I have been meaning to get back to this. I will see if I can make time soon (today?).
No problem. Sounds great—thanks so much!
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Working on the draft. This is a work in progress as I record the initial steps. Then I will add the workout juggling.
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Add the SSB1 Plan.
- Push Week 5 - (That also moves Week 6, to make an open week right after Week 4 in SSB1)
- Move Week 6 up to the open week - (Right after Week 4 in SSB1)
- Manually drag the “Week 6” Annotation up to the relocated week - (This does not happen when you move the week)
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Add the SSB2 Plan, right after Week 5 of SSB1.
- Push Week 3 - (That also moves Weeks 4, 5 & 6, to make an open week right after Week 2 in SSB2).
- Copy Week 6 from SSB1 above, into the open week - (Right after Week 2 in SSB2).
- Optional: Add an annotation for the new Week 6 recovery by copying the text from the original annotation above (There is no way to copy a complete Annotation at this time).
That sets the initial plan in place, but does not leave the best placement of the Ramp Tests and workouts. That takes another set of steps to come soon.
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Making the initial changes to the adjusted plan above:
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Move Ramp Test from Week 1 of the SSB2 section up one week, to Week 5 of the SSB1 section.
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Move Carillon from Week 5 of the SSB1 section down one week, to Week 1 of the SSB2 section.
- Essentially you swap the first workouts between these two weeks.
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Delete Bluebell from Week 3 of the SSB2 section, and replace it with a Ramp Test.
This gets a basic swap with Ramp tests at the start of each tri-phase, and gets the TSS mostly laid out with a desired ramp rate.
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Thank you very much! I really appreciate it.
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@mcneese.chad I just wrapped up the final week of the alternate SSB plan. I think the extra recovery week worked out really well. I finished all the workouts and had a pretty good FTP bump with small FTP increase after the first ramp test (week 6), and a healthy increase after the second ramp test (week 10). Jepson was really hard at higher FTP. And… I’m not gonna lie… I was a little worried about tackling Palisade both times with higher FTP. The only bad workout I had was Mary Austin, but I think that was because of under-fueling. I finished strong with Lamark and Laconte.
One observation about the alternate plan: I felt like deleting Bluebell disrupted the VO2max progression. I adjusted by doing Dade -1 in place of Spencer +2. Otherwise, the alternate plan worked out really well for me.
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Good deal. I know it worked better for me last year, and I have the same thing set for this December.
I agree on Bluebell. I might reword that and do something different. It was just the “easy” thing to do, but may be worth a swap.
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I’m wondering if doing the ramp test in place of Brasstown would work??? It would cut the recovery week short, but keep Bluebell in the plan. Not sure I like that idea better than what I did with Dade -1, but it might work for folks who don’t need full recovery week and want to maintain the SSB VO2 progression.
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Thanks, I am on week 4 of SSB1 mid volume and I need some rest for sure (46yrold)
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I am using the 4,3,3 progression and feeling like it is going well. I too was looking at moving the last ramp test to the sunday before bluebell in order to keep the VO2 progression. Plan is to add some endurance/recovery time after the ramp test to fill out the volume for the week.
I’m not overly concerned with this affecting recovery. I always feel that the ramp test is brutal during the effort, but feel little lasting effect due to the relatively short nature of the test.
I’ll report back and see if @mcneese.chad thinks this is an alteration worth incorporating.
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Sure, I think you can shift around to avoid dropping Bluebell. I may even try a version of it this season. I am just finishing the 4 before the first recovery week, so I will keep that in mind.
Here is what I just tossed together:
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If you have built a plan using Plan Builder, how do you adjust the plan to add in extra recovery weeks? I know that you can still push a week, but by adding in extra rest weeks the later parts of the plan will also be affected as you will need to lose some of the later work weeks before your A race. Any thoughts anyone?
Would be a good option for TR to build in to Plan Builder
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Not really possible in any clean way right now. You can sledgehammer the PB plan, but it leads to a mess, IMHO.
So if you want this kind of adjustment, you are forced to do it the “old” way and just add one plan at a time. I added my Base, adjusted it as above, and then added my Build and Specialty after. I then adjusted those manually, again like the old ways.
With these adjustments and the current implementation of the Plan Builder, they don’t mix well at all, unfortunately.
One more option (that I chose to ignore since my Build and Specialty adjustments were "easy) is to do the Base like above manually. Then you MIGHT be able to use PB with a post date on the calendar, to fill in after the Base. But unless you are “done” with the Base, I suspect it might double up on workouts. I honestly have been afraid to even try this since I didn’t want to mess up the work I did to mod the base, so I am speculating on what happens there.
Many thanks Chad, really helpful. I thought that might be the case. I have laid out a plan already and am nearly 5 weeks into SSB1 so will see how I go and may have to do some sledgehammering later.
Would be good if the TR team could add in an option for more recovery into the Plan Builder - maybe they are already working on that…
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What would happen if you put recovery weeks in as events. insert a recovery week into your calendar as a C stage race, with rest days as 1 minute, 1 TSS and workouts with the time and TSS you plan. Then you can just copy the week into every time you want it.
After doing that, try plan builder.
Just a thought…
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Thanks Chad
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