Stewart Fleming wrote:
Benjamin Weiner wrote:

P.S. Seems that they showed doing a lot of 4 minute intervals improves
your performance over 4 minute periods. Specificity ...

Consider a road racing pack doing steady state at 40kph.
Your break goes with a jump then a sustained effort at 50kph.

40kph for 4 mins = 2.66km
50kph for 4 mins = 3.33km

Your break is now 0.67km ahead on the road. The pack at steady state
will take 1 min to cover that extra distance. So you have a lead of 1
minute and you can revert to steady state. The sustained effort after
the initial jump is what gives the break a chance to succeed.

(If, of course, there is no reaction from the bunch...but if it's the
7th attack that day...who knows?)

On a different tack, Eddy B recommended never doing more than 2km
intervals for time trial preparation. For much the same reason as given
in the article - recovery is easier.

Well, yeah, I can believe that there are cases where going hard for a
4 minute interval gives you a race advantage. But the same could
probably be said for 1 minute intervals, or a high LT that lets you
ride harder all race long. It gets back to the question of, what is
the most effective regimen given the need to recover, and for most
of us, limited time? Is it really easier to recover from 2km intervals
at a 2km pace than 20 min intervals at a somewhat slower pace?

When I said "Specificity" I was trolling for Andy Coggan, who usually
has an opinion on these things - I could take a guess but don't want
to presume.

Ben
Doing whiskey intervals with beer recovery this week