I agree with everything previously stated. I also had the same concerns when I started tr in November. I just did bluebell yesterday at my new ftp and bumped up the intensity to 103% on the second set and up again to 106% on the third set. I believe vo2 max is a strength of mine, Although I can finish the threshold workouts, so far, I could never up the intensity as I feel it is brutal, for me.
I’d say if you’re comfortable at the intensity and want more work, the just you the intensity in the workout as you go, but be sure to not over do it and make then unmanageable. Unless all your workouts are too easy, that may be a different story.
Bluebell is still part of the revised and more gentle on-ramp to VO2. As @DaveWh mentioned, it’ll start to hurt at IF .9. If you have Mills coming up, you could do Dade -1 instead.
Up until about a year ago, the SSB2 VO2 progression was Huffaker → Mills → Spencer → Kaiser. Yikes.
I had Taylor -2 yesterday in SSBMV2, and totally get the “see how it goes” mantra. But…
Mid way though SSBMV1 I threw in a Charybdis -4 with a 0.96 IF and nailed it. Reckon I’ll follow a tougher progression like you chaps for the remaining 3 weeks.
Looking like Charybdis +1, Kaiser, Spencer +3. Should get me into that “barely able to complete” zone!
I did this the other day and recorded “it’s not as hard as it looks”. What it did do though is really pull at my right knee, I’ve had an underlying issue with it for years which is aggravated by high cadences. Was really sore last night but it’s settled down today. Any other sessions like this I’ll need to swap out.
Ouch, I imagine the stop/start nature also might not be ideal for bad knees! I had a similar high cadence affair - saw some intervals in the 130s on Tuesday - first time I’ve managed that.
You could try something like Brasted instead, which follows the 30/15 protocol. Short intervals but the reduced rest means your heart rate doesn’t drop much between intervals.
I did Baird +6 last night with my new FTP bump and it harder than Spencer! I thought with it only being 90 seconds at 120% instead of 3 min it would be much easier. The combination of 10 more watts and only 1 minute rest between each was very challenging. Maybe I just had a bad night too, but I barely completed it!
Did Taylor -2 this morning, and got through it ok. It’s certainly nothing like Dade+1 (2.5min efforts) and Kaiser+2 (3min efforts) which both had me suffering last year - got through Dade+1 by dialling it down from 120% to 117%. Kaiser+2 was a straight fail after 35 minutes.
For this morning’s ride my target power was 312 watts (120% of 260 FTP), but when looking at the analysis page all the intervals are listed as target 305 watts whereas the blue graph correctly shows the 312 watt target. Any ideas what’s going on here?
First time doing Taylor -2. I too was really intimidated, but I found once I adjusted after the first set and got used to it, the workout was… not easy, but lets say less taxing than I expected. I thought my HR was going to spike and I was going to gassed each interval, but I wasn’t even breathing that hard. I was a bit surprised. Over-unders and sweetspot work felt a lot more difficult.
I did Taylor-3 today as the first workout in SSB2. My heart rate did not even get close to my threshold despite completing at +3% and I was wondering what was up (have I magically gained like 30w on my week off?!?!?). Despite the IF of only 0.8 I was expecting it to be a bit more difficult. I am used to something more like 6x3min @120% for my VO2 work during a build.
Will likely try one of the alternate progressions mentioned above.
Any Taylor minus workout is very easy for a V02 workout. IMO, TR’s transition from Taylor -2 to Spencer +2 is too big of a swing. I start with Bluebell and then throw a Dade in between Mills and Spencer +2. Like all of their plans, it works well for someone who is relatively new to structured training with a rapidly rising FTP. If you have somewhat plateaued, this will still be very easy, but Spencer +2 will probably be impossible. From a IF basis, you would need to add 11% to the entirety of Taylor -2 in order to have the same difficulty as Spencer +2, but the true workout difficulty is even harder.
Taylor is not a vo2 max workout. Too short intervals, too long brakes to make any sort of impact. If it is not your first tango with tr it is basically useless workout that can be only treated as leg primer.
