Modified plan for more recovery weeks every 4th or 5th week?

[Thanas_Stefanes_V]

Hello All.

Lessons learned from last year, and the start of this year makes it somewhat apparent that doing 5 weeks of work, such as in the Sweet Spot Base I & II plans, seems to be a bit too much, leading to failing work outs in the 4th/5th week. (or just giving up). And to make a plan succesfull, you have to stick to the plan.

Work, life, stress, not sleeping well, extra riding, all play a part in the fatigue rising and making me less than succesfull at sticking to the plan.
I do the low volume plan, which is only 3.5 hours of work a week.
But supplement that with mostly Z0/ Z1 riding to average between 10 - 14 hours a week.
Recovery week i try to do about 6 - 7 hours easy.

At the moment i’ve modified my plan to have a recovery week every 4th week.
After CX season 1 take 1 week completely off, then i do a few weeks of easy traditional base type riding before i get into doing work.

This looks like this:
Week of VO2
Week of VO2
SSB1 wk1
recovery
SSB1 wk2
SSB1 wk3
SSB1 wk4
recovery
SSB1 wk5
SSB2 wk1 (skipping wk6 of SSB1 which is the recovery week)
SSB2 wk2
recovery
SSB2 wk3
SSB2 wk4
SSB2 wk5
recovery
SPB wk1 (skipping wk6 of SSB2 which is the recovery week)
SPB wk2
SPB wk3
recovery
SPB wk5 (skipping wk4 of SPB which is the recovery week)
SPB wk6
SPB wk7
Recovery
Then my Cyclocross season starts.

SSB1 = sweet spot base 1
SSB2 = sweet spot base 2
SPB = short power build

Does this sound ok?
I could also construct this with 4 weeks of work followed with 1 week of recovery.

[MI-XC]

Alternate Sweet Spot Base, Work : Recovery Week Layout

The following are some possible adjustments that can be made to the Sweet Spot Base plans. The goal is to shorten the number of “Work Weeks” between “Recovery Weeks”. It can be helpful for those who find the default 5 Work to 1 Recovery schedule too taxing. This may include Masters riders and anyone else looking to reduce the fatigue between recovery weeks. It adds one total week to the typical cycle and makes the full Sweet Spot Base a total of 13 weeks (instead of the default 12 weeks). …

[Thanas_Stefanes_V]

Thanks, thats exactly what i needed to know.
plan 2021 is set now.

[dprimm]

I am at a point where doing the MV plans, plus runs and swims, gets to be too much. I am going to move recovery weeks up to do like you. Will mess up the schedule towards the “A Race” (which I expect to see canceled) but better to make slower progress at almost 50 is better than falling behind by going too deep and then crashing out.