Introductory workout for those joining Zwift's Fondo training plan. This is a welcome workout designed to introduce you to both workout mode and our new flex-time structured training plans. This workout is designed to help you get a sense if your FTP (Functional Threshold Power) is set correctly, though it is a good workout even if you're already confident in your FTP. An accurate FTP is critical to getting the most out of Zwift's structured workouts.
The second workout in the Fondo training plan, this workout consists of two rounds of progressively harder - but shorter - intervals in the sub-threshold zones.
Take a break from the structured training and take some time to listen to your body. This is a great time to get outside if you can. Or enjoy the terrain of Zwift. Ride how you feel, but keep it on the easier side.
If you need to skip or miss a day, this is the session to take a pass on. But if just need a mental break, feel free to opt for this session over one of the harder workouts. You can also replace this with a social group ride of about an hour, in Zwift or with your friends.
Long rides are critical for building the endurance you will need to tackle a long event. But it is also important to change the pace and include some high effort surges. This helps mentally to break up the monotony of a long ride and also helps physically by stimulating your body to be able to respond even when fatigued.
Work here on that top end speed just above threshold. If you want to make - or join - a breakaway, this is the sort of fitness you will need to make that happen.
Take a break from the structured training and take some time to listen to your body. This is a great time to get outside if you can. Or enjoy the terrain of Zwift. Ride how you feel, but keep it on the easier side.
If you need to skip or miss a day, this is the session to take a pass on. But if just need a mental break, feel free to opt for this session over one of the harder workouts. You can also replace this with a social group ride of about an hour, in Zwift or with your friends.
This week's long ride features some sweet-spot intervals to start before going into a long Zone 2 endurance block to finish. But punctuating that long, steady base work, we will surge for 5min four times throughout. The last 5min surge takes you up and into the VO2max range of work. When you are tired and just want to relax, that is when you need to be able to push.
The main work here is a long descending ladder that starts out above threshold and steps down in progressively longer intervals. When you're tired going over those final climbs, you can rely on the strength you've built up here.
Focused low-cadence 3min intervals (2min recovery) bracketing goal 90% FTP power. Build all while holding a good low cadence down in the 50s. Recovery with high cadence and still reasonable aerobic power. The power here shouldn't be a challenge... except for the cadence. If you can get comfortable generating your target race power with a firm cadence cap, it becomes a lot easier on race day when you can ride whatever cadence you choose. The cadence caps on the hard work are critical, so make sure not to cheat up and spin a bit faster to make it easier.
Take a break from the structured training and take some time to listen to your body. This is a great time to get outside if you can. Or enjoy the terrain of Zwift. Ride how you feel, but keep it on the easier side.
If you need to skip or miss a day, this is the session to take a pass on. But if just need a mental break, feel free to opt for this session over one of the harder workouts. You can also replace this with a social group ride of about an hour, in Zwift or with your friends.
For this week's long ride, we take on sustained tempo work. Rather than spiking from base endurance, this week you will tackle long, sustained work in the tempo zone. This workout will require mental focus as these long blocks at tempo work start out feeling easy but they do get hard.
The challenge is to complete 4 short, high intensity intervals of increasing power, after first opening with a steady 15min Tempo effort. By working aerobically in the early 15min effort you will be improving the ability to deliver oxygen to the working muscles and preserve your carbohydrate stores for the finishing maximal efforts.
Steady endurance work trains your body to utilize oxygen to metabolise fat as its fuel source. By incorporating sprint efforts into a steady state effort, you will recruit additional muscle fibres and extend their ability to work aerobically. The sprint efforts increase in duration from 15sec, to 20sec and 30sec.
Take a break from the structured training and take some time to listen to your body. This is a great time to get outside if you can. Or enjoy the terrain of Zwift. Ride how you feel, but keep it on the easier side.
If you need to skip or miss a day, this is the session to take a pass on. But if just need a mental break, feel free to opt for this session over one of the harder workouts. You can also replace this with a social group ride of about an hour, in Zwift or with your friends.
Sweet Spot Training (or SST for short) will give great bang for buck as you can spend quite a bit of time in the Sweet Spot of your power curve without building up undue amounts of training stress.
10x1min hard (Z5) with 4min recovery at steady base aerobic power. The idea here is getting comfortable with power output in the near-MAP (Maximal Aerobic Power) range but with good full recovery. The interval duration is too long to be a sprint - and you should stay seated for the entire interval - but not so long as to be overly taxing, especially with the long recovery. Keep the power up at a reasonable intensity during the recovery - it's not coasting.
This is a workout where topography can present a real challenge to effective execution outdoors. The speeds at race effort for elite athletes can likewise present a problem for more elite athletes. The purpose of this workout is to sustain work at a specific race-pace with recovery at a relatively high-intensity that nevertheless is easy enough to be sustainable.
Take a break from the structured training and take some time to listen to your body. This is a great time to get outside if you can. Or enjoy the terrain of Zwift. Ride how you feel, but keep it on the easier side.
If you need to skip or miss a day, this is the session to take a pass on. But if just need a mental break, feel free to opt for this session over one of the harder workouts. You can also replace this with a social group ride of about an hour, in Zwift or with your friends.
This is a big session today. The volume is big and the efforts are big! Warm up followed by a long block at Zone 3 Power with surges into Zone 5. Then a set of Zone 3 intervals. Finish with another long block of Zone 3 work with Zone 5 surges.
A series of three three-step ramps. Each ramp is progressively harder than the last, and each block is then progressively harder than the one that came before it. This workout is designed to challenge your ability to make small pace changes to respond to terrain or race-day pressure.
For this workout, we have a structured warm-up. Then there are two blocks of three-repetition over-under intervals that bracket a long block of free-ride, only for this workout, we leave the natural terrain of Zwift turned ON. So pick a route with some challenging terrain - in the middle of this workout you will be free-riding, but you will still feel the terrain. A nice mix here of structure and nature variance.
Take a break from the structured training and take some time to listen to your body. This is a great time to get outside if you can. Or enjoy the terrain of Zwift. Ride how you feel, but keep it on the easier side.
If you need to skip or miss a day, this is the session to take a pass on. But if just need a mental break, feel free to opt for this session over one of the harder workouts. You can also replace this with a social group ride of about an hour, in Zwift or with your friends.
For the long ride this week, we start out with a block of SST intervals. The main long block of work consists of long, steady Zone 2 blocks punctuated by 5min of progressively more intensive SST.
5x3min at "Best Possible Average." This is a MAP (Maximal Aerobic Power) workout. The goal is to hit the same power for each - roughly 125% of FTP - 3min interval. But in this case, it's less about hitting a given power than it is about being consistent throughout. If you blow out the first one and blow up on the last, that is less ideal than five evenly paced intervals. Likewise, within each interval, try to hit the target power and hang-on.
The preference do this workout with ERG mode OFF since some fade is almost inevitable, and it is about doing the best you can rather than hitting a specific power.
Take a break from the structured training and take some time to listen to your body. This is a great time to get outside if you can. Or enjoy the terrain of Zwift. Ride how you feel, but keep it on the easier side.
If you need to skip or miss a day, this is the session to take a pass on. But if just need a mental break, feel free to opt for this session over one of the harder workouts. You can also replace this with a social group ride of about an hour, in Zwift or with your friends.
A set of long intervals focused on endurance in Zone 2. Nothing fancy here, just long bouts of solid work here. This is your last long ride, and is designed to help keep rhythm but without adding any significant fatigue. You should have the fitness by now to execute this and recover fully.