Ha! Not a problem for me there. It’s more about having at most 60-90 min to ride indoors. Family, work, etc. This becomes a limiter in terms of how to progress winter sweet spot sessions. 3x30 (or 1x60 or 2x45) can be done within a 2hr window—for me that’s a big workout and certainly enough to get me to the warm riding season which is when I can devote more hours.
It’s currently -18° F /-28° C so outdoor riding is not an option—but when it is then 2+ hour rides are most definitely an option and give me the time I need to really push out TiZ.
Managed to progress pretty quickly up to 1hr30min at 95%. 2 hours (esp. if I knocked the power down a handful of watts) seems pretty doable. Gotta love this extended sweetspot work for making you feel super strong. You realise how much capacity you actually have if you just relax and settle into the effort - I always find myself feeling way better 30 minutes in than I do at the start.
Worth going up to 1x120min or adding some intensity through O/Us?
I love O/U’s and as mentioned I slot in 1x per week in my early base phase to get some above-threshold intensity in the legs. It helps prepare for subsequent sessions later in the base and build phase. And just good bang for buck. For me anyway.
Cheers - yeah, certainly one where you’re craving some carbs immediately after… This thread sets some pretty high standards for “mega” sessions though!
Yeah, will add some O/Us in I think, if anything just to mix it up a bit. Think it’ll be a couple of months (at least) until we get any time-trialling back in the UK, so not much time pressure at the moment to peak.
Once weather gets better and I can ride outside (April) I’ll dial up the Sunday to longer. I just do not want to be sitting on the trainer in z2 for 4 hours. I’ve done it, it just drives me up the wall.
I’m actually looking at flipping the tues and thursday workouts so that i hit the threshold fresh and the OU can always be turned into pure SST if needed.
I find the longer sessions harder than the longer TiZ as well. The mental aspect just kills me for some reason, hence my progression.
Everything is based off of WKO metrics.
90min as my max for weekday workouts. Certainly makes programming interesting for some of these longer blocks. Also makes overall weekly total somewhat limited. Once you make peace with the time limit and figure out how to use that 1-2hr slot in the most effective way, you can really take control and focus on what you want to accomplish out of that workout rather than just TiZ. ex. go really long on one interval even if it means less overall TiZ just to mentally strengthen your abilities.
Hmm, yeah I could probably do with that, although only been 3 weeks since doing 340w for 42min TTE in the last test. I did 2x20min + 1x15min at 336w last week, with 4min rests for a threshold session and I was pretty empty at the end.
Pretty sure my TTE has gone out to somewhere between 50-60min, but going off ‘feel’ in those threshold sessions, FTP doesn’t seem much above 340w? Conversely, 325w feels incredibly sustainable…
You raise a good point here. When training TTE it seems like for me also it seems to extend pretty easily, versus going upwards. But I do 3 weeks on, 1 week off anyway.
Curious what you folks are doing after you’ve done your sweet spot block.
Are you:
A) continuing with the same frequency as-is, but progressing TiZ further
B) Raising watts/intensity and continuing at a higher intensity
C) Shifting to something else (VO2, threshold, rest week, etc)
For me, I’m going to attempt something like 10 weeks of SS focused training and then move to a more POL focus that has 2 VO2 workouts per week and the rest Z2. I’ll add a SS maintenance session every 10 days or so just to keep that system engaged and for varsity.
Personally, I’ll likely do a block with some over/unders (with shorter, i.e. 20min interval length) and a bit f vo2 max work. Tbh it’s as much to vary the stimulus and keep me interested without any racing as anything.
Hoping by the end of March weather will be a bit better in the UK and I can get a few weeks of higher volume Z2 rides in as a block. Will also be able to get the TT bike outside in nicer weather and dial in some efforts on the road
Will you do a 20 min test outdoors on your TT bike? I’m gonna take mine out this weekend for first time in months. Planning to do a handful of 10 min sub-maximal efforts to see where I’m at whilst getting reacquainted with the position.
Sounds pretty similar to what I’m thinking. Will do some shorter sweetspot/threshold efforts, just to regain familiarity. I tend to not need much time in the TT position, and don’t have much/any power drop off, but thinking of doing some longer events (50, maybe a 100 who knows?!) this year, so doing some longer rides probably sensible. I live in London though, so the 45min urban/traffic light heavy ride out always puts me off riding the TT bike much…
Probably won’t do a full 20 minute test too, as on the TT bike they tend to put me way more in the box than on a road bike… Always way more knackered after a 10 than a 25!
Sounds good. I’ve only done one 100 and a weekly long ride helped massively, both mentally and logistically.
I live in Sevenoaks and used to regularly commute into town so I know exactly what you mean!
Yeah, there’s a lot of fatigue incurred during a 20 min TT test but it’s hard to work out zones otherwise. Might just do a series of efforts from 200-350 watts and try to ballpark where SS/threshold is from RPE
I had my three quality sessions of over-unders, high SST (92-94%), and threshold (97-100%). I prioritized threshold, then O/Us, then SST, which is why I did the first two Monday/Friday, then I could see if I had gas in the tank in between. (Along with 4hrs on a weekend day). Just sharing my layout…
Yay!! I passed ‘my test’: 1 x 100 at 92%. So that’s the extensive phase done. Now the issue is one of designing the intensive phase.
Cusick’s seminar says, per week:
2 sessions @ 95 - 105% of target power
1 session over threshold
rest = Z2, endurance.
That gives 3 work sessions and 2 endurance sessions per week for a five riding-day week (Tu, W, Th, Sa, Su). Is this how you would do it? It seems a bit intense to me: what would you advice be?
Also, having got my SS out to 1 x 100, I don’t want to lose that. Would you keep some long SS work in the plan, perhaps every other week? And if so, how would you do it?
I’ve already learnt a lot from this thread and would really appreciate any advice as I knuckle down to the next phase of this plan.
If you can’t do 3 threshold sessions, you could always dial the 3rd one down and make it SST. It’s not going to be quite as strong of a ‘dose’ but still working similar adaptive signals as I understand it.
PS you’re not going to lose your aerobic capabilities doing threshold work, so just don’t worry about it!
I agree. 1 threshold and 1 supra-threshold is still a good week—see if you can go for 3 intense days and adjust as necessary.
I did 6 weeks of VO2/Z2 aka polarized last summer and didn’t do a single SS ride over that duration and could bang out long SS intervals with no issue—your engine will be just fine.
