I think it is important to both experiment and learn from experience. It really comes down to knowing yourself, consistently putting in the time, and adjusting the balance between endurance riding and interval riding. Timing is everything.
Kurt and others in this thread have more experience building custom plans with a lot of sweet spot. My first two years were loosely structured and letting my legs be the coach - pushing hard, backing off, not being completely consistent or linear but still achieving excellent results. Then TR for a couple years, and then a coach for a couple years.
First year used a weekly group ride plus an additional solo workout, to build out a progression from 10 minutes to 60 minutes of sweet spot/threshold. That was enough to support buying a road bike and 7 months later finishing a day with 8 hours of climbing (4 HC climbs). Lesson learned - going long works.
Second year I pushed sweet spot riding beyond 2 hours, and threshold to 70 minutes. Lesson learned - going long works.
Third year I found TR and figured that SSB-1 HV had enough science that going long 5 days a week was a good thing. Made it thru the first 6 week block with very good results on a 2.5 hour HC climb but, a) switching from outside to 8+ hours/week riding inside led to trainer burn out, and b) red flags started when attempting SSB-2 HV and I abandoned it. Lesson learned - too much sweet spot is not good, for me.
Happy to see that TR has now dropped SSB HV to 4 days/week of sweet spot, and this article What Is Sweet Spot Training: Everything You Need to Know - TrainerRoad Blog should be reviewed as HV is not generally recommended. And a lot of voices in the coaching world would have you doing more endurance than sweet spot, on the number of hours in a TR HV plan. I’m on the side of science supporting more endurance, up to 60-80% of riding on 8-10 (or 8-12) hours/week of a TR HV plan.
Muscular endurance seems like something I’m naturally inclined to do well at, and that building up to 90 minutes can be done quickly over 4-6 weeks. So from a timing standpoint, better to wait on burning those long progression matches on outside group rides come January and February. But I’m not racing like Kurt and others, and I’m older and need more recovery. Toss in a monthly long threshold and I’m good.
In the context of TR I saw better results in base by using traditional base 1 and 2 MV/HV as a loose template, but taking it outside and adding some intensity otherwise I faced the aging athlete dilemma of use it or lose it. Some low-cadence work during both TB1 and TB2 was particularly helpful to build out some muscular endurance early on, without having to burn mental matches of doing long SS so early in the season. I also liked the cycling portion of TR full distance triathlon base, on paper, but never had a chance of doing it before getting a coach.
Food for thought, hope that helps.