Century Plan: Late-Plan VO2max Workouts

What’s the reasoning behind the Monadnock +2 → Shortoff +2 → Old Rag +6 progression late in the Century Specialty Plan? (in LV and MV; similar one in HV)

Time-crunched bump in intensity?
Targeting left side of PD curve? (and if so why, doesn’t seem race/event-specific)
Something else?

Tim

According to the weekly tips: (Mid Vol, Week #5)

  • Then, in the event you thought you were done with VO2max work, your second workout kicks off a late-plan round of aerobic capacity work to help nudge up your sustainable power capabilities a little more prior to your most important event(s). By stressing your heart, lungs, and muscles briefly but intensely, you can find a little more room to allow your FTP to rise.

Week 6:

  • Following your midweek aerobic Endurance ride, you’ll find an extra 30 seconds tacked onto each of your VO2max repeats, our gift to you. Retaining this single high-intensity workout each week remains in the spirit of extracting some last-minute-fitness gains, but modify the workout intensity as necessary in order to fully but barely complete these relatively long high-capacity repeats.

Week 7:

  • Noodle through this week’s easy ride, then up next is one last round of VO2max repeats that grow in duration yet again. Pushing your breathing and heart rate to a very high level and then keeping it there is the essence of VO2max work. The longer you stay there, the greater the training stimulus and the higher your post-recovery capabilities. Consider this the TrainerRoad ultimate in all 3 cases considering that you won’t see VO2max intervals longer than these ones.

Thanks @mcneese.chad !!

Ok, so that’s “raise the roof” analogy. Cool.

I guess this means last minute targeting of shorter durations on PD curve? If so, ok.

Week 7 = no idea what that means. :joy:

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