I’ve had sporatic issues with VO2Max work, when I think back I usually did not have enough carbs that day. Or I was stressed out at work, or didn’t sleep enough.
Last night for instance I was trying to do williamson +4 which is quite a hard workout. Looking back, I had a stressful day and ate fried food for lunch. So, when I was thinking about why I just could not turn the pedals for more than a minute and a half I wasn’t totally shocked.
The other thing that I wonder about also is, have you been doing VO2 work preceding this latest block of training, or have you not had VO2max in your training diet for a few months? The other times I’ve had issues with VO2 is when I was just doing a whole lot of sweet spot base 1 and unstructured training before that. Then the reality of VO2 sets in and it takes a little time for the body to pick it up. But, I think starting with the shorter duration ones and increasing the duration as the training progresses will help you out. Also, I wonder if one of our more experienced members could shine some light on whether masters athletes should try to keep VO2max workouts in the mix year round, just for maintinance.