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My Toughest Workout: Olympic Road Cyclist Kristin ArmstrongHow 6 little, brutal minutes help the Gold Medalist outlast the competition Last Updated: Jul 27, 2012| ByMichelle Hamilton 
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Overview
Kristin Armstrong was a nervous wreck. Not because the cyclist will soon be defending her 2008 Olympic gold medal at the London Games (on Aug. 1), but because it was Thursday night and the morning’s workout would involve pain. Lots of it.
The hill interval session seemed innocuous on paper: six minutes of climbing, repeated five times. But the reality of the all-out effort made Armstrong, 38, tremble. “I try to be all cool-cat about it, but I get grumpy,” she says. “My husband will be like, what’s your problem? Then he says, ‘oh, you have intervals tomorrow, right?’”
One could say Armstrong has a Ph.D. in pain. Her willingness to hurt has earned her a third trip to the Olympics, where she’s competing as the United States’ top-ranked female time-trialist. At Athens in 2004, Armstrong (no relation to Lance) placed eighth in the women’s road race (140 kilometers). Four years later, she took gold in the 24-kilometer time trial (a speed test; the 2012 event is 29-kilometer), covering the course in a scorching 34 minutes, 51.72 seconds. The silver medalist, Britain’s Emma Pooley, was more than 24 seconds behind her.
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In London, Armstrong will need to hold off Pooley in both events on her home soil to win. Enter the 5 x 6. The workout sharpens Armstrong’s speed right before competition. Its high intensity increases her threshold pace (her ability to sustain a fast pace over distance), puts more fast-twitch muscle fibers on task, and elevates her mental game. “The intervals give me that last edge,” she says. “They make you dig to places you don’t normally go.”
Her Workout
Four weeks before a competition, once a week, for three weeks, Armstrong hammered out the repeats on Bogus Basin, a long, steady climb near her home in Boise, Idaho. Using the same hill every week let her gauge her progress and resist the temptation to cheat the pace. She stayed in the saddle and kept her RPMs (pedal revolutions per minute) at 90-plus. “I go hard as I can for three minutes, talk myself into it for a minute, then hold on for dear life,” she says.
Six minutes later, Armstrong collected her lungs (usually by leaning over her handlebars, gasping), rolled down for a 7- to 10-minute recovery, and repeated five more times.
Armstrong did the workouts alone because time-trialing is an individual grit test, a “race of truth” as she puts it. If she was thinking anything mid-workout, or while cooling down on the ride home, it was of winning. “Standing on the podium in 2008 was surreal,” she says. “Once you’ve won, the only thing you want is to win again.”
Do It Yourself
To get a similar challenge to Armstrong’s tough workout, try doing three repeats that are 3 to 4 minutes long, recovering for five minutes between each. The interval effort should be hard – about a 9 on a 10-point scale of perceived exertion.
Perform the workout on a hill with a three to five percent grade—the same as Armstrong uses. Anything steeper slows your cadence and changes the focus of the workout. Warm up for at least 15 minutes, including four 30-second surges. You want to execute the intervals at a hard effort, but keep your pace and cadence as even as possible throughout the workout. Roll back down and spin until you’re ready to climb again.
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