I am doing a self-experiment with training density right now, meaning 2x interval sessions each week, back-to-back. Right now doing FTP-FTP, 60 min TiZ for each. If I get fatigued, drop the second session to SST and extend if I can.
After that, not sure. If FTP has gone up, SST/TTE extension out to 90-120min. Once that’s done VO2max and then FTP work, etc. heading into race season in January all with ~15hrs/wk.
Pretty much same as always!
Frank may have stopped selling plans as one-off purchases at his website, but you can still get the plans in TrainingPeaks.
You can buy these without using Optimize. I’d be surprised if he ever pulls these out of TP. He is/was one of the top marketplace authors when I worked at TrainingPeaks
I’ll give a break when the first snow appears. 15/20 day. After that weight lifting, running, swimming, skiing, and occasionally a couple of hour on the bike. I’m not a big fan of turbo. I can do a few workouts here and there, but putting 10hours a week for 2 months, NOT AT ALL.
March 1st I’m planning to start a real base aiming a peak un June. Nothing special planned yet. I’ll see a couple of races. The real goal is being fit for the summer.
I’m 45 and will turn 46 this winter. I still have hopes of getting faster, even though I don’t plan to go on any competitive events. I used to do about 450/500 hours a year and my FTP was about 300, then I had an injury, covid, etc and I trained much less in 2022.
I feel motivated to ramp up the training hours and to get back to my pre-injury weight. I’d like to try and get to 4 w/kg in 2024, but that will take some work.
I’m thinking about focusing on a better diet, doing 3 SST rides during the week and a long ride on the weekend, and try to sprinkle in strength work and shorter workouts here and there to fill out the week.
The plan is:
2023 is/was one of my best years and it will be hard to improve. The key is always to be rested and illness free to keep the consistency up.
I’m with you. I’ve turned 46 ten years in a row!
Definetely, definitely, definitely don’t getting caught to Z2 hype. This already stole a season from me. Don’t listen the guy who said “if you gonna do 4 ride a week, all of them should be Z2.”
The correct way to refer to this is that you are Forty-Sixteen. 
Me: disappointed! I like to do VO2 work throughout the year, and will have to tweak these plans if I use them again, so that’s annoying.
Yup, if I do POL again, I will swap in VO2 since I like paring these with Thresh each week.
I’m considering taking a so-called “reverse” periodization approach in the coming season…
A few reasons for this, one being that I’ve done so much long duration sweetspot, tempo & endurance specificity work for an upcoming trip, that I’d like a change. Another being that the (outside) rides I do in winter tend to be shorter & punchier, while those in the warmer months are longer & steadier, so possessing fitness that’s trained to those ends would make it more “usable” so makes some practical sense.
Using TR’s stock plans, what’d be a reasonable way to go about implementing a “reverse” periodization approach? NB I’m used to tweaking plans heavily myself, but like to use the TR plans as a solid skeleton to do this from. Thought on this?!
To reverse periodize I think you could just ride your plans in reverse, so specialty, build, base … but maybe progress through those periods as normal.
Joe Friel wrote about that in his training bible and I believe Adam Pulford from CTS goes over it briefly in Tine Crunched Athlete podcast, in which he also goes over interval types as being intensive and extensive.
Good luck with you plan, I find it fun to experiment myself.
extra strength training. extra yoga. more mtb since less wind for mtb = less chilly.
couple hard-ish interval sessions each week inside.
Those of you who claim to “like” VO2 workouts and are intentionally scheduling them into your POL plans are psychopaths.
“Like” is actually more of a “I feel the need to suffer for the resulting benefit” in this instance 
LOL - Yeah. It’s amazing anyone actually completes more than one genuine VO2max block.
I suggest changing the nomenclature and approach. Rather than getting wound up about VO2max, just say you are working on your short term power. That’s much more mentally attractive and a lot more fun than VO2max. As a bonus, if you do a block or two of short power work, your power numbers for 1, 3, 5 minutes will very likely go up. Since almost everyone here has a power meter, you can see the improvement as you hit new max numbers. Feels really good to see a new max number and that builds enthusiasm to keep working. Compare that to puking in a bucket for three weeks then wondering if your VO2max actually improved, not seeing an FTP bump because VO2max blocks don’t immediately translate to FTP, and being disappointed. So much of what we do is about being excited and seeing results so we come back for more!!
Since 5 min max has some correlation to VO2max, folks that go deep into this stuff can make some approximations if they really want to…
FWIW, and I’ll be an outlier here, a few things:
(a) I think most amateurs make a big mistake of playing a short game instead of a long one when it comes to improving. A season is a short game. Multiple years (seasons) is a long game. Come fall, riders playing the short game are tired of training and think they need a break. They don’t. They go off and do other stuff and get distracted for several months and end up losing a lot of the cycling specific fitness they built. They go from peak back to trough. As we get older, those peaks are less high and the troughs are deeper.
When we take a break then come back to it, we have to regain all of the loss to get back to where we were. It would be better to keep going and play a long game. You can’t hold a peak, particularly in winter, but you can minimize the depth of the trough. Trough is a nice way of saying the hole you have to dig yourself out of!! It perhaps doesn’t help that the industry caters to “time crunched” riders and produces plans meant for one season at a time (short game) rather than taking riders on a longer journey. As a motivated rider, you’ll have to do some work to link your seasons together and play the long game.
(b) For cyclists, Weightlifting and Core work should be year-long components of a fitness plan. It won’t help you be faster on the bike in an obvious and immediate way. But over time it will help. Besides, 99.9% (internet fact checked number) of us are hobbiests. We ride for fun and satisfaction. Take a couple hours a week total to be healthier and your older self will love you for it. The time to start strength and mobility training habits is not at some magical age like 50, 55, 60 - it is TODAY. Don’t do this for just 8 or 12 weeks a year - do it year round.
(c) Leg work in the gym for 8-10 weeks a year is a waste of time in terms of improving you on bike power long term. You’ll just get DOMS and a short period of squats and deadlifts will likely not translate to being a faster cyclist. If you can’t incorporate those movements into a year-round plan, then I don’t think it’s worth the effort for 2-3 months. Something different than riding which I do think does translates to the bike is rowing on an erg. Rowing is a great exercise, it translates to the bike for me, and has nice bang for the buck in terms of using time efficiently. It’s great for folks with hard winters stuck inside.
(d) My days of doing 2, 3, 4 hours several times a week on the rollers are gone. While piling on endurance time during winter “base” makes a lot of sense, its mentally something I’m not gonna do. For winter, if committed to the bike, I actually like the mid-volume type plans. 45-90 min per workout and HIT or Sweetspot heavy. If I do that for 12 weeks, along with my regular weights and core, then when the weather breaks and can get outside, will switch it up to a more polarized, endurance type program. That has worked pretty darn well (when I’ve followed the plan and not been lazy). It is also mentally satisfying and doable. By the end of the HIT/SST focused blocks I’ve had enough of that and am ready for a ton of endurance work outside along with some very focused hard days or races.
$0.02. YMMV. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Have you done this ride / race yet? How is it? I’ve heard great things about it.
Yeah, it’s a solid event. We went down in 2020 (cancelled due to COVID, but got in a lap of the course), attempted in 2022 (wife crashed out and needed a ride to the ER), and finally finished the 100 this year (2023).
It’s a well-run event, well supported on course, good communication from race director, etc. Entry fees have been appropriate for size/scale of event. Usually a few really fast guys, but not the full pro turnout you get a BWR or Lifetime events. Dylan Johnson won a few times, Ian Boswell another year, forget who won this year.
The course is a ball-buster. Pancake flat, windy, and almost 100% gravel - just a short paved lead-in, and one short paved section around mile 20. So no recovery and you don’t want to get caught out solo. The gravel is maintained, but coming out of winter, sections of it are a potholed mess. Makes the first ~15 miles interesting, as you try to avoid hitting too many while riding in a large pack going 18mph or so. After a few course features (mud section, corn field, short paved bit), it thins out enough and you’re just hoping the wheel you’re on doesn’t do anything stupid.
Coming from DC, it’s a similar drive to the OBX. Makes for a reasonable long weekend. We usually head down Thur, stay on the beach (though it’s too cold to actually do the beach), and get in some pre-rides (to the fort on Thu PM, 15-20 miles of the course on Sat), race, then home Sunday.
Not sure which category I’ll enter for 2024. Probably not 150 - don’t want to commit to that much training over the winter. Maybe do the 50 mile single-speed and shoot for a podium. Or just 100 mile geared again and try for sub-6:00.
My local shop ride is the only fast ride around here, all the others are big, slow groups or a drive away.
Downside is they don’t stop attacking or driving the pace until mid-December.
I may start skipping every other weekend starting in November to start doing 5+ hour rides more consistently.
I’ll either suffer more on the weekends I do show up or realise I should have been doing this all year.