I am starting the 2nd week of build phase. But somehow, I feel my fitness is very low or should I say gone down drastically this past few weeks due to different factors. I got flu for 4 days during the rest week of base2 (but still trained) which I think is very counter productive. Then on my first week of build after one terrible workout I had to do a tooth extraction which sidelined me for 3days.
AI detection suggesting to bump down my FTP by 1.9% but didnt accept.
The race that im preparing is 80 days away. Should I restart and do base again? Or should I continue with my current plan with a lower FTP as AI detection suggested?
p.s.
Also my indoor FTP is like 10% lower than my outdoor FTP. Current FTP is 261 but can maintain 305 for 20mins outside. Which one should I follow?
Had similar situation as you, during low volume climbing plan, got flu exactly on rest week, during build phase and managed to do 2 or 3 exercises after that (with 7w increased ftp, as calculated by AI), but after that I wasn’t able to complete none of the threshold and sweet spot wko’s…took one week of 1h-1,5h endurance wko’s only and pushed the following weeks further and it turned out to be the right decision…although still failed at one or two wko’s (or lowered intensity of late intervals for 5%), the following ones felt like I think they should…(some very) hard but doable…but than again, did most of them outside, which is almost always easier to me… Reading somewhere “a week of pure endurance is always useful for those who are training on a low volume plan” made that decision even easier.
Some good advice already. My guess is your body is still recovering a bit. A few days of endurance rides may help. Then I would accept the lower FTP or at least be very willing to lower the target power on your upcoming FTP intervals to make sure you can get thru them. The problem with Erg mode is that it creates a false impression that their FTP is an exact number when it is a range. And your ability to express your FTP is going to be hampered when you are sick or recovering.
Tell us more about this. Can you do 2 x 20 at 305 outside?
Yes. Thats what I did. Did. endurance for a couple of session then do vo2 workout just to try if i need a lower FTP.
As for 300+ 2x20 i havent tried. Longest I did was 22mins doing a chase in a practice race a few weeks back before the sickness bug hit me. I think I can do 2x20 given the right motivation.
300+ for 20 minutes doesn’t make that your FTP. And if you could only do repeats of those efforts on your very best day, that also makes it sound like it is not your FTP.
This may be a good guide though. A classic outdoor FTP test (that many will argue about) is to do your best 20 minute effort and then take that number x .90 to .95. That would mean your FTP is somewhere in the ballpark of 274-290.
And it doesn’t have to be exact. Good enough is usually good enough.
You’re always gonna feel like crap on the bike until you have a few weeks of riding consistently under your belt.
I’m in a similar but worse situation to you. My “base” was destroyed by illness and I only got 1 week of it done. I know myself and training background though, so turned the recovery week into more base, then went straight into build, titrating the intensity of it to how I feel (number of and intensity of sessions). I have a long history with structured training though, am used to doing >500-700tss weeks, and don’t typically need a full recovery week every 4th week anyways.
If you’re not confident that you’d be able to tell when a build was just killing you, then I wouldn’t recommend doing what I did, and would focus on doing more base.
Alternatively… if you have your event in your calendar and your period of illness… how did your plan get adapted? TRs plan adaptions aren’t perfect but they’re pretty reasonable if you aren’t confident to make your own changes.
As for the 1.9% change in FTP… I wouldn’t worry about that. That’s like margin of error/daily variation.
And as for different FTPs inside and outside… provided you’re talking about measured FTP in both scenarios, yes this is common for a number of reasons. You use indoors for indoors and outdoors for outdoors.
Just an update, followed most of the advice here did a couple of z2 and vo2 and it felt great and did a practice race last sunday and was able to hang till the end so felt really good about that.
However, I got injured playing other sports later in the day. looks like another setback of 5-10days. Hopefully I can still get into shape before May.