I am relegated to trainer rides at the moment and will be performing my 3 hour sweet spot training ride from SS3. I am building myself a little workout to keep my mind from going numb. My plan workout currently looks like this:
10min Z1 warmup
20min Z2
repeat 30 x 1 min Z3,
1 min Sweet spot
20 min Z2
Repeat 30 x 1 min Z3
1 min Sweet spot
5 min Z2
5 min CD
This gives me a total time spent in Sweet spot of 60 minutes for a 3 hour ride.
I usually ride with a buddy, and we take 1 minutes pulls when we are trying to ride “pretty hard”. i built this workout to simulate this.
My question is, would the above workout suffice? or would it be better to spend longer blocks of time in sweet spot than 1 minute.
I would mix it up a bit. But you are on the right track of finding a way to make a weekend sweet spot ride work on the trainer better.
So if you had any races with long climbs, gravel racing, time trials or etc I would look at doing longer blocks of sweet spot. But if a typically weekend ride or race for you is taking pulls and such then this would work as well. Simulate your goals.
Could do one set like this and another set with longer steadier efforts. If I were to look at sweet spot group ride rarely do I see long steady efforts at sweet spot, its more the cumulative.
You might find switching every minute to be more of a pain. I don’t know what type of set up you have if you watch movies or listen to music. But say you listen to music you could switch effort with each song. Then you don’t have to look at a timer even.
If you have Zwift I like to use either group rides or segments as intervals. Pick a climb, lap or etc to do at sweet spot. Again not looking at a timer but a point to finish at.
Thanks Jake! that really helps. especially the knowledge that it is more the cumulative sweet spot time that matters more. My A race is mostly rolling hills, so I think I will do what you suggested and do the first block as my repeats as they are, and then another set with longer efforts.