yeah - I’ve held the position you have, and for sure it could be my VO2 just needs to be scaled back. But I consistently fail the threshold workouts based off a ramp test setting, which is the bigger red flag. And it hasn’t mattered if I was rested going into it or not.
I have almost 20 years of cycling, and I spent years doing hours of unstructured training below threshold in what would surely have been tempo/sweet spot if I had a PM for most of it to track. I also started endurance sports in track and cross-country before that running the 800, 1600, 3200 and 5000m - that surely developed an ability to just drill myself on 2-20 minute efforts and perform quite well on a short test like the ramp test relative to fitness level.
I’m quite confident something is wrong with my targets, but all I can go off of is what I can actually do over several weeks of training. And as best I can tell right now, it is too high a FTP setting coupled with a high muscular endurance in that 90-95% FTP range.
Z2 is 56-75%. Pootling around at 60% FTP is easy and can be done almost ad nauseam. Upper end is pretty potent but will burn a lot of glycogen as it starts to get closer to being tempo, and make recovery harder.
In the past when I’ve done big weeks, I’ve stayed in the lower part of the zone, or working on HR, made sure rides don’t go much above 70% max HR
This advise saved my HV Build phase. Just wrapping up week 3 of ShortPB and for the first time following TR build plans I don’t feel completely smoked and discouraged. Thank you again, this was the precise advise I needed.
I’ve been reading back on this thread since I started HV SS2 a month ago. It has been a good source of information for someone like me, making the jump from MV. Currently going into my 5th week of HV and I have to say that I am feeling relatively fresh, surprisingly so actually. Work stress has been low, and the pandemic has given me the gift of time so I figured I would give a HV plan a go. I’ve been on TR for over 3 years now, and I usually stick with MV plans. I would say that I am feeling better at this point in the HV plan than I typically do during MV SS2 (over-unders kill me, Vo2 intervals I find are tough but doable). Anyways, I have one more week of these long SS intervals, and then I’ll take a rest week and re-test. I’ll update you all on any gains.
Follow up: Ok, I know I was feeling great last week but I decided to skip the 5th week and go straight to a rest week. I’m no spring chicken, and I felt like I was flying a little too close to the sun. Looking towards the general build HV plan- think I’ll just do the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rides, and replace the other days with 1.5-2 hr Z2 rides (maybe one tempo ride or a Zwift race).
Just finished week 5 of my high-volume sweet spot plan. The plan is somewhat based on TR SSHV, but I have taken some liberties of dumbing it down to meet my demands.
Here are some of the stats:
Week
Time
TSS
kJ
Avg. TSS
Avg. kJ
1
9.26
572
8,813
95
1,469
2
5.80
363
5,520
91
1,380
3
9.26
612
9,055
87
1,294
4
10.13
636
9,749
91
1,393
5
9.79
653
9,862
109
1,644
I am quite happy with how I was able to manage that load. I am however not sure if I could handle another 6 weeks. Now just need to see how I feel after the rest week.
After reading the above, I totally agree that the HV build phase destroys me and I believe I would benefit by adding more Z2 volume. I love the progression in the plan, and don’t want to lose the structured workouts, so here is my thought on adding / changing up the calendar.
I’ve been doing my own extra high-volume build plans now for 10 weeks. The gist of it is that I wanted to ride my fatbike for 4+ hours on both saturday and sunday and still do all the intervals of HV general build and HV sustained power. I knew from experience that I could tolerate >1000TSS weeks. This combined with being single, not having much else to do (cause Corona), and working a cush IT-job from home led me to try this.
Seems to work ok for me with only 2 failed workouts yet (whole Gen-build and 2 weeks into sustained). The trick seem to be to do the tuesday workout as early as possible to have the maximum amount of rest before wednesday. I’ve reached the highest ever FTP and I get to ride my bike a lot so I’m happy.
