Bike Workout: Over/Unders

I thought I'd share one of my favorite threshold workouts.  It's called Over/Unders.  I haven't written about this yet - because I haven't really written about anything lately - but I found out late last year that I have exercise-induced asthma.  Being able to breathe has completely changed my training, and this workout is a prime example.  It would trigger an asthma attack and the workout would quickly spiral down the drain.  But now that I have that under control, I'm loving this workout.  It's tough, but time goes quickly and you get a pretty good bang for your buck in terms of getting in a lot of work in a fairly short period of time.


The workout:

Warm up (15-25 minutes)
    In the warm up I include a 5' effort building from 70% to 100% of FTP.  Then I ride easy for a bit and then do 3x30" (30") at 100-120% of FTP.  Then I ride easy for a few minutes and start the main set.

Main Set (55 minutes)
3x [3x (3' @ 90-95% of FTP, 2' @ 105-110% of FTP)]  
5' Easy between intervals

 Cool Down


So the main set is basically three 15-minute intervals where you alternate 3 minutes at 90-95% of FTP and 2 minutes at about 105% of FTP.  You should end each interval with an average power around threshold.  Bouncing back and forth above and below threshold really breaks up the intervals and makes time go quickly. 

Here's what it looks like. Yellow is power.