Forgive me for jumping in here as I haven’t been in this thread for quite a while, but have an observation to share…
The same happened to me after doing my long SST progression block in Nov-Dec. I made great progress up to 100 mins @ 90% and then thought I’d do some 100% efforts after a few days rest…it really didnt go well at all and I questioned whether I was burned out or had somehow just wasted 12 weeks of training?!
Long story short, it just took a little time - some z2 work, less intensity for a couple of weeks and I was able to get back to the harder work and lower RPE. Started hitting 10-12m 100% efforts and extending TiZ quite comfortably. So my takeaway message…“don’t panic”. I think doing single focused blocks for any period of time just means we need an adjustment phase when we start to mix it up again.
I bailed on a ramp test yesterday because i just felt flat around the 15min mark, gave it another go this morning and was up another 15w from my 4 weeks of threshold work.
Also (stupidly) decided to go out on friday and do a short power test to make sure that I have a good 5min max effort for my PDC heading into the VO2 block. Smacked down 5w shy of an all time PB of 430w, which for not having touched any above threshold work since the fall feels pretty damn nice.
I will say, the confidence that comes from doing all of this SST and especially threshold work the last few weeks is amazing. cruising along and knowing that if you want to sit at threshold for 30+min without issue is extremely confidence inspiring.
Two observations, which might help for future recovery weeks.
1 100 TSS is remarkably low, unless you are on a low volume kind of plan. I usually aim for recovery week TSS of about 50-60% or the average TSS for the previous couple of weeks.
2 I don’t know what the structure of your workouts was during the recovery week, but I take an approach in which I mimic the structure of the phase I’m in. Currently I’m doing an intensive phase, so my recovery last week included 5 rides:
a single interval of 15 mins @ 102% of FTP [instead of the usual 3 intervals] + endurance riding to 1 hour
one hour endurance
two 4-min intervals @ 105% FTP [instead of the usual 9 intervals) + endurance
one hour endurance
one 9-minute over-unders [instead of the usual 3 - 4] + endurance.
That structure – some intensive work, but of short duration – meant that the first intensive workout back was not too bad, though I did struggle with the third 15 mins @ 102% of FTP.
Good feedback, thanks. I’m going to do this with my next recovery week and see how it goes. I generally race well after these kinds of taper weeks, so perhaps during parts of the year this is the format of recovery week I will use too.
On another note: anyone looked at the polarized plans yet? First thing that struck me is that one workout is high zone 2 (three zone model) or borderline 3. I’m sure they’re hard, but not sure what the goals of those plans are other than just being “polarized.”
Had a look earlier. Thats what people have been asking for, but I think not even the TR guys really know what the aim of these plans is. I’m also not sure how you progress them (and especially how AT will!) - just more TiZ? Then you’ll quickly hit the limit of time that people have for their training.
To be honest, I’ve never really understood what the big deal is about needing a polarized plan - just ride a lot in z2 (z1 pol) and smash yourself occasionally. It just doesn’t seem very complicated to me.
I do get why you’d end up training polarized, for example if you were focussing on sprint workouts - you can only do so many per week, so you’d need to fill the rest of the time with easy pedalling. But then the focus really should be on progressing the HIT workouts.
not to derail this thread, but i think different people view polarized as different things which leads to part of the debate around the topic. “which god is the right god”.
My VO2 block will be polarized for the next 3 weeks. Its either VO2 work or its z2. There will be no middle ground. But its certainly, not something i intend to do for all of my blocks.
This was a weird rest week, in that it didn’t fall in the typical M-F span.
I went into the final week of my sweet spot block knowing that I would be delivered an ass-kicking for my last ride. And it was. And it happened on Friday instead of the usual Saturday or Sunday. This forced me to take two days in a row off the bike during the weekend, which is not something I normally do.
So the remaining 3 days of the 5 day rest period were filled with easy rides (Bald Knob and Collins -1) and I then introduced some intensity late in the week in prep for this week (start of a new block). Again, kind of unusual programming.
I do like the idea that you propose, it’s sort of like a race-week taper.
Kurt, I was a little thrown off by them as well. In addition to your observations, the 4x8 @ 102% sessions are likely no where near hard enough to elicit the type of stress you’d want from that session. I think people will ultimately have to make some personal adjustments–fine.
I do appreciate TR taking time to develop a blueprint for those plans, (even though many of us have been programming our own blocks for a long time) but I wonder if they are lacking.
Furthering our discussion on testing after recovery:
Just did a 30+ min residual test on the trainer. After struggling at 275 for 25 min less than two weeks ago, I just smashed out more than 20 at 291W and 30min+ over 285 after about ten days of intensive SST work. And that was every All-Time power PR from 16:15 to 32:00. I’ll take it.
I hope I’m not getting too O/T with this, but there was a lot of discussion on it earlier in the thread… O/U vs threshold progression after your SST work? I know a lot of you were getting into O/U sessions recently…
I’m not racing and have target events as 100-120 mile hilly GFs with a goal of fastest possible times. I’m wondering if there is a a reason to favour O/U’s over progressing threshold work (approx 96-97% ish)? I totally understand the race specific benefits of the O/U to simulate real conditions, but if your event means you’re riding less time over threshold is there any physiological benefit to these sessions that means they are superior to longer threshold sessions? There will certainly be some steep ramps where >FTP efforts are essential, but my goal will be to minimise that time rather than the typical ‘race winning efforts’ scenario commonly used around O/U efforts.
I know they don’t have to be mutually exclusive, so maybe the answer is one of each per week, but if the goal is being able to hold a high % of FTP for 10-20 min climbs and do it over and over for 7 hours, is there a reason to favour one over the other?
FYI, at 50 with a 15-16hr typical training week (rising to prob 20hrs some weeks as the weather improves), I tend to absolute max of 2 intervals sessions per week and the rest is z2, or occasionally 1 intervals and some of the longer rides have some extra intensity thrown in. I should perhaps also add I’m currently in a block of 4x8 105% work and am thinking of this work as the 8 week lead in to these events.
O/Us should help to increase FTP, so your average watts (and therefore speed) for the event could be higher. They may also help you recover faster if/when you need to go over threshold in the event. I would probably only focus on O/Us if your FTP is starting to plateau doing regular threshold work and if you also can’t move out your TTE any further (as this is lower hanging fruit IMO).
I am doing more intensive endurance - that is, more sweet spot progression but a bit differently than my last go-round. Here’s my general week template for this block:
M: Big SST workout - e.g. 3x25@255W (FTP of 280)
T: Easy hour
W: Long Tempo or residual testing
R: Off
F: Over/Unders (5min power overs/92% unders)
Sa: Long (3-4 hrs)
Su: Off
I’m messing with my training density, so some weeks I’m going to move the W workout to Tuesday and see how that goes. Planning to do this at least four weeks, maybe five weeks, recovering into a possible road race.
On the plus side, my mFTP is at an all time high after last night’s 30min blowout.
I would do Over/Unders as part of your base or build because they build better tolerance and clearance of lactate, and can help raise your FTP. They may not be specific for your event, but they are a good late base/build workout for building lactate tolerance in general.
As you approach your event, make the workouts more specific - in your case a lot of SST and threshold work along with long zone 2. But if you know some of the climbs will send you over FTP and then require you to sit at a high % of FTP after, over-unders can be good for that as well.
I included O/U’s as part of my Intensive Aerobic (threshold) block as a secondary focus. The primary focus of that block was to build time at FTP, but you can only do so much of that a week, so I used the other day as a O/U day to continue to grow my SST ability while also getting better at lactate management. If you structure the workouts correctly, they can be very beneficial but without the stress of a full threshold workout (more like SST).
