Take a good rest, and then when you think you’ve had enough rest take another couple days off 
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I’m thinking I’ll be excited for intervals again by next Monday.
Just going to ride easy til then, maybe even go outside to ride!
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Good plan. Just listen to your body. @empiricalcycling is the absolute guru / VO2 whisperer and his Pods are well worth the listen. You’ve dug a deep hole, now you’ll be absolutely pinging, but only once you’ve recovered 
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@liam_mail Ah, I’ve listened to all of his podcasts! And definitely the vo2 ones, even when my eyes got a bit glossy over the science.
I did his protocol about two years ago, and I dug a very deep hole. But once I recovered, I came back quite strong! I used to do his FTP testing too. It made me really enjoy longer intervals.
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I caught the racing bug again. Found a shorter MTB marathon race (34miles) Oct 1 in NH I’ll be doing on my single speed. Plan builder recommended Sustained Power Build but I feel that due to the constant on/off nature of a single gear off road, Short Power Build is a better fit. I bypassed ftp testing & used AI ftp detection which gave me 239 up from 233. I know this is too high for me, inside. Outside? Yeah, it works & maybe low. Intervals.icu has me at 248 based on outside workouts I’ve done. All that said, I’m going to try to stick to this LV plan & see how it serves me. I’m sure I’ll substitute some of the longer indoor workouts for outside versions but they won’t be over unders, I’ll likely do sustained intervals up to 18 minutes or so.
In any case, here’s my first workout, Katahdin-4. It was labeled achievable but it was hard. I managed but I’m nervous about what other, more difficult efforts will bring. As usual, apologies for my lack of brevity, I’m the guy with the long emails at work that nobody reads 
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Easy workouts til next week, when I start up a new plan. This was still much harder than it should have been. Could have been the fatigue in the legs, the Oreos I ate last night or me not turning on my fan 
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Decided to do this guy today. Looks boring but it actually wasn’t bad. Enough work to feel productive but not to make you hate life
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Tahoe Trail on Saturday, Flume Trail on Sunday, so Recovery on Monday.
Going to be more low volume, low effort all week for recover before building again for the Queen’s Stage Race at Rebecca’s Private Idaho the the first week of September.
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VO2 Block - Workout 2 of 9.
Definitely “Very Hard”. I knew it was going to be, I should have done the week 5min, 4min, 3min. I was pretty pleased with the AT workouts provided but it’s a tough way to do it.
Gutted to miss out on a 5min Power PR. I did 5min at 391W, 4m50 at 397W, PR of 407W for 5min from Virtual Power days that for a long time was nothing more than a pipe dream/stretchiest of stretch goals . I was having stereo issues right before the first interval and missed the start 
. Wasn’t much left at the end of the interval so who knows.
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The Thumb -2
This is the closest workout I could find to what I actually did outside. I was originally scheduled for Matthes +2 (3 x (3 x 3.5) @ 112%) but ran out of motivation to do two more intervals for a variety of reasons, including:
- Doing the workout at the end of the day instead of the morning due to work commitments
- Taking a wrong turn on the way to the hill and getting a flat (more on that here), costing me 15 minutes of ride time in total
Anyway, I did manage seven intervals. The first two were closer to 3.5 minutes and the last five were 4 minutes. Power wasn’t as steady throughout the duration of the intervals as I would have liked but the averages worked out in the end.
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That was well timed my first wo after a break was scheduled for tonight and it was almost ideal conditions to take it outside (unlike the last two days). It was a ramp test substitute Palmer.
I chose a route that was mainly uphill and I had hoped that the 10x2 min VO2Max would get me up the one big hill but unfortunately they finished at the bottom so after the 5min cool down I had another spontaneous circa 60s on/60s off (the timer had stopped so it was counting in my head, hence the circa ). I then free wheeled down the hill before having a go on a strava segment (one last VO2Max interval).
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Madison -1 today - 4x7 min @ 100%. Rode the first one at normal cadence and full power, then dialled down to 92% and rode the remaining intervals at 60 rpm. (abundance of caution for the knees, etc…) I’m doing this for all my Thursday threshold workouts in MV SSB2 - outside when I can. Legs feel pretty second hand but pretty easy cardio wise. Be interesting to see how it shapes up - in week 2 now and good sensations.
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Workout two of short power build. This one was tough. It shouldn’t be too bad but gasping for air after the second interval in all 5 sets. FTP too high for sure. TR AI looking at power numbers from outside, I think. Then again, maybe they know what I’m capable of better than I do 
Next workout is threshold, will probably do an alternate outside but we’ll see. Blistering hot in western Massachusetts for the foreseeable future. Also planning on some true Z2 work for a change over the weekend.
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Coincidentally (because of today’s podcast) I decided during this Z2 workout I would go fanless and do some heat training. Felt kinda nice, like a sauna, but it is a GREAT reminder how much RPE skyrockets without adequate cooling. And my heart rate as well.
One thing I heard nate say on a different podcast I was listening to (about the benefit of Z2 workouts… Rest & Recovery, Motorpacing, Short Zone 2 Workouts & More – Ask a Cycling Coach 196 - YouTube
And Nate said something that really resonated with me regarding “listening to your body”. He made the point that listening to your body is super subjective, and some times he has felt crappy, like hes digging himself a hole, but then had huge fitness gains after it.
I’ve noticed the same thing. So while yes, you have to listen to your body, you really have to take all the information because sometimes your body will mislead you in a way. Interesting.
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Still working in some SIT work while I’m between plans. Like the workout text said, I did all sprint intervals seated. It suggested 200% ftp target but I hit over that each time, and I felt like I could have done a bunch more intervals by the end. I’m definitely enjoying this change of pace.
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