Great question, CDR and great timing. I was looking at the break dangling in front of the pack by only about 15 seconds yesterday. I'm thinking to myself, "I think I can bridge that, but what the hell am I going to do when I get there?" My FTP is for crapola right now and I've got basically no recovery. The only thing I could do was try to get other people to do the dirty work.

I've done an interval similar to what tombailey described. They really suck. I think I did a 30 second sprint at 200%, 5 minutes at FTP, then a 10 second sprint. If memory serves, I couldn't really do them right. The 5 minutes at FTP would kill me. Like you were describing, I just couldn't recover enough from the sprint.

I think the recovery at, say, 60% of FTP sounds like it could be a pretty big help. Like you, I end up gasping and coughing at 10 mph. I try to keep the pedals turning, because it does seem like keeping the circulation up helps clear my legs. Probably need to actually put out some sort of power, though. Ugh.

CDR, your numbers always seem off to me. Your claimed FTP seems too low and the sprint speeds you talk about seem too high. I wonder if you're not a tick stronger than you really think. I just can't reconcile the two (and I understand that one has very little to do with the other). If you're truly a Cat2 with a 220W FTP, I'm impressed as hell. Even your best of 260W seems low. I will say this, your videos show a guy with a lot of racecraft. You have a great pack presence and a real talent for moving around in the group. You can tell it's not your first day at the rodeo.