This happens to me too, especially when I’m doing over under work. The first part of a set feels harder, once get through the “over”, I am usually good for it.
There is psychological benefit to doing a 1x90, for example, but physiologically doing 3x30 on short rest is very close. I did my 1x90, but don’t plan to repeat it any time soon, opting for same TiZ with the breaks when I get back to doing long SST as maintenance.
First off than you everyone for this thread. I feel like the sweet spot progression I got out of here is going to really pay off. I’ve been doing sweet spot Tuesday/saturday, tempo Wednesday, endurance thursday/Sunday (Sunday being a longer ride). I’ve got a few weeks left in this sweet spot block that I’ve got planned that’ll hopefully culminate with a 2x45 or 1x90.
My question is where should I got next? I was toying with trying out a 3-4 week vo2 block, something like Chad has talked about on the forum and podcast. Or would doing some threshold work be more sound?
But i did allready 2x25 and 1x30 with 3min rest. That is 80min TiZ. When i go to 1x50 i do 30min TiZ less. How can i progress to longer blocks with not loosing to much TiZ?
I mean, your intervals don’t have to be equal length. So if you want to do at least 80min TiZ and a 50min interval you can add a 20min and a 10min interval or any other combination. I feel all the standard 2x and 3x are equal because that is easiest to make quickly, but there is no rule they should be like that.
I wasn’t speaking about your case personally. It was a general progression case. If you’re able to do 80 minutes, then go to 90. I’d recommend 3x30. If you want to do a 1x90, do it. It’s debateable whether it’s really worth it, but there is some mental benefit to knowing you can hold 90% for 90min.
How far you go in your progression depends on a lot of things.
2x25 + 1x30 → 2x40 → 1x50 + 1x30 → 1x60+1x30 is dragging things out.
If 80 min TiZ is really, really hard for you and takes you a couple of days to recover from, then maybe go this route. Personally, I’d just push you to 3x30 right now, or perhaps just 2x40 → 3x30.
I think you are right! I did the SST on Tuesday 2x25 and 1x30, on wednesday i did in the morning strength and 1.5hour workout on Zwift with FTP and Vo2max blocks and thursday (yesterday) 3.5h endurance. So i think that 3x30 is good to go!
Been working on this now for two weeks and already noticing massive difference as i work through progressions.
Overall HR has come down dramatically from my first 2x20 ride 10 days ago, to the point now its sitting in the range of where it would be when i used to do tempo while i do a 2x30. RPE dramatically down as well.
Also appreciate the few of you saying 3min recoveries between intervals starts to become unnecessary. Certainly still need something for the mental break, but it has no physical impact really. Certainly builds a lot of confidence.
I started following the progression @empiricalcycling described in his podcast and worked my way up to 2x30 min pretty quickly. I have a question, however:
At what point should you simply stop pushing the curve further to the right and focus on something else? Lets say I build my progression up to 1x60 (my next step), 4x20, 3x30 etc. up to 2 hours… when is it “enough”? At some point, one simply can’t progress any more, if not from other reasons, because of time constraints.
When you get to that point, where to next? Test FTP, recalibrate and repeat? Start FTP block basically the same way, e.g. 3x10, 2x20, 3x15 …?
BTW: I’m looking to complete a full IM but am currently not training for a race, my primary target is to increase FTP.
Eventually your FTP will raise instead of your TTE going out. Then you get to rebuild your TTE at the new FTP. Or it doesn’t and you have a 3hr TTE. I can think of worse things.