OOZI Musing v2—VO2Max + SPRINT WORKOUT
After finishing the first week, I was overly excited to have no pain and just be able to GO MEGA AGAIN!
TLDR: What can you take from this musing? A discussion on VO2Max Time in Zone, Sprint Workout thoughts, an OOZI week reflection, and some anaerobic thoughts. It was a busy week!
Here’s what the upcoming week entailed:
Training For The Week
VO2Max…initially thinking old 5 x 5min, constant power, but was thinking I wanted to at least add a 6th. More on that later
A new sprint workout that I took from W/KG…ran into Paul, and invited him to the smashfest
LONG MEGA ENDURANCE (you might notice some hip pain denoted there which was from a 12H drive…gotta break that up next time)
ANAEROBIC SMASHING
You might be thinking: “This seems like a lot of smashing for base miles!”
Not in base season yet for me (at time of writing).
If you missed the last blog, I’m finally back to 100% health and wanted to get a bunch of high intensity in before shifting to base in November!
Sidenote: wow, this Joe Bean Nicaraguan Blanca Nieve hits nicely. And some spanish vibes were influencing the upcoming album, CIELO LUMINOSO produced by Forrest Lee Howard.
Speaking of music, in the portion of the blog, what I’m listening to.
6 x 5m…Why 6? Is Time in Zone Valuable?
At this time of writing, 5 x 5 minute vo2max intervals do seem a bit outdated for the more seasoned cyclist. Are they effective? I think so for sure—there is something about laying fully on the gas for a very uncomfortable duration, but the trend is more hard starts and 40/20s. Personally I feel all three are important.
Why six instead of 5?
How much VO2Max should we do per session? For years, we’ve heard “15-20 minutes of quality work…which might mean 25 minutes of intervals, since it takes some time to get to VO2Max”.
While there is a VO2Max max zone, you can be riding in it and not be affecting your maximal oxygen consumption. Conversely, you could be riding in Zone 4 or 6, and definitely be training your VO2Max…think hard start intervals for the former, and tabatas (40/20’s and the like) for the latter.
I went out on a Gran Fondo Training Day and shredded the amount that I’d normally do on a 5 x 5…
What about race days!?
I’m actually surprised to not find as much VO2 in these races as I’d expect. KOM days and VO2max TTE days (ooo that’ll be an upcoming musing) elicit a lot of quality.
Races can bring out more 95-100% VO2…but even a race like Carter County RR produced the following in 2024; LOADS of time in Zone, but is it actually training VO2Max?
Some say yes, some no
Clemson Road Race - so much smashing
Anyway, digressing as I’m going down a WKO analysis hole.
What do I take from this?
Workouts CAN be super effective, if not more effective, than racing, to increase VO2Max.
But that doesn’t make races “bad”. Look at that insane amount of time in zone AND Clemson had wayyyy more 95-100% VO2 which is hard to accumulate on one’s own…the nature of that race is aggreessive because it is so short at 2.5H.
Hope I can make that in 2025!
So, why 6?
Just to get more time. See if I could do it. Maybe it becomes 25+min of 85%
Crack on!!! Dang. That was a day. I had a little more juice left, so went after a couple KOMs as well.
Totaling:
15-30-45 Sprint Workout
I took this one from w/kg email blast, and wanted to really rip some hard efforts to pieces.
I was heading south to intersect a group ride and passed an old pal Paul M. He literally rolled up as I was about to drop the hammer.
“You meeting those guys?”
“Yeah, but have some sprints to do…you game?”
This is a toughie for sure and amazingly had over 7min at 100% VO2max. Now, is it truly training VO2 even though the 15s are more tapping the creatine phosphate system??
Either way, really digging in and hitting extremely long 30 second and 45 second efforts when the fatigue starts to set in is a phenomenal way to accumulate some intensity. Big fan of this workout.
15s ON, 1:15off////30s ON, 2:30 OFF //// 45s ON, 3:45 OFF
NP of 429W for nearly an hour!
Ended up a 325 TSS day and a great wrap up to the trip north.
95/5 focus on the good
I heard an episode of Smartless, the podcast, and WIll Arnett made a great point:
We can have SO MANY things going extremely well in life, but our brain chooses to hyper focus on the 5% negative.
It may only be 1% negative, but it can be SO LOUD in our heads.
I’m choosing to focus on that 95%, or 99%, instead of the 1. Do what I can to address those issues, but step back and really see the big picture—the whole story.
There’s so much good going on.
Ok, back to training:
1 minute efforts
Okay, let me call myself out before you do—ha, I was clearly in the hurt locker doing these for the first time in a WHILE, and cut them a few seconds short at times.
But hey, pain free and reacclimating the brain to these depths.
Hit the 1’s then added some 30s and 20s and 10s….
Just going IN!
To finish a really solid second week.
I was super gassed after this.
Sponsor shout out: Delta G Ketones. Buy them here.
Thanks for reading.