"It is my personal experience that medium-length intervals are impossible"

Some sessions always leave the Doc searching for excuses

- By Michael Hutchinson

Here is a suggestion for an interval training session. Three reps of eight minutes at threshold power plus about eight per cent, with good recovery in between, like 10 or 15 minutes.

Depending a little on your physiology, the eight per cent might be a bit ambitious or a little too easy. But don't worry, the main aim is simply to do them as hard as you can while still being able to complete the last one without seeing a long tunnel leading towards a brilliant light and hearing angels singing.

It's an excellent session, and I've been planning to do it for ages. Since the spring of 2009, to be exact. For some reason, I can't do it. Many, many times I have put it in the schedule with some vague note about VO2 max improvement, and exactly as many times I've somehow managed to let the session get bumped by something else, or mysteriously found my day so full of work commitments that I can't train at all, or I've done the warm-up and decided that maybe I'm getting a cold or that actually I'm going to give up cycling.