Ben Healy’s Lactate Clearance Workout A: Surge, Settle, Keep Riding

Ben Healy’s Lactate Clearance Workout A is an 80-minute smart-trainer session that develops your ability to recover while continuing to ride strongly. Hard Level V+ surges transition directly into sustained Level III+ riding, challenging you to control your power, settle quickly and maintain quality without taking an easy recovery.

What happens after a hard effort can be just as important as the effort itself.

In a race or hard group ride, you might surge over a climb, respond to an attack or accelerate out of a corner—but that doesn’t necessarily mean you get to recover afterwards. Often, you still need to produce substantial power just to stay in the action.

That’s the idea behind Ben Healy’s Lactate Clearance Workout A.

The Hard Effort Is Only the Beginning

This workout combines a hard Level V+ surge at approximately 120% of FTP with sustained Level III+ riding at 85–90% of FTP.

The important part is the transition between them.

Rather than completing the hard effort and immediately backing off into easy recovery riding, you reduce the power but continue riding strongly.

That’s what makes this a lactate-clearance workout.

Learn to Settle Without Switching Off

When the Level V+ effort finishes, resist the temptation to take a few easy pedal strokes before getting yourself back on target.

Instead, bring the power down promptly and settle into Level III+.

You’re reducing the intensity—but you’re not stopping the work.

The Level III+ portion might ordinarily feel quite manageable. Coming directly after an above-threshold surge, however, it can feel considerably different.

That’s the challenge.

Can you get your breathing under control, relax your upper body and continue producing strong, consistent power rather than allowing the initial surge to compromise everything that follows?

Think of It as One Continuous Effort

One of the best ways to approach this workout is to stop thinking of the hard surge and subsequent aerobic riding as two separate intervals.

Instead, think:

Surge → settle → keep producing power.

That pattern has plenty of real-world applications. A climb can steepen and then flatten. Someone can attack before the pace settles. You can accelerate hard through a technical section and still need to maintain speed afterwards.

Training that transition can help make those changes in intensity feel much more familiar.

And Workout A is only the starting point. I’ll be developing this lactate-clearance concept through a series of progressively different Ben Healy-inspired sessions.

Want to see the complete workout, including the exact intensities, durations, recoveries and my coaching advice for executing it properly?

👉 Read the full Ben Healy’s Lactate Clearance Workout A article on CoachRay.nz

Surge. Settle. Keep producing power.