I am currently in speciality phase of the Gran Fondo phase. I recently did my B event (2 weeks ago), which went better than expected. Just before entering my speciality phase AI FTP increased my FTP by about 4% to almost exactly in line with what my Garmin has been saying. I wear a Garmin Forerunner 24/7 and have recently (in the 10 days since my event) seen a drop off in VO2Max numbers despite no real change in RPE for various different types of workouts.
My question is, should I listen to the watch and back off training a bit, or should I listen to my body and carry on until things feel too hard? One other point is that my sleep has not been great for a few days which explains very low “training readiness” scores and probably factors into the training status from the Garmin.
Any advice would be appreciated. I have not done a lot of structured training, though have been cycling for quite a few years, and I have only had my watch for 6 months, so do not have past experience to work from.
