With TR SSB my some of my thoughts are summed up in this post yesterday: Differences between high and medium volume SSB plans - #30 by WindWarrior where that once a month really long 1-3 hour interval is often a hard push on a metric or imperial century. I seem to respond well to infrequent big overloads and recovery week keeping a couple toned down intensity workouts (vs TR’s all endurance recovery week). So if I was using TR, my approach might be cherry picking 2 workouts from SSB1/SSB2, possibly dialing down the number of intervals, and then 3 days of zone2/endurance. I’ve got almost 15 years on you, and am finally starting to notice the impact of aging in terms of recovery. Some people start feeling that sooner. For context I still have a head of dark hair and can read a menu or my phone with or without glasses, call me a late bloomer on aging.
My coach has taught me a lot about minimum effective dose in order to elicit adaptations. Right now we are building up threshold, after having built a large base over 1 year. My best training happens in December/January/February while I’m not on allergy meds. Monday was shorter over/unders wrapped into 2 hours you can see the intervals here Where did you ride OUTSIDE today (2021) - #1321 by WindWarrior something like 3-min at 85% and 1-min at 115%, repeat that twice, and do four sets. Tuesdays are generally 2 hour endurance rides 72-77%. Yesterday was 2 hours with threshold intervals of 8-min at 95%, 3 sets of those and it felt really easy and I could have gone a lot longer and done more sets. But Friday is more tempo and some above threshold repeatability, so I just did the Wed threshold work as a little can go a long way before I start needing 40-70 minute efforts in March. Saturday is 3 hour endurance ride. Its basically an Individualized variation of the two weeks shown here Sweet Spot Part 3 – FasCat Coaching
About two years ago I tried the FasCat off-the-shelf 18 weeks of sweet spot plan (skipped the first 4 weeks), and within 3 months I saw improvements. The plans have fewer intervals than TR, and initially I was concerned about not doing enough sweet spot intervals (or even long ones like TR Wright Peak). But to my surprise I could still go out and nail 40-70 minutes at threshold. And FTP bumped above 260 about 4% higher than I was seeing on TR (and the ‘before AT’ build plans destroyed me). However if you want to work on fatigue resistance, then mixing in longer tempo intervals say 85-90% are gold IMHO and a lot of info about that on the Sweet Spot Progression thread.
Hope that helps, its somewhat specific to where I currently am but the general rules of thumb are: a) 2-3 hard sessions a week, b) fewer intervals, and c) more endurance. Its surprisingly similar to what Brandan Housler wrote here 2021: what worked for you, what didn’t - #8 by brendanhousler and he won 2 US masters championships this year (road and Fondo I believe). I don’t have that level of talent, but that approach is working better for me.