Do they? Not from what I see.
Most riders do this stuff during base season, it’s definitely not replacing races.
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+1 on this. For me, base is a bunch of endurance, tempo, and sweet spot with a little threshold or over/unders mixed in toward the end. Once the intensity of build starts, the scheduled sweet spot workouts largely drop away. I’ll do enough long rides and races prior to my target events that I still get enough extended hard efforts to maintain durability.
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Well if it works for you that is great, I mean touch long sweetspot once or twice in the base season if you want, not the place to get into a discussion on if it is a waste of TSS or not, this is TR forum so I think it’s kind of anticipated that people will make progress on their FTP and then have their levels correct and then it’s back to shorter stuff with a slightly higher FTP and after the next low hanging fruit, etc.
I was kind of keeping the original thread topic in the back of my mind when posting this stuff, the last time I heard a question like this was at a time trial on the second day of this stage race, lighter guy came back with 350w for 20 and some of the other heavier guys were speculating well how long could they hold 350w for.
The honest answer is most of them don’t know because racing doesn’t require you to do that except for in the unique case of the one guy that jumps in the break on a 100km gravel race and goes solo from km 2 to the finish, but again that is happening in a race, nobody is actually going out and dragging their sweet spot work to the absolute limit unless they are not racing and are looking for the training to be their final destination or unless they are a client of these guys that have been scheduling this kind of work to these exact kind of riders.
I think you are missing the reason people prescribe or do longer SST efforts. Not sure who “these guys” are but the point of extending SST is to increase muscular endurance and overall fitness. It’s not to have some final destination training ride (and if done properly is really not that hard) or specific to breakaways. You also don’t need to push it to the absolute limit, it’s all dependent on the individual’s goals and race schedule.
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Yes I know what the idea is in principle.
If you want to get into specifics consider the following. You have an FTP, you book a trip to mallorca, you ride 20h per week for 5 weeks in mallorca with a coach and a chef and a masseuse and everything is perfect.
You get home take 2 days off to freshen up and are looking to do a workout to PR and show your new higher FTP
The question is, what is your true FTP before you start that workout? The truth is it is the same before and after as the workout itself is only realizing your potential and does not make it any more real physiologically then having the condition to be able to do the workout. We so often as riders fall into the trap of wanting to realize the increase in FTP in an exercise to feel that it is real, the truth is that if you could do it then your FTP was already there when you started the exercise.
The same principle applies to these long sweet spot rides, plenty of speculation, not a lot of people actually doing them (and again look at the thread title we are talking maximum, not 3x45 minutes or something normal, a true maxed out ss workout until you are slapping cramps out of your hamstring and puking)
So what does that mean? It means that sweet spot is so often an unrealized part of the power curve, it exists in the potential of the athlete but they never go there, the reason they don’t go there is that there are better workouts, except for in the rare case as I have mentioned where your coach is running out of ideas and says put this guy on the sweetspot block.
Are you saying there are better workouts during base? I’m not sure there is any single “best” type workout for anything, but I find sweet spot work to be great during base as an interval day. I’m not going to start hammering long threshold and vo2max in January or February. I just can’t start that early or I’ll be burned out by May (mentally and physically). I am actually starting some over/unders this week since I’ve only got a couple weeks of base left, but just easy stuff. For most of base, it’s sweet spot a couple times a week and some tempo on the weekend, just pile on Z2 to get the rest. Even if just sticking to endless “traditional” Z2 was the best approach for base (which I don’t believe), I’d go crazy only doing that kind of riding and I don’t have 25+ hours a week to rack up reasonable TSS.
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I mean during base SST has a very good impact, it’s less fatiguing that ftp and much more impactful that z2 or z3. It has a valuable place in most training plans if you understand how to use it properly. I would argue it is one of the better workouts to do during base. If you go take a look at the Coggan physiological adaptations chart it’s pretty self explanatory.
I don’t think any coaches out there are just throwing it in because they are out of ideas, they are assigning it for the reasons I have already mentioned a couple times now.
You keep saying there are coaches assigning these massive sst blocks willy nilly so maybe it’s them you have a problem with?
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i don’t buy the argument that if you’re not doing long sweet spot then you shouldn’t bother doing it (if I’m reading correctly, it’s quite frankly hard to follow the argument). i tend to revisit sweet spot work a couple of times a year, in the winter as part of base building leading up to May, where I schedule to cap things off for my club’s road race, and in the late spring/early summer as I begin another cycle as a year to reset a bit to train for CX. That said, I used to do 12 weeks of this with the TR SSB programs, I then evolved to an 8 week progression (and I personally promote an 8 week progression “plan” on my website that I share for people looking to get started). But as of late I’ve done a single block of sweet spot work, where I progress from 60min tiz to 120min over 6 workouts. So I can conceded that may it’s not necessary to spend a ton of time on it, but I doubt any coach worth their salt is just giving SST work without any major thought to it.
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Sign me up as another person who does a bunch of Sweet Spot in my fall base season along with building up Z2 and free-ride volume after the season. Then I hit it again (after VO2, FTP, Over Under blocks) because for me I’m targeting longer events where I will spend a bunch of time in SST, even though it’ll never be constant for that long.
Yes, the thread title was “How long can you…” and I do agree almost nobody ever goes as long as they can in SST (I never have) and don’t need to, but that a little bit misses the point that it’s an incredibly valuable part of a yearly training plan if you ask me. In fact, true max efforts are pretty rare across the entire power curve when you look at it in the big picture. Some people don’t ever do any and don’t necessarily need to.
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I know guys you can do some sweetspot workouts it’s not an issue, but remember the thread title we are talking about the limit of human performance, the point is that usually stays as a speculative area, the difference between a low volume rider doing SST on a saturday for 90 mins and feeling good and riding SST to the total limit is very different. In my case I could probably do 320 for somewhere 3-4 hours and you bet your ass I will never be trying that until someone is paying me handsomely that is just way too much work, big difference between SST as a workout and the thread title.
If you guys want to get serious with your training then you should drop the SST entirely apart from maybe a few sessions to prepare endurance wise as you have mentioned and switch to a more traditional higher volume of lower intensity base and lower volume of higher intensity build exercises, follow principles like fractional utilization to avoid burnout but focus on having the biggest FTP possible and the sweetspot efforts themselves will be there for you when you choose to go take them, which as I have said for people who don’t race is usually never hence these extreme SST workouts entering into the space imo.
Additionally :
They get rarer and rarer as you go towards the right side of the power curve, max anaerobic efforts are pretty common.
Look I don’t really want to keep going back and forth while people are unable to nail down what we are talking about here. You can do SST, but is a max SST effort to find your limit going to do anything beneficial ? Well you’re probably taking a day off after that and it is probably between 250 - 300 TSS, if you did that in zone 2 or zone 1/2 you wouldn’t need a day off and you would probably get a deeper stimulus of aerobic abilities, less stress leading into it, less reliance on fueling, less insulin response, less post ride requirements, there is a method to the madness.
I get you seem to dislike sst for some reason 
. I am already high volume (>20hr a week) and switching to an even lower intensity approach won’t work.
Let’s say I have 20hr a week to train during my current base season, what would you do instead of sst that would be more effective and less fatiguing?
I tend to do an extensive block each season and it prepares me very well for the upcoming higher intensity work without being overly fatiguing.
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How much TSS per week, and are you using the AI FTP detection frequently or are you letting your FTP and progression levels rise for a while before using it ?
TSS is between about 900 and 1100.
I don’t use TR so no ai ftp detection. Test before and after each major block of training using a long form test to establish both FTP and TTE.
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So why didn’t you just agree with my initial premise since you fit the exact description of the rider that I said it would be prescribed for. Pro trained athlete, high volume, coach is running out of ideas, etc.
I don’t really think that at that point you need more TSS in your week, probably what you need is to reduce TSS add rest and PR harder in shorter duration stuff. Feel free to PM me if you are looking for inspiration.
Like I mentioned above eventually all good coaches should set you free, when this doesn’t happen you get these meme blocks.
I don’t have a coach (nor do I do or prescribe meme blocks), but I do have plenty of data showing my approach is quite effective for my goals.
Reducing my current tss would only serve to make me slower.
There will be a transition to harder intervals eventually but there is little point to doing those during base season.
I still don’t get why you dislike sst so much but am going to leave it here as we are just going in circles.
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What is your training like to manage 20 hours a week? I presume you’re either an ultra endurance person or pro roadie?
Currently mostly endurance with a couple sst sessions extending time in zone each time. One off day and one easier day. Sometimes a tempo session but that depends on fatigue.
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Cogan is so old at this point his biggest use might be as a form of presleep hypnosis to help you fall off into a deep sleep.
Just to be clear you are referencing material from training and racing with a power meter which was published in 2006, in 2025 ? Remember in 2006 guys thought having more vents on your helmet was a big performance advantage and it made you faster if the air had lots of spots the get through the head… It would be a long list of things that have improved since then including understanding of training.
Might need to catch up on the advances in the sport, PM me and I’ll send you a reading list.
Do you aim for low or high zone 2 or does it seem to matter for you? I’m trying to get my first 20 hour week and finding lower zone 2 is way more sustainable for me than consecutive long days of higher zone 2, which can absolutely cook me without rest days.
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I pace by RPE but it tends to fall between 50-65ish %. Riding right at the top of z2 would be a bit much.
It’s basically as hard as I can do while still being fresh for the hard(er) workouts.
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