Oh man, 3 hard days in a week can be tough, and if you ever go for a segment on one of the other rides it makes for even more intensity. I think you’ll be happy with 2 dedicated days—that leaves some room for the odd effort here and there on other rides when a crown (if you know what I mean) is up for grabs.
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With racing; I would then leverage everything into peaking and focus on specialization, which for me is Pmax and FRC/short power.
With no racing; i’ll just rinse and repeat hopefully starting the extensive block at a much higher mFTP so that everything will be at a higher power output.
I hate Vo2max 
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If someone likes vo2 max, it’s not properly done vo2 max workout 
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Yes true true…
I would do 3x5min 330w (115%) but did 2x5min and 1x 2min before i quit… Its going better than last time and it was my 7th cycling day with saturday 3x15min 105% so to much fatique i think…but with more fatique a longer blocks and better RPE than last time with less fatique…
But its hurts a lot…
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Just came off a full 7 days of illness with no intensity and only 170 TSS last week. AND…my goodness did today’s session feel sub-optimal.
Today’s workout included 3 sweet-spot intervals of varying length: 20-min, 15-min, and 10-min @ 91-94%. AVG heart rate across the 3 intervals was 173, 177, and 180 bpm. LTHR for reference is ~175-77. There were numerous times where HR was in the low to mid 180s during these intervals…which is VO2max zone for me.
It’s incredible what a random cold can do to influence heart-rate. This makes me question a couple things. I didn’t feel terrible during the intervals, but they felt worse than my last hard session of 4x10 @ FTP. Watts were there, but heart rate was massively elevated…IS THIS BAD? Maybe I should have taken an extra day and went easy.
/blog
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Heart rate should be expected to be higher after 7 days off.
edit:
@anthonylane here is a study by Coyle/Coggan/Hemmert published in 1986 that established 2-4 week detraining in cyclists resulted in lower cardiovascular fitness (including higher heart rate) and largely due to reduced blood volume. Without reading study, I assume less oxygen in blood requires faster pumping rate to deliver same oxygen as required during trained state. And like @velocoach below, after 5-7 day layoff it usually takes me a couple workouts for heart rate to settle back down. I just had that happen recently due to bad seasonal allergies.
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I wouldn’t worry about it.
Personally, it takes me a couple days before I feel good again after a reduced volume and TSS week so I schedule 1-2 days of building back into my program after unexpected time off due to things outside my control (sickness/life).
Or I just accept that I’m going to feel like crap with a high HR while hitting my numbers and jump right back into it. If my HR is still uber high and workouts are quite difficult after a few days back at it, and I can’t explain it (work/family/life stress, caffeine, heat, hr monitor issues(?), etc) then I’ll normally retest my FTP.
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I “like” VO2 max the same way I “like” racing crits and tasting blood. Type 2 fun.
While the sessions are absolutely brutal i do like the sense of accomplishment when you finally step out of the hurt locker and have won.
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Oh I also like this masochistic part of vo2 max and sense of accomplishment after, especially when doing them 3 days in the row and getting better but I never look at the workout and thinking “oh amazing, vo2 workout finally! Today is a good day”.
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Oh that’s interesting.
This is for another thread, but I’ll ask anyway…
Let’s say I’m riding at sweet spot, and on a normal week my heart rate is between 163-167 at 92% of FTP, which is 92-94% of LTHR. But, this week it’s at or above LTHR at the same wattage. Is this equal strain because the watts are identical or is one eliciting more strain than the other due to an increased cardiovascular demand? Despite watts being identical.
I assume this…
I cap my SST to <LTHR for few sessions when coming back from a break, illness etc. After a few sessions HR drops a fair bit then I hardly ever look as I’m safely under LTHR.
Personally I dont want SST to become like Threshold+ (in every way other than the watts) there are other sessions for that
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Depends on strain where? Muscular strain is probably fairly similar, while cardiovascular strain is obviously different. Considering you’re doing sweetspot mainly to work on muscular endurance, I’d guess that it’s fine to “ignore” HR, as long as it’s not massively out of normal. If it wasn’t a sweetspot session, but vo2max I’d pay more attention to HR.
Also depends on if you know why HR is different - if there’s a clear reason, eg temperature, I feel it’s easier to make a decision - if HR is out of range for unknown reasons, I’d be a bit more cautious.
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^^^ this. Maybe because of Seiler I think people lose sight of the purpose of training.
What was odd was that my heart rate was exceeding my usual LTHR, and drifting into VO2max territory @ low sweet spot. 
…but the RPE was not following. Despite not feeling as hard as my heart rate would suggest they should feel. Shrug.
FWIW, anyone who’s worried about or curious about extensive residuals, take this. My last workout during my extensive phase was 1x60 @ 90% which was done back on March 4th. After that, I backed off for 7 days (50% of TSS from the previous week) and started an FTP build block. A couple hard outdoor rides and two FTP sessions (4x8 @ 105 + 4x10 @ FTP) have been the only “hard” rides since that 1x60 SS effort a month ago.
Having ridden minimally in the last week (illness, not COVID 
) I just did 2x25 @ 320NP and 283NP at normal RPE/HR. Yeah, so?
The point being, don’t freak out about how much fitness or muscle endurance you’ll lose after your extensive phase. The deeper you go with it the bigger your bank account will be, and you’ll be able to tap into that savings long after you stopped depositing into it.
Temperature and nutrition/hydration can throw out HR. So if you are trying to do SST early in the morning and you dont typically do 5am workouts then it might be higher.
But if all else is equal, i’d be weary about long SST intervals that start to look a lot like threshold only because they may put you into a deeper hole than expected and make the recovery and subsequent workouts harder as a result.
This is the part i am most looking forward to with this difference in training. Building some redundancy into my aerobic capacity so that it is far less brittle
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How are people structuring intensive blocks? Have completed SST out to 1x90 currently in rest week.
I will need to retest FTP and TTE at the start
I’m thinking
Monday - rest
Tuesday - SST OU 2x20 → 2x30
Wednesday - Threshold 97% TIZ progression + 1hr Z2
Thursday - Z2 1.5hr
Friday - rest
Saturday - Threshold 97% TIZ progression + 1hr Z2
Sunday - Z2 2hr+ (Depends on weather)
TIZ progression will depend on TTE but aiming to replicate what Cusick has in PDF above page 31 3x10 to eventual 1x60
I just worry it could be a bit too much TIZ as a proportion of total
Final question, how long to take as a rest between intervals at threshold? I did 3 mins for SST and it was fine, tempted to try same again.
I based TiZ @ FTP as a percentage (~70%) of my longest continuous SS interval (60 min), so I started with 4x10 min @ threshold.
Feel free to check out my calendar here: - TrainerRoad
I notice you are blocking O/U and threshold work. Not sure the purpose, but know it puts you in a position where you may be fatigued heading into threshold work, when threshold should be the focus. Remember you focus for the block, prioritize it, adjust the rest accordingly.
FWIW this is how i structured my block to prioritize the threshold work, which always followed a rest day or active recovery, and the next day was always easy to allow me to properly recover before doing the secondary effort which was extended O/U. I was always clear though with my plan that if i felt fatigued the OU work would get cut back first.
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