True, but I look at it with the caveat that if you’re new and your FTP is underestimated and your PL’s are very low, it’s going to take a long time to get where you should be. I know TR says not to do this, but I don’t see any reason to go from a 2.0 to a 2.2 to a 2.5 to a 2.7 to a 3.0…when you’re fully capable of consistently doing a 4.5 off the bat. I do Stretch workouts to get fast bumps when needed.
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Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. You are three weeks away from a 5 day event. Why would you mess with a plan that is working? At this point there is not much in respect to training you can do to make you better. “The hay is in the barn.” Stay the course, things are going well.
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I feel like my FTP is correct, but it’s been a month since my last ramp test. The recent FTP increase was AI recommended. I will do a new ramp test on Monday, but if it’s on point, I don’t know if I can continue with intensity this low. I appreciate the concern about over training, but I will try and stay on top of this with common sense and HRV measurements. As many others have suggested, I will manually bump my PL’s if necessary, with some room to progress as well over the training block.
I haven’t done a 5x5 VO2 Max with the new FTP. This is the last one I completed, which was in the low end of the moderate scale. I didn’t feel very challenged and it almost felt like I had wasted an hour. Through the course of this post I now realize that my FTP might be off though, or the PL’s are way too low after being reset by AT. Your suggestions could be challenging but my initial plan was to follow AT recommendations.
Yes, but chosing moderate only gives a slight PL increase that is not very noticable at the moment.
I don’t disagree with you which is why I made this post instead of just doing it. This last VO2Max workout just left me uninspired to continue without making any changes. This goes beyond my event in 3 weeks. Let’s see what my ramp test shows. Maybe it’s just way too low.
Like I was saying above and discussed in the pod cast I linked too, others have inferred something similar too, your FTP may be spot on for the majority of workouts but true VO2max is an oxygen based zone and varies for more as to at what % of your FTP it occurs. To train it better it may be as suggested by @adrian_r et al. to turn ERG off. Be mindful of possible burn out before your event though, good luck with it.
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I dunno, I was in a similar boat and I just kept ramping it up. My threshold and SS efforts were really hard so I marked them as such and AT paired them back a bit. But when Vo2 was too easy I chose some alt suggested stretch workouts until it pushed it back in line. I want to be challenged but not flogged.
My “A” race is 8 days away and all my TR workouts this week (LV) were productive and gave minor gains (last hard effort was today), and my outdoor z2 workouts were super tame. Next week will be very tame for a full recovery.
Are you workouts being labelled as “achievable” or “productive”? Whatever they are, if you’re feeling like they’re too easy why not bumped them up one level and see how they feel?
That’s what I did too for a while, I decided to switch it up this “season”. I felt like low volume didn’t have enough time in zone for the scheduled threshold and vo2 workouts. I also added about 6 hours of endurance on top of it.
So far the mid volume plan with zone 2 rides Wednesday and Sunday is working well. Even though the notes are outdated, they do have a nice progression of endurance rides ( from what is suggested) when swapping the sweet spot workout.
I felt like I would plateau using the low volume plan plus endurance. We will see how things go, my main focus now is increasing my tte with threshold so I’m not entirely focused on building ftp. That might change since I start build in a week and a half.
I am hoping they make the time available to train option in plan builder soon. I feel like that would solve a lot of the “in between plans” people, like myself.
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It’s helpful to not think of “VO2 Power”. VO2 Max isn’t a power number, it’s a condition where you are consuming as much oxygen as your body can manage. I highly recommend thinking about any VO2 session like this:
- What is the hardest I can go in each interval. But not so hard on the first that the power drops significantly for the next interval.
- Do it in resistance mode, and don’t be too concerned about the power “number”, only that it stays relatively constant, and that it doesn’t change dramatically from the first to the last interval.
- Do this right, and you’ll feel like a fish out of water gasping for air!
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I really appreciate this advise. My last VO2 interval felt nothing like this. More like short threshold intervals. When I think about it, doing 20x2 Threshold intervals at my current FTP would be challenging and would probably result in a hard workout. I could pick this as an alternate option next week for my planned threshold workout instead of a ramp test. Just to give me a good indication. For VO2 intervals I will think about bumping the PL’s or doing them in resistance mode. I’ve never tried that before.
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As a rough guide, if you’re doing sustained 4 or 5 minute VO2 Max intervals as intended, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be doing them at less than 110% of FTP. If you are, that’s more “high threshold”. A lot of the TR workouts do target this zone.
Another rule of thumb is to aim for a heart rate of at or a little above 90% of your Max HR. So, with my Max HR being 177, I want my HR across the interval to rise fairly rapidly to about 160 and probably drift up to 165 at the end of the interval. If you hit those sort of numbers, you should get the VO2 Max breathing as well. You’ll know when you get it. 
Again, though. Don’t burst yourself this close to your event.
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Forget the levels, forget the power. As Tim Cusick says “max is max”. Smash every interval and you will feel like you are being waterboarded. Then repeat. It is not your max test but level effort you are able to sustain through all intervals. Do not care if your last inverval will have lower power than first one. Just to give you a ballpark when it comes to 5 min power - I can sustain around 85-90% of my 5 min max power through 4x5. So it’s like sst to your FTP:) only thing you are interested in is breathing - you should gasping for air and praying it to end and every second will be true torture 
You can do the workout with higher cadence to make some relief to your muscles and increase heart pump and stroke volume. If its not enough - nothing will be.
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I can’t wait for the toture to begin! 
On a more serious note. My planned VO2 Max intervals at this PL are between 105-110% of FTP.
Is there a specific purpose for these “low-end” type of VO2 workouts in my speciality phase, or should I just aim to acheive maximum VO2 max breathing each workout? Currently 2/3 of my weekly workouts until my event are VO2 max.
I guess what Im asking is, if there is any downsides to start doing “real” max VO2 efforts this late in my training block? I will of course scale it back down if I don’t recover well enough, that I understand. In my previous training block I had 1/3 high intensity workouts as VO2, but now when it’s 2/3, I really want to get it right.
It all depends. When it comes to your vo2 max aka raising the ceiling- they will do nothing at least if you have some training in your legs. Going by percentage over FTP is pointless as it is always extremely individual, depending on many factors as fractional utilisation, anaerobic capacity ect. For example someone with huge anaerobic capacity 120% ftp workout will be easy, for other person with less frc and ftp being close to vo2 max not achievable.
If you want to maximise your gains over FTP - go your max every workout. If you want to work on your aerobic capacity you can do longer intervals on lower percentage (4x8 as an example).
When it comes to your phase - it is a little bit late to do vo2 max as a focus, as you are pretty close to your racing goal - you will probably not recover properly. At the moment probably some anaerobic efforts or shorts-shorts (like 40/20 30/15) as a leg primer and some anaerobic capacity would be suitable - but do not overdue. Basically - its to late to work on anything specific other than general fitness and trying to not overdo thing to feel good on your racing day.
I will insist on the survey, when Im not feeling challenged I choose easy and the next workout it’s like AT is going full revenge on me: “so you think that wasn’t hard enough? I will show you hard enough!”.
Playing with the survey you can adjust your progression and take advantage of AT at the same time.
Beware of overtraining, “piano piano se va lontano”, slow gains sustained in time will give you big gains, but big gains too fast can be dangerous and you risk overtraining and loosing all that gains and start over again. If you don’t get pay for cycling then enjoy the process without rushing.
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This would go directly against the speciality training block tailored and recommended by AT, which has my 5 day climbing road race event in 3 weeks as high priority. I’m not writing off your suggestion, just curious about your thoughts.
As mentioned before I have zero signs of burn out. The past 3+ months I’ve had the physical and mental feeling that I could add much more volume and intensity but I’ve held back to avoid overtraining. My goal now is just to make sure I get full benefit from my VO2 max intervals and not just cruise through them.
There is difference betwen maximising something and training something. There is nothing wrong with doing hard efforts just 3 weeks before event. You just priming your legs and maybe see some kind of improvement. To fully benefit the gains from vo2 max block (like 3xvo2 max per week for 3 weeks), that is fully focused on one thing only, you need around 4-6 weeks after the block to fully benefit the adaptations . But if you are doing your normal plan - just do it. 3 weeks before event is not a time to push pedal to the metal but I would rather focus on all the things around the race - checking the route, planning nutrition and looking for key moments from previous races.
I have mentioned anaerobic work as it comes fairly fast and, especially if you have not trained it before, you can see some fast improvements in this realm. Doing too much just before the race is common caveat for many people, and usually nothing good comes from that other than fatigue.
So in my personal opinion only I would not experiment with anything so close to the event but just do some specific workouts that mimic key parts of the race and truly focus other components than trying to improve fitness in the last throw.
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Sorry for my mistake - I haven’t meant after the block but from the start of the block (recovery time included). Of course, as always - it depends. And if you keep volume sufficient and touch the threshold from time to time you can easily maintain your vo2 max all year long. But volume is the key here.
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