What does a typical weekly schedule look like in one of these blocks?
I’m just looking for something like: Mon - off, Tues - Intervals, Wed - Endurance [what amount], Thurs - Active Recovery, Fri - Intervals, Sat - Long z2, Sun - slightly less long z2?
16 weeks of SS seems really long. Personal opinion, if you flame out after 6-8 months on a regular basis, dial it back a bit so you don’t blow up. I think it is better to be a little undercooked and avoid flaming out to the alternative.
Thanks everyone for the input.
Some comments;
For all of the blocks except the traditional base, I’m thinking something like:
Cool. Thank you. Seems like a pretty standard weekly schedule and I was on something like that for a long time. I might just make that Friday workout a mandatory active recovery / z1 ride. If there’s a history of blowing up I’d err on the side of more recovery and if you feel you are too undercooked then step it up.
Last year I had an exchange with @anthonylane and he wrote out his weekly schedule. I gave something similar a shot and have liked it so much I’ve been doing it for about a year. For me, I found it helped me balance general recovery, acute recovery for key interval sessions, and still keep a high z2 volume. Its: Mon - Active Recovery (basically Lazy Mountain or Lazy Mountain -1), Tues - Intervals, Wed - 1.5-2hr z2, Thurs - AR, Fri - Intervals, Sat - Long z2, Sun - Slightly less long z2. Carrying a little fatigue into a couple of the z2 rides hasn’t been as bad as I initially thought.
The challenge I found doing Tues/Thurs interval days was being as fresh as I wanted with a z2 day in the middle. It just wasn’t enough recovery for me.
YMMV, but I find VO2 block hugely draining just due to the high physical and mental impact of doing intervals of that intensity despite the overall drop in volume and training load. I also do my weekday workouts early in the morning, so its a bit of a challenge going from sleeping to feeling like I’m dying duringVO2max intervals in only 20min at 5am. Probably not optimal.
As I understand it, that is a training pattern for med or high maturity athletes. What I found interesting about the off-the-shelf FasCat plans is that there is a tradeoff - in general vs TR (or Cusick’s fatigue resistance ‘go long’) the mid-week workouts have fewer intervals and less time-in-zone. For example during the 2nd block of base (SS2 example on FC website) the mid-week block is Tuesday 3x15 Sweet Spot, Wednesday 3x12 Tempo, Thur endurance/z2. When I did that last spring, it just worked. And I was STILL able to go out once a month and nail a 1x50 or 1x70 just below threshold, which is how I built out time-to-exhaustion to 60+ minutes in 2017 (first Saturday of Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr 2017 was 60+ threshold effort).
Perhaps not completely fair characterization, but the sweet spot progression thread seemed to have a lot of (younger) people slamming SS TIZ above 60 minutes, twice a week. That simply requires too much recovery at my age, when done weekly. I believe the minimum effective dose is far less, or you are better served by going out for a mid-week drop ride.
My observation of FasCat plans is this tradeoff on reducing the number of intervals / TIZ mid-week, thereby increasing load via back-to-back intervals Tue/Wed, and then a big weekend. I have enough data to say that basic pattern works for me. It might not work for everyone. My coach manipulated that basic template and personalized even more (I was doing gym work too), and it shows in my power curve and hard efforts.
Those mid-week back-to-back interval days made me stronger before TR in 2016-2017 (when I was your age), and again after TR 2020-2021. I think Frank Overton calls it fatigue dependent design, or designing a plan to go with the grain of fatigue. Instead of going longer and longer on the intervals, he keeps them manageable which allows me to throw down on the weekends, and throw down a long ~60 minute interval at least once a month. In turn that increases fatigue resistance (TTE) while not increasing recovery required and still allowing me to do 3 weeks on and 1 week “regeneration” and I say regen week because the FC plans lower volume but keep intensity.
Another n=1… I found 3:1 with regeneration week (with some intensity) works better for me versus TR’s SSB of 5:1 and recovery week is all z2. Keep in mind this is an off-the-shelf plan from a long-time coach that has accumulated a lot of direct feedback from 35+ year old athletes that work and have families. And he has a coaching staff. My coach has a lot of athletes, and its still surprising how well he knows me. I’m sure he keeps notes and reviews before our monthly 1-1 and weekly workout feedback.
Where it got interesting for me with FC 16 week plan was when I skipped some of the long days on the weekends in SS1 and SS2 (done during early days of pandemic). Then I started SS3 and I clearly wasn’t ready, so I repeated SS2 and then SS3 produced excellent results.
A lot of this comes down to experimenting and finding what works. I still keep an open mind and try different things, in fact this is a discussion topic at every month’s 1-1 with my coach.
Hope that is useful food for thought, and helps you or someone else.
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.
I’ve had the same concern about short SST and tempo of the first 4 week block. And I skipped it in Feb 2020 because I came in with enough base fitness that it made sense to jump into week 5 of the plan.
Keep in mind the recommended progression includes season break, fall foundation, 10 week resistance plan, and then base. So in that context, the first block of SS1 makes more sense. I finished the 10 week resistance plan in August a year ago, and then continued heavy resistance and sprint work under a coach. By the time Oct/Nov rolled along, and with continued gym work, my legs were thankful to be doing shorter SS and tempo intervals. By late Nov or early December I was doing longer tempo work.
Curious about this. Will you provide an example of what a “regeneration” week vs. a recovery week looks like?
TR rest weeks are usually all endurance zone2 rides. Other plans have reduced volume and include some intervals. Velocious iLevel plans also have you do unstructured testing at short/medium/long durations as per your WKO. Pretty much that simple.
Thanks for the context - it makes more sense for sure.
Just reviewing the plan and I think I may do as you did and jump in around week 6 when the SST work looks more worthwhile. I may just structure a block of tempo work to ease back in after relatively little interval work recently.
I just want to make sure I leave enough in the tank to complete a solid block afterwards to push up FTP before my early season events in April.
Hey, glad to hear you like it. My season has been a bit more sporadic than last in terms of what days of the week I ride. But I’m still really good about building in at least 48 hours of low intensity between my hard days. And my hard days are truly hard. This is because I’m doing more supra threshold work this time of year, but if I’m doing sub-threshold work I can easily go back to back on the days in a more fatigue dependent approach of Hard (ex. 3x20 SS) > Less Hard (2x30 tempo) > Easy (90 min Z2)