For those of you who use/design your own plans, how do you decide your “critical/breakthrough/focus” workouts? Target limiters in off-season, then work toward race-specificity closer to the season?
For example, let’s say your TSB/Form is positive and you would like to do a 75-85 TSS workout that isn’t endurance work. What criteria do you use to determine if it’s a SS, Threshold, or Vo2max session?
-What phase of training am I in
-What’s the purpose of this workout
-How much time do I have on that day
-What is planned the day before and the day after
-Is this workout hard enough to cause stress and still recover in time for my next hard workout
I think about all this and fill the rest of my days with the volume I can handle that week
I do believe in picking a main event or date and counting the weeks backwards (say 28 weeks) to figure out how to structure your training to build and peak on that date.
This is helpful. Thanks guys. The only significant way I differ I think is that I don’t peak for an A race/event. I “peak” for a short season. So I target about a three month period. Of course you can’t peak for that long but you can come in to that time half cooked and try to time a peak toward the end.
June, July, Aug. Heart of road race season. Lots of officially and unofficially competitive events. During that time frame I let the events/races determine my “hard/intensity”