4 sweet spot workouts in a week is too much. Now, your TiZ in each of those workouts was likely not much of an issue for you, so you got away with it that first week.
As you noted, the biggest issue is you increased your volume of sweet spot by 33% in one workout, then tried to follow it with the same thing a day later, and late in a block. That’s overly aggressive.
The progression was a bit odd that you spent three workouts at 60min TiZ. The progression before that was pretty good, but then you stagnated it, then you tried to make a huge jump. 3x20 → 3x24or25 → 4x20 → 3x30. Do that over the course of those last two weeks and you probably would’ve been golden and gone from 3x12 to 3x30 in three weeks, likely without issue if your other rides supported it (Z2, maybe some tempo if you can handle it.) (This year I progressed 3x20 → 3x25 → 3x30… you want to be aggressive with progression in sweet spot, especially if you’ve done it before… you aren’t nearly this aggressive with threshold/anything higher.)
Your overall goal is to increase time in zone, first and foremost. Interval length would be a secondary progression… physiologically there’s not much difference between 3x20 on 3 min rest and 1x60. Psychologically there’s a big difference. The question is, do you need to be able to drill 60 or 90 straight minutes at 90%? There’s not many applications to that outside a solo breakaway, but it is “nice to know”.
Biggest issue was doing four workouts and setting week 1 at 175 min TiZ and trying to progress from there. Ditch the 3x12, start at 3x15, lower week 1 TiZ, and do two sweet spot workouts per week with a third zone 3/tempo ride in there. That’s much more sustainable when you get up into the 75 and 90 minute SST workouts.
I think the big reason for that second week staying at 60min was your point here. For me, I wanted to get to that 1x60. Mostly from a psychological point. I had never done a 60min SS interval so it was a target I wanted to hit. So I think I built it up in my head and had to build up the interval length to complete it. Now looking back, it probably wasn’t the best choice as it made the jumps in the 3rd week bigger. And I think blocks like this in the future I’ll focus on TIZ like you said.
Agree with the points above - these looong SST workouts catch up with you suddenly and I found they just floored me just after I had my 1x100 session!
I think the other way to look at this is WHY would you want to schedule more than 2 long sessions like this a week really? The work you are doing during those sessions is very significant so what do we really expect to happen by trying to do a 3rd? Is it really going to add anything beneficial to your development if you can already do a 4x20 etc twice a week anyway? I love the @brendanhousler quote about "a little being good for us so doing even more must be better right…wrong!"
The goal has to be consistency longer term, so far far better to dial it down one notch and maintain it over time than max out and burn out. Sadly I had to learn that one the hard way. Felt great after my SST progression and then spent 3 months praying I never had to get on the turbo again…
Another update…die my short efforts from my PDC last Thursday. mFTP still the same. FRC went up to 14.8 and %vo2max got lower now (82.7). So ok. All seems ok now.
About progression…Finisher my 3rd higher volume week and really feels good. Tomorrow 1hr recovery and finish the week in 16hr. Today did a Z2 ride for 2.45 and then completed a 75min SST interval at 90%…
With controlled TSB and good sleep it seems that the higher volume weeks are doable for me as a 45y old dude. Also fueling during every rides is key. Even thé easier ones. 4z2 workouts and one FTP and one SST a week. One week tot gonand then a recovery week.
Finished my 3rd week today. Managed to do 4x20 Monday and 4x20 again today. Was going to try to extend today out a bit but was pretty cooked so I called it at 80min TiZ. Learned some things from this thread that will help me next time I do an extensive block again. Got a rest week then some threshold work to come.
Generally build out to an hour TiZ, but realise it needs to be done in smaller steps than sweetspot.
Might be worth doing a Kolie Moore style TTE test to start and use that number as a start point for TiZ and build from there. I think when working very close to FTP it takes more experimentation to find your individual start/end points and se how much progression you can take each week. I also prefer to avoid ERG for these and do them with a resistance setting and more by feel.
Can you explain why this is? Do you have approximate weekly % growth targets for TIZ?
I am a newbie to this space and have been following this thread for awhile. Started swapping my TR SS Saturday workout (on LV plan) with progressions I’ve seen in this thread. I’m mostly interested in pushing out single long intervals (first one I did was 1x60min @ ~88% FTP). My thinking here is that 60 min is the longest climb or extended effort I’ll ever expect to go in the races I plan on doing this year (lots of MTB marathon). My plan was to push out to 1x90min eventually at 90-92% FTP (expecting to see FTP gains from build phase I’m currently in). FWIW, I am doing about 10hrs per week, with all the additional time being in Z2 around 65-75% FTP (I ramp the Z2 progression through the blocks as well, first week Z2 is 65% FTP, second week is 70%, third week is 75%, etc)
Here’s my quote from the Threshold Progression thread. Again, this is my opinion only, so take that for what it’s worth. IMO the preference for threshold training is (1) over/unders (a couple different ways to do those); (2) threshold training at 94-96% of FTP starting point depends on TTE, extending time in zone. Personally, I do a lot (a LOT) more over/under work than long threshold intervals.
And…
Sweet Spot is not as fatiguing as a lot of work, especially for experienced riders, and especially in the 30-60 minute workout range… for some even extending out to 75 min or more. So to run a progression where you spend three workouts trying to get from 45 to 60 min TiZ might be appropriate, but then spending three more workouts going from 3x20 to 1x60 probably isn’t necessary and isn’t forcing much adaptation if you’ve ridden workouts of 60min TiZ previously.
So for experienced riders, I’d advise them to be aggressive with their progressions, and rather than spending three months going from 45 min TiZ to 90 min TiZ and seeking glory intervals of 1x90, spend three weeks getting to 3x30 and then move on to something else… then go back and hit whatever you want to maintain every couple of weeks - maybe 3x30, maybe 3x25, maybe 3x20…
Then if you feel good one of those days, just skip the rest intervals and bang your 90 minutes straight on… but that said, having done a few of these blocks now, it’s a bit of a waste of time to push 1x90 as some kind of arbitrary goal, again IMO. If it is race-specific, you’re a breakaway rider, long TT, long climb, whatever… go for it.
Another update after my extensive block. Finished 3 weeks of 14h30 with Z2 and FTP and SST work. Progression went to 1x75 outdoor after 2h45 Z2 work in that ride. Next goal is to do it 1x90.
I entered for La Marmotte gran fondo on 3th July again (174k and 5200m). 4 big Alpe climbs (about 5h of climbing).
I have now a recovery week (or 5-6 days). Tips always welcome how to do a good recovery week. And then I do 2.5 weeks of another block of volume but I think I add a Vo2max session. Maybe SST over/unders, … But for my main event of long steady climbing. I think I want to try to get my sweetspot progression as far as I can go. Mostly in those climbing fondo’s I can can climb at 0.85IF. So maybe also focus on long tempo rides?
New ramp test after my good 5 weeks block. 10W increase. Time for the next block (2 good volume weeks again, few days rest and 7 days Majorca camp).
1x75min is my current progression. Hope to ramp it up towards 120min. Goal is to ride as long as possible in Sweetspot or upper tempo before the beginning of July.
I try to work towards 1x120min, but normally this should be doable. Last year I climbed the Stelvio in 1h58 at 88%. But what is harder 1x120min? Or 4x40min? With 20min recovery between? In other words, how much does recovery affects your additional extra TIZ you can handle?
I think 1x120 min is harder, especially with 20 min recoveries - I personally find the 3 mins recovery that are in the custom SS workouts a good mental break. The physical adaptions probably aren’t that different, but if it’s easier you can also take a 30-60s break going up Stelvio (e.g. standing up or when there’s a flatter section).
Good luck, I love the MTB trail that goes down from there
Also wanted to give an update on my progressions and hoping for some ideas what to do going forward.
Did PDC testing for WKO5 and took Kolie Moore’s FTP test progression 1, which gave an mFTP of 345 last week - I ran out of ramp at the end, but for the first time felt a sustainable power and think the TTE would’ve been above 60 mins.
I’ve since done 22/23/22 min @ 97% and 4x25 @ 90%, both felt challenging, but doable (rated 3 - hard).
I’m planning to progress SS/Threshold for the next 2 weeks, then take a week fully off the bike.
After that, I’ll be 15 weeks out from my A race (100mi MTB XC) and have progressed from 277 in Dec to 345 now with primarily SS and a little Threshold (<10 workouts total I did intervals above threshold: 5 O/Us, 3 Vo2max).
TR Plan Builder has me do SSB 7 weeks, Sustained Power Build 7 weeks, and XC Marathon Specialty 1 week (the plan continues to a second A race end of September). I haven’t followed TR plans since last spring, where I got great ramp FTPs, but stalled out quickly.
My current thinking is something like this:
4 weeks SS progression + 1 recovery
3 week Vo2max block + 1 recovery
5 weeks SS progression (incl recovery somewhere) and 1 week taper into the A race
I’ve also played with the idea to back off intensity and do a couple of high volume Z2 weeks to change the stimulus - something like 1 high TiZ SS session and otherwise 15-20h Z2.
My volume has been surprisingly low (5-7h), but usually had at least one long day skiing in the mountains, so definitely looking to turn that into Z2 volume now.
I vote for the extra hours in Z2. I am far away from your impressive FTP but I recently started a higher volume approach (15hours) with 1 SS and 1 FTP session a week. And it seems to work and getting almost back at my level of 2021 (covid took some condition away in the end of 2021). And when I do Z2 it is Z2 (65-70%). And I think for your 100miles race it will be not that bad to get some longe endurance rides into the legs, make your body a fat burner, not a carb consumer. You also want to hit your numbers in the last part of your race, and then the aerobic engine is talking…
My first thought reading your post was that you had done a big block of SST/Thr work and PB was about to get you to do SSB again… That may work but it does feel like a change in stimulus might be useful to make continued gains. I’d be thinking a big z2 block for a few weeks, then vo2 and back to SST/Thr.
Thats a huge bump in FTP from SST/Thr work and at some point you’ll face diminishing returns or need to ‘raise the ceiling’ as your FTP heads towards your MAP. I think a big block of z2 work, perhaps with 1 weekly VO2 session rather than SST, will be a good next step.
