Lactate Clearance
180 min
High intensity
Let slow-twitch fibres clear the lactate the fast-twitch fibres produce: three blocks of progressively longer efforts alternating 90% with 110-115% of CP, between an hour of warm-up and an hour of cool-down.
Decathlon CMA CGM Team
WorldTour team
Lactate Clearance
180 min
High
9 / 10
Advanced
Outdoors
The session
The workout
Written as a share of critical power, so it fits every rider. In Vekta it becomes your watts, with the W′ cost shown before you ride.
Decathlon CMA CGM Team
Why this workout
The breakdown
Inside the workout
Three blocks of progressively longer efforts alternating 90% of CP with 110–115%, designed so the slow-twitch fibres clear the lactate the fast-twitch fibres produce above LT2. The building structure forces the body to cross and recover from threshold again and again, which is the clearance capacity sustained hard racing needs.
Six rounds of ninety seconds at 90% and thirty at 115%; then four rounds of two minutes and one; then four of three minutes and one, with fifteen minutes between blocks and an hour of endurance either side. Each block lengthens the under and keeps the over short, so the clearance work grows as the fatigue grows.
The W′ balance trace in Vekta shows the three blocks as three sawtooths of increasing width; if the third block's baseline drifts down, the under at 90% was too high for the day. Targets track the rider's current CP.
A build or race-block session from a WorldTour team, weekly, outdoors. Three hours all told.
Lactate Clearance
Stimulus
Advanced
Workout level
Outdoors
Best ridden
Road,
DISCIPLINE
The stimulus
Lactate Clearance, explained
Surge above threshold, settle just under it, and teach the body to clear the cost.
What it is
Over-under and variable-pace intervals that alternate short surges above critical power with longer segments just below it. The "under" is not recovery; it is the working part, where lactate produced in the surge is used as fuel while still riding hard.
Why it matters
Races are not steady. The ability to absorb an attack, a short climb or a crosswind surge and return to a hard pace without blowing is what separates finishing in the group from being dropped. This is the trainable version of that ability.
The surges should feel manageable and the "unders" should feel like the real work. If you are recovering during the under, it is too easy; if you cannot finish the set, the surge is too hard or too long.
These sessions map directly onto race demands and are the best way to expose whether an athlete's W′ recovers under load. The W′ balance trace after the session shows the pattern clearly: it should dip on each surge and partially recover through the under.
The session's surges and unders are written in % of CP and personalised in Vekta. The W′ preview shows whether the athlete can complete the set as written; the post-ride analysis names each surge and the recovery between them.
Common questions
What is an over-under interval?
How far over and under should I go?
Is this a threshold or a VO2 max session?
Go deeper
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