So in Specialty phase now, My A race is a road race (had a A XC race on the calendar in June but it got cancelled) that will be around 2h15 mins, happening Sept 16th just got a small bump in FTP before starting this phase so dropped my levels but my previous VO2 PL was like 3.2 or something, My level was decreased to 2.0, my Vo2 workout this week was supposed to be Julius Cesar +1 (PL 5.0) but I swapped it out for Sleeping Beauty (PL 2.3), every week except for 1 recovery week my calendar includes hard VO2 1h30 workouts (Caltech -7 5.0, Bolton Brown -6 6.1, Rixford -1 6.2, Tiehacker 5.0), It also wants similar jumps in Anaerobic but less concerned about that as they are 1h workouts its easier to choose an appropriate substitute. I feel that for my race, maximizing my VO2 progress over the 1h30 duration will be most important.
My concern is I’m gonna fail these workouts or burn out and be fatigued coming into the race, since the new year, partially due to life stress I’ve gone through 3 multi-week periods of over fatigue where my cadence was like 55 trying to grind through low level workouts before I could recover.
What I am wondering is what workouts might be good alternatives and maybe allow me to bridge up to doing Caltech -7 or Julius Cesar +1 by the week of Aug 27th and Sept 3rd?
The lower level of Caltech -8 is a Threshold 1.9, which is achievable, if I can do that at 100% then maybe the VO2 version will be achievable. Find it weird though the difference of 0.02 in IF goes from 1.9 threshold to 5.0 VO2…
The other thought is trying to progress through VO2 PLs, Ohio (2.9), Drake (3.6), Blundell (4.0), Grober (4.6), followed by Julius Cesar +1 and Caltech -7 (not progressing as far as Bolton Brown -6 and Rixford -1 as my plan would like).
The other thought was progressing through the 1h30 Threshold workouts that would be productive and then doing Julius Cesar +1 and Caltech -7 in those last 2 weeks, so that would look like White Leaf +1 (3.0 Thr a 0.7 jump), Dragontail -1 (3.6 Thr), WhiteLeaf +2 (4.2 Thr) and then jumping into the VO2 stuff.
The unproductive Caltech -8 seems to make the most sense and then going to Julius Cesar +1 and Caltech -7, I would rather progress my PL less than risk burnout/over fatigue so if I could do these, would likely look to do Julius Cesar +2 (5.7) and Bolton Brown -7 (5.7) rather than Bolton Brown -6 (6.1) and Rixford -1 (6.2).
