At this time of the season, many riders feel a bit burned out. The usual advice is to take a decent break from the bike, and I certainly think that it is sound. Indeed, I wound up taking nearly a week off myself when we moved from Chicago to Virginia. But if it hadn’t been for the move, I’m not sure I would have taken the time. Rather, I would have returned to early season workouts, endurance rides, tempo and lots of sweet spot (sst). After the sheer agony of anaerobic intervals and two crits a week, the dull pain, perhaps better described as a pressure on the legs, of sst is a welcome change.
When I was able to get back on the bike, I focussed solely on this type of threshold work — climbing the local mountains at threshold intensity, doing the middle hour or so of rides at sweet spot intensity, and of course, a few sessions of the ubiquitous 2×20. For the latter two I discovered that to stay in the proper training zone in this (hilly) area requires me to ascend the hills at nearly a walking pace and hammer on the downhills. Despite the natural variation of cadence required by the rolling terrain, I have definitely lost some "snap" in the legs and will have to put in some time working on my sprint so that I don’t get gapped in ‘cross starts.
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