Hi everyone, my first post but I’m an assiduous reader of the forum. After few years of “free riding” without any specific systematic training, I decided to start a plan with Trainerroad. With a race planned for mid June I will start SSB LV next week. In the meantime I’m doing VO2max workouts (3/week).
I completed without any particular issues Bluebell, Bashful, Taylor -2, Mills but I poorly failed with Abott and Gawler. This is very frustating because I had to lower the intensity to 90% in order to finish the workout.
Since all the workouts did until now are focused on VO2max, why I failed only on these two?
Thanks in advance for your help!
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I’d be careful starting with a block of VO2, and then doing a Ramp test to kick off SSB. It might be that you over perform the Ramp test and end up with an FTP to high, which turns SS into threshold. You could do a 20 minute to be sure or just keep an eye on it. I would rather spend my pre-plan time trying to ascertain where threshold actually is rather than bump VO2 which is then going to be lost during SSB.
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^ This
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Ummm…because Abott includes 130% and 135%FTP intervals which are 10-15% higher than most of the VO2 work you’ve been doing. And Gawler is basically 10min blocks of VO2 work which is waaaay longer than any of your other VO2 workouts.
Why only these two? Intensity and duration. Abott and Gawler seem very much out of place in your VO2max progression. 
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Look at the Intensity factor of the workouts. There’s a big step up from the first three to the last two.
Bluebell: 0.87
Bashful: 0.86
Taylor -2: 0.83
Abott: 0.92
Gawker: 0.94
That’s a lot of VO2 max in a week. Especially if IF is above 0.90
…and with little history of structured indoor training.
The first two weeks are always easy…
Thank you all for the suggestions, really useful. IF is probably the key, simply it was too high for my current fitness level/experience. I’ll do the 20 min FTP test and then enjoy my first training plan
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