I’m going into my third year of Trainer Road and have been loving my progression. I’ve always done sweet spot low volume plan and supplemented with outdoor mountain bike work outs and some long endurance gravel rides. I’m in the 4-7 hours a week range of total riding. Over the past three years I’ve gone from 275 FTP and peaked out at 336.
Within the past 3 months I’ve been unable to complete specific workouts without lowering the intensity. In the past my heart rate rarely went into Zone 4 unless I was doing workouts with IF of .88 or higher, but have found myself in that Zone 4 more regularly and more often. Despite me having to lower workout intensity recently I was still seeing bumps in FTP (until my most recent AI FTP detection, 336 - 331).
Within the past 6 months I have had some major life changes in career, relationship, and housing. I also started implementing long z2 gravel rides for an event I recently completed. I had been training for an overnight 177 mile gravel ride, which I completed successfully and felt really strong finishing.
Bottom line, I don’t like struggling to the point of lowering my levels during a workout. This is something I’ve almost NEVER done in the past.
Any insight or guidance would be hugely appreciated and I’d happily give any more info as needed.
This was my workout this morning where I lowered the last interval 5%
Cardinal - this mornings workout
This is an additional work out I had difficulty with
This was a few weeks back