Hi there,
I have been a TR user for a couple of years now and so far have had great success with any format plans I have used (HV/MV). My problem is I noticed my endurance fades quickly after 1h (on group rides) when I am only training with the MV plan. I feel like I have developed some type of mental block with anything longer and the only way I am able to break it is to jump back into HV plans with their long intervals and long workouts. I just finished the first week of HV (with same FTP I would use for MV plan) and was able to go through with no issues.
The TSS on HV is fine but the frequency is an issue for me. The MV has way too little of the long stuff and the only way around would be for me to build a custom plan. I am looking for shortcuts (Maybe HV minus 1 ride, or MV with all workouts substituted with their +2 or +3 versions for longer workouts?) I love what the HV plans have to offer, I just don’t want the crazy time commitment (I have a 3h commute and 3 kids…)
One option that is present in most MV plans, is in the weekly tips. The default Sunday ride is a Sweet Spot workout, but they list one or two longer Endurance level options you can use instead of the SS version.
Thanks for your reply, Chad. Option 2 seem nice although look like tons of work (changing everything to +1 or +2 while making sure the TSS/Week properly increases at a sustainable rate).
Out of curiosity, would it be a mistake to, say, take SSB MV and substitute the Wednesday with a 1h hard interval (for example, repeating the Tuesday block), and substituting all weekend workouts with 2 hour sweetspot instead ? I am slightly worried that removing the over-under on the Saturday basically remove the value of the MV plan which is different from the HV sweetspot only approach.
I’m confused and looking for clarity. Why are you removing the Saturday ride?
The advice I shared above was about swapping the Sunday Sweet Spot ride with a longer Endurance ride. I saw nothing about removing the Saturday one.
That is tough and somewhat beyond my comfort level, but it might not work well.
If I understand you correctly, you are effectively suggesting “hard” workouts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That is possibly OK for some “block” approaches, but I don’t think it is doable for most athletes around here, as part of a “typical” periodized plan.
Some plans may not be as hard as others, but a decent number at the Mid Vol level have workouts at Threshold (or higher) for Tue & Thur. Doubling that by repeating Tue seems a recipe for lower performance on the upcoming Thur (if not Wed) because you have not allowed enough recovery time to rally for a properly hard workout.
The typical Endurance level Wed that is intended as a reset for hitting Thur hard.
Your suggestion might lead to decreased performance in each of those “key” workouts and that seems like a bad direction. If you nail them, great, but that is a stretch to expect, IMHO.
Sorry for the confusing wording, I was just wondering if I could combine your option of swapping the Sunday ride with also swapping the saturday one but with a sweetspot. My concern was whether the over-under was necessary when on a lower volume plan and if replacing by sweetspot was not enough of a stimulus for the amount of TSS you have for MV.
But isn’t this what I am currently doing with the HV plan? There is basically no recovery between Tuesday and Thursday, only hard days. Is the HV basically more of a periodized plan?
Thanks for your insight, btw, really the bulleted points. Maybe MV is indeed what I should stick to and intersperse with a couple of longer interval days.
Ok, the jump between SSB MV and HV is special. HV is almost exclusively Sweet Spot workouts. Because it is all a moderate intensity workouts, we can handle a large volume if it, including back to back to back efforts (Tue, Wed & Thur like you noted).
MV uses a typical 2 to 3 days of high intensity workouts in the week and the rest as low intensity like Endurance (or shorter SS in the case of the Sunday options). There is a real limit to what we can do for these higher intensity workouts and ho close we can stack them.
Trying to mimic the loaded schedule of HV, with higher intensity from MV may be too much. I think a 2nd opinion is useful here, but I think your suggestion would lead to insufficient recovery and inability to nail 3 hard workouts in a row for the consistent plan.
i noticed this when i went through the MV plans. i added a 2 hour sweetspot workout with the intervals rainging from 20-30 minutes. That really helped my endurance. Tray Mountain+3 and Spruce Knob+3 were the two rides i did that really helped me. there were a few others i did but those i liked and just to continue to increase the TSS i adjusted each up 1% each week manually. Probably not the best way to do it but it worked for me.
