TR Guidance: how to choose between BASE and BUILD?

I think pretty much everything you’re suggesting now sounds great to try - I’d only suggest one very minor thing - see if you can swap the Sunday mid-volume SSB ride for outside, instead of the Saturday.

Reason being, the Saturday rides are among the most challenging milestone rides (90 mins at high intensity factors) - unless you have really pristine open road, you may find it hard to do them faithfully. For example, something like Carp Peak + 2 needs 16 mins non-stop just barely over/under threshold. A couple stoplights brings that from brutally tough to very do-able - it’s just not the same. The Sunday rides are often already longer by design, more moderate intensity, and thus slightly better suited to take outdoors.

You can also try exporting the planned rides to your Garmin or Wahoo - I live in a rural area and it’s a fantastic way to do them if you can find good uninterrupted roads! Never hurts to have extra Z2 time before/after the planned workout portion as well, if it gets you to nice open roads.

I also looked at your calendar history and a few things jumped out to me - again, full disclaimer, just an amateur who loves data and reading about all of these things a bit too much…

  • Your big IF / power rides are all outside - it’s very typical to be stronger outside than inside - I made mistake my first year of training with an outdoor tested FTP and it crushed me. Don’t assume the power you can do outside will translate indoors. If it’s way off, then read the threads on here about cooling and high performance fans to close the gap.

  • You seem to have no problem nailing the short VO2 max intervals - but I see a lot of SS and O/U workouts that came up short - maybe you just often ran out of time, but I’m seeing Kaweah, Carp Peak +1, Antelope… a lot of bread and butter SS base workouts indoors very frequently not done to completion. Prove to yourself you can nail most of those in your new structure before moving to build. These are the ones that will really help you just get out and ride 50+ miles faster without blowing up.

  • MV is going to be a brutally tough step up. Don’t sweat it if you have to drop the Wed/Sun rides to just get the other stuff done reliably each week - as others have said, doing 100% of a LV plan is already going to be a massive step up. If things get tough, most would say drop Pettit first; then either drop the Sunday ride, or cut it back from intervals to an easy Z2 long ride - but still aim for steady constant Z2 power output - no coasting That makes it a lot more productive time. MV is no joke first time through :slight_smile:

Good luck and please do post back how things go, or to find a support group when you get to know Mary Austin :grin:

EDIT - just saw your latest post - looks like a perfect strategy to manage the MV risk!