Workout: Two by Twenty Minutes
This workout also serves as a self-assessment, because it is designed to help measure an important fitness level: your current anaerobic threshold heart rate number. Anaerobic means without oxygen. Anaerobic threshold means that point where you can no longer produce energy aerobically. Your body then crosses over into anaerobic metabolism as a source of the energy.
Purpose:
The higher the percentage of maximum heart rate you can sustain for the duration of the test, the fitter you are. If you have never done this workout before you may want to go conservative the first time until you get the feel for what the workout is like. Retest in a month or 6 weeks to see if you can sustain a higher average heart rate two times in 20 minutes. It is important that you are fully rested before doing this workout and give yourself plenty of recovery time after.
Workout Plan:
Warm up for 5 minutes to the bottom of zone 2 then gradually increase heart rate every minute for the next 5 minutes until you have reached your anaerobic threshold number. Sustain that number for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, recover to the bottom of zone 2 for 1 for 5 minutes. Make sure you drink plenty of water during this recovery period and allow your legs and body to relax. After 5 minutes of recovery begin the second 20 minute set by increasing your heart rate again to the same heart rate that you averaged for the first 20 minutes. Hold this heart rate intensity for a total of 20 minutes. After completing both 20-minute intervals, answer the question: was that the hardest I could work for the total duration of time (40 minutes). If the answer is yes, then your average heart rate for each of the 20 minute segments is usually within 5 bpm of your anaerobic threshold training pace.
Warm down over the next 5 minutes to zone 1 or lower. Take the next day off from training or train in very low zones to allow 48 hours of recovery.
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