Hi everybody, just wondering how people are responding to achieving a level 10 progression level?
Training has been good, but motivation has been a little flat lately waiting to confirm if races will happen here in New Zealand. Last night I shrugged it off and decided to do Boarstone +1 as a bit of a challenge; it’s rated Tempo 11.1
I smashed the workout, and found it reasonably easy (rated it Moderate). Now my progression level is 10.
Do I need to re-test? Manually adjust my FTP up a little? Or just start trying to max a few other zones?
Understand the excitement, but think about it. The sprints are not related to the tempo work, so why should they impact tempo progression?
Personally I find that type of workout really straightforward. Did Boarstone+1 in April 2020, on the trainer, and set all-time power PR from 14-19 seconds on the first sprint. All four sprints were well above target.
This is a good question, i suppose with no definitive answer. First is the aspect of workout itself - it is not particularly hard workout but sprints push the level in AT interpretation of this (my personal opinion - one of the big flaws of AT). But in general terms - you have to think about context. For example - if you can finish lvl 10 endurance or tempo does it mean your FTP went up or you just have good base and fatigue resistance? You have to implement whole context - like it was extremely easy and you HR was quite lower? How was RPE?
Good example would be sst lvl 10 - for me, these are just another workouts, by no means indication my FTP moved up, but I am good at sst. I need to see other signs (hr&rpe) across couple of them to even think about FTP moved up. On the other hand if you can finish threshold lvl 8-10, your FTP probably needs retesting, as workouts there in higher levels are extremely hard to finish with proper FTP. So context is everything.
Work on some other zones. If your threshold level is 4, you’re probably not ready for a shift in ftp. (But as your vo2max level is 6, you’re also probably not far off)
They do make a difference, but they come so late that I don’t think it really matters, and not so much that the PL should be 11.1. Boarstone +3 looks harder to me. I’ve also noticed that the workouts including sprints tend to go higher on the PL than I think they should be. Particularly when you consider, as @bbarrera pointed out, that they have nothing to do with the Tempo zone. When they come early in the workout I’d say they make more difference. But at the end like that? Meh.
