Moving from century to rolling road race

Not really a question, but thought I would see what others thought of this change of plan.

I was about to enter my second round of specialised century low volume. I can’t see my first Gran Fondo of 2021 happening in March (UK) I thought I would change this block to rolling road race. I have certainly had gains over the last year doing the century plan, up about 25 watts over the year, but the century can be a bit boring. Not easy, just boring :grinning:

I look at some of the other workouts people post and they look much more interesting. Will it be harder, I am not sure, probably harder in a different way. I will now doubt be using different systems during this block.

I looked at this once, not trying to give you advice but I looked at the workouts and decided that I could handle the Century plan but would not be able to handle al the above FTP required in the Rolling RR. I should try ad get better at these type of efforts but being over 55 think I’m better spending my time building my endurance and being able to sustain high output workloads closer to what I would use in Fondo’s/Sportives etc.

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I don’t disagree with any of that. I am 51. I Just fancied a change and thought it might help with hills in the century side. I totally agree rolling road race looks a bit scary. I will report back how it goes :grinning:.

From the glass is full view, if the event doesn’t happen that frees you up to experiment and try something new like Rolling RR. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to base or take a rest week and then start the Century Specialty.

This sounds like a no-consequences opportunity to experiment. Who knows, you might even like it or prefer it to Century Specialty. Also no harm in going outside of your comfort zone, you’ll probably learn something. Worst case, you hate it and now you know and there’s no impact to an event you were prepping for.

What build did you do? If you did Sustained PB, you could try General Build the next time through or Short PB or SusPB. I’m not doing Short PB though. :slight_smile:

If the intensity is higher than you are used to, prioritize recovery and pay attention to your body. I didn’t have any injuries during Sustained PB, but I did get a knee ache that slowly built. If it got bad I would have adjusted my schedule or pulled the plug. All those VO2max intervals put a lot of stress on a bad knee that was not used to that much intensity.

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Thanks Craig. That was my thought. This was the plan that Plan Builder gave me. I have already done this once. Today was day one, Merced -1. It was fun, but had no @chad notes which was a shame for my first RRR workout.

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I took the plunge and I am half way through. First recovery week next week. It has certainly been hard, but I have enjoyed doing something different. Early on I thought I might have made a mistake, but I just remembered I was trying new systems.

I like to do two hours on a Saturday so swapped all the workouts to two hours, but I made it through those.

The last one in this block was Mallory +1. The 3rd and 4th VO2 max intervals were done at 95%, but I put it back up for the remain two. I was pleased to get through this one.

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