Hey all,
I am currently in my 3 week off season recovering from oral surgery. Since I cannot ride right now, the next best thing is planning how I will ride LOL. But in all seriousness it’s time for me to plan 2022.
How’s with the past couple years, my focus is on State and national time trial championships. I also have long 150-200 road races later in the year as my primary events.
I am eager to use adaptive training from the very beginning of a new season to see how that goes, as it worked well the latter half of the year when I was able to start using it.
But I need help selecting the best type of event for my a races. The obvious answer would be to set it as a time trial since that’s the most important. However, my training has always plateaued later in the season when I have been doing sweet spot and near threshold efforts. My body is so accustomed to that and I am so good at it that I no longer see gains by doing that later in the year (early season Sweet spot in threshold works really well though, and I got a huge pump in FTP last year up until about April). I know that VO2 max and Supra threshold efforts are what I need to continue growing and improving. I’ve been riding and racing long enough that, 30 to 90 minute efforts at a high intensity are basically something I can do in my sleep. So what type of events should I set on my calendar to help me get a good mixture of VO2 and Supra threshold without doing a dedicated crit or something like that?
Let me know if the question makes sense or not, and if you all need any more info. But the basic problem is that steady state efforts don’t really see me increase my fitness come April and I know I need more VO2 style efforts to continue improving. The TT plan will not be the best for me even though I’m targeting a TT. So which event type should I set my A race as to get more V02 to keep improving? That is my weakness, and I need to build my year around improving my weaknesses.
I don’t have dates on my event yet, but they are usually around the beginning of June and the end of July respectively so I would set tentative race event dates similar in May and July and just slightly tweak as necessary once I have more information. Cheers, and thanks for the help.
So this is the classic answering the question by not answering the question, but it sounds like you could really use a 3-week VO2 Max block. I bet your FTP is a high percentage of your VO2 Max, and you really need to just suffer and do some VO2 Max work to address the weakness.
I wouldn’t specifically pick a TR plan to do this, but would manually pick 2-3 VO2 max workouts per week to complete for 3 weeks, then recover hard in that 4th week. If everything goes well and you rest enough between workouts and really hit them hard, I bet your FTP will have room to grow again.
That sounds like a good idea, but I was hesitant to do that because
A: I don’t know how AT would like me messing with my training plan by changing SS workouts to V02
B: When would I do this block (assuming my race dates are the end of May and end of July)?
I like this idea with the Century Plan, as the CP has a bit of V02 and supra-threshold already 
I personally wouldn’t worry about AT. You’ve said that you did a lot of SS in the past and then hit a plateau. From the sound of it, it sounds like you have followed TR plans (or similar) in the past. So why keep doing the same thing for the same results???
As far as planning is concerned, you mentioned that you are taking 3 weeks off. Clearly don’t hop right into it after 3 weeks off. Personally I would look into a lot of the stuff from Tim Cusick and Kolie Moore, as I think it is really informative. You should also check out the SS Progression threads on here and the Threshold Progression, as a lot of the people are applying the concept of those coaches to their own training, which may give you some ideas as well.
This is something I’d like in the plans, and I’m sure it’s been mentioned before, as well as having an event goal I’d like to be able to have a “power goal”.
Not a specific number but have an end date and let plan builder work out what’s needed to improve sprint or steady or V02.
@cnigro I definitely don’t plan to jump right into things, especially after surgery. I don’t see it as a problem with the TR plans as such, rather the plans I’m using. I always see huge gains until later in the year, and have seen year over year improvements since starting TR. My issue is that the plans I pick don’t address my weaknesses (as I select plans that play to my strengths and likes). Injecting focus on my weakness will, ideally, allow me to keep growing past my usual peaks. Hence why I like the idea of a V02 block somewhere in that (where is another matter…)
@firemunki That would be cool, but I would imagine that, as with most improvements, they can’t all happen at once. With fixing bugs in AT, I doubt that would happen anytime soon lol 
That’s why I’m asking here-how do I insert my V02 within their existing structure? Cheers!
This is probably where TR falls the most short and where either a coach or a good self assessment helps. TR can build you toward the requirements of an event and taper you down for that event but it isn’t able to identify where you fall short, determine if that weakness is actually necessary to build up for your goal event, and then shore it up if it is. Rather it does a good job of building up an allrounder for the goal event.
So if you have a particularly weak area then you have to do some of your own modifications to put more emphasis on that area.
Do you (or anyone else here) know the best way to insert a VO2 blocked into my training? I’m happy with replacing workouts with VO2 progressions, I just don’t know when to do it in the season
Take this as one man’s opinion and with a large grain of salt……
Ok so first of all what type of plan do you do in terms of volume? So if you did SSHV, I feel like after 6 weeks you could throw in a VO2 max block and see some good results. Then go back to some extensive work AKA Sweet Spot, before then focusing on threshold.
I have done high volume in the past, but this last year did the mid volume plan so I could throw in weekly races without having to worry about them in the calendar. I’d usually do sustained power plans, but I’m thinking the century/Fondo plan with a V02 block sounds nice. How would I do that within the actual system though without borking my AT/Plan builder stuff? Thanks!
I agree with @cnigro 's suggestion above for a short VO2Max block.
Take a look at Coach Chad’s suggestions for a short VO2Max block. https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/short-intense-period-before-starting-base-chads-short-ftp-boost-plan/6875/4 and some of his surrounding comments in that thread about doing a block like that BEFORE starting Base>Build>Speciality.
I will look at that today, thanks for the link!
I’m spending the next 8 weeks doing Short Track XC Specialty. It’s heavy on the VO2max and I feel like I need to try that after multiple years of sustained, marathon or Century plans.
Workouts look fearsome right now after a few weeks off: Stretch and Breakthrough all the way! Since this isn’t Plan Builder I’ll be manually adjusting with workout alternates or workout chooser.
I’m doing Low Volume, adding one or two endurance and one strength day each week. Plan Builder starts in January 2022.