The below workouts can be done on either a mountain bike or road bike and will be useful as part of any One Hour Series program you develop. They are designed to maximize your cycling fitness, however, not to increase your cycling skills. While some skill development will happen naturally, you may need to devote additional training time to cycling if your ambitions require significant improvement in technical riding, group riding, etc, so keep this in mind. In my opinion, developing skills is best NOT done in conjunction with high intensity work--you will invariably back off on intensity as you are trying to learn new movements or habits. Don't stress about it--just plan appropriately and be honest about the fact that if you choose to make the black diamond loop at the cycle park your time trial effort and it feels really scary, you're not going to be able to approach real high intensity.

For those that are keen to be outside as much as possible, I've tried to include outdoor versions of many of the stationary bike workouts. It will be important that, at minimum, you have some easily accessible way to keep track of time. A cycle computer with real time speed is also useful, especially for rides involving long stretches of easy terrain. Time to bring on the (apparent) wind!

• C1: 1:1 interval. Choose a stretch of uncrowded highway that is roughly half a mile long. Hit it as hard as you can, noting the time. Round UP to the nearest 10 seconds and add 15%, then round again. This is your WI target time. Double your WI target time ,and start each new WI after this duration has elapsed. For example, if my first half mile takes 1:15, I'd round up to 1:20 and add 15% to get 1:32. I'd round this to 1:30 and this would be my WI target time. I'll continue to tackle the half mile section of road, leaving every three minutes (double the WI target time), until I can't do it in 1:30. If you don't go really really hard on that first interval you might have to suffer through a great many intervals! [15+ minutes]
• C2: Hill interval. Find a big hill or a section of a big hill. It should have a short flat section at the bottom. Mark off a section anywhere from a quarter mile (400 meters) to a mile (1600 meters) long. Gaining speed on the flat part at the bottom start your watch and hammer all the way to the top as fast as possible. When you get to the top (or the top of the section), glance at your watch and note the time, rounding up to the nearest 10 seconds. Add 10% to the time, rounding again to make it easy. This is your interval time. Do as many laps on the hill as you can under the interval time, leaving, ideally, at double the interval time. As an example: if it takes me 1:43 to get up my hill on the first go, I round that to 1:50 (or 110 seconds) and add 10% which is 2:01, which I round to an even 2:00. My goal is therefore to make it up the hill in under 2:00 as many times as I can, leaving from the bottom of the hill every 4:00. Ouch. Note, you'll need to head back down the hill pretty much right away--let yourself coast and try your best to recover! [10+ minutes]
• C3: Double Trouble. Find a loop course with little traffic (you can use a MTB loop as well). You'll want to make the loop short enough so that you can push hard the whole way--I like to be able to get 'er done in 10-15 minutes or less. Push hard, take 5 minutes rest, then do it again and aim for a negative split. Push HARD--oh, I already said that! [approx. 30+ minutes]
• C4: Time trial. 10 miles as fast as you can. Take notes of the conditions so you can compare subsequent results. This effort will be long enough for you to try out some mental strategies (check out ultramentalbook.com if you don't have any!) as you struggle to keep your motivation and your intensity high throughout. Remember, a consistent pace over time is the way to go--if you spend everything you have in the first few minutes you'll be sorry! FYI--I usually taste blood in the back of my throat on this one! Something to shoot for, perhaps. [25+ minutes--at least for me!]

Notes:

1. These workouts will be hard, but probably not as hard as the indoor ones. I've never quite endured the seemingly unendurable agony that grips my thighs after a good indoor session when on a real bike.
2. Just because these aren't Baseline Workouts doesn't mean that you shouldn't use the metrics available to you and attempt to meet or exceed previous performances. Take note of the weather and wind conditions so you can more objectively assess your efforts after the fact.