Originally Posted by Drew Eckhardt

On non-recovery weeks my 12 mile morning commute is a nice sweet spot ride except when I need to sprint to beat traffic lights (there are 24, only one of which is a right turn) or feel like a hard five minutes on the one reasonable stretch of road without too many traffic lights.

I leave the office late so the roads are empty in the evening and I can really work hard. After a brief warm up I start with the ten minutes of pain trying to beat my best 10 minutes. Where there's less distance between lights I accelerate quickly and ride above my critical power. A good ride ends up with xPower (close to Normalized Power) around 90% of critical power, average power close to that, and 500 kilojoules of work. Then I ride another mile to evaporate sweat so I'm not blinded when I stop.

Last week my four commuting days totaled 5:42 moving with 144 minutes zone 4 or harder and 68 at a tempo pace. Plus 25 minutes parked at traffic lights/stop signs.