Today's workout again focuses on helping to develop our endurance and aerobic capacity - both key attributes for mountain biking.
Long days in the saddle, with some tricky terrain that requires a bursts of power to get through - this is where being able to produce spikes in power output, repeatedly for a few minutes at a time is critical for success. These efforts are not all out max efforts, but surges above threshold, but still a controlled, aerobic effort.
We are completing two blocks of Zone 3 effort at the start of this session to generate some fatigue and give the 3 minute Zone 5 efforts much more of a 'race feel' vs doing them fresh.
The 3 minutes Z5 efforts are to be completed as much as possible, out of the saddle as we imitate a very steep single track section!