Despite the hacking rain, six committed souls braved Wednesday's Turbo session at the YMCA. The session was based on three sets of eight 20 second bursts of hard effort followed by 40 seconds recovery.
I suspected from the look on Nick Curran's face that he suspected this was going to be just too easy... but by the time you get to the 7th and 8th burst, you realise why some coaches believe that short intervals (following the lessons of legendary German coach, Woldemar Gerschler) are the way forward on the turbo.
After the third block, the floor was looking somewhat slick so we switched to practice some techniques for keeping the heart rate down and the output constant... simple stuff like breathing and relaxing the shoulders!
I think that my choice of music to accompany the evening went down well... certainly the presence of only one small interval of techno seemed to be appreciated.
After 1 hour and 6 minutes, a distinctly warm group comprising Des, Brian, Chris Stone, Nick, Maria and myself experienced the warm righteous feeling that comes from heading home with 20 turbo miles under your belt on an otherwise inauspicious evening.
Thanks for coming along, everyone... others, come and give it a try. A great way to boost the fitness before the light returns to the evenings.
Adrian
ps. if anyone is interested I can send you a PDF of an article about Gerschler's short interval training plans.