I’ll be having 5 - 8 days off training with travelling away for Christmas (depending how plans pan out). I’m now into week 5 of SSBMV1, so already have a rest week coming up 16th - 22nd.
Not too sure it’s worth FTP testing then doing a couple of workouts before a short break. Also with enforced time off coming up, I don’t feel like the timing of this rest week is the most productive for me.
I’m sure there are some others who have/had the same dilemma before. What would be most beneficial? Stick with it? Skip rest week and crack on with SSBMV2? Something else?
I’ve had similar things with vacations in the past. Missing the week of workouts in and of itself is probably not a huge deal. Depending on how things line up exactly, I think I would use the rest week as your xmas travel time and just skip those workouts. If that means adding a few days of workouts on the front end to get you to the time off that’s probably fine.
My strategy for this would be to repeat this week’s (week 5) workouts next week if I felt I could handle the stress without a break. Otherwise, I might take two easy days and then jump back into repeating the meat workouts of week 5. I’d use my Christmas time away as my recovery week and test when I get back (maybe after a few days of riding again with at least one higher intensity workout to get myself ready for the hurt of a test).
I agree that testing right before being off for 8 days may not be the best because you’ll probably detrain a bit in the time off (I recently took 9 days off for vacation and felt like I lost about 5% when I got back to it).
This sounds like a good strategy. Definitely keep an eye on the intensity and if you need a lower intensity ride sub in a Pettit.
As far as coming back you could do something like this (ignore the dates, just focus on the days) This brings you back in with a nice easy z2 ride and adds an extra sweet spot workout (carson) off the back of some sprinting sweet spot. Also, this first week you’ll be doing with your old ftp, so it might seem easy, if it does then test and go.
As @miesemer says after 8 days totally off you might find a bit of a dip in fitness that you’d get back pretty quick so wouldn’t hurt to push the ramp test out. But you might find that you come back fresher and ready to hit it especially since it looks like your structured training history is pretty limited. I don’t think either way you can go wrong.
I’m going well so far, so like the suggestion to just mix up the order of SSBMV2 a bit and jump back in when I’m home.
I’ll call the time off my rest week and see how I’m going through week 1 of the new plan. I’ll test earlier if it’s easy going.
I may be able to borrow a bike that’s too small over the holidays and get in 1 or 2 rides. Or perhaps a couple of jogs might help keep things ticking over.
