This is really timely for me and I appreciate you posting it. I’m wondering the exact same thing about how to structure the next base period.
I have bought the FC 18 week plan and looking at it I just worry there isnt enough work in it to build much fitness for me? I did the extending SST thing last year and got to 100 mins with huge impact on my early season. I manged it OK at age 51 but ‘something’ burned me out and as soon as I got to the new year I switched to more of a z2 focus and never did the essential intensity to increase FTP rather than just build TTE. (That may simply have been that I got sick of indoors and intervals rather than getting burned out by SST, but am not sure.)
With a very big volume year for me this year (will be >500 hours with a very heavy z2 focus by end Oct and weeks like this week at 18+ hours) I am just concerned that those relatively short SST & tempo intervals in the first 4-5 weeks of the FC plan just wont do anything for me? TBH I’m scared this plan might even have me come out in 18 weeks time with little or no increase in base fitness? I do however like the idea of back to back days again, which is an approach that worked very well for me for many years when my work schedule forced 3-4 days back to back and 2-3 days forced off the bike. My goal events next year are also almost all multi-day events of 3-7 days and I know theseback to back days built serious stamina in years gone by.
Should I just FTFP and trust it, or perhaps even follow the template but use slightly more intervals/TiZ?Any other thoughts very much appreciated based on your experiences.