Making my first specialty block more like another build block?

Training
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My first A event (Unbound 200) is June 1st. I broke a couple bones in my hand in January and lost some training/fitness and decided to continue base longer than originally planned. When I rebuilt my training plan, plan builder gave me a single block of build (I’m currently in week 2) and 2 blocks of specialty (starts April 8th). I’m used to pushing most of my gains during build and it’s really the only time I’m doing any vo2max work (current build is a mix of threshold and vo2max). Specialty has me dropping the vo2max with a mix of threshold and sweet spot (which is probably appropriate for Unbound).

But I’m currently trending strong in build (it feels like I’m just getting started) and not ready to start backing it down for 2 month prior to Unbound (and I have another A race in August). And as much as I hate vo2max intervals, I don’t feel like 3 vo2max workouts (3 weeks of build) will get me to the place I like to be.

So, I’m leaning toward either switching the first block of specialty into a 2nd build block (I’m not sure how to do this) or maybe just swapping the sweet spot workouts in the first block of specialty for vo2max (sweet spot and threshold are pretty trained right now since I did them in base). Any thoughts on this and the best way to adjust the plan? I don’t know of a way in plan builder to force the swap between specialty and build and I’m not sure if manually swapping to completely different workouts will still allow AT to do it’s thing. I could also just pick and choose workouts for the remainder of my plan manually and adjust as needed, but I’d rather use planbuilder/AT as a baseline if possible.

On a related note - I understand there is some risk of carrying a bit of extra fatigue into Unbound by carrying the build phase deeper into the season, but I’m OK with that. I’ve had good results carrying a lot of volume/stess up to about a month prior to these long events.

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In plan builder you can choose different experience levels and it prioritize different phases. I’d adjust those and see how it affects your overall training.

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I think the best option here would be to delete your current plan and manually add another Build Phase plan to your TR Calendar. You can backdate the “start” of your plan a few weeks back so that you start out in the second half of the Build Phase if that’s what you’re after.

Then, you can add your Specialty Phase plan back in leading up to your A race.

AT proposes adaptations to your plan block by block, so everything will still work according to your current fitness levels!

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Only problem with adding standalone blocks is that you can’t set desired workout durations for each weekday like with Plan Builder.

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Good point, but not relevant for how I personally use TR. The main thing I get out of the TR plans is suggested intervals for tues and thurs.

I sometimes do the actual TR workout at the specified duration, but more often I’ll incorporate those intervals into a longer outside workout (loading some Z2 on the front and back of the intervals). I’ll make the TR prescribed workout “outside” and it will associate it and keep the progression going, but it basically ignores the actual workout and just looks at what I was supposed to do. It still works well enough to progress the intervals week to week, but I’m obviously looking forward to “V2” where they look at the entire workout. For the way I use it, I still need to manage my weekly TSS and everything else in my training outside of the intervals. I use a mix of the TR calendar and golden cheetah to manage all that, it’s easy enough.

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