

What are the benefits of this session?

This session includes both elements of sweetspot and base training. Keeping the sweetspot efforts short with a break in the middle will mean that you can hit the correct intensity for an entire forty minutes within a session.

If you tried to do forty minutes in one go then chances are that by the end of the effort you will be struggling to hold the intensity high enough to hit sweetspot. The bursts in this session are designed to also give an element of training to your type IIb fibres. Doing this means that you are reminding your body that you do still need them and they are less likely to be converted to type IIa fibres.

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