For the sake of a quick comparison to some in the TR library:
VO2 Max Zone, 1:45 Duration, sorted from highest IF to lowest:
They are well below the 0.96 IF of this WO, and I wouldn’t be excited to tackle any of them even at their lower IF. Quick skim of workouts by people show some bails, lowered intensity and some completions. No idea if that is appropriate or expected, but I still see this workout as a monster.
Hoping someone can do a better job of nailing down the reality via harder data. 
Easy. Bookmark this beast for Disaster 2021. 
I gotta side with Chad here. If your FTP is set accurately, I cannot imagine anyone completing this workout as you’ve intended it. There simply is not enough rest. An IF of .91 would be full gas in a race this long. A .96 IF is definitely near impossible at this workout length.
If the intervals were 95% for the first bit and kept the surges over threshold, it would make much more sense to me. But having it all be over threshold until that last section is simply bonkers.
The good thing, after the workout being still alive and all, probably you feel reborn, possibly a new perspective on life? Some workouts I imagine when doing them must be how dying feels like, let alone this 
Would anyone be interested in having a look at my training on intervals.icu since the 15 October 2020? I’m not entirely sure that my coach is giving me a great programme and would like someone to critique it i guess.
My intervals name Matt Taylor - ACU
With the qualifier that I am NOT a coach, and noting that this is a very superficial look without any knowledge of your current goals or discussion with your coach, here are a few observations:
Considering the time relative to the Oct 15 start (red arrow) and looking at a full year view:
Looking at Fatigue (purple line):
Looking at Zone info (red/orange/green bars):
Seeing that along with the workout info above seems to indicate some real push to get you into some stress that you may not have experienced in the past.
Thanks for taking a look. I understand your not a coach but that doesn’t make your opinion less valid.
So the prior year I was with TR which explains why the ramp rate and the like is as it should be. After the break I then started my own SS progression as an experiment as I felt that my body seemed to respond well to SS. I then decided to try a coach, in the hope that they could give me a bespoke plan to meet my goals.
Once I started with a coach, I did the 20 min test instead of a ramp test for the first time, and it made 23w difference for me. Also, the majority of my current TSS is Z2 and not big intervals, where I would be feeling the fatigue alot more. I’ve done TR MV+ in the past and am comfortable with the volume.
I guess I’m on the right path for the moment with my current coach?
Yeah, if you are handling the workouts, and seeing progress (even at an early stage), I’d say you are good to go.
Did your coach build this workout?
Yep.
Fire your coach.
Seriously.
He doesn’t know what he is doing.
Just a couple of things that I can see from what Chad posted:
I don’t see any major red flags in there since October 15th, but it seems like you had quite a bit of recovery earlier this month. Almost two weeks that were significantly lighter.
It also looks like a 5 week progression followed by a bit easier week, then a hard week, then two easy weeks. This is a bit of an odd progression as Chad pointed out, based on your training history. Looks like you bit off quite a bit right off the bat, and then needed to back off for two weeks to recover? I’d rather see you dig a hole that’s not quite as deep, and recover out of that for a few days or a week at most.
My concern would be that your coach might be asking too much of you right off the bat based on what history I can see. I caveat that with it being mostly Z1/Z2 work, it may not be a big deal.
I haven’t looked at your specific workouts yet to glean much from it.
As for the workout in question, I have no idea what your coach is hoping to accomplish with that workout, to be blunt. I personally wouldn’t program that for probably anyone, and certainly not in the “offseason”.
The time at 105% leading into “VO2max” type time is just going to degrade the quality of those intervals. I think your coach’s idea is to maximize time at max O2 uptake, but since you’re probably not going to complete more than one or two intervals before your legs limit you, that kind of throws that out the window. As others have mentioned, the rest intervals are entirely inappropriate for the intensity. I’d expect to see 8 minute intervals at 100% or a bit over separated by 2 minutes. And then after the bludgeoning, I don’t know what you hope to accomplish with max effort sprints like that.
It’s just a hodgepodge mess that I’d be interested to hear what he or she thinks it is going to accomplish other than breaking the athlete down.
I’m a bit uncomfortable being openly critical of another coach’s work like this because I am certainly not the world’s (or even this forum’s) foremost coaching expert, but that’s some crazy stuff in my opinion.
Just to play devil’s advocate to this, we don’t know what kind of feedback the coach is getting from his client. Is he/she getting honest feedback, or is there some pride that’s downplaying how tough the workload is, so the coach just piles it on, until the hole is too deep and things start to crack? I tend towards the latter myself, which is why it came to mind. For me, it’s sometimes hard to know when I should think, “suck it up, cupcake, this isn’t supposed to be easy,” and when it should be, “man, this was really rough, maybe I should dial it back a notch.”
I can say I’ve been completely honest about my fatigue and how my body has been feeling for better and for worse. The two periods of less TSS were due to my job, in that week at work I had to do some extra runs and circuits than I usually do and as a result the DOMS got to me and forced a rest. The training on the bike wasn’t the cause.
Yes, it’s a concern. As I mentioned, I don’t see any glaring red flags, and that concern was based on the weird progression and need for two recovery weeks in December. There’s a lot I don’t know, so I hesitate to be too critical of another’s work.
Then I don’t see much in that limited data that concerns me, just this one workout.
So if I completed this workout 2 weeks out from a big ride does that imply that my FTP is set to low??
Completing it is one thing. How did you feel during and after is part of a way to analyze if your FTP may have been close or potentially off.
Well I just went and checked and I followed that ride up with a Leavitt - 5 and pretty normal HR. I felt the road but never felt in danger of not being able to complete it??
So you did the full Disaster, followed by another hour of Endurance and felt OK.
That seems to indicate your FTP is well off, IMO. When I completed Disaster, I collapsed on the bike and nearly cried. I almost bailed in the main VO2 section, and had all sorts of struggles in the SS/Sprint section towards the end. My experience may not be universal, but we see plenty of people have issues in those sections and really fight the finish.
All that is to say, that if you breezed through this like it sounds, I highly suspect an issue, which could be your FTP or another factor.
