+6.1 on my VO2 
My riding/training has been anything but structured recently. A long time off the bike with injury, and an operation, and now that I’m back I’ve been able to just do whatever I want and see large gains. Starting to plateau now though, I might have to stop dicking about and do dull structured training 
There is actually a green line in the chart. It’s the power target set by the athlete, by adjusting the difficulty %.
Let’s say, to keep the numbers easy, an athlete has a 300w FTP, they’re not on erg mode, the intervals are at 90%, but they bump the workout difficulty to 105%. They’ll see the blue bars at 270w, the white line at 300w, then a green line at 285w, & their actual power drawn over the top of that in yellow at whatever they’re doing. For someone in erg mode, the green line isn’t usually visible because the power tightly matches it, except in sprints or getting off the trainer.
You can see the green line visible above the blue bars when I did Tray Mountain -1 earlier this year:
The key is up the top in the browser view, but Target & Actual aren’t very descriptive.
Hey at least you hit all the targets! 
I did the -2 last year on WWDD & died a slow death during the sweetspot “recoveries” between fireworks.
The app still passed me but I excluded it from my progression levels.
I failed the first firework in that last block, just wasn’t paying attention and missed it starting. Which as we all know is pretty much harder than hitting it as planned when you’re on ERG
Nice job, that sucker look tough.
I was supposed to do Thimble +1 again so swapped it with Kern +3 which almost felt like a mistake. Getting through the step down was hard. Knowing that last interval was only 2 minutes wqs enormously helpful.
Reco week, but the last time I did intervals over 90% was last Thursday, & the next time will be next Monday. So I decided to switch out the prescibed Pioneer -3 & keep the engine turning with the taper threshold workout Prater -5, then added another half an hour which included 22 minutes at 60%.
During the intervals it felt hard, but I definitely had a lot more left in the tank, so called it moderate.
Otherwise I promise I’m recovering. 
Last workout of the block, 2min under 30s over. Nice fitness bump from the 3 week heatwave we had, now the temps have gone down power is high and hr is low.
Some threshold work today.
I’ve been completing all the workouts during the week but I don’t know why TR gave me an Achievable workout today.
Finished my reco week, & I decided it was time.
20’ FTP test. 
(Also I decided it was time to see how quickly I could climb a hill that I used to climb a whole lot when I was 18, so that’s where I did it. +500 m, 5 km, a reasonably consistent 10%. My best time back then was low 25’, maybe a few seconds off.)
Well done - that’s no joke to complete 
Awesome effort to plough through that and keep going.
That was way harder than I anticipated. The initial 6s bursts were fine. The 6s bursts whilst already being above FTP later were not. Really struggled with the final ones (+500w) and cadence slowed almost to a halt. I had to reduce the intensity on the last 2 blocks to 95% and rated it maximum effort. Sjeesh!
Partially I think because its the first vo2max workout I have after a AI FTP increase
First post this year…. Owl +4
Skip the self-accountability journal if uninterested:
I’m allegedly training for CX (life likely won’t let me race, but a boy can dream), with my “C race” target date coming up in late September and "A race” target date being the first week of December.
The first half of 2025, training has been near impossible with work. I was just getting my commutes in (sometimes) with a couple of workouts a month in March and April when I got a little bit of help in my role. May was 5h, 6h, 7, 10h and 2h per week. Better, but not as consistent as I’d like.
June tanked again, work going off the hook and really demotivating me in every aspect of life, not just cycling.
Swapped to a different group around July 1 and have been commuting a little further as well as getting in at least 2/3 planned workouts for the most part. Much better attitude about everything and some motivation to gain fitness.
July was 11h, 11h, 15h, 9h, 14h (which includes my first century since the first of my three kids was born…. over a decade ago). By the time I finally got on track volume-wise the next “recovery week” coincided with my family’s annual vacation, where I’ve always brought my bike and treated it like a training camp. So I skipped a whole recovery week and treated it like a training camp…. doing mostly unstructured volume but I did 2 kind of long 30-30 workouts within some longer rides.
August has been 11h, 12h and at the end of the 12h week, my body snapped. The day after doing a 20 minute FTP test, and immediately after a commute ride, I failed a “productive” threshold workout which I don’t think I’ve ever done before…. Marked it training fatigue. But it certainly wasn’t following the standard hard day / easy day rotation anyway.
I recognized it, plugged in a manual rest week and have only commuted this week. Depending which office I go to its either 30 minutes or 45 minutes 1-way and I try to keep it chill except when traffic dictates some pedal smashing for safety. I got home today with 8 hours under my belt, mostly little ring stuff and some townie stuff with the kids….
Friday is normally penciled in for. a 90 minute ride, but since I commuted today, and I’m just getting back into it, I settled for Owl +4, Threshold 3.4, 60 minute hard start 5x5. AI/adaptations kept trying to move me down to an achievable threshold, but I wanted to test if 1 recovery week was enough, so I stayed at productive, even though I haven’t done any workouts since my 7% bump in FTP….
Passed it, marked it hard, and I’m now jumping in with 2 feet into 2 VO2 workouts this coming week.
Window
Turned it into 3 x 10 @ FTP instead of 3 x 10 @ 95, 99, 97%. Love these workouts with a long Z2 before and after and some steady-state threshold intervals in the middle. This and hard starts. Not a fan of over/unders. VO2, or anaerobic - probably because they hurt (a lot) and I suck at them. 
Today’s workout on the CX plan. These Vo2 workouts make my legs feel like they are going to explode by the last 30 seconds.
This is the first week of Speciality Phase, Cross is here 
Honestly this was brutal. I only had ever done 1 anaerobic workout before which was 1.5 level. It tried to give me a 7.1 level ever since an outdoor ride where my PM glitched and gave me 1100w for 1s. But I changed that back to the old 1.5 one. (think it was a connection loss thingy, my max is about 890w for 1s).
This time it gave me this one. And whilst it was a steep increase, it’s around similar where my other pl’s lie. So I tried it anyway. I only struggled a bit with the 1.30 intervals. Cadence slowly dying in the end.
Honestly I think these sort of workouts are better outside. Outside I’ve done 422 for 1m and 300w for 5m. I could never replicate those efforts inside. Doesn’t matter if its ERG or Resistance mode, it just doesn’t feel the same and is easier to do outside.
The longer efforts (10m, 20m) I can replicate pretty well inside vs outside. But inside I struggle to do 350 for 1m30, ERG grinds you to a hold. Resistancce I just can’t keep up the watts. Outside I can, especially uphill.
I gotta take the bad with the good. Today I received a harsh lesson in fuelling whilst doing Crows Nest on the track.
As some background, I’ve done some fasted rides of much greater duration (but that was years ago). I thought, there’s not a lot of intensity in this workout, I should be alright, & it’s maybe not such a bad thing for the body to be able to remember how to metabolise different substrates, after I’ve been carbing all my rides to the hilt. And after the middle interval at 74% I thought, there’s a bit of pootling at 55%, a 20-minute period at 70%, then it gets easier, this one’s in the bag. I was feeling good, I’d even started the middle interval a few minutes early & was accidentally overachieving the 55% sections.
Well…
Beginning the second 70% section, straight away it felt harder than it should’ve. Ten minutes later, my power had dropped right off. It wasn’t fatigue (either muscular or neural), it was just, I got nuffum. Finished that work period out with whatever I had, & headed home. There was an additional period at 60%, but I couldn’t even manage that; I was right down near 40%. I actually got slightly dizzy on the bike, & multiple times didn’t immediately recognise my location, even though it was a route I ride frequently. Just as well it was all cycleway + 1km of quiet suburban street with minimal traffic. Got home unscathed, & to my credit I had my recovery drink but did not demolish the snacks cache.
Annoyingly tomorrow is now yellow so TR has taken away my threshold workout, after a sinus virus obliterated the better part of this block.
