Or you just have patience, keep your nose to the grindstone and continue to eke out tiny gains, or you back off for a bit then take another run, or you choose to spend your glycogen budget on something unrelated for a while, all of which I have seen work.
What I’m arguing against the idea of some rule-of-thumb that tells you whether your cardiovascular fitness or your muscular metabolic fitness is what you should target. Instead, that choice should be on the basis of your competitive goals.
TL,DR: Train for performance, let your physiology sort itself out.
I think it’s more useful if you either don’t have competitive goals or you’re 6 months away from racing.
Also more useful if your rule-of-thumb fractional utilisation is 90% or 60% than if it’s 75%, as either of those is sending a much stronger signal as to where you might want to focus your efforts over the next training block or two.
I’m in the fortunate position of being too slow to think about racing and other than the events I have planned - currently only a 215km hilly event (Dragon Ride Fondo) in June 2024 I just want to get faster and in particular get. More power at lower heart rate to reduce the strain on my body.
It really does feel like time is screaming by so I want to use my time most wisely.
A lot. Like @Dknotty, I ride for pleasure, mostly LSD and have already maximised volume (duration x frequency). Of course, I can still progress by increasing intensity but then I’ll lose appetite for riding after a while.
So goal is to implement some kind of reverse periodisation to push FTP up during indoor season and when outdoor period arrives return to high volume with higher power but reduced heart rate that does not affect motivation over longer period.
