After a recovery week and 1 month before my main A race of the year
Feel a bit toasted lately. In february I feel really really good and I pushed more watts than now (and ever), so the lasts months were a fight against my mind… I keep training, recovering and eating well etc. Hope the hard work pays somehow, cause I trusted TR training plan to the letter.
Today’s VO2 max workout hurts (specially the last five of each block), but I never doubt I could finish it.
Another kitchen sink sweetspot workout: Moosilaukee. (Everything except Z6.) Done on the cycleway.
Swapping it out for Tray Mountain after doing its -1 a fortnight ago had crossed my mind. Given there’s not a lot of sweetspot in these mixed-interval workouts it took me a while to work out what adaptations it was seeking to encourage, but then when I looked ahead to TB3 MV I saw the sprints in its Wednesday endurance workouts. Between those efforts & the introduction of threshold, it seems that these short SS workouts in TB2 are not so much there for the adaptations normally sought with sweetspot riding, seems more likely they’re categorised as sweetspot because in the TR ecosystem they have to be categorised as something, rather they’re used in TB2 as primers for TB3, & the real bread & butter of TB2 is tempo & endurance. So I was a good little boy & did what was prescribed (mostly 
). There’ll be plenty of time next block for bog-standard sweetspot intervals.
I started with the interval target boosted to 104% of prescribed, but then realised after the VO2s that the longer period of high tempo/low sweetspot/sprints might come back to bite me, so I dropped it back to 100%. The rest of the workout was quite manageable.
Instead of doing this weekends over-under’s thought I’d give Zwift racing ago. Ended up turning into a pretty decent threshold workout, was pretty cooked by the end
McAdie (bail) & Pioneer -3
Didn’t quite make it to the end of this base block. Bailed on McAdie (last workout of the block) due to fighting a chest cold and relatively poor sleep all week. Opted for an endurance spin instead. Taking this weekend completely off, likely Monday too.
Just made up this workout today. Picked a VO2 workout rated as “stretch” and integrated it into my 4 hr Z2 session. Came out to be 10, 2 min intervals at 116% FTP. I completed 6 at 1 hour in and 4more at 3 hours in. Went really well and I had zero fade into the last 4 intervals.
Unfortunately the free rides don’t count towards progression level changes.
I missed a week of training and AIFTP dropped my FTP from 230 to 214.
I don’t think it’s right so I’m giving the AI something to adapt too.
I’m on Base 3 now and doing all my workouts a 105%
Moral of the story for me today is to be careful what precedents I set. 
For today I was served up the SS L5.1 Kaputyat which I took to the track. Once on the track I thought 6 minutes of pootling around between 8-minute sweetspot intervals to be a bit of a waste of time, so I scrubbed through the workout on the recoveries, cutting them down into the vicinity of 2-3 minutes, except the first & last which I kept as-is for the purpose of managing my interval start-finish positions on the cycleway to/from the track. Blitzed all the intervals.
Well, it seems Adaptive Training has discovered, oh this guy likes short recoveries; let’s push him further in this direction…
Short-recovery workouts have been a bit of a bogie for me in the past, so this is going to be very interesting. 
I had Tallac -1 this week, it wasn’t bad. You have that short break in the middle of the interval but it’s better just to think of it as a 3x15min workout.
Good luck with it.
You did also bump up the power target. Well done! 
Time for an FTP bump perhaps?
Yes, that’s how I think of those workouts, bigger blocks with scheduled bailouts.
I swapped Tallac -1 for Truchas -3 to avoid the Tallac family’s variable interval targets. Actually went alright. 
Fox, sort of.
I had the TR app set to erg as always, however the erg never kicked in! That’s a first.
So i tried to use gears for a couple of the intervals, sort of worked.
Restarted the app and tried to turn off / on erg, that didn’t work.
Restarted the app and tried to calibrate the trainer, that didn’t work.
So just trucked on with some junk miles as buggy software didn’t inspire. Reminds me of the software delays that always seem to delay workouts on zwift.
Wrapped up Galena today, sweet spot work is never flashy, but it always feels like money in the training bank. Heart rate stayed stable, cadence felt smooth, and I think it’s setting me up well for the next threshold block
I had a really good return commute from work yesterday, where my available power surprised me. Started off fairly steady (it’s a 25km, flattish asphalt route) and against a decent headwind.
Built the power over the course of the ride, and ended up with 375w actual, 390w NP and 34.5kph average (on the gravel bike on road wheels). Best 20 minutes was 400w, best 30 minutes, 390w.
If I’d had a 10 minute warmup, I’m pretty sure I’d have managed 400w actual for the hour. I’m genuinely terrible on the flat/rolling terrain, and those sorts of numbers are usually only reserved for mountain climbing.
What’s nice is that I’d been at work (on my feet) for ten hours, and I’d done a fairly snappy ride to work in the morning too (333w NP). I’d also done 180km/2450m gravel the day before.
Ive not had a break since last Monday (19th) during that time Ive done 341miles (including 195miles over the bank holiday weekend) so as expected AI adapted my SS workout to a recovery (Volunteer-1). So I thought I’d give proper rollers ago for the first time since pre chemo in 2019. Probably as expected my confidence was terrible. It was a little better when I moved them to the back garden and had a wheely bin to hold on to. Whilst I never fell it just wasn’t good! I don’t know how I use to do 20 min tests and hour plus sessions on them 
@HLaB at least you got some fresh air, hey? Or were you just smelling the bin? 
I’m in the middle of a recovery week, yeahyeah it means recover, but I’m coming out of TB3 & going back into TB2 which was a walk in the park so I decided to keep the engine turning over by subbing out one Z2 for a 1h sweetspot. I picked Truchas -3. Hard, but not especially hard, & I did have a bit left in the tank.
Phone was in the frame bag for the workout as usual. Ripper day today! 
I took a major chunk out of my 100km pb today (by 22 minutes, albeit my previous one was a little soft).
Almost entirely solo as my riding buddy told me to push on at the half way point after I’d dragged him along for most of that time.
Final time for the 100km was 2hrs 37 minutes 38 seconds, at 38.1kph and 340w average (357w NP). Might have been a couple of minutes quicker had I been solo from the get-go. Quite hilly terrain for a TT style effort with over 1000m vertical.
Training for Vätternrundan (one of the world’s largest cycle events, with 315km around Sweden’s second largest lake) as I’m in a large team of about 45 and we have an 8hr target (so around 40kph by the time you factor in the 2x2 minute stops). Shouldn’t be as tough as today’s ride!
Nice work 
Always a good feeling to set a new PB 
