One-Hour Workout: Super Simple 70.3 Bike Intervals
Improve your bike speed and power with this classic workout.
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This week’s One-Hour Workout is taken from coach Matt Fitzgerald’s Super Simple Ironman 70.3 Triathlon Training Plan and, as the name suggests, it’s a super simple bike workout! Taken from Week 10 of the 16-week plan, it’s a 50-minute ride with some three-minute harder efforts scattered throughout the ride.
While training and physiology can be complicated, Fitzgerald explains why he likes to keep things simple: “First, I find them to be less mentally stressful than complex training plans. Why make your training so complex that it is unnecessarily mentally taxing in addition to being necessarily physically taxing? Second, the results of a very basic, and highly repetitive, training plan are predictable, and predictability of effects is a major virtue in a training plan…Finally, it’s easier to measure and monitor progress in a training plan with lots of repetition. You can make apples-to-apples comparisons of your performance in difference instances of the same workout. This is important, because seeing progress inspires future progress.”
With this workout, spend the first 10 minutes gradually warming up and building effort, before riding at a steady aerobic pace, think RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) 6-7/10. Once you feel well warmed up and you’re moving well, start to include the five sets of three-minute harder efforts, taking two to three minutes recovery between each interval. These should be done at RPE 8/10.
Once you’ve done all five sets of efforts, take some time to spin relaxed and easy for five to 10 minutes (or longer, if time allows).
One-Hour Workout: Super Simple 70.3 Bike Intervals
Warm-up
10 min. easy riding
Main set
40 min. steady aerobic riding RPE 6-7/10, including:
5 x 3 min. RPE 8/10 with 2-3 min. recovery between each
Cool-down
5-10 min. easy riding
RELATED: Want to transform your triathlon knowledge, training, and performance? Check out 10 Weeks to Your Best 70.3—a complete training program led by top endurance coach Jim Vance—free with Outside+ membership!