This is intended. While the intensity percentage is lower, the duration of each interval is longer. As a result, Tinker is actually slightly higher in TSS than Red Lake +6 despite its lower intensity.
If you look at the overall Week 6 TSS vs. Week 5, there is a big TSS jump already. Week 6 is going to be a tough week already, so I would recommend following along as prescribed.
Thanks! Appreciate you taking the time to chime in.
Hey JoeX thanks for the shout out, you can put me down for IM Canada (as well as the Patagonman) in July, anyone else here doing IM Canada? All going OK in the trg I am currently doing Sustained Power Build (LV) and combining that with one long hillyish bike outdoor per and all the other swim run sessions of the IM build (HV) plan. Feeling good with the normal trg aches and pains but nothing too debilitating so all is as good as it could be just now. Hope everyone else is on track with the trg.
6 weeks to go for me ! I’ve been on holidays for a bit more than 2 weeks and I struggled to train, but still did a pretty good work.
Swim: Confident I will do good - definitely not great, but I will do 2’00 per 100m pretty easily, which is better than my initial target.
Bike: FTP up again at 278 (way beyond what I hoped for initially) - I really think I will kill it, but it’s Nice - quite hilly. Anyway, I’m very confident on that part of the race. I’ve did some outside rides by now - the FTP gains indoors translate very well outside - I’m significantly improving all my PBs from last year while finishing less tired than before.
Run: I increased the distance once per week, and luckily, the knees were all right ! I did >20km several times at a pace a bit faster than my target for Ironman, and was very cool during all the sessions.
Food / Alcohol: Well, holidays, in the USA… I seriously don’t know how you guys can stay fit out there - it’s really hard to eat well (as compared to France). Anyway, I somehow managed to not to take any weight, and will gradually go down on weight in those final weeks.
Mental: I feel really good. I must say the book recommended on this forum (“How bad do you want it”) was really helpful here - I’m not thinking ‘pain’ now - it’s just ‘discomfort’ 
The only thing I’m a bit affraid now is heat - my Ironman is Nice - usually it’s very hot. We have a very bad spring here in France so chances are it will not be too hot, but during my holidays I did 2 runs at high temperatures (at Tahiti…), and it was really hard. Not sure I can keep the pace for a full marathon, although it should be a bit easier (much lesss humidity, some shade).
Can’t wait for the event.
Trust the process
Good luck everybody !
Those are the worst! Worse than overunders and vo2. In fact it is a vo2 workout but you have to endure 6-8 min of it.
If it’s hot, stay on the conservative side and pull back. Lots of fluids and salts.
On Monday after a weekend of minimal training I had a big day. (2hr pretty hard bike, 3x20 at 90%FTP then endurance at the end) with 45min of running pretty easy. Nothing that would have previously killed me. Then on Tuesday I had to drop down the intensity on Gibraltar about an hour in, then eventually bailed after 1:30 which isn’t something I do almost ever. Yesterday my legs felt pretty heavy and being concerned about overtraining, I took that day off, even though I really wanted to go for an easy jog I held off for rest. Today I feel a bit better as well, but I wouldn’t say my legs are in anyway “snappy.”
So what I would like to solicit the community on is, how do you know you are good to ease back into training if you think you might have been closing in on that redline? And how do you generally ease back in?
I don’t usually take many days off, but I do take plenty of very easy days. After the weekend of some hard work, I would usually also have a hard ride on Mondays during the winter. So Tues/Wed were both spent recovering, and things were usually fine by Thursday.
The real answer is if you’ve got a good calibration of what’s really easy. For some people a .65 IF ride is quite easy, but for some they need something like lazy mountain. Maybe your next run is only 30 minutes at recovery pace. As a reference, my base runs are 30 beats below threshold, and base rides are almost 40 beats below threshold.
My workout today was Julius Caeser +3, which is 90 minutes of VO2 and over-unders. My legs feel like they’ve been ripped off.
Well done! That’s a tough one for sure.
Glad to see that in the main things are going well for everyone. Unfortunately my season has come to a stop. Been under the weather for a little while, which culminated in 2 days hospitalised. Heart and blood pressure problems. Now waiting for further tests. Last doctor did say she can currently see no reason why I shouldn’t return to full training. But I have to take it easy until the test are complete. So Outlaw now deferred to 2020. Good luck everyone will still keep an eye out on the thread.
All the best, no need to rush back with the training, your health always takes priority.
It’s a hard thing to judge when like you say you are constantly trying to wander along that line between doing just enough and too much. It’s also hard as that line is always changing. There’s a lot of truth when people say ‘the more you train, the more you can train’ as your body gradually habituates of higher and harder volumes of training.
I don’t really do days off and will always try to follow the plan I’ve got in mind but sometimes after the warm up or first interval of a harder session I’ve got planned if I’m feeling that it might not be a productive session it might turn into an easy run, or Pettit on the bike, and that’s how I’d ease back in.
A couple of easier days, maybe follow one of the recovery weeks from the plan you’re following and then get going again? Obviously I can only speak for myself but I often feel sluggish at the end of a week of easier rides so it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between heavy legs from a hard training block and the sluggish feeling from having volume but no hard sessions. Sometimes you may need to take those easier couple of days, trust that they will help in recovery, and then crack on knowing the first few sessions may be tough.
Fatigue and injury have one thing in common - it can be very tricky to be sure what the root cause is. Usually it’s the accumulation of a variety of factors over time, rather than a single thing you did recently.
I would chalk it up to experience and just be sure I’m getting the nutrition and proper recovery to support the training. 
Something I picked up once: “there is a thin line between being fit and being fucked.”
Lot of truth
This might be me next week. I’m currently in the nightmare 17:24 (720 TSS) build week in mid volume. I’ve got 12 hours to go and I’m already feeling cooked from my club run (which gave me DOMS - thanks coach) and swims.
Very succinctly put!!
And that line becomes more wiggly as you age.
Well done. I’ll bet the bike course was really tough with those 21mph headwinds.
. I’ll do some analysis and come back.