I’m on the LV plan and just entering the specialty phase.
I just completed the first VO2 workout of the 2nd week and felt pretty good, so extended the workout at <50% FTP for 25mins and could have gone on for ages but decided to stop it there as I know fatigue creeps up on you.
Is there any benefit in this or any drawback ?
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You said it. You might reach a point where you need a bit of extra rest between workouts. Or like me know when my body is at its limit and revert to the planned workouts and planned time for them.
I did go from LV to MV as LV was not stressing me at all after the first phase.
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Its an experiment of 1 person - you.
Six months ago I did it (adding ‘junk miles’) for 6 weeks. Ended up hitting around 9-11 hours/week average. The fatigue mounted on a couple weeks before Christmas but I kept focusing on time at the expense of some intervals. And it worked for me, and still benefiting. However I knew from the past that I appear to get the best gains by focusing on volume during the cooler winter months. I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t experimented.
All that said, if you have an A event at the end of specialty then see @TrekCentury post above.
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Adding extra weekly volume is almost always a net benefit provided you can absorb the extra load, so as long as it’s not impacting the quality of subsequent sessions I’d say go for it.
There’s probably a distinction to be made between ‘fitness’ and ‘recovery’ benefit though. 50% is firmly in recovery territory and won’t provide a ton of stimulus to the aerobic system, relatively speaking- probably better than nothing, but bumping that to 65% would be a more efficient way to do so if that’s your goal. On the other hand, if you feel better and or/enjoy just spinning the legs after a hard session that’s all good too- either way it’s probably good to be clear on your purpose though.
My inspiration for all this is a few local 20 somethings, and a couple 30/40 somethings that have seen big gains from 12-20 hours of mostly super easy “junk miles” deep into what most call the recovery zone.
For that reason I didn’t really need to tell myself the story below, I’ve watched these people transform into much stronger cyclists. And I’ve seen aerobic gains myself.
Story I tell myself uses a logic chain like this… IF training “around” max stroke volume provides a stimulus, and IF training a little below max stroke volume provides a stimulus, and IF my intensity to reach max stroke volume is in the 50-60% ftp range, then adding ‘junk miles’ can in fact be a long-term stimulus for the heart (with respect to stroke volume). And if I see these types of small volume increases deliver gains over longer 3-12 month horizons, then it really doesn’t matter that an exercise physiologist drew a ‘recovery’ line at 55% ftp.
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Back when I raced, 30 years ago now, there was a cat 1 on my team. Driving around town you would always see that guy on his bike. He must have ridden 25 hours per week always going at a snail’s pace.
At the time, none of us knuckle head cat 4s understood what he was doing. Now I understand.
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During base/build, I always ride 30min to good stretch of road, do the intervals even farther and then limp back to home at ~50-60% of FTP. It hasn’t increased FTP too much (1-3% per load cycle) but TTE is grown very good. This way have doubled volume, but same time doing 3:1 loading/recovery cycle. Usual 5:1 would be too hard this way.
But for specialty, this is probably different. With first 4 week, maybe ok but last 4 week before event you might want to taper and shed the fatigue. Better to stick to prescribed plan during that time and be more conservative.
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