Introducing a new blog series - Workout of the Week!
The McCarthy Special is an anaerobic cycling workout on Zwift. It's a 60-minute workout with three x 9-minute intervals, with each interval split into three x 3-minute segments. The main benefit of doing The McCarthy Special is to increase your lactate threshold, meaning you can bike or run faster for longer without getting the heavy-legged feeling of fatigue that comes with the build-up of blood lactate.
Each week I'll be sharing a swim, bike or run workout of the week and I'll cover 4 things:
structure of the workout
type of workout (recovery, tempo, HIIT, VO2 max etc..)
training benefits of this workout
toughness of the workout (based on my feeling of 1-10)
So, let's kick off the with the first one in this series, The McCarthy Special!
What is the Workout?
"The McCarthy Special" is an above lactate threshold and anaerobic workout on Zwift and was developed by former Track World Champion Mike McCarthy.
Don't worry if you don't use ZWIFT - later on I'll explain how to apply the concept of this workout to your run workouts!
I've read about this workout on some of the Zwift and Reddit forums, and common words that kept cropping up were "killer", "fall off my bike", "gasping for air" and "mentally damaging".
Sounds good I thought - I'd love to have a crack at that!!
This delightful one-hour workout begins with an easy 10-minute warm up that ramps from 30% FTP to 70% FTP.
Then come 3 pretty intense intervals of 9 minutes each, with 9 minutes zone 2 recovery in between.
The 9-minute intervals in The McCarthy Special on Zwift are split into 3 segments of 3 minutes each:
S1 = 3mins @ 100% FTP
S2 = 3mins @ 112% FTP
S3 = 3mins @ 125% FTP
Finally, we have a much needed and well-deserved 10-minute cool down!
Type of Workout
The McCarthy Special can be described as "above lactate threshold" or "anaerobic" workout.
By doing workouts like The McCarthy Special we can train our bodies to tolerate higher intensity exercise for longer periods of time.
What is Lactate Threshold?
We reach our lactate threshold (LT) when our bodies are creating more lactic acid than we can get rid of during exercise.
It's that burning feeling you get in your muscles during intense exercise. When you start to feel that, you know you've gone past your lactate threshold!
At this point, we are forced to back off or slow down.
When we go beyond the lactate threshold our workouts become ANAEROBIC. This means that glucose is being used for energy instead of oxygen (unlike "aerobic" workouts which get energy from oxygen).
This glucose is created through glycolysis and helps to produce energy quickly, which is what we need for these short, high-intensity efforts.
But the process of glycolysis also produces lactic acid, and this is the stuff that makes your muscles ache and burn! Nice!
Benefits of This Workout
So we know these workouts are hard, and by the end you'll probably be questioning your sanity - so why do them?
As I've mentioned, one of the key benefits of The McCarthy Special is to increase your lactate threshold. There are also a few other benefits - let's take a closer look at them.
Increase Lactate Threshold
Doing anaerobic workouts regularly trains our bodies to manage and remove lactic acid quicker and will increase our lactate threshold over time. A higher lactate threshold means that we can perform harder and faster for longer and we slow down the build up of lactate and therefore delay the feeling of tiredness in our legs.
In race-situations, anaerobic workouts will help you keep up with the pack during surges, make a race-winning breakaway, and keep up the power on a short but steep climb.
Increase FTP
Pushing big power of 125% FTP for 3 minutes will increase your power over time. Your going to be making your legs stronger and build up more muscular endurance.
Boost Metabolism
These workouts are know to make our metabolisms work harder after we've finished, allowing us to burn calories for hours after we finished.
Protect Against Injury
By building your muscle strength and muscle mass, your joints will be better protected meaning you’ll have greater protection against injury.
More Energy
Consistent anaerobic exercise increases your body’s ability to store glycogen (what your body uses as energy), giving you more energy for your next bout of intense physical activity. This can improve your athletic ability
Workout Summary
Here's a summary of my first attempt at The McCarthy Special!
Warm Up
Not a great fan of the short ramp warm-up in this workout to be honest. The power ramped up from 30% to 70% and there were no leg-openers or bursts to get the lungs pumping. Kind of felt it wasn't enough and didn't get my body 100% ready for what was coming next!
Better warm-ups I've done are 12-15 minutes and include 3 x 30x bursts above FTP at increasing cadence. I guess you can just do these yourself during the warm-up if you disable ERG mode - maybe I'll do that next time as I only just thought of that while writing this!
Interval 1
Completed the first interval surprisingly well.
I was able to keep a high cadence (90 RPM) through S1 and S2, and for about the first minute of S3. Towards the end of the third segment I began my fight against the pedals and time was beginning to slow down!
Jeez, I still have 2 more of these to do!
Interval 2
Hit the first segment ok, focused on trying to keep a high cadence and deep breaths!
Into the second segment and things started to take a turn for the worse! First minute and a half was solid but come the final minute the HR was going up a lot and I still had the final segment to go!
With about a minute of S3 remaining I just couldn't hold the power anymore and had to turn ERG mode off.
Even so, pushed through to the end and kept the power at around 200-250W but was defo red-lining at this point!
Interval 3
For the last interval I knew that if I kept ERG mode at 100%, it was going to be seriously tough to finish - so I moved the power down to 94% of FTP.
I believe it's better to keep good form rather than ride with bad form just so you can hit some numbers.
Apply the Concept to Other Forms of Training
Although this workout is done on Zwift, you can apply the concept to other forms of training.
You can use either the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale or heart rate zones to copy the power zones listed above.
Segment 1 - this would be an 8 on the RPE of 8, or a low zone 4 effort for heart rate
Segment 2 - this would be a 9 on the RPE scale, or a high zone 4 heart rate
Segment 3 - this would be a 10 on the RPE scale and zone 5 heart rate. MAX EFFORT!
Final Thoughts
Sadly, this was the first workout on Zwift that I've failed to properly finish. You can see in the Ride Report below that my power fell off at the end of the second interval and the third interval was at slightly lower power overall.
I'll give this a toughness rating of 9/10. Nice!
Still managed to burn off 666 calories which I believe is a couple of bottles of Leo beer - so I'm off to 7/11 rehydrate!
I'll be back to have another crack at this one in a few weeks, and maybe I'll do it in the evening to see if that makes it any easier!
Hope you enjoyed reading and got some new knowledge.
And remember: Workout Hard. Play Harder!
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