This is an insightful podcast.
Iāve seen the same thing on my PR chart. Also based on RPE, Iām able to put out more power later on in long outdoor rides. (ex. doing a 10min climb at threshold three hours into a ride)
Ps. āFTPā for each of these seasons were between 330 and 345 with 2018 an outlier at 290-300 (no testing that year). So these changes occurred without a huge change in āFTPā (read as ramp and 20min test performance)
Huge breakthrough today after a week of rest and easy riding. Seems like it takes a long time for the high volume work to manifest.
are you still putting down 12-15-ish hours/week?
Itās been a pretty consistent 12-13hrs per week. Slight reduction since Iām doing sweetspot work now, but the next few weeks will probably be closer to 15hrs.
What is interesting is that last week was a rest week and I did 11 hours it felt like I did nothing.
Yes.
This is something people need to consider if they are contemplating doing HV Endurance work ā the results donāt show up until a long time down the road (months to years) vs SS work. Iāve always looked at it as a 5 year plan vs 1 year plan. Donāt do it just to do it, make sure it makes sense to your goals, both current and future.
Btw, nice boost! 
Yeah, one of the beauties of indoor training is getting to listen to music while youāre at it. The ONLY thing that makes me miss running.
Since we arenāt racing, I did a 90min XC simulation time trial this morning and finally, the 60ā has fallen. Nearly 3 years.
Only two more workouts for April and Iāll have cracked 40,000kj for the month. Biggest month ever, followed by March at 36,500kj. Quarantine has been good for my training.
I wondered if I was weird for thinking HV was easier than MV. Every O-U workout kills me, but I can do SS for a long time.
āCoach Chadās VO2max primerā is this a thing?
I have been lucky over last three months to be able to allocate time for really high volume riding (14-18hr/week, 2x2hr SS + rest filled with Z2 LSD, basically custom SSBHV). But from July need to transform back being ārespectable member of societyā and cut hours back to ~10hr/week range. Are there any details to consider for this? Or just jump into SusPBHV and increased intensity will take care of volume change?
Note: I donāt race and havenāt done any structured high intensity training yet. Not sure how will respond to it.
Same boat, so Iām just going to do longer intervals than TR prescribe (with less rest) So effectively condensing workouts so that my time in zone remains similar but a bit less probably then do 2 or 3 Short Zwift races per week targeting threshold and VO2.
Coming up on the final month of the āseasonā before Iāll take an off-season, which is usually in October.
Full year stats compared to the previous year:
- October 2018 - September 2019: 425 hours, 200,000 kjs
- October 2019 - September 2020: 665 hours, 387,000 kjs
Pretty much a full step change increase across the entire power curve between 25-60w starting from 1 minute out to 5 hours.
Well done, similar improvements here. 350->500 hours. No ābigā weeks (20+), but being consistent!
Another HVolumer here! First time using this level of volume.
I have a question that donāt know if youāve addressed before: Iām trying to do my workouts outdoor since itās still warm were I live - Getting to the point where I usually do my intervals doesnāt take a lot, but definetly adds TSS. Besides, Iām trying to replace one of the weekend workouts with a long Z2 ride (4-5h). This adds a lot of TSS as well. Taking a look at my TrainingPeaks PMC or intervals.icu fitness chart, my fatigue and form numbers are deep in the āred zoneā and my CTL is ramping up very quickly (3rd week into my training plan and having 8/10 CTL weekly incrementals) - Is this sustainable? How should I approach this? Based on feeling I think Iām doing well and can handle the load, but donāt want to end hitting up on the overtraining alley without noticing.
Interestingā¦so the longer the event the more benefits with HV? Letās say XC races up to 90 min does benefit more from a MV?
I primarily race 90 minute XC.
FTP and 5 minute power are also way up this year.
By doing MV instead of HV?
Iām in my last week of work in SSBHVII - I have the last three hard workouts before going into the rest week. While I wouldnāt characterize the workouts as easy, I havenāt struggled much to complete them. That isnāt to say I havenāt gotten fitter - I couldnāt have jumped into this last week and done them without trouble 10 weeks ago, but I do wonder if I have gone a bit too easy. I do them all first thing in the morning after a cup of coffee and with 1 20oz bottle of infinit and am good to go. Iām wondering if that is a good sign or a bad sign for the purposes of the plan. I always tend to struggle at how hard I should go. Iām the type of person that tends to try and overshoot power targets all the time and bury myself every workout, and as described below I seem to have plateaued by going hard all the time for too long.
For context, I am right around 4W/KG and a long time cyclist (44 yo next month), been using TR for a long time, but this is the first time I am fully committed to the Base/Build/Speciality cycle. Mostly trained on the bike in the context of tris, but for the last 16-18 months have been on a big cycling focus trying to get a big step change in FTP and overall bike fitness. I was doing my own selection of workouts late 2019/early 2020 with big TSS weeks last fall - peaking at around 1000 TSS for three weeks straight before having a bit of a meltdown and needing to back off to a steady stream of 600 TSS weeks with a mix of sweet spot, VO2 and threshold work. I saw a jump from 3.7 W/KG to 4 W/KG during that big build phase, but then plateaued, clearly from over-doing things. Jumped into the sustained power build HV plan in Apr 2020 time frame, saw a big bump on my ramp test after 4 weeks, but then floundered the second half of that and completely crashed and burned on the TT specialty plan - I didnāt complete a single simulation TT without failing early, even with a knocked down FTP after the completion of SPB and first block of TT specialty. Took a month off from structure and started the HV sweet spot base plans on Sept. 1 following my second highest ramp test performance ever. Had a few workouts in the middle part of HV1 where things were tough at times, but that was fleeting. Now towards the end I donāt feel that challenged.
Time will tell on if I have raised my threshold a little or if I am just really really good at sweet spot work. Comments welcome, but not really expecting anything other than stick with it and see. Iāll look back to this post in the future when I get through the general build plan and see if I have any noticeable changes in fitness.
No high volume. I average between 12 and 15 hours a week.
If you have time and ability to handle high volume, you should ride more.