Each 10-minute-ish lap of Tempelhofer Feld: shove in an aero position into a 20km/h headwind for medium amounts of discomfort along the southern section of the airport; on the west and north, sprint ten times in 10 second blocks of increasing intensity with 20 second not-slacking-off pace in-between; wonder if I will ever feel love again by the end of that, recover for the eastern section and do it all again. Four times. It’s not so much about absolute speed at the moment (though faster is nicer, and I’d love to be doing this on a road bike rather than my cyclocross bike) as it is about mental and emotional discipline to handle what is frankly unpleasant, and which I really, really want to bail out of every time. Physiologically, I’m not sure what it does, but I find I notice if I don’t make it one of my core training sessions. On the eighth sprint on one session my brain went “Hard No,” pulled the red Emergency Stop handle, which in retrospect, looking at my heart hitting 193bpm seemed to be a pretty sensible and clear message.
