No racing in the foreseeable future here. And honestly I’ve been having an awfully hard time getting up and on the bike, ready to deal with this intensity before 6am. I’m switching things up, with the intention of building general fitness, raising FTP, dropping a stubborn 10lbs, and getting ready to be blazing fast for a 2021 season that hopefully takes place.
So…I’m starting Sweet Spot Base high volume. I’ve been doing the ~9hrs a week that coincides with high volume all year…adding on endurance rides and hard group rides on top of mid volume ssb and short power build. We’ll see if I can handle it. Either way…I know be it mental, physical, or both, I am more ready to do sweet spot at 5:30am than a VO2 workout or 50/40s like ansel adams +4 that I just pulled the plug on.
Anywho…I’ve complete the 1st week of the second half of short power build. Would the most logical schedule be to gonstraight into SSB, finish the first 2 weeks (so 3 weeks of work total), take a rest week, then the last 3 weeks of ssb work then rest week again, before continuing on and following the normal plan of SSB2?
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If you’re feeling lack of motivation and pulling the plug on workouts why not just take a rest week now, get outside for some low key mileage that’ll help with the reset, then just start from square one all fresh with SSBHV1 Wk 1?
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That had certainly crossed my mind…I should have laid that out as the other option in my question. But it’s not that I’m not motivated…quite the opposite. I WANT to train, and just had a rest week the week before last. I juat cant seem to get my body geared up in the morning for short power build workouts before I have to drop my daughter off in the morning and head in to work. Doing evening workouts would solve this as well I think…but I’m not really willing to sacrifice family time consistently for my bike. I reserve those cards for race days 
Additionally though…I think I need a bit of a reset though in other facets. I need to get a better handle on sleep and diet, and I’m also currently motivated to do those two things, and to eat well and try to drop a few pounds. Right now none of that really coincides (for me anyway…) with gutting out short power build at the crack of dawn.
Maybe that does speak to lack of motivation lol. And the sleep/diet minor issues certainly are contributing to making SPB so tough right now.
Maybe the moral of this story is I’m just confused 
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Off season break, drop and give me 10 weeks of strength 
before going back to SSB!
Oh dear god I’d rather get up at 1am to ride a solo century than lift a weight!
I have been meaning to start doing a little yoga/stretching routine to do SOME kind of more full body workout. Was going to take up swimming this summer…but the apocalypse kinda put the kabash on that idea.
sorry, thought you wanted to get faster 
Nah. I just want to look like I’m making an effort while drinking too much beer. I race cross for christ sake!
In all seriousness though…I do have a feeling that strength work would probably help me…but I’m not entirely clear on HOW. I feel I have a decent grasp on endurance physiology/training…but I dont quite get how strength work plays into that.
For what it’s worth…I’m sort of comically muscular below the waist. Not from riding…just genetics. I’m build like a centaur with Froome as the human half. Broader shoulders though. And a tad more flabby. And worse hair.
I’m guessing slower as well.
I’m going to toss out some links and be lazy because, well, because no beer after July 4th as I fired up Lose It! app and decided to track calories for a couple weeks…
here are some things to review:
science and guidelines:
and bought this plan because I liked the podcast (full details on plan):
